etc. Winter 2018

etc.

Winter 2018

The Magazine of The Redwood Library & Athenæum

The Illustrious Claggetts at the Redwood A Ball of a Time: ten, nine, eight…

Dinner is Served P.J. O’Rourke Delights Crowd

Curling up with a good book.

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W e lc o m e Dear Friends, We’ve always known that time is fugitive, alas. But as I struggle to rationalize the fleeting mirage that was our 2018 summer season, I’d like to propose that we for once refuse time’s manic pace. It’s the eternal lesson we all seem eternally to forget: aesthetic contemplation—especially in picturesque Newport—should be like ‘slow’ food, savored deliberately.

Certainly, you will want to take your time when visiting our winter exhibition, The Claggetts of Newport: Master Clock Makers in Colonial America. Opening on December 8th, the show brings together more superb Claggett and Wady clocks that has ever been—and likely ever will be—assembled. As an extension of the theme of ‘time,’ this issue also features an article on historic books of hours and almanacs from the Redwood Special Collections. Another piece returns us to eighteenth-century Rhode Island—to that which today, as then, still orders our day: food and mealtimes.

Finally, among other things, we include the Newport Daily News’ coverage of the special appearance of political satirist P.J. O’Rourke, an event bearing a key reminder: that the Redwood, for all times, was meant to address topical issues and engage with contemporary culture.

Until next time and with much gratitude for your support,

Contents 2 The Illustrious Claggetts

at the Redwood

Donald L. Fennimore and

Frank L. Hohmann III

6

A Ball of a Time: ten, nine, eight…

8

Dinner is Served

Latif Nasser

James Chevallier

1 0 Designing Women

Michelle Farias 1 2 The Hours Before the

Hours: Books of Hours

and Almanacs at the Redwood

Patrick Crowley 1 6 Political satirist, author

P.J. O’Rourke delights Newport crowd

Laura Damon 1 8 At the Athenæum

Benedict Leca, Ph.D. Executive Director

2 0 Exhibitions at the Redwood

Redwood Library & Athenæum 50 Bellevue Avenue Newport, Rhode Island 02840 chartered 1747

Mission Statement Founded in 1747 on the Enlightenment ideals of intellectual pursuit and civic engagement, and committed to lifelong, interdisciplinary learning, the Redwood Library & Athenæum generates knowledge in the humanities for the benefit of the widest possible audience with “nothing in view but the good of mankind.”

401.847.0292 redwood@redwoodlibrary.org @redwoodlibrary @theredwoodlibrary @RedwoodLibrary

etc.

Winter 2018

redwoodlibrary.org Editorial Director Benedict Leca, Ph.D. Editor Patricia Barry Pettit Editorial Advisor Don Dery Design Pam Rogers Design Reprint of any content herein must bear following credit line: Originally Published in Etc., The Magazine of the Redwood Library and Athenæum Winter 2018

Cover: Arch-dial, eight-day quarter-striking clock made by William Claggett in Newport between 1735 and 1748. It is housed in a Boston-made japanned pine case and was commissioned by a member of the Stanton family of Newport. The Redwood Library & Athenæum Special Collections.

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Fig. 1 Square-dial, eight-day clock made by William Claggett in Newport between 1716 and 1720. Housed in a Newport-made walnut case with gilded finials, it was made for a member of the Gorton family of Warwick, Rhode Island.

(Private collection)

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The Illustrious Claggetts at the Redwood

by Donald L. Fennimore and Frank L. Hohmann III

Soon after his arrival in Boston from England in 1714, William Claggett (1694-1748) determined greater opportunity lay in the smaller but thriving town of Newport, Rhode Island, relocating his extended family there in 1716. That move proved to be prescient, for William went on to fame as Newport’s preeminent clockmaker and his clocks are among the most admired in early America. On the eve of the opening of the Redwood’s exhibition devoted to Claggett clocks, The Claggetts of Newport: Master Clockmakers in Colonial America (opening Dec. 8, 2019), the present article aims to function as a primer providing added information about both the clocks and the professional and personal contexts in which they were created.

The greatest single presentation of Claggett clocks ever assembled, the Redwood exhibition will notably allow for comparative analysis of mechanical and stylistic innovations of the Claggetts’ (and Wady’s) superlative craftsmanship over more than a half-century. A good starting point to illustrate William Claggett’s work is a clock he made shortly after he settled in Newport for a member of the Gorton family—probably Samuel Gorton (16721722)—of Warwick, Rhode Island (Fig. 1). Housed in a Newportmade walnut case, the square dial, eight-day clock nicely represents his early work. The movement is fronted with an 11 1/2-inch square brass dial that indicates four bits of information, the hour, minute, second and date of the month. The silvered chapter rings and name plate, coupled with the gilt lacquered corner spandrels impart a bright, attractive and decorative aspect to its functional purpose.

By the early 1720s demand for clocks with an arch dial became the norm in the North American colonies and Claggett was well equipped to supply them. Figure 2 shows a fine example of a Claggett arch dial clock housed in a Newport-made walnut and veneered walnut case. While the configuration of the square portion of its dial is essentially the same as that on the Gorton clock (Fig. 1), arches like those pictured here provided a dramatic new aspect that not only influenced the design of the clock cases, but also offered multiple new opportunities to present time related information. In this instance, the arch provides space for an attention-getting silvered name boss flanked by sprightly winged putti. In addition, it employs a graduated scale at its perimeter that in conjunction with the blued steel pointer allows one to advance or retard the speed of the movement by raising (shortening) or lowering (lengthening) the pendulum.

