"In fiction, the principles are given, to find the facts: in history, the facts are given, to find the principles; and the writer who does not explain the phenomena as well as state them performs only one half of his office."
Thomas Babington Macaulay, "History," Edinburgh Review, 1828
Showing posts with label Material Culture. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Material Culture. Show all posts
Because I'm teaching my course on modern East Central Europe again this fall, it seems an appropriate time to remember the so-called "Velvet Revolution" (a sappy term I never liked) in the course of which dissidents peacefully forced the hard-line Czechoslovak communist regime from power in 1989.
The driving force behind the revolution were the dissidents such as Václav Havel, associated with the Charter 77 human rights movement. As the spirit of protest spread throughout the bloc in the fall of 1989, they organized themselves as the "Civic Forum" (Občanské fórum, OF).
I acquired this small--I guess you would call it a (?)--mini-placard some years ago in a Prague antiquariat. It displays the name of the organization against the background of the Czechoslovak flag. It is the size of a small bumper sticker (193 x 63 mm.) but is printed on stiff (now yellowed) pasteboard and thus lacks adhesive, which makes me wonder what its intended use was: for display in apartment or store windows? (After all, Havel's famous essay on "the power of the powerless" anchors its notion of "living in truth" in the story of those who agree vs. decline to accede to the regime's supposedly meaningless and harmless demand that they place its propaganda signs in their windows.) For display in an automobile? And when? The dampstaining at the bottom suggests that it was actually placed in a window where it would have been subject to condensation arising from a heated interior in cold weather.
It is at once an inspiring and a sad memento. Although Czechoslovakia had been an island of liberal democracy among the post-World War I successor states that drifted toward authoritarianism, it became one of the most hardline communist states after 1948, and indeed, its leaders (in contrast to those of Hungary and Poland) refused even to nod to the de-Staliniziation "thaw" in the wake of Krushchev's denunciation of Stalin's crimes in 1956. Following the short-lived and optimistic episode of the "Prague Spring," crushed by Warsaw Pact tanks in August 1968, the regime pursued a quietly brutal policy of "normalization."
Despite this long history of resistance to reform, the communist regime collapsed in only ten days in 1989 in the face of determined citizens jingling their keys and refusing any longer to be afraid. Former dissident Václav Havel became president at the end of December 1989.
By 1991, however, the movement split into conservative-capitalist and liberal factions. The latter triumphed in the elections of 1992, and the latter passed from the scene. A cautionary tale about politics in more ways than one.
An advertisement from The Press, 29 July 1863. Founded by John Weiss Forney in 1857, the paper was published in Philadelphia until 1920. In 1894, it serialized Stephen Crane's Civil War novel, The Red Badge of Courage.
Flags, pennants, bunting, streamers. Hats, too. What more could one want?
Oh, burgees? Although the term dates to 1750, it did not appear in Noah Webster's 1828 dictionary, but as his successors at today's Merriam-Webster firm in Springfield explain, this is "a swallow-tailed flag used especially by ships for signals or identification."
I suddenly realized that, immersed in work, I had let Palm Sunday pass without again sharing a picture of one of my favorite types of religious folk art: the Palm Sunday donkey.
Traditional "period rooms," once a staple feature of the museum of history or fine arts, fell into disrepute in recent years for a variety of reasons. As one curator puts it, they often incoherently (re)presented "decorative arts displays" or "local history" or "confusing combinations of both approaches." Still, there is certainly a value to preserving the individually significant interior as well as the exemplary collection for the study of material culture in general.
"history happens in parlors and kitchens as well as in the halls of Congress"
Still, this is not to say that everything was choked in conceptual cobwebs. My favorite example: in 1963, activists saved an 18th-century Ipswich, Massachusetts, house from demolition literally at the last moment by arranging to have the Smithsonian acquire it. So, instead of yet another Colonial period room, we have an entire home (the largest--some say: greatest--artifact in the collection) which tells the story of both structure and inhabitants from its origins to its abandonment. As the Smithsonian puts it, "The five families whose stories are told here were not famous, but they remind us that history happens in parlors and kitchens as well as in the halls of Congress." In the most recent interpretation (2002), portions of the walls have been opened up to reveal the timber-frame structure, thus doing justice to the original focus on the evolution of technology.
The Museum continues to think innovatively in its acquisition and interpretation practices regarding historic interiors and objects. To be sure, you can still find such things as a 17th-century chair-table (nothing wrong with that!)--but also Archie and Edith Bunker's chairs, from the TV series, "All in the Familly"--which a curator boldly calls "the equivalent of the "Appomattox chairs" used by Grant and Lee when the Confederacy surrendered.
Equally interesting are the larger interior ensembles. For me, one of the most memorable and moving is the famed Greensboro desegregation lunch counter. As of 2008, it is also part of a new series of "landmark objects" anchoring and highlighting the themes of a given wing.
