Category: The Past is a Foreign…Something

Our Glorious National Heritage, The Past is a Foreign...Something

Umbrellas, Giant Melons, and Queen Victoria

daelnorwood

Or, Homely as Sin on Horseback

umbrella

It’s newspaper research time! Some highlights from today’s scanning:

“Women and Umbrellas in Ireland” Southern Patriot (Charleston, SC), 31 Aug 1842, p. 2

Dr. Hagan, in one of his letters from Dublin, says that many of the ladies of Dublin are surpassingly beautiful, while some are as homely as Sin on horseback. But the impression of a stranger on seeing the ladies and gentlemen of Dublin, as they spring into their cars and dash through the streets is highly favorable to their personal beauty, sprightliness and energy.

Of the penchant of the Irish for umbrellas, he says: ‘The Irish seem to have a passion for umbrellas. I have seen men carry umbrellas, and I am certain the paper maker would not give sixpence for all the clothes on their back! I have seen some pretty girls decently clothed, with bare feet, and an umbrella over their heads to protect their faces from the sun!’

“A Mammoth Melon,” Southern Patriot (Charleston, SC), 31 Aug 1842, p. 2

The Raleigh Register says: A muskmelon weighing forty and a half pounds, measuring forty-five inches in circumference on average, was sent us a few days ago, in a very polite manner, by Mr. J. A. Barry, in whose garden on Eden’s Sound, it grew. Mr. Barry informs us that, from a piece of ground about 100 feet square, he has obtained nearly 200, several of them weighing from 20 to 31 lbs.

“Variety is the Spice of Life” [aka misc. column], Southern Patriot, 3 March 1843, p.1

…
The Pickayune, in giving an account of late weaver riots, says ‘Sheriff Porter was severely wounded in the rumpus.’ We had imagined that the sheriff’s wound was in the breast!
…
As evidence of the onward march of civilization, it is said that the French have sent a guillotine to Algiers.
…
Epigram on the Chinese Treaty

Our wars are ended – foreign battles cease. –
Great Britain owns an universal peace;
And Queen Victoria triumphs over all,
Still ‘Mistress of herself though China fall!’

Image cite: Special, “umbrella,” Flickr, CC License

Archival Follies, The Past is a Foreign...Something

Great Moments in Taking Things Completely Out of Context

daelnorwood

Diplomatic Despatches* Edition

Giraffe

“Feeling excited by the Death of the Duke of Orleans.”

~Edward Everett, U.S. Envoy Extraordinary and Minister Plenipotentiary to Great Britain, to Daniel Webster, Secretary of State, 18 July 1842, Despatch No. 17.

* Yes, they spelled it “despatches” not “dispatches.” No, I don’t know why.

Image cite: Swiv,”What?,” Flickr, CC License

The Past is a Foreign...Something

Print is New Media

daelnorwood

Or, Back in My Day, We Used to Write the Newspapers By Hand — Both Ways!

Random Google hits are fun:

Between 1844 and 1854 there were at least three handwritten newspapers published in the frontier town of Washington, Iowa. They were the “Domestic Quarterly Review,” the “Washington Shark,” and the “Quarterly Visitor.”

While calling Iowa part of the Old Northwest is a bit of a stretch (it was part of a separate land grab, part of the Black Hawk territory), this sounds pretty interesting. Also, my next band/baseball team/journal is going to be called “The Washington Shark.”

Here’s the paper from whose abstract I pulled the quote:

Roy Alden Atwood,“Handwritten Newspapers on the Iowa Frontier, 1844-54,” Paper presented at the Annual Meeting of the Association for Education in Journalism (63rd, Boston, MA, August 9-13, 1980).

Our Glorious National Heritage, The Past is a Foreign...Something

The Engine of American Diplomacy

daelnorwood

Or, Choo-Choo! Goes the Tariff Negotiation

Mariposa

One of the clichés of East-West relations in the early modern era was the attempt to use representations of Western technology – especially maps and model machines – to awe non-Westerners into submission. Perhaps hoping for a repeat of Columbus’s trick with the lunar eclipse, Euro-American statesmen and diplomats apparently thought that the mere suggestion of the advanced state of Western civilization would be enough to persuade proud sovereigns to open ports, lower tariffs, and alienate land for the benefit of the major Atlantic-basin powers.