Fig. 2 Arch-dial, eight-day clock made by William Claggett in Newport between 1725 and 1735. It is in a Newport-made walnut case embellished with panels of figured burl walnut and gilded finials. (Private collection)

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Fig. 3 William Claggett, ca. 1735-48.

Arch-dial, eight-day quarter-striking clock housed in a Boston-made japanned pine case. Commissioned by a member of the Stanton family of Newport. Redwood Library & Athenæum Special Collections.

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Another of William Claggett’s dial clocks with a name boss is housed in a Boston-made mahogany case made between 1735 and 1748 for John Cushing (1695-1778) of Scituate, Massachusetts. It is notable that Claggett recorded his location as “Boston” on the engraved name boss in the arch of the dial, instead of the usual “Newport”, confirming that he did not completely give up his connections in the former when he relocated to the latter. This clock nicely demonstrates the influence the arch dial had on clock case design, visible not only in the arched dial door, but also the arched pendulum door below it and the arched side lights (windows) on either side of the hood.

Widely held to be the pinnacle of William Claggett’s artistry as a clockmaker is the Redwood’s masterpiece clock made between 1735 and the date of his death (Fig. 3 and cover), probably for a member of the Stanton family of Newport, which features a Boston-made japanned pine case that reflects the era’s taste for Asian design. The movement strikes every fifteen minutes on a nest of six graduated bells and on the hour with a seventh bell. It is configured and the dial designed to impart an impressive ten bits of information—the hour, minute, second, day of the week (in the wedge-shaped aperture under the clock hands), the month and its number of days (in the lower right corner), the date of the month (in the lower left corner), the hour of high tide in Newport harbor (in the upper left corner) and the phase of the moon and day of the lunar month (in the arch). In addition, its bells can be silenced with the switch in the upper right corner.

The clock also demonstrates William Claggett’s talent as an engraver. Like all clockmakers during America’s brass dial era (circa 1700-circa 1780), he had to be competent at engraving functional features like Roman numerals and Arabic numbers. However, he far excelled his counterparts in his ability to engrave pictorial adjuncts like the figure of Jupiter in the wedge-shaped aperture and the manin-the-moon in the arch. Equally impressive is his facility with decorative line engraving and alphabetic lettering, as seen in the arch.

Claggett was not just a clockmaker. He worked with his father as a baker and he engraved copper plates used to print money for the colony. He experimented with static electricity and pursued business opportunities unrelated to clockmaking. All the while, he needed to keep his clockmaking and repair business solvent.

To that end, he had shop staff who worked for him. James Wady (circa. 1706-1759), who was probably born in London and emigrated to Boston after apprenticing to his uncle John Wady, moved to Newport and worked for Claggett as a journeyman from about 1729 to about 1747. He married Claggett’s daughter, Mary, and he is Claggett’s best known employee. Following Claggett’s death, Wady attempted clockmaking for a short time on his own, but that ended in 1753 at which time his personal and business life spiraled downward toward his death as a pauper. The few years during which Wady worked as an independent clockmaker probably account for the small number of clocks bearing his name that are presently known. Only eleven are known to exist. A clock Wady made between 1747 and 1753 for a member of the Wanton family of Newport (Fig. 4) exemplifies his talent as a clockmaker.

Housed in an ambitious Newport-made mahogany case, it relates closely to those of his master, most notably in the use of a tides dial in the upper left corner. This horological solution to predicting tides is unique to William Claggett and his journeyman, occurring nowhere else on clocks made in the Anglo-American world.

Fig. 4 Arch-dial, eightday clock made by James Wady in Newport between 1747 and 1753 for a member of the Wanton family of Newport. Housed in a Newport-made mahogany case embellished with a carved gilded shell and finial and panels of blind fretwork fronting yellow fabric. (Private collection.)

Fig. 5 Thomas Claggett, ca 1755-80. Dial with rotating portion of the arch painted with polychrome moon and landscape vignettes.

Thomas Claggett, the third of the Newport clockmakers Claggett and Wady clocks represent a high water mark in detailed here has proven enigmatic; he has long been accepted as Rhode Island’s horological legacy and stand at the pinnacle of William Claggett’s son, but no evidence to support that contention early American colonial clockmaking. They embody artistic beauty has ever been found. Circumstantial evidence suggests they were and mechanical originality, separate and apart from the impressive probably related but not as father and son. There is no record of design and construction of their cases. The Redwood exhibition, where and when Thomas was born or with whom he trained. He The Claggetts of Newport: Master Clockmakers in Colonial America first appears in Newport as an adult in the clockmaking business and our book, Claggett: Newport’s Illustrious Clockmakers, illuminate in 1752. Thomas Claggett continued the best of their work in conjunction with a there presumably with a degree of success Claggett and Wady clocks represent consideration of their lives and the various until 1776 when the occupying British in a high water mark in Rhode Island’s local, regional and global forces that Newport and the American Revolution horological legacy and stand at the affected them, establishing the Claggetts effectively destroyed his business. Like pinnacle of early American colonial and Wady establishes their place in the many Newporters, Thomas Claggett fled world of early American horology. clockmaking. They embody artistic north to Providence, where he attempted In closing it must be noted that to earn a living clockmaking, silversmithing beauty and mechanical originality, seminal research and writing on these and teaching swordsmanship. At the separate and apart from the impressive three clockmakers was conducted by conclusion of the Revolution Claggett design and construction of their cases.