One kitchen that made history
As the Smithsonian says of the Ipswich House, "history happens in parlors and kitchens as well as in the halls of Congress." And so, it seemed but fitting that at least a portion of another Massachusetts house should enter those galleries. It didn't make the cut as a "landmark object," it didn't date back to the 18th century, and it didn't play a role in the triumph of human rights, but it did change America in its own way, from foodways to women's history, and it has proven extremely popular. I am speaking of Julia Child's kitchen.
It opened at the Smithsonian on August 19, 2002, only shortly after the updated installation of the Choate House from Ipswich. When Julia Child (1912-2004) decided to relocate from Cambridge, Massachusetts to her native California at the end of her public career, she gave her kitchen to the Smithsonian.
"A Place for Everything"
"While kitchens of the 1950s and 1960s were often designed to keep everything hidden from view, Julia and Paul preferred to hang their pots and pans on a pegboard for quick and easy access. Nor would there be any confusion about where that pan belonged after it had been used, thanks to the outlines Paul traced on the pegboard. Later, for the benefit of student and guest cooks working in the kitchen with Julia, snapshots were added." (Smithsonian)
"Work zones"
"Julia organized her kitchen around work zones, making sure tools and equipment were placed near the surfaces where they would be used. Her pots, pans, and utensils are near the stove, her knives are near the sink, and her small appliances are set on solid work surfaces, ready to use." (Smithsonian)
Designed by her husband Paul in 1961, the room was specially tailored to his wife's particular needs, with high countertops to accommodate her six-foot two-inch frame. In her ten cookbooks and eight television programs, several of which were filmed in her own kitchen, Julia Child demystified French cooking for American audiences. She became, in the words of the New York Times, "the French chef for a Jello nation." The exhibit is titled "Bon Appétit!" — as she signed off at the end of every show she hosted during her 38 years as a television icon.
Viewers of the film, "Julie and Julia" (the former was a whining Amherst College graduate: nuff said) will be familiar with the backstory behind the first great cookbook, but just in case, Mass Moments explains:
She fell in love with French food and enrolled in the prestigious Cordon Bleu culinary school. In 1952 she and two Frenchwomen formed a cooking school and began writing a French cookbook for American readers.
In 1956 the Childs returned to the U.S. and settled in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Julia Child continued work on the book, communicating frequently with her French partners. When Mastering the Art of French Cooking was published in 1961, with 734 pages of detailed but unintimidating recipes, it was a critical and popular success. In an era when American "cuisine" consisted of cake mixes, TV dinners, and health food crazes, the book made sophisticated French food not only appealing but accessible. Child ignored fads, and Americans embraced her "cuisine soignée: long, caring cooking."
My mother was a good cook, but by no means a gourmet. Still, Julia Child's first great book was one of the main cookbooks in our kitchen. I believe it was a present from my father.
When I learned to cook (mostly while I was a grad student: it seemed preferable to bankruptcy or starvation), I bought myself a copy, too. (Later, my mother gave me more recent Julia Child books as presents.)
It seems fitting: just as the Choate house chronicled the lives and material culture of ordinary people "who were not famous," so, too, her kitchen helps to chronicle the transformation of the way that all of us eat and think about food. There is more than one way for history to happen in the kitchen.
Bon appétit.
Footnote:
Local connection: The pioneering chef was a graduate of Smith College (history major, I am proud to say), which celebrates a Julia Child Day. In fact, I recall meals at the former Faculty Club where we were served a special "Julia Child" label house wine.
To us, it seems a commonplace item: a product promising to make the consumer healthier and more attractive, promoted with the aid of patriotism.
dia. 3.25 "; height 1.75" (83 x 43 mm.)
The small paper box is undated but, based on the lettering and the fashion styles depicted on the lid, was produced sometime around the turn of the nineteenth to the twentieth century.
"La Marseillaise" promised:
A superior and domestic product to clean, beautify, and strengthen the hair.
Guarantees prompt disappearance of lice, nits, dandruff, and grime.
Who wouldn't want all that?
Well, first, who could afford it?
The small box cost 30 centimes. In 1890 in the Département de la Seine (which is to say: Paris and environs), cleaning women earned 1.5 francs a day; seamstresses, shirtmakers, and dressmakers, 2; and women industrial workers, 2.46. As for what 30 centimes could buy: 2 loaves of bread or 3 liters of either wine or milk.
So, who wouldn't want all that?
Maybe more people than you would think. For one thing, although the use of the national anthem and national colors to sell the product is something that we (alas) have come to regard as commonplace, that wasn't always the case. Even the use of the historic patriotic hymn as national anthem itself was relatively new. Napoleon banned it, as did his monarchical successors, so it was officially adopted again only in 1879, the year before the first official new Bastille Day celebration. Even the creation of the Third Republic in 1870 did not definitively end the struggle between republicans and royalists--as the Dreyfus Affair showed. Using a product called the "Marseillaise" was thus, at least in some quarters, a potentially political statement.
