Friday Video: The Odyssey by Thug Notes

Loretta reports:

Back in January, I alerted you to Emily Wilson's new translation of Homer's Odyssey, the first in English by a woman. Since then I’ve been reading it in installments, puzzling over the hero especially, and what drives him, as well as the culture in which the story lives.

This video offers some interesting insights as well as laughs. However, since it’s part of the Thug Notes series, be warned that the language is not delicate.


Video:  Homer's Odyssey - Thug Notes Summary and Analysis

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be. To watch the video, please click on the title to this post (which will take you to our blog) or the video title (which will take you to YouTube).
Image at top left is a still from the video.

The Diamond Rock Octagonal School, 1818

Susan reporting,

Education was important to the first generations of Americans after the Revolution. True, there were a great many things to be sorted out by the new country - everything from minting money to debating a standing army to creating public works for safe drinking water. But the ultimate success of the Revolution and the new government that followed would depend on citizens who could think and make important decisions for themselves. Literacy was key.

Among those who recognized the need for education was John Adams, who wrote the following in a 1786 letter:

"But before any great things are accomplished, a memorable change must be made in the system of Education and knowledge must become so general as to raise the lower ranks of Society nearer to the higher. The Education of a Nation, instead of being confined to a few schools & Universities, for the instruction of the few, must become the National Care and expence, for the information of the Many...."

The same belief was expressed on every level of early American society, and not just in the affluent and sophisticated coastal cities. While only twenty miles from Philadelphia, the Great Valley region of Chester County was still farms and forest in 1818. Yet in that year, a group of thirty-four individuals from the Great Valley came together to subsidize the creation of a school for the local children.

To be sure, thoughtful citizenship wasn't the only reason for the school. Being able to read, write, and cipher were important skills for farmers, too, and being able to read the Bible was as important as reading newspapers. Education was also seen as "improving," a way to better one's self and rise higher in the world. What parents - then or now - don't want that for their children?

None of these individuals founding the school would have been considered wealthy. The original subscription list shows that only one contributor paid thirty dollars, with the majority offering between three and five dollars, and one subscription of only fifty cents. But together, they raised the amount necessary to build a single-room schoolhouse: $260.93. Members of the community continued to contribute, whether in money to pay the teacher's salary, or by offering a spare room for the teacher's lodgings, or by cutting wood to burn for heat during the winter months. From the beginning, the school was considered a "free school", without a religious affiliation, and open to all boys and girls in the area.

The little schoolhouse still stands today, upper left, and is known as the Diamond Rock Octagonal School. Its single room is in fact an octagon, a forward-thinking design for schools at the time. Windows supplied light from every direction, and heat came from a wood-burning cast-iron stove, lower left, in the center of the room. The teacher's tall desk, upper right,  stood nearby, where he or she (the list of teachers between 1818 and 1864 shows the post was nearly equally divided between women and men) could survey the students.

And what a task that must have been. Students sat on backless benches, divided by age and ability into groups that faced one of the eight walls for study and assignments. When it was each group's turn to be taught, they would swivel around on their benches to face the teacher. Their ages ranged from small children to young adults, and during harvest and planting seasons, the older students would be kept home to help with crops. Tradition says that at its greatest capacity, the school could accommodate sixty children - a staggering number in a single room, and a testament to the dedication and adaptability of those early teachers.

The schoolhouse remained in use until 1864, when newer, more modern schools were built nearby. Over time, the little building fell into disrepair, and late 19thc photographs show that it had deteriorated into a roofless shell. Around 1915, the  artist Wharton Esherick became involved in the restoration of the school and used it as his studio for several years. He added the concrete floor, and was also responsible for the diamonds in the shutters and the iron work on the windows and door.

The school soon found another savior in Emma W. Wersler, a local woman whose mother and sister attended the school and was a descendent of one of the original subscribers. She supervised the school building and its restoration, and arranged for original artifacts - books, the teacher's desk and chair, the wooden buckets for drinking water, lower right - that had been scattered when the school closed to be returned for display. In 1918, the school reopened as a museum and historic site.

Overseeing the maintenance of the school was the Diamond Rock Old Pupils Association, which also served as an alumni group for former students. These included three physicians, two ministers, and a congressman - ample proof that "improvement" could in fact take place in a one-room schoolhouse.

For more information about the Diamond Rock Octagonal Schoolhouse, including hours when it is open to the public, visit the website here.

Many thanks to Susanna Baum for her assistance with this post.

Photographs ©2017 Susan Holloway Scott

Octavia Hill, Victorian Social Reformer

Sargent, Octavia Hill 1898

Loretta reports:

In the course of our stay in London, we took a number of guided walks, during which I discovered dozens of interesting people, including several intrepid women.