Richard L. Champlin (1923-2003), returned to a devastated Newport in 1779, librarian at the Redwood Library and but divided his time between there, Taunton and Dighton, both in Athenæum (1988-91). Though William Claggett’s clocks have Massachusetts, all the while slowly losing his mind. He died insane drawn comment and admiration since the early 1800s, it was in Newport in 1797 and was buried in a pauper’s grave.

Champlin who undertook in-depth research on him, James Wady Thomas Claggett’s clocks differ from William Claggett’s and and Thomas Claggett over a period of years that greatly expanded James Wady’s. In addition, his clocks vary significantly one from understanding of the three. The fruits of his pioneering research the other. A dwarf timepiece is a case in point. Its movement is were offered in three excellent monographs entitled High Time: smaller and simpler than those of his predecessors; it has no strike William Claggett and his Clockmaking family in 1974, James Wady: train or bell to mark the hours and it tells only the hour and minute. The Life so Short, The Craft so Long to Learn in 1975 and Thomas Furthermore, it is housed in a Newport-made mahogany case Claggett: Silversmith, Swordsman, Clockmaker in 1976. Additionally, that is only two thirds the height (just over five feet) of William thanks to the generosity of Mr. Ed Kane, the Redwood Library Claggett’s and James Wady’s. In contrast, another of Thomas purchased Champlin’s working papers in 2017.

Claggett’s clocks (Fig. 5) strikes the hours on a bell, offers six bits of information—the hour, minute, second, date of the month, Donald L. Fennimore is curator emeritus, Winterthur Museum, phase of the moon (with a painted moon face) and the day of the Garden & Library. Frank L. Hohmann III is a collector of eighteenthlunar month. It is housed in a Newport-made mahogany case that century clocks and furniture. stands not quite eight feet tall. r e d w o o d l i b r a r y. o r g 5

A ten, Ball of a Time: nine, eight…

A History of the New Year’s Eve Ball Drop

by Latif Nasser At the stroke of midnight on New Year’s Eve, a billion people But the technology was flawed. Calibrating a marine will stop what they are doing in order to watch a big ball slide chronometer according to a time ball was tricky, because the down a pole. The Times Square device is a dazzling spectacle: an chronometer was installed below deck, where the ball wasn’t visible. aluminum, geodesic skeleton covered in wedge-cut crystals and Time-ball operators complained of adverse weather conditions, more than thirty-two thousand light-emitting diodes, which are poor visibility, and faulty signals. According to Scientific American, capable of creating billions of kaleidoscopic color patterns. But a time ball installed in 1845 atop the U.S. Naval Observatory despite its modern shell, the nearly twelve-thousand-pound ball is a in Washington, D.C.—likely an “air tight ball of Gumelastic nineteenth-century contraption.

Composition,” manufactured by Charles Goodyear—had to be Time balls originated in the early eighteen-hundreds, before “thrown down by hand.” Afterward, it would land on the observatory there were time zones. Most American cities kept their own time, dome and roll onto the roof beneath. (Former President John Quincy based on the sun. Knowing the exact time at sea was exceptionally Adams liked to stroll over to the observatory and watch it fall.) difficult but was crucial to navigators, who used it to calculate their But in the words of McCrossen, the ball “was clearly almost useless precise longitude. To determine the time, seafarers relied on a marine to navigators, few of whom would have bothered to anchor so far chronometer, an apparatus that resembled an inland along the Potomac.” By the eighteenoversized pocket watch, carefully gimballed We know that Lincoln was shot eighties, new commercial technologies— in a wooden box to keep it level as rough seas at 10:13 P.M. because a stage such as those of the Self-Winding Clock rose and fell.

Company, in Brooklyn—eliminated the need carpenter had synchronized the for mariners to recalibrate chronometers, and Unfortunately, chronometers varied in Ford’s Theatre clock that morning: therefore the need for public time signals. their “going-rate”—the speed at which they ran. If the instrument wasn’t periodically “I fixed the clock in the vestibule

On land, however, time balls found “rated”—recalibrated—the vessel risked by the ball today and it is right by a new audience. In cities, people set their being wrecked by unexpected shoals. “The that,” he said. personal clocks to them. So, too, did city deadly serious task of rating chronometers,” businesses that relied on having the precise as the historian Alexis McCrossen has called it, forced crews to lug time, such as banks, coach companies, clockmakers, and playhouses. the delicate devices ashore and pay agents to maintain them.