Cleanliness next to godliness?
Using any product to clean the hair, for that matter, was not something that one could take for granted. We are all familiar with the popular notion of the Middle Ages as a time of uncleanliness (in the famous phrase: a thousand years without a bath). In fact, washing and bathing were well established habits in the medieval era. One cannot say the same of some subsequent periods--even including the turn of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. What is even more striking is that lack of bathing in France was not confined to the lower orders.
As Eugene Weber shows in his evocative account of France, Fin de Siècle, a combination of factors--prudery, the expense and difficulty of dealing with clean and waste water, and just plain ignorance of hygiene--conspired to make bathing less common than we would expect.
He cites the example of upper-class provincial women who bathed "once a month in summer, never in winter," as well as a contemporary public lecture claiming that most French women never took a bath even once in their lives. Those who did clean themselves with any regularity often just sponged themselves off--through a nightshirt, "for never would we have allowed ourselves to be naked to wash." Continuing this account, he adds, "When changing the chemise, they closed their eyes and crossed themselves. 'I grew up without ever seeing my navel.'"
And hair was the part of the body perhaps least likely to be clean: in Weber's words, "washed seldom if ever." He cites the recollections of the Countess de Pange, whose tresses apparently resembled the ones on the lid of our little box:
At seventeen, I had very long hair which, when loosened, wrapped around me like a mantle. But these beautiful tresses were never washed. They were stiff and filthy. The very word shampoo was ignored. From time to time they rubbed my hair with quinine water.
As for those lice and nits that "La Marseillaise" was supposed to purge: they were ubiquitous. Weber notes, "In the countryside lice and fleas and scabs were so common that popular wisdom considered them essential to the health of children."
So maybe a product that guaranteed clean and beautiful hair was indeed a revolutionary idea.
"This glass is for the 14th of July, 1789 -- to the storming of the Bastille"
I often like to celebrate holidays with an eye to old historical practices.
One of my favorite traditions was that of the great German idealist philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770-1831). As a student at the famed Stift in Tübingen, he was a passionate admirer of the French Revolution, more interested in political philosophy than epistemology (or the theology that he was supposed to be studying). According to a well-established but less well-proven tradition, Hegel, along with the likewise soon to be famous poet Friedrich Hölderlin and philosopher Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling, erected and danced around a liberty tree on the anniversary of the storming of the Bastille in the early 1790s.
But it is absolutely established that, every year, on the anniversary of the outbreak of the Revolution, the older Hegel--even though he had seemingly become more conservative--celebrated with a bottle of fine wine. I've known the story for years, but if I stop to think about it, I must have encountered it as a college or grad student, probably via the memoirs of the Prussian diplomat Karl August Varnhagen von Ense, while I was doing research on his friend, the poet and journalist Heinrich Heine.
At the inn called the Blue Star (where Hegel thereafter always stayed when going to Dresden), various friends and compatriots from other universities gathered for dinner . . . when the usual local Meißner wine was offered to Hegel, he rejected it, ordering instead some bottles of Champagne Sillery, the most distinguished champagne of its day. Having sent the expensive bottles of Sillery around the table, he then entreated his companions to empty their glasses in the memory of the day on which they were drinking. Everyone happily downed the Sillery, but when it became clear that nobody at the table knew exactly why they should be drinking to that particular day, Hegel turned in mock astonishment and with raised voice declared, 'This is for the 14th of July, 1789 -- to the storming of the Bastille.' Needless to say, those around Hegel were astonished; the old man had not only bought them the finest champagne available, he was drinking to the Revolution at the height of the reaction and at a time when he himself might have been in danger. (But maybe this was not so odd; in 1826, Hegel, once again in the company of young people, again drank at toast to the storming of the Bastille, telling Varnhagen von Ense at the time that he in fact always drank a toast to the storming of the Bastille on July 14.)
Hegel at that time wasn't really an "old man": only 50 (!); admittedly, he died at the age of 61. But I hope that, when I am a truly "old" scholar, I will continue to associate with "young people" and exhort them to remember the Revolution even as I listen to the particular reforming or revolutionary concerns of their own generation.
Print ephemera
Depicted above, two very rare pamphlets from the outbreak of the Revolution:
Paris Sauvé . . . recounts the events from 12 to 15 July. The anonymous author notes that it is impossible to produce a definitive history at this early point, but offers a preliminary sketch, dedicated to "you courageous Parisians, brave fellow citizens, liberators of all France."
The Récit of the statement by the King on 15 July, by contrast, is an official document on the monarch's report to the Estates General following the storming of the Bastille. He here assures them that, having come before them to consult on the "horrible disorders taking place in the capital," he is one with the nation. He guarantees the personal security of the representatives of the nation and asks them to join him in working for the common welfare.