Needless to say, things rarely went down that way. In developed parts of Asia – and especially in China – these attempts repeatedly failed. The most famous of these faceplants was probably Great Britain’s 1793 embassy to China, led by Lord Macartney. The Chinese emperor declared the fancy clockwork the Brits brought – lugged across the world at great expense, and costing many man-hours to assemble – as “good enough to amuse children.” Bafflingly, the stopped cogs and wheels the Brits brought as gifts failed to make the gates to the Middle Kingdom fly off their hinges.

However, this failure – as in so many other instances of cross-cultural contact – did not impede others from flattering through imitation.
Continue reading “The Engine of American Diplomacy” →

The Past is a Foreign...Something

The Romance of the Tapirs

daelnorwood

Also, A Blog Jubilee

Tapir

To celebrate the fiftieth post on this here blog* I thought I might share a sweet little story I found today. Who’s day isn’t improved when theorists of organic American nationalism, tapirs, and romance are in the mix?

Here’s the context: Francis Lieber, famed German-American jurist and political economist is writing to his BFF** Samuel B. Ruggles to tell him that he’s safely returned home from his visit to NYC. After spending most of his letter begging Ruggles to help find him a job at Columbia College because (ironically) he hates life in Columbia, South Carolina, he lightens the tone by recounting a “ludicrous scene” he saw on the train ride home.

To wit:

… My journey was plain, hum-drum, as most [railroad] journeys are. One ludicrous scene I witnessed. You may remember that the platforms in the depot at Baltimore run a long way on both sides of the rail, and are on a level with the cars, when they come in. I was in the first and stepped out; an elderly gentleman was standing near me, waiting for some one. When the next car came in, I saw a woman looking anxiously out of one of the windows; the gentleman reached toward her, and, she protruding her lips, he tried by an equally elongated mouth to catch the proffered kiss, but the cars moved on, so did the woman and consequently her lips, which she stretched longer and longer; the elderly man ran astride on the platform and as the horses moved faster than he, his mouth in turn stretched farther and farther, as one might imagine an India rubber tube would do, if it could be attracted by some magnet.

My fancy could not help imagining some enamored tapirs, stretching their trunks farther and farther toward one another, to catch the token of love, yet without success. On this whole scene moved, car, woman, man, trunks and all until they passed me and I thought I felt the old man’s funnel, formed of his mouth, brush my occiput, while the woman’s swept my nose in front. The scene was abundantly ludicrous and yet deeply touching to me, who was hastening to his wife and children. And altogether, is not that which is touching of itself, the more so for being manifested in some thing ludicrous? Is not this the secret of many of the most moving, nay harrowing scenes of Dickens’s, e.g. all those dreadful scences at Squeer’s school?? The contrast heightens the effect, as also the part that the people not caring for the ludicrous exposure show only the depth and earnestness of their feelings. …

~Francis Lieber to Samuel B. Ruggles, October 10, 1842, Francis Lieber Papers, 1830-1872, Library of Congress

Lieber, in addition for his gift for political philosophy, had, at times, a certain way with imagery. (Remind me to show you his ode to the idea of a Panamanian Canal sometime).

And before you ask: yes, the first rail cars were indeed powered by horseflesh, not steam engines. The cars even looked like stagecoaches (sorry I don’t have a pic, but use your imagination).

I’m not sure if in this case horses were just used to maneuver individual train cars around the station, or if they were actually pulling train the whole way. I suspect the latter, as Baltimore was early in railroad development. In any case, a good reminder that one of the key innovations of railroads was the lower coefficient of friction (μ) on land –- not just the application of steam power.

* 153 days old, more or less, today. Who knew? Don’t worry, I won’t mark every anniversary like a hyperactive moonstruck tween couple.

** No but really; their correspondence is quite touching.

Image cite: guppiecat, “Malayan Tapir (Tapirus indicus),” Flickr, CC License