We know that Lincoln was shot at 10:13 P.M. because a stage In 1818, Captain Robert Wauchope, of the Royal Navy, had carpenter had synchronized the Ford’s Theatre clock that morning: a better idea. Why not use a visual signal from a coastal naval “I fixed the clock in the vestibule by the ball today and it is right observatory, coordinated by telegraph, that captains could see from by that,” he said. Government officials considered the time ball an their decks? The first ball drop took place in late 1829, in a dockyard appropriate accent on municipal buildings. In 1884, someone even at Portsmouth, England. Wauchope’s design used two balls, both proposed erecting a time ball on top of the Washington Monument. five feet in diameter, set on a flagpole at the water’s edge. One was New balls popped up on both coasts, and even in landlocked fixed at the top; the second was weighted and mobile. Minutes cities like Kansas City, Missouri; Akron, Ohio; and Crete, before noon, the second ball was raised up the flagpole until it met Nebraska. Businesses put them in their shop windows or atop their the stationary ball, so that no light passed between them. A flag corporate headquarters. Jewelry stores used them to demonstrate was flown nearby, to warn observers of the imminent drop, which the reliability of their clocks and watches. In 1877, Western Union Wauchope estimated took a little less than half a second. At the installed a time ball on its Manhattan headquarters, at Broadway moment captains saw light between the balls, they checked their and Dey Street. Its firing signal came from the Naval Observatory chronometers against the official time. in Washington, via a dedicated telegraph line, which directed the A year later, Wauchope grandly claimed, “There will be no port ball to drop at noon New York time, or about 11:48 A.M. in D.C. of any consequence into which a ship can enter, where an accurate The New York ball had its detractors, among them Cleveland rate for the time-pieces on board may not be found.” He drummed Abbe, who later became head of the U.S. Weather Bureau. In an up support from London’s ship captains, and shortly afterward, the 1881 Times article, he notes that there were a “number of large Royal Observatory, in Greenwich, erected its own time ball. Soon errors in the falling of this ball, sometimes amounting to five and many more appeared, at ports in the Cape of Good Hope, Jakarta, six seconds.” New Yorkers loved it anyway. As Leonard Waldo, an Valparaiso, and Madras. By 1845, there were a dozen or so time astronomer at Yale, put it, “The time-balls in Boston, New York and Washington, have thoroughly ingratiated themselves in the balls installed around the world. public favor.”

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Russ Brown, superintendent of One Times Square, checks his vintage Mickey Mouse watch a few hours before the illuminated ball in the background was to be hoisted into position atop the building, Dec. 31, 1980.

AP Photo/David Handschuh

After Adolph Ochs became the publisher of the Times, in 1896, he decided to move it to the former site of the Pabst Hotel, at the intersection of Forty-second Street, Broadway, and Seventh Avenue. The Times’ new terra cotta and pink granite building was the second tallest in Manhattan. By 1904, Ochs had convinced Mayor George McClellan to rename the square after the paper.

That same year, Ochs planned a New Year’s Eve party, promising fireworks at midnight, to lure New Yorkers away from the city’s traditional gathering, on Wall Street, where people listened to the bells of Trinity Church. It worked. Three years later, though, Ochs couldn’t get a permit for the fireworks. Instead, he installed a seven-hundred-pound sphere of iron and wood, covered it in a hundred twenty-five-watt light bulbs, and had it lowered from the flagpole at midnight.

The Times moved in 1913, but the Times Square ball drop continued, interrupted only by wartime blackouts in 1942 and 1943. Until 1995, the ball was lowered much as older time balls once were: by “six guys with ropes and a stopwatch.” Today, the drop is initiated by a laser-cooled atomic clock in Colorado, the primary time standard for the United States. It continues to be our most spectacular display of public time-keeping.

Reprinted with permission. Latif Nasser, The New Yorker Magazine © Conde Nast Latif Nasser is the Director of Research at WNYC, New York’s flagship public radio station. He recently received his Ph.D. from Harvard in the history of science.

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Dinner is Served

On The Menu in 18th-Century Rhode Island

by Jim Chevallier If “the diet of the first (seventeenth) century was limited to home products, fish, and wild game,” eighteenth-century prosperity in Rhode Island brought plenty. The plantations of Narragansett were then very like those of the South (including slavery, which for a while was one major source of their wealth). This included ample hospitality:

of rum.” After January 1779, during the Revolution, Newport residents were reduced to rations of one-half bread and one-half rice, the bread itself being of mixed oatmeal and rice. Entries for 1798 in a store’s day book at Puncatest, show them buying quantities of “bitters and biscuit, rum, tobacco, cider and bread.”

As late as 1888, one could still see the oven from the first store in the area in which a Mr. Stoddard had baked “those delectable compounds of sweetened dough and ginger, that his fair good customers were so gallant as to call cakes.” Time shortened their original name of “Stoddard’s cakes” to “Stodercakes”.

Allowances must always be made for eccentricity. In 1779, a friend visited a Dr. Babcock and found:

All this served by maids with “African born curls...taught in the school of south country etiquette, neatness and grace,” a vignette which holds less charm for us today.

A less elegant but prized entertainment was the husking festival, at a time when one farmer “had a thousand bushels of corn husked in one day.” The bountiful provisions included “hot roasts, baked puddings, pies, cake, sauces, wines, cider, whiskey and all other creature comforts”.

Others of course ate more simply. In 1702, a man hired during fishing season got (in addition to forty shillings a month) “six pounds of bread and six pounds of pork a week”. In 1744, sailors on the sloop Tartar got, each week, “seven pounds of bread, four pounds of beef, two pounds of pork, two quarts of peas or beans and one pound of butter; and for every day each man half a pint

His breakfast was bread and milk, with some apple-pie, or fruit of the season, while his housekeeper and I were taking a cup of excellent coffee with buttered toast. He would often rally us on our want of taste: “better live as I do;” would he say, “out of this old silver porringer and with this spoon, I have taken my breakfast for forty years.” At dinner, and he kept an excellent table, he ate heartily, but always of one dish, be it roast or boiled, fish or flesh; as he began, so he ended. He took cider as his common beverage, and a temperate glass of good wine. At tea, of which he was very fond, he drank exactly three cups. At a regular supper table, the fashion of those days, whatever company he might entertain, after due attention to his guests, he confined himself invariably to his porringer of bread and milk.

The men and women of high degree of Dutch, French or English stock found in a Narragansett mansion a warm welcome, a cheery sideboard, a blazing cordwood fire, under a roaring chimney, a table loaded with all the meats, breadstuffs, fruits, pies, cakes, corn-bread, johnny cakes, wines, cider, tea, coffee, et cetera, et cetera.