The wine
Unlike the famous Hegel, I wasn't about to spring for top-of-the-line French champagne (even for myself, much less for a bunch of students) so I chose a much more modest beverage closer to what the typical Frenchman might have drunk back then: in this case, a Pied-de-Perdrix ("partridge foot"). It's one of the old "black wines," a recently rediscovered relative of the Malbec--what one critic calls an "earthy, rustic wine."
I did, however, use a fine hand-blown and -cut eighteenth-century glass appropriate to the occasion. (It's English rather than French, but you have to make do with what you have lying around the house.)
Southerners can continue to honor their ancestors, but doing so does not necessitate embracing the vile cause for which they fought — just as Germans can honor their ancestors without embracing Nazism and Japanese without embracing militarism.
Some have expressed surprise that otherwise well-meaning people could insist that the flag is simply a symbol of regional and historical pride, which has nothing to do with slavery and should not be seen as an offense and a provocation. That becomes much less surprising when one realizes that a good many Americans don't seem to think slavery was all that much of a problem in the first place.
Yesterday, the South Carolina Senate voted to remove the offending "Confederate flag" from the grounds of the Statehouse, although subsequent necessary approval from the House was far from certain, and even if successful, the measure might just result in replacement of the battle flag by another Confederate flag. Meanwhile, in Texas, schools are preparing to use textbooks "based," in the words of the Washington Post, "on state academic standards that barely address racial segregation" and "also do not mention the Ku Klux Klan or Jim Crow laws." A Republican Board of Education member was quoted as having called slavery a "side issue to the Civil War.”
"earnest but deep misunderstandings about the nature of American slavery"
I tend to use Twitter more for professional than personal purposes, to keep up with news from and network with colleagues in various historical fields, including historic preservation and history museums. One of the accounts that I follow is @AfAmHistFail. The author, Margaret Biser, who for six years gave tours of a historic southern plantation on which the captive Africans outnumbered the whites by three to one, was dumbfounded when visitors "reacted with hostility to hearing a presentation that focused more on the slaves than on the owner." She began to tweet some of their choicest remarks, which range from the offensive and mindboggling to those reflecting "earnest but deep misunderstandings about the nature of American slavery."
People think slaveholders "took care" of their slaves out of the goodness of their hearts, rather than out of economic interest
People know that field slavery was bad but think household slavery was pretty all right, if not an outright sweet deal
People think slavery and poverty are interchangeable
People don't understand how prejudice influenced slaveholders' actions beyond mere economic interest
People think "loyalty" is a fair term to apply to people held in bondage
As she notes, in many cases, it is probably not so much about an intentional desire to defend slavery as such, and rather, more about the need to defend one's individual or collective national ancestors. (We all saw how Ben Affleck forced PBS to censor the presentation of his ancestry on "Finding Your Roots" because he discovered he had slave-owning forebears--even though no one would seek to visit their sins upon the quintessentially liberal actor.)
How do public historians teach the population about the legacy of
slavery and the contributions of African Americans to our collective
heritage?
Two African American public historians (among others) are doing brilliant work to teach about the history of slavery and foster understanding by emphasizing a common but not unproblematic American heritage.
Historic preservationist Joseph McGill (@slavedwelling) hit upon the simple but radically original idea of traveling the country to visit every former slave dwelling and, by spending the night in them, calling attention to this lost history and these lost-from-memory historic structures.
The immediate purpose of his Slave Dwelling Project "is to become a clearinghouse for the
identification of resources to document and preserve these slave
dwellings," but there is also a larger mission:
Now that I have the attention of the public by sleeping in extant slave dwellings, it is time to wake up and deliver the message that the people who lived in these structures were not a footnote in American history.
His work is among the most exciting and innovative efforts of the National Trust for Historic Preservation. It has provoked considerable conversation and now inspired two national conferences. Clearly, it no longer suffices simply to mark sites of memory with a sign. We need new ways to engage the public, so that it can understand the place of history as not only the past and memory but also an active contributor to the world that we have inherited.
In arelated realm, Michael Twitty (@koshersoul) travels the country to explain our fascinating and tangled foodways. His afroculinaria.com presents his work as "a food writer, independent scholar,
culinary historian , and historical interpreter personally charged with
preparing, preserving and promoting African American foodways and its
parent traditions in Africa and her Diaspora and its legacy in the food
culture of the American South." His work is multifaceted, focused on three fronts:
Antebellum Chef emphasizes "the vast number of unknown Black cooks across the Americas that were essential in the creation of the creole cuisines of Atlantic world" and their contribtion to the overall "Southern food heritage. A corollary is the need for “culinary justice” in contemporary African American communities suffering from poor health, food deserts, and other symptoms of inequality.