Our Old Marylebone Walk (which propelled us to the Wallace Collection in very short order), introduced me to, among others, Octavia Hill. She was a social reformer whose work puts her in a class, I think, with Florence Nightingale. You can read a detailed biography of her here at Wikipedia, and some of her writing here.

Having written about the Ragged Schools in Dukes Prefer Blondes, I was, naturally, intrigued to learn she’d started her work by making toys for Ragged School children.  But I was more impressed by her ability to get things done. Like so many Victorian reformers, she had, apparently, a will of iron—a necessary character trait, although not necessarily one that endears a person to everybody. Still, she got things going, and by all accounts, her houses were successful.

But social housing wasn’t her only achievement. Believing that city workers should have access to green spaces, she campaigned to save several suburban woodlands from development. And while she may have been shortsighted about women’s suffrage and other social reforms, the heart of her work lives on, in the National Trust and various housing organizations, in the U.K. and the U.S.

You can read more about her here.

Image: John Singer Sargent, Octavia Hill, 1898 

Photos copyright © 2017 Walter M. Henritze III


Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Victorians Lose Their Luggage

Frith, The Railway Station 1866

Loretta reports:

Last time, I talked about penmanship. Today, I offer a look at letter-writing, another lost art. I was, as any nerdy history person would imagine, thrilled to find the Correct Guide to Letter Writing (4th ed, 1889), which covers letters for virtually all occasions, including a marriage proposal From a Widower with grown-up Daughters to a Young Lady (and acceptance and rejection letters for same);  a letter From a Young Man to his  Guardian, asking for an increased Allowance; one from From a Butler to his Master, giving Notice; and one From a Lady, promising to sing at an Afternoon Tea.

Lost Luggage Letters

The two letters displayed here, complaining about lost luggage, show that this phenomenon didn't begin with airline luggage.  I’ll bet anything there are Egyptian hieroglyphs and Roman tablets complaining about lost luggage. Some of those pictures carved on cave walls probably express some Neolithic ancient ancestor’s dismay about his misplaced mastodon skin.

Llangollen Station

Images
Llangollen station on the w:Llangollen Railway, a heritage line in north Wales. Photographed from the town bridge over the River Dee (Afon Ddyfrdwy), by Chris Mckenna, 2005, courtesy Wikipedia.

William Powell Frith, The Railway Station. Engraving by Francis Holl (after Frith) 1866, courtesy Wikipedia.
Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

The Art of Penmanship

Alfred Stevens, The Letter

Loretta reports:

Periodically, an inquiry pops up on social media about whether or not children ought to be taught cursive handwriting. Some say it’s no longer necessary. Others worry that our letters and journals will become the equivalent of Egyptian hieroglyphs, which were a complete mystery for about 1400 years. We’re still not positive about how to pronounce the ancient Egyptian words, since the hieroglyphs don’t bother with vowels.

But the Is Cursive Really Necessary? contingent maintain that there will always be experts who can translate our funny little marks on paper, just as there are experts today who can translate the numerous scripts of centuries past, like this letter written in English Chancery Hand.

Who Can Learn to Write

The Picturesque

In other words, our diaries and such will make perfect sense to a small group of nerdy history writing scholars in the centuries ahead.

For now, though, a great many of us are still writing and reading cursive. Some of us ancient ones remember being taught the “Palmer Method” in elementary school. While reading Ann Trubeck’s The History and Uncertain Future of Handwriting, I learned that the Palmer method was a simplification of a very beautiful style that was popular from about 1850 to the 1920s, and used for one of the most famous logos on earth, Coca-Cola®.

It’s called Spencerian script, and it was developed by Platt Rogers Spencer, who thought that our writing should be inspired by the forms in nature. The forms of his letters truly are beautiful. The words are easy to read. But it’s no easy feat to get good at it. If you’re interested, though, you can read the New Spencerian Compendium of Penmanship here at Internet Archive or in this PDF.

Ladies' Hand

Images: Alfred Stevens, The Letter, courtesy Wikipedia.
Handwriting advice and samples from the New Spencerian Compendium, courtesy Internet Archive.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

A College for Women is Founded in 1848

Oread Institute 1853

Loretta reports:

Once upon a time, in my college days back in the last century, I lived on Castle Street in Worcester. Behind our little street rose a hill*), which we learned was Castle Hill. Queries about the name evoked responses like, "I heard there was a castle on the hill. Or a school or something.” That was about as much as I ever learned, until recently, when a vintage postcard arrived at our house. It showed a castle, and its title, “Oread Institute,” connected in my mind with my old neighborhood, because I recalled a street by that name not far away.

As my husband I have been learning, Worcester was a happening place in the 1800s and first half of the 1900s.This was why I wasn’t completely surprised when I read here why Worcester was chosen as the site for one of the United States' first higher education institutions for women. It was built by Eli Thayer, and modeled on his alma mater, Brown University. Founded in 1848, it opened 14 May 1849.