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A less elegant but prized entertainment was the husking festival, at a time when one farmer “had a thousand bushels of corn husked in one day.” The bountiful provisions included “hot roasts, baked puddings, pies, cake, sauces, wines, cider, whiskey and all other creature comforts”.

A 1776 convention of the New England States set prices for a series of products, including meals at inns: “Every traveler, (an exception was made in the case of soldiers), was to pay for a dinner of boiled or roast meat, with the usual accompaniments, except wine, one shilling and six pence; for his supper and breakfast, each one shilling; for his lodging four pence.” Otherwise, the list of products shows us the staples of the period. Prices were set for wheat, rice and corn by the bushel; for West India rum by the gallon, sugar by the pound or hogshead, molasses by the gallon or (slightly cheaper) the hogshead. “Domestic cheese was six pence a pound; butter ten pence” Milk was cheaper from May 1st. to November 1st. Potatoes were cheaper in the fall. Meats included mutton and veal, turkeys, “dung hill” fowls and geese.

Finally, we get a more specific look through the stores of an eighteenth-century doctor, who kept ample cider and wine on hand and a full barrel of farm-raised pork and almost as much homemade beef.

Twenty barrels of apples supplied the demands for fresh fruits, while dried apples, berries, etc., were stored in the cellar pantry with bottles of grape juice and other temperance drinks, vegetables of all sorts from garden and field, with a pile of golden pumpkins and squashes, filled the store house to the doors. Add to the stores of the cellar, the riches of the corn-cribs, chockfull of oats, rye, barley, buckwheat and Indian corn, and you have the fountains of good health full to overflowing under every roof-tree in Rhode Island.

From samp to overflowing corn-cribs and stores of wine, cider, and meat, Rhode Island’s appetite had already grown as it took its place in a new republic.

Jim Chevallier is a contributor to Modernist Bread (2017), Savoring Gotham (2015), The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America. His work on the history of the baguette and the croissant has been cited in Libération, the Smithsonian Magazine, and a number of other publications. His new book, A History of the Food of Paris: From Roast Mammoth to Steak Frites was recently published.

Bayles, Richard M. History of Newport County, Rhode Island. From the year 1638 to the year 1887, including the settlement of its towns, and their subsequent progress (New York: L. E. Preston & Company, 1888), 284, 389, 914-915.

Bicknell, Thomas Williams. The History of the State of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations (New York: American Historical Society, 1920), 1:71-75, 151; 2:479, 3:850, 891.

F. C.C. “Assize of Bread in Narragansett Historical Register,” ed James N. Arnold (Providence: Narragansett Historical Publishing Company, 1888), 6:265-266.

Livermore, Samuel Truesdale. A History of Block Island: From Its Discovery, in 1514, to the Present Time, 1876 (Hartford: Case, Lockwood & Brainard Company, 1877), 38.

Records of the Colony of Rhode Island and Providence Plantations, in New England: 1741-1756, ed. John Russell Bartlett (Province: Knowles, Anthony & Co, 1860), 91.

Sheffield, William P. A Historical Sketch of Block Island (Newport: J. P. Sanborn & Company, printers, 1876), 54.

Updike, Wilkins. History of the Episcopal Church, in Naragansett, Rhode-Island: Including a History of the Other Episcopal Churches in the State; with an App., Containing a Reprint of a Work Now Extremely Rare, Entitled, “America Dissected,” (New York: H.M. Onderdonk, 1847), 309.

r e d w o o d l i b r a r y. o r g 9

Treasures o f t h e R e dw o o d

Designing Women

by Michelle Farias Recently opened in the Redwood’s Peirce Prince Gallery, Ingenuity and Invention: Women Illustrators of the Golden Age celebrates the artwork of women illustrators during what has been termed the ‘Golden Age of American Illustration’ (c.1880-1920). It is during this period, marked by advances in printing and a growing popular readership, that a rich array of illustrated weeklies and monthlies, advertisers, and book publishers came to employ many gifted women illustrators.

For example, at the 1893 Chicago Columbian World’s Fair, which marked the 400th anniversary of Columbus’ arrival in the Americas, was another significant milestone for women: the creation of the first official Woman’s Building dedicated to the art and handicrafts of women. The building’s design was the result of a national competition open only to women and it served as the site of a comprehensive exhibition of artwork from women working in all media and genres, including illustration.

The catalogue accompanying the exhibition featured an article by illustrator Alice C. Morse on the subject of “Women Illustrators,” which historicized and brought attention to the important place of women in the competitive environment of illustration. Tracing the tradition in America back to Mary Hallock Foote (1847-1938), Morse emphasized the relatively recent opening of professional opportunities for women, despite the already vast number of women illustrators working by the time of the World’s Fair in 1893.

“There is no branch of art,” according to Morse, “that shows more 10 etc. Win ter 201 8

conclusively the higher standards demanded from its devotees among all classes of people than illustration. About twenty years ago, we could count on the fingers of one hand all the women seriously engaged in this work.”

Morse seems intent on establishing a robust tradition of women illustrators whose professional emergence can be linked to distinctly American feminine character traits. Accordingly, “the average American woman has an instinct for expansion… an unquenchable thirst for information, a love of knowledge for its own sake; this actuating impulse has resulted in her development in all directions.”

One such direction newly available during the second half of the nineteenth century was a formal artistic education, as art schools began opening their doors to women. Some schools were founded specifically for the benefit of women, enabling more women than ever to make their careers as illustrators. As Morse explains, “through the higher education—[women] eagerly seek an outlet for their energies. In art, perhaps more than in any other profession, do they find the conditions which make for success.”