Kosher Soul explains: "Identity cooking isn’t about fusion; rather its how we construct complex identities and then express them through how we eat. Very few people in the modern West eat one cuisine or live within one culinary construct." Finally, The Cooking Gene seeks "to document the connection between food history and family history from Africa to America, from slavery to freedom" as Michael "visits sites of cultural memory, does presentations on his journey, and visits places critical to his family history while conducting genealogical and genetic research to discover his roots and food heritage." It is not only an attempt to recover the Black heritage, but also "a proving ground for racial reconciliation and healing and dialogue" which thus "seeks to connect the whole of the Southern food family."
The nation's history, good and bad, black and white, is our collective history. The sooner we recognize that, the better off we will all be. As the foregoing examples show, historic preservation and public history have a crucial role to play here--and the individual with a vision can make difference.
Whenever possible, I like to use images and objects in teaching. They
can provide insights into specific aspects of life in the past
in the past or simply help to make tangible a world that can seem irredeemably
distant and alien to students.
One of the favorite
objects in my collection is this one. It's not terribly rare (you can
still find them fairly easily, and they don't cost a fortune), but it is
special.
hinged embossed brass box, 37 x 125 mm (click to enlarge)
The Imperial War Museum calls this brass box, created as a Christmas gift for British troops in1914, "one of the most enduring mementos of the First World War."
In the center, enclosed in a circle within a wreath, is a profile of Britain's Princess Mary facing left, flanked by the cursive initial "M." Above, center, in a cartouche in the decorative border, the words "Imperium Britannicum" (British Empire) set over a garlanded sword. Below, center, a cartouche with the words "Christmas 1914." flanked by the bows of warships.
The names of the major allies, France and Russia, are set within circles over tripods of banners at left and right, respectively. In the four corner cartouches, diagonally facing the center of the lid, are the names of the other allies. Clockwise: Belgium, Japan, Montenegro, and Servia (sic).
The story is as intriguing as the box is beautiful. The War Museum, which holds the documentary and material record of the undertaking, provides the fullest recounting on its website, but here are the essentials.
'every Sailor afloat and every Soldier at the front'
The story began in the early months of the war, when Britain's Princess Mary (Victoria Alexandra Alice Mary; 1897-1965), daughter of King George V, wanted to do something to honor and cheer the troops.
The undertaking proved far more complex than anyone had anticipated, and
indeed, can serve as an illustration, on a microcosmic scale, of the
challenges of morale-building efforts and industrial activity in the era of nascent
total war. Virtually every aspect of the project, from concept, funding, and contents, to manufacturing and distribution, had to be modified.
Although the Princess's original plan had been to make a true personal gift from her own resources, it soon became apparent that a public effort and fundraising appeal were required, so in October, she wrote:
I want you now to help me to send a Christmas present from the whole of the nation to every sailor afloat and every soldier at the front. I am sure that we should all be happier to feel that we had helped to send our little token of love and sympathy on Christmas morning, something that would be useful and of permanent value, and the making of which may be the means of providing employment in trades adversely affected by the war. Could there be anything more likely to hearten them in their struggle than a present received straight from home on Christmas Day?
The gift was to consist of the hinged and embossed brass box, "one ounce of pipe tobacco, twenty cigarettes, a pipe, a tinder lighter, Christmas card and photograph [of the Princess]." The Executive Committee then decided to produce several variant versions for those for whom the smoking-oriented contents might be inappropriate. For the non-smokers, "a packet of acid tablets, a khaki writing case containing pencil, paper and envelopes" took the place of the tobacco and related products. Nurses at the front received chocolate instead. As for the Colonial troops: "The Gurkhas were to receive the same gift as the British troops; Sikhs the box filled with sugar candy, a tin box of spices and the Christmas card; all other Indian troops, the box with a packet of cigarettes and sugar candy, a tin box of spices and the card."
The fundraising campaign was so successful--bringing in nearly £ 163,000, most of it from small donations--that it allowed for boxes to be given to all troops, but this proved to be a mixed blessing, given the sheer number of recipients, estimated at some 2.6 million. The Executive Committee thereupon decided to do a sort of triage, aiming to reach recipients in Class A--essentially, the Navy, frontline troops, nurses, prisoners and internees, and families of the deceased--by Christmas, and those in Classes B (British, Colonial, and Indian troops outside the UK), and C (troops within the UK borders) later on. Because these latter were distributed after Christmas, the card proffered New Year's greetings instead.
As it happened, just fabricating the box proved more than challenge
enough. The manufacturers were not eager to take on the task in the first place, but the largest problem consisted in the shortage of appropriate
brass metal, even after the Committee was forced to intervene and supply it directly. In the event, there proved to be enough for the Christmas issue, but the Committee struggled to find the remainder, even turning to American sources. Nice bit of historical trivia: most of the US shipment was aboard the Lusitania, famously torpedoed by the Germans in 1915.