History of Oread Institute

Oread Institute in 1870s

As this piece in Gleason’s Pictorial of 19 March 1853 points out, “Here woman enjoys exclusively those privileges which some have regarded as the rightful prerogative of the other sex, having the advantages of a collegiate course of study, if she chooses. And in the attainment of that to which she has long aspired, she is happy.”

Here's a view of Worcester from the Oread Institute in 1858, and here is a detailed study of the college. It
closed in 1881. From 1898 to 1904, it was the Worcester Domestic Science Cooking School.** In 1934 it was demolished.

We’ve located the grave of one of its graduates, about whom I’ll post at a future date.

Image at top: Oread Institute 1853, courtesy Yale University Art Gallery. The photograph below it is described thus:  "The Oread Institute, in Worcester, Massachusetts, was an important and popular women's school from 1848 until it closed its doors in 1881. This ca. 1870's photograph is significant not only because it captures the school in its final years, but because it was taken by a woman, Ms. Augustine H. Folsom." Image and quote courtesy American Antiquarian Society, Worcester MA.   

*This is the case with most streets in Worcester: level ground is in short supply.
**It's believed that shredded wheat was invented there.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Andrew Carnegie & His Libraries

Punch cartoon

Loretta reports:

Andrew Carnegie was one of those rich guys who ended up giving away something close to 90% of his money. This would still leave a large chunk of change, because he was extremely rich, one of the richest Americans of all time.

One of his methods for unloading his money was building libraries. A lot of libraries. I knew nothing about Carnegie libraries until my husband, after one of his photographic expeditions in Worcester, MA, told me the city had three of them. This entry in the The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy; Earth edition, explains what they were and the conditions Carnegie required the town to meet.

Greendale Branch

If you scroll down this page of the Worcester Public Library site, you can read the vital statistics about our three Carnegie-funded branches.

Greendale Branch detail

Mr & Mrs Carnegie attended the cornerstone layings of all three libraries, as described here. I loved that, having come unprepared for a cold, raw, Worcester day, Mr. Carnegie stopped at a store to get rubbers. Here’s more about that day, complete with illustrations and links. It’s well worth reading, for a glimpse into the past, and some idealism we could use today.

South Worcester Branch

The Greendale Branch, now renamed, is still a library.
The Quinsigamond Branch is now part of a school.
The South Worcester Branch has been converted to private residences.

South Worcester Branch detail

Is there a Carnegie Library in your town? Look around. You might be surprised, as I was.

The Accomplished Young Lady

Morning Dress 1813

Loretta reports:

I thought it would be interesting to compare William Hazlitt’s remarks about ladies' accomplishments with the exchange in Pride and Prejudice dealing with the topic.

The elegant manners of people of fashion have been objected to us to show the frivolity of external accomplishments, and the facility with which they are acquired. As to the last point we demur. There is no class of people who lead so laborious a life, or who take more pains to cultivate their minds as well as persons, than people of fashion. A young lady of quality, who has to devote so many hours a day to music, so many to dancing, so many to drawing, so many to French, Italian, &c. certainly does not pass her time in idleness; and these accomplishments are afterwards called into action by every kind of external or mental stimulus, by the excitements of pleasure, vanity, and interest. A Ministerial or Opposition Lord goes through more drudgery than half a dozen literary hacks; nor does a reviewer by profession read half the same number of productions as a modern fine lady is obliged to labour through.
—William Hazlitt, The Round Table Vol 1, 1817

Image:
Morning Dress, Ackermann’s Repository August 1813, courtesy Philadelphia Art Museum via Internet Archive. Text clippings from Pride and Prejudice online at Google Books.

Clicking on the image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will take you to the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Gargoyles on the Doomed Gymnasium

Loretta reports:

A notice in the local paper, of a building’s possible appointment with a wrecking ball, spurred us* to document it. That was how we discovered the gargoyles on the Alumni Gymnasium of Worcester Polytechnic Institute. However, as I began to research them, I learned that gargoyles are waterspouts. Stony beings like these, which are not, are “chimera” or “bosses.” But when you look at these photos, I’ll bet a majority of you are thinking “gargoyles.” Also, that whoever carved them had a sense of humor.

Since I’m not the art historian of the 2NHGs, I asked Susan/Isabella about this architectural feature. She introduced me to the term Collegiate Gothic, which led me to this very interesting piece in the Atlantic about its origins...

...and then, in the way of nerdiness, to this pdf, which early on makes two intriguing points: “Success of these buildings can be measured, in part, by the fact that these are often the most desirable buildings in which to live, despite the fact that in many cases they have undergone only minimal updates over the years and are in somewhat worn condition.