Michelle Farias is Archivist & Special Collections Librarian at the Redwood Library & Athenæum Alice C. Morse, “Women Illustrators,” Illustrated Art and Handicraft in the Woman’s Building of the World’s Columbian Exposition.

Chicago, 1893 (Paris and New York: Goupil & Co., 1893).

Photos: Jessica Pohl

r e d w o o d l i b r a r y . o r g 11

The Hours Before the Hours: Books of Hours and Almanacs at the Redwood

by Patrick Crowley

While the Claggett family of clockmakers formed the eighteenth-century highpoint of fashionable timekeeping, an enormous tradition of books and texts had for long served as important markers of time and of the rhythms of daily life. In this brief article I focus on books of hours and almanacs, two seemingly disparate genres that nonetheless share similarities in terms of popularity, portability, and practical usage.

The most popular form of personal prayer book for the medieval laity, books of hours were generally produced in smaller, portable formats for use in the home and at mass. These included calendars and various prayer cycles tied to the monastic hours of the day, but also a range of additional liturgical information. Enormously popular for three centuries, the production of books of hours peaks in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, waning in the eighteenth century, when they remained in use only in the most Catholic parts of Europe, notably France and Italy.

The Redwood has striking examples of books of hours from the 1440s through to the eighteenth century. The pictured calendar page, from a c. 1440 Netherlandish book of hours, shows differing feast days highlighted in red and in black ( Fig. 1). The feast days printed in red were held to be particularly important in a specific location, in this case Paris. Different for every city, these “red-letter days” gave the book owners immediate visual access to important localized data. Likewise, the elaborate, illuminated miniatures that characterize books of hours were not only pleasing visually but also practical tools to navigate one’s day on time. Specific selections from the Psalms are organized according to the hours of the day, and are headed by easily identifiable suites of illustrations that might show the life of the Virgin or the Passion of Christ.

A calendar might seem counterintuitive in a book that was meant to survive as an heirloom. But books of hours were kept to trace ongoing family devotion across generations, as well as for their enduring utility. For example, a calendar page of a printed

Fig. 1

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Fig. 2

book of hours gave the owner a tool for normalizing the liturgical calendar of saints’ days to the temporal Julian calendar.

Evolved in the seventeenth century, almanacs, like the pamphlet and the novel, are among the signal literary formats of the eighteenth century. Unlike books of hours, almanacs did not pattern the hours of the day, but were similarly portable sources for localized calendrical and meteorological data. Almanacs are a calendar of a given year and of a specific place, providing carefully calculated astrological information such as phases of the moon, tides, the rise and fall of specific constellations. Such data—like the feast days in a book of hours—were very specifically localized, but based on scientific observation rather than religious considerations.

Nonetheless, almanacs were always more than local calendars.

Especially in the eighteenth century, advancements in printing and the varied preferences of a modern cosmopolitan literary market can make for a wide variety of content. A 1776 almanac printed in Newport at the threshold of the American revolution contains pages coming after the calendar that give details on the Rhode Island courts, as well as charts of the distance between Newport and other towns and cities in New England (Fig. 2). A 1734 London almanac dedicates extra space following the calendar to detailed discussions of the astronomical calculations used in that calendar, eschewing localization while glossing the calendar with pointed pro-monarchy and anti-papal commentary. A high-status and appealingly-illustrated French example, meanwhile, contains primarily witty and playful predictions.

If localization precluded a broader reach in sales beyond a particular city or region, it could also greatly benefit the publisher who succeeded in cornering a local market. One of the most lucrative monopolies controlled by the Stationers Guild in London was on almanacs, which also explains why eighteenth-century Boston was the site of vicious competition for primacy in the

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publishing of almanacs. Consumers, for their part, found them cheap and useful guides to daily life. Among the examples pictured here, is an almanac with a hanging tab, for use in a shop perhaps; one trimmed to fit nicely in a pocket, and one inscribed.

On one level, almanacs at the height of their popularity were products of the Enlightenment. They fit into the increasingly precise and scientifically-measured world of timekeeping, existing alongside, and as an additional data device to, the clock or the pocket watch. Likewise, their tie to the stars made them a place where astronomy and astrology, horology, and early medicine might appear in the same work (Figs. 3 & 4). Many almanacs combine horoscopes, predictions of maladies, weather prognostications, recipes for home cures, and detailed astronomical calculations.

And as we have seen, almanac authors and compilers had broad latitude and motive to expand the almanac’s purview from practical science to literary learning and entertainment. American almanacs differed distinctly from continental models by their attention to this literary dimension, introducing the political essay as a constituent of the almanac. As well, almanacs came to include proverbial short stories, anecdotes, and poetry, all of which aimed to impart a certain veneer of wisdom and cultural polish to the reader. Because they were so widely consumed, and contained such a broad menu of topical and fashionable information, almanacs were a key conduit in shaping eighteenth-century public opinion in politics and in taste. Time was, of course, always but one data stream. By combining important practical data, be it time or tide, with religious information or news and fashion, almanacs and books

Fig. 3

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of hours can be likened to a modern smart phone: they ordered the world of early modern readers, just as ours is governed by screens and texts reminding us of the time, appointments, weather, and current events.

Patrick Crowley is the Ezra Stiles Special Collections Librarian at the Redwood Library & Athenæum.

Reading list:

• Roger S. Wieck. Time Sanctified: The Book of Hours in Medieval Art and Life. New York: Braziller, 2001.