426,724 boxes were distributed by Christmas 1914. This meant that 1,803,147 still had to reach the other two classes, a daunting number that prompted the Committee to streamline things yet again by settling upon a uniform gift consisting of only the box, New Year's card, and pencil. After the final accounting was done in 1919, the surplus went to Queen Mary's Maternity Home, which aided the wives and newborns of men in the service.
* * *
One of the things that is so fascinating about the rise of the web and social media in museum and historical work is the possibility for dialogue, among members of the public, and between the public and professionals. There is a nice representative collection of responses--from Massachusetts and the UK to Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, and India--on the web page of the box from Museum Victoria in Australia. Some of the commenters knew what the box was, some were learning for the first time about this mysterious object that they had in their homes. One collector and writer used the opportunity to add to his knowledge base prior to issuing a new publication. One of the most intriguing and laconic posts seems to come from a British soldier who found one in an abandoned house in the course of the current war in Afghanistan.
This sort of engagement (though presumably lacking the direct personal connection) is what I hope to bring out when I show the box in class. One can begin the conversation via any one of multiple avenues:
The striking elegance of the design and quality of the product, for example. Do they reflect a soon-to-be antiquated aesthetic?
What of the relationship between monarchy, state, and public? How do the texts and images of the box feature in the construction of a patriotic ideal?
Are students surprised to see Japan featured on the box? Why?
What do the design of the box, along with the production and distribution problems, tell us about expectations of the course of the war? Were the initiators of the project naive?
What do the contents such as tobacco and writing products tell us about the culture of the era and the daily life, hopes, and fears of the soldier in the trenches?
And what about the substitution of spices and sweets in the boxes destined for Indian troops? How did the Empire understand cultural diversity and pluralism? Why has the significant presence of Colonial forces failed to become part of our popular image of the war? (1, 2)
And then there is the now-fabled "Christmas Truce" of 1914 in which the soldiers of the opposing sides climbed out of their trenches, and for a day, at least, met face to face as friends rather than foes. Among the gifts they exchanged were cigarettes. What if this box was there? What if this box could talk?
What curious, serendipitous finds one makes when doing research. A week ago, we marked the anniversary of the repeal of Prohibition. Not long before that, I came across a perfect illustration of how American attitudes about drinking have changed since the Colonial situation described in the last post.
"Local D.A.R. Woman Defends U.S. Ideals. Writes Paper Denying That George Washington was 'a Drinking Man'"
Is that one subject or two? readers could be excused for wondering as they picked up the Springfield newspaper in 1930.
The news was that the Massachusetts Daughters of the American Revolution had asked the head of the Amherst chapter to send copies of her paper on cultural conflicts and American ideals to the state and national headquarters. Her point, it seems, was openness to change, provided it occurred within the framework of our founding system: to avoid "letting down the bars to strange and foreign ideas and ideals" and "see to it that the constitution is not wrecked by the addition of weakening amendments." "The American," she said, does not hesitate to change methods if by so doing he can better conditions, but he does hold fast to the fundamentals upon which his country is founded."
Estella Adaline Eastman Harris (1880-1974) was a resident of my own North Amherst who married carpenter Charles Dickinson Harris (1877-1955) in 1904. Neither went to college, but clearly, she had intellectual ambitions. She was also proud of her ancestors, who included not only the Pilgrim Roger Eastman and her Revolutionary forebears, but also the great abolitionist Zebina Eastman (1815-83), one of the founders the Republican Party in Illinois, appointed by Abraham Lincoln as Consul in Bristol (1861-69).
The Liquor is the Lede?
"Foreign ideas" and challenges to the Constitutional order must have been among the pressing concerns in the political and economic crisis of the 1930s, but, curiously, the article led with the liquor, explaining that the essay "describes the attempts to discredit the great men of American history, especially George Washington, saying he was 'a drinking man.'" We don't get to the Constitution and Monroe Doctrine until more than halfway through.
The article quotes Mrs. Harris as saying:
In the olden days it was the commonly accepted custom to use liquors. As we know, many of the churches were raised to the accompaniment of strong drink. So why endeavor to dim the luster of a great man's life by accusing him of doing something that everyone at that time accepted as correct. Even in those days, he was rated as temperate.
This could of course take us into the intellectual and moral morass of historicist relativism. After all, slavery was also something that (almost) "everyone at that time accepted as correct." And when she wrote, the DAR itself practiced racial discrimination. That said, her point is quite accurate, and the subject of the previous post.