“Success is also measured by the ability of these buildings to be modified. (Italics mine] During their renovations they have been able to withstand interventions while maintaining their structural and aesthetic integrity. At the same time they are capable of being updated with state of the art systems and programmatic changes.”

Interestingly, as I continued research—about the WPI building in particular—I discovered that a team of engineering students apparently—and only last year—did view the Alumni Gymnasium as “desirable." They prepared this proposal to renovate it. Furthermore a fundraising project was under way in spring of 2014, and appears to be continuing ... for a building WPI wants to raze?


So I guess the the university is saying ... erm ... “Never mind.”

N.B. The building was in use as late as 2012.

Well, at least they’re promising to save the gargoyles/chimera/bosses.


*Actually, I told my husband he had to document it, because he’s a real photographer.

Friday Video: Two Schoolboys' View of a Georgian Prince

Frederick, Prince of Wales

Loretta reports:

The early Georgians are not my specialty.  I’m more familiar with the Prince Regent (later, King George IV) than his predecessors.  But it’s interesting to learn how a family tradition of mutual father-son antipathy continues over generations.

In this short video clip, two schoolboys explain Prince Frederick and his family situation.  If you want to know more, you can view a lengthier and more detailed (and yes, very entertaining) account of the Georgian monarchs here.

Image: Attributed to Joseph Highmore, Frederick, eldest son of George II of Great Britain and Caroline of Anspach (circa 1740-50), from the Royal Collection via Wikipedia

Clicking on an image will enlarge it.  Clicking on the caption will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

Readers who receive our blog via email might see a rectangle, square, or nothing where the video ought to be.  To watch the video, please click on the title to this post.

Sea Pines School for Girls 1916, on old Cape Cod

Sea Pines School for Girls

Loretta reports:

In the past year and a half, I’ve been lucky enough to spend quite a bit of time on Cape Cod, MA.  Though the Cape has changed a great deal since my girlhood—not nearly so wild and rustic as it used to be—some of the past remains.  So I did pause when I saw this ad.  As far as I can make out, the building is still there, albeit turned into an inn.  It does remind me of the grand resort hotels from the Victorian-Edwardian eras, most of which have vanished.  (Here, here, and here are examples of those still in operation.) Apparently it was still operating as a school into the 1970s, so it must have been successful.  In any event, the Reverend Bickford gets a fine write up in the 1919 American Biography, and on the next page, so does the school.


Image from The World’s Work, August 1916 advertisements. Bio from American Biography: A New Cyclopedia, Volume 6 (1919).  Both courtesy Google Books.

Clicking on an image will enlarge it.  Clicking on a caption will allow you to read at the source, where you can learn more and enlarge images as needed.

The Victorian Hair-Guard

Bradley Headstone & Charley Hexam

Loretta reports:

During my recent re-enactment of sickbed scenes from La Bohème—with less fatal results, in that I did not, actually, die—I whiled away the time reading, among other things, Charles Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend, his last complete novel and one of my favorites.

Seeking an edition for my eBook reader led me to a review claiming Dickens had been paid by the word.  This concept makes sense to people who (a) never read a reputable biography of Dickens, (b) never had to read Victorian literature in general, and/or (c) can’t imagine a world in which television and radio—let alone the Internet—didn’t exist, and where entertainment was something you read, heard read, went to see/hear, or made for yourself.

Some people have trouble with Victorian writing because it’s …wordy.  It had to be.  People needed detail. Many had never seen the scenes or people novelists described.  Many lived in a world so small we can’t imagine it.  There were Londoners who’d never seen the sea and knew next to nothing about places outside their immediate neighborhoods.

They probably knew what a hair-guard was, though.

“Bradley Headstone,* in his decent black coat and waistcoat, and decent white shirt, and decent formal black tie, and decent pantaloons of pepper and salt, with his decent silver watch in his pocket and its decent hair-guard round his neck, looked a thoroughly decent young man of six-and-twenty.”  —Our Mutual Friend
 
Though I’ve studied fashion, the finer points of Victorian male attire are not in my repertoire.  Hair-guard?  Try Googling it.  Yikes.

My OED merely listed it, without definition.  My copy of The Dickens Index said:  “superfine neck-cord made of hair for ensuring the safety of pocket watches, spectacles, etc.”  Having found occasional mistakes in this book, I proceeded to Google.  Filtering to 19th C Books led me to many examples, (here, here, here, here, here - item 71- and here) whose context offered clues, i.e., it is a sort of chain or rope.  But changing my search terms showed me it wasn't necessarily "superfine," as this page of examples demonstrates.

Now we all know.

*Pictured above, courtesy The Victorian Web.  Please click on the caption for a larger image in which the hair-guard is easier to see, and to learn more about the image.
The Doré illustration, "The Organ in the Court," of street children's entertainment, is scanned from my copy of Doré's London, edited by Valerie Purton.