• Lawrence-Mathers, Anne, “Domesticating the calendar: the hours and the almanac in Tudor England.” Women and Writing, c. 1340 - c. 1650: The Domestication of Print Culture. Ed. Lawrence-Mathers, Anne & Hardman, Phillipa. Woodbridge, Suffolk: York Medieval Press, 2009: 34-61 • Kidd, Thomas S. “Protestants, Popery, and Prognostications: New England Almanacs.” The Protestant Interest: New England After Puritanism, New Haven; London: Yale University Press, 2004: 74-90.

• Spero, Patrick. “The Revolution in Popular Publications:

The Almanac and New England Primer, 1750—1800.”

Early American Studies 8, no. 1 (2010): 41-74.

• Chapman, Alison A. “Marking Time: Astrology, Almanacs, and English Protestantism.” Renaissance Quarterly 60, no. 4 (2007): 1257-290.

A Glimpse…

Ghosts of Trade Wars Past with A. J. Jacobs In 1689 British King William of Orange imposed steep tariffs on French wine. He wanted to encourage the British to drink their own booze—make and drink. It was not a great idea because without wine, Britain turned to the hard stuff—gin. So for the next 50 years, England was in the grip of the so-called gin craze. And newspapers wrote about the surge in crime and death and unemployment. Pundits were especially upset because women started drinking gin and allegedly neglecting their kids.

We have a trade war of a different kind in 1773…the Boston Tea Party. Britain put trade restrictions and taxes on tea being shipped to the colonies. And this led to everyone’s favorite act of cultural appropriation and vandalism, the Boston Tea Party. But it also inspired a lesser-known tea party—the Edenton Tea Party in North Carolina. And what’s remarkable about the Edenton Tea Party is that it was all women—possibly the first women-driven political protest in U.S. history.

And then a trade war that turned into a real war. In the 1800s, the Brits were importing a lot of tea from China, and they didn’t like the trade deficit, so they started to export opium to China, which caused an opium epidemic in China. China put a tariff on the opium and then banned it altogether. Well, this led to the very bloody Opium Wars, which actually began with sort of a version of the Boston Tea Party—a Chinese version. The Chinese seized and destroyed 1,000 tons of British opium, which is not easy.

More recently in 1962 JFK bought 1,200 Cuban cigars for personal use the day before he signed the trade embargo with Cuba. So we’ll see if Trump buys eight tons of Chinese steel for personal use before the tariffs go into effect. And if I could just add a lesser-known addendum to the cigar story, after the embargo, JFK’s press secretary Pierre Salinger visited the Soviet Union, and Khrushchev gave him 250 Cuban cigars, which Salinger smuggled through customs.

JFK found out about it, flipped out, made Salinger go back, surrender the cigars to customs. Salinger claimed years later, he was at the airport, and one of the customs guys was smoking his Cuban cigar. And he claimed they, quote, “destroyed his cigars one by one.”

A.J. Jacobs is a journalist, lecturer, Editor at Large, Esquire Magazine and author of four New York Times bestsellers.

His latest book, Thanks A Thousand: A Gratitude Journey was published this fall.

Fig. 4

All items pictured from the Redwood Library & Athenæum Special Collections. Photos:Jessica Pohl.

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Political satirist, author P.J. O’Rourke delights Newport crowd

By Laura Damon P.J. O’Rourke speaks to a full-house audience under a tent on the grounds of the Redwood Library and Athenæum

NEWPORT — Doug Riggs with the Redwood Library and Athenæum introduced P.J. O’Rourke, 70, as “a recovering left-wing hippie” on Wednesday evening.

O’Rourke, a political satirist, journalist and book author, took the joke in stride as he stepped to the lectern and entertained the ample crowd with anecdotes and personal musings on the current political climate from a libertarian’s point of view. His lecture was titled “The Humorist in Un-humorous Times.”

Now a resident of Sharon, New Hampshire, O’Rourke grew up in Toledo, Ohio. The career O’Rourke carved for himself is characterized by his editorial stint with National Lampoon humor magazine and contributions to publications like Vanity Fair and Rolling Stone. He’s also a New York Times bestselling author.

O’Rourke’s personal method for excelling in his professional life as a political reporter? “Use humor as a journalistic technique for covering serious stories.” It’s important to be funnier than the political elite, though he struggles with topping the current president, he said. “I was funnier than Jimmy Carter,” he quipped.

O’Rourke said the role of humor in politics is “to undercut dignity.” Politicians with a compelling sense of self-importance are dangerous, he said.

He didn’t have answers for the crowd about the current state of affairs or predictions about where the country is heading.

“I know nothing; I know absolutely nothing,” he admitted. But he knew how to get a rise from the audience.

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“I vote for Republicans because Republicans have fewer ideas,” O’Rourke said. “But not few enough.”

He made an exception for the last presidential election, though. “I voted for Hillary” in the 2016 presidential election, O’Rourke said. “She’s wrong about everything…but she’s wrong within normal parameters.”

Though O’Rourke joked about the actions of politicians, he didn’t condemn them. “I like politicians. I’m friends with politicians,” he said. They’re great until they stick their noses into things they don’t understand, O’Rourke said.

Political power has expanded in scope over the years, according to O’Rourke. He cited the debate over transgender bathrooms, an issue that’s become political and subject to legislative control.

“All change is disruptive…all change is scary,” was one of O’Rourke’s closing remarks before he took questions from the audience.