As Corin Hirsch (@latesupper) explained in her Amherst Historical Society lecture last month, everyone in Colonial America, from churchmen to Founding Fathers, drank like a sailor on leave all year 'round (and often all day). Implicitly agreeing with Mrs. Harris, she said:
George Washington "was a man of all things alcoholic, but he was not an alcoholic," "a fanboy of small beer . . . and enthusiastic swiller of porter." He also became one of the nation's leading distillers of whiskey.
As for Ben Franklin, he was "a sot, marinating in porter, Champagne, brandy, Madeira and the fine wines of France."
New York Governor Georg Clinton honored the French ambassador with a dinner at which 120 guests downed 135 bottles of Madeira, 36 bottles of port, 60 bottles of English beer, and 30 large cups of rum punch. Even in staid New England the upper classes continued to imbibe; at one Congregational minister's ordination in 1793, the celebrants consumed dozens of bottles of hard cider, wine, sherry, cherry brandy, and Jamaica rum. (48)
Ms. Hirsch provides some specific numbers: "At the 1785 ordination of a Beverly, Massachusetts, minister, the eighty attendees drank seventy-four bowls of punch as well as twenty-eight bottles of wine and eight bottles of brandy."
Lots of Liquor at Raisings. High Church?
Speaking of the church: It is said that when the horse teams brought in the granite for the foundations of our own North Amherst Church, Oliver ("Landlord") Dickinson, who had financed much of the project, rode all the way into town from Pelham atop one such load of stone, moved by drink to boisterous song. And when the church was finally dedicated, Carpenter and Morehouse tell us in their classic history of the town, "The raising was made a gala occasion, liquor being generously provided and consumed, the expenses being met by contributions."
Dickinson was a tavernkeeper, for like every good New England town, Amherst had its share of taverns. The reason this institution was
so popular, as both they and Hirsch explain, is because the "public
house," as the name implies, was not just a source of food, drink, and
lodging, but also a social center: for meetings, discussion, reading of
periodicals, even convening of court. Take the Baggs Tavern (1818 ff.), for example.
In 1828, it was the headquarters of the democratic party in town, where caucuses were held and the politicians gathered in the bar-room of an evening to discuss the state of the country. It was famous for the excellence of the liquors served over its bar and the royal good times that were enjoyed by those who loved the liquors, not wisely but too well. It was a favorite gathering place for the old stage-drivers, who found its toddy and its flip a powerful antidote against winter's cold and summer's heat.
The Amherst branch of the D.A.R., to which Mrs. Harris belonged, is the Mary Mattoon chapter, named after the wife of a local patriot. (With characteristic inflation, we generally refer to him as "General Mattoon," but that title came late in life when he led the Massachusetts Militia; during the Revolution, he was a mere lieutenant.)
As it happens, this chapter, founded in 1894, met and now once again meets at the eighteenth-century Simeon Strong House, which was also since 1916 the home of the Amherst Historical Society, where Corin Hirsch demonstrated her Colonial bartending skills last month.
The Cider House. It Rules!
When Simeon Strong--theologian, Tory, and then respected jurist in the new republic--died in 1805 with an estate worth approximately $ 10,000, he was among the ten richest men in Amherst. A glance at his probate inventory provides some hints at the culture of drink among the upper class. It lists, for example,
1 pair fluted decanters (valued at 2.50)
2 pair plain decanters (2.00)
2 pair round-bottomed decanters (.75), and
1 pair decanter stands (1.25).
This, in addition to:
16 wine glasses (best sort) (worth 4--)
9 wine glasses (worth .90)
14 tumblers (worth 1.75)
5 pint tumblers (worth .62)
10 tumblers and 2 small glass canns ["cans" were small, straight-sided drinking vessels] (@10, worth 1.00), and
2 one-quart tumblers (@ .33)
Among the items that his second wife brought to the marriage was a china punch bowl, once again, a luxury item (1.00: equivalent to four chamber pots--or a volume of Foster's Crown Law Reports--in case you were wondering).
At the same time, we are able to discern tastes that crossed class lines. Hirsch tells us that the hard cider "was an almost uniquely New England drink," and Timothy Dwight's account of his travels (1796-1815) described it as "the common drink of all its inhabitants, the rich and poor alike." John Adams found it "mortifying beyond all expression that we Americans should exceed all other eight millions of people on the globe . . . in this degrading, beastly vice of intemperance"--and nonetheless downed a tankard of hard cider at his daily breakfast (yes, breakfast), which speaks volumes about the cultural gap between that era and ours.
In Strong's probate inventory, we thus find 13 barrels of cider, 28 empty cider barrels, 5 old cider barrels, and 1 barrel of old cider. The typical New England farmer, we are told, produced about 10 (50-gallon) barrels per year. According to Hirsch, "By the mid-1700s, the average New England family might consume a barrel of cider a week," which explains her verdict, "Early Americans imbibed hard cider with gusto."