When asked about his thoughts on President Donald Trump’s recent meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin, O’Rourke said: “I’m not discounting the possibility that Trump is a complete meathead,” but he’s also not discounting the possibility that Trump may have seen “The “Godfather Part III” and is keeping his friends close, but his enemies closer.

When asked to comment on the excessive coverage by national media outlets of Trump’s actions, O’Rourke replied: “He’s made us look as dumb as we are.” A subscriber to The Washington Post, Photos: Jessica Pohl

O’Rourke is bombarded with coverage on the president, he said.

“There must be something else going on in the world.”

When asked if America is on the verge of a breakdown, O’Rourke replied: “We’re not polarized, we’re just split on some issues...we’ll get through this.”

Asked his opinion on Trump’s presidential victory in spite of losing the majority vote, O’Rourke said as a libertarian with a focus on the individual, he doesn’t take much of a stand when it comes to majority voting. It’s a flawed system, he said, but all systems are flawed. A popular-vote election would have yielded different campaigns and behaviors, he said.

It’s important, O’Rourke said, to prevent a dictatorship of the majority, since such an overwhelming rule can be just as dangerous as a dictatorship of the minority. He cited slavery as an example: In the Confederate South, the majority of southerners supported the enslavement of people.

O’Rourke told one audience member he writes with a legal pad and pencil, “‘cause I have a lot of erasable thoughts.” He looks outside and ponders, knowing or hoping that “the joke is somewhere to be found.”

Laura Damon is a Newport Daily News staff writer.

Originally published in the Newport Daily News, July 18, 2018.

Reprinted with permission.

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At The AthenĂŚum

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Exhibitions at The Redwood

Photo: Jessica Pohl

The Claggetts of Newport: Master Clockmakers in Colonial America

Drawn from Redwood Special Collections, an exhibition celebrating women artists from the ‘Golden Age of Illustration’ (ca. 1880-1920). The exhibition features the range of illustrative work by women artists—magazine, children’s books, commercial advertisements—while charting the professional journey of women illustrators, whose emergence was coincident with one of the high points of American illustration.

Curator: Michelle Farias November 8, 2018 – March 28, 2019 Peirce Prince Gallery

Photo: Jessica Pohl

Ingenuity and Invention: Women Illustrators of the Golden Age

Coming to the fore during Newport’s ascendency as an Enlightenment city, the Claggett family and their production of fine clocks marked the pinnacle of American technical and artistic know-how. Bringing together the largest number of Claggett clocks from private and institutional lenders ever assembled, the exhibition will allow for an in-depth analysis of period clock design and craftsmanship within the specific historical context of Colonial Newport.

Curators: Gary Sullivan with Benedict Leca December 8, 2018 – April 21, 2019 Van Alen Gallery

Spectacular Silver: Yachting’s Goelet Cups A sweeping, multimedia exhibition of one of the great chapters in sailing competition and trophy craftsmanship: the Goelet Cups and the sailboat races held in Newport from 1882 to 1897 for which they were the prize. The races were among the first American sporting contests to attract national media attention and the elaborate silver trophies, made by leading firms such as Tiffany & Co. and Whiting Manufacturing Co., are considered a high point in nineteenth-century American silver.

Locating the cups within the context of the sailing events and the sporting culture of the Gilded Age, Spectacular Silver will feature a range of historic materials: from yacht models and marine paintings to press clippings and scrap books, culminating in a select presentation of Goelet Cups from major private and institutional collections.

Organized by the New York Yacht Club in partnership with the Redwood Library & Athenæum, Spectacular Silver will bring the Goelet Cup races to life in the original context of Newport in celebration of the NYYC’s 175th anniversary in 2019.

Goelet Cup for Schooners, 1886, Sterling silver, Tiffany & Co., New York Yacht Club.

Photo: Alice Dickinson

Curators: Alice Dickinson with Benedict Leca June 14 – September 29, 2019 Van Alen Gallery

Redwood Library & Athenæum Board of Directors 2018-2019 R. Daniel Prentiss, Esq. President Frank Ray Vice President Virginia Decker Secretary Zia Eftekhar Treasurer

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Marvin Abney Holly Bannister, M.D. Daniel Benson Miles O. Bidwell David Brodsky Vincent Buonanno Grenville Craig Jacalyn Egan

Edwin G. Fischer, M.D.* Ronald Lee Fleming Michael K. Gewirz John R. Grace Washington Irving III Dodie Kazanjian Elizabeth Leatherman Earl McMillen III

Victoria Mele Allison Walk *Honorary Board Member

chartered 1747

Back cover graphic: Fleming + Company

Explore the World with the Museum Travel Alliance The Redwood Library & Athenaeum is now part of the Museum Travel Alliance (MTA), a consortium of museums whose patrons and supporters are passionate about cultural travel.

MTA offers affiliated museums and cultural institutions access to a curated selection of travel opportunities led by renowned curators and scholars.

Join the MTA and the Redwood Library & Athenaeum on journeys that awaken new insights into art and culture. Visit UNESCO World Heritage sites, and travel on elegant chartered ships, planes, and luxury trains. Go behind the scenes of major cultural institutions and visit private collections as you discover masterpieces in context and in situ.

MUSEUM TRAVEL ALLIANCE 1040 Avenue of the Americas, 23rd Floor, New York, NY 10018-3721 212-302-3104 or 855-533-0033 • Fax 212-344-7493 trips@museumtravelalliance.com • www.MuseumTravelAlliance.com r e d w o o d l i b r a r y. o r g

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From Redwood Library & AthenĂŚum charter, 1747

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www.redwoodlibrary.org