One is strongly tempted to conclude that Mrs. Harris took
much of her argument from Carpenter and Morehouse. They write, somewhat
apologetically, before launching into a discussion of the rise of
temperance movements:
the drinking habits of the
earlier residents of Amherst . . . . were not peculiar,
merely following the fashion of their times. It is almost impossible, in
later times and under changed conditions, to write of the liquor
problem as it existed in the closing years of the 18th and the opening years of the 19th centuries, without doing something of an injustice to those who upheld a system which has since come to be looked upon as pernicious and degrading. The part that liquor then bore in social, business and community life was honored if not honorable. Total abstinence from liquor, while not unknown, was looked upon as an eccentricity rather than a virtue. The minister drank liquor with his deacons, the lawyer with his clients, the doctor with his patients. A 'raising' without the presence of liquor was unknown; ministers drank flip at ecclesiastical councils and ordinations; hardly a trade was made at the village without 'something to wash it down.' . . . Drunkenness, while not encouraged, was tolerated, carrying with it no special disgrace.
Like it or not, heavy drinking was among "the fundamentals upon which [t]his country is founded." As the late historian Eugen Weber wrote, the decent folk in the Anglo-American world of that era were drunk all the
time, dead drunk most of the time, and apparently none the worse for it
except in the long run, and perhaps not even then. Mrs. Harris--whose drinking habits we do not know (though she lived to the ripe old age of 93)--might not have put it quite that way to the prim dames of the DAR, but her point was the same.
The annual meeting of the Amherst Historical Society typically includes a guest lecture. This year, at the suggestion of visiting curator Marianne Curling, we combined the talk (at the Jones Library) with a subsequent event
(at the History Museum next door) that was at once demonstration, experience, and fundraiser. As the
description put it, "Before it was safe to drink
the water, tipples at breakfast, lunch, tea time and dinner were the
norm in Colonial New England, and low-alcohol hard cider was sometimes a
part of even children’s lives." Who would not be intrigued?
Ms.
Hirsch, humbly describing herself as a foodie rather than a historian and characterizing her book as "a romp" rather than a "scholarly" work, was an engaging speaker who took the
audience on a sort of guided tour of the region's early drinking habits. The book is divided
into four parts: Why They Drank, Where They Drank, What They Drank, and
How They Drank, though the latter two overlap as part 4 consists of
recipes with descriptions. The lecture began with the "Why" and "Where" but focused on the "What," conducting
us from drink to drink in a manner that also roughly followed
chronology.
It began with Hogarth's famed etchings of "Gin Lane" and "Beer Street," to illustrate the contemporary views on dangerous (foreign, newfangled) vs. healthful (traditional, national) drinking habits. Although the social and medical consequences of gin-drinking among the poor became a cause for concern, steady consumption of other forms of alcohol was simply a normal way of life. As Ms. Hirsch reminded us (and many of us know), the Pilgrims and Puritans were plenty fond of their drink. In fact, one of the reasons the Pilgrims finally picked a settlement site in 1620 was because their beer supply was running low. The Mayflower had also carried hard spirits and probably wine. By the time the newcomers celebrated that first Thanksgiving in 1621, they had already brewed their own beer.
Beer
Although beer-brewing was an almost universal practice in English farms and villages, it was not without its challenges in America. Hops grew well: the first plant was imported in 1628, Ms. Hirsch explained. But growing good barley for the malt was more difficult in the North American climate, so the colonists used any substance that was handy to produce the necessary sugars: potato, pumpkin (yes, pumpkin ale is nothing new)--even berries, birch bark, maple syrup, or spruce tips; the latter imparted a favored hop-like bitterness to the brew.
Cider
Hard cider was also ubiquitous: the value of traditional apple varieties lay in their suitability for long winter storage--and production of alcohol. And even the wild varieties, which made for poor eating, served perfectly well as a source of fermentable juice. (It was not for nothing that Leominster native Johnny Appleseed was later so popular.) As historians of early America and material culture can tell you, John Adams knocked back a pint (the equivalent of two pints of typical modern beer, Ms. Hirsch explains) at breakfast every day. Children drank a weak version--and sometimes even the strong stuff. And we were none the worse for it. Sometimes it even led to victory (or at least did not prevent it).
The "Stone-Fence"--a blend of hard cider and rum--seems to have inspir(it)ed Ethan Allen's Green Mountain Boys prior to the capture of Fort Ticonderoga. As Ms. Hirsch puts it in her book, "Drunk, hung over or just a combination of the two, they found a slumbering guard to Ticonderoga, and the American militiamen claimed their first victory of the war."
Wine
By contrast, the wine trade was slow to develop. Despite high hopes occasioned by the prevalence of wild grapes (the east coast was the fabled Viking Vinland, after all), European varieties suitable for making fine wines did poorly in the climate of both New England and Virginia. This did not stop the colonists from making wine from wild grapes (and, well, almost anything and everything that would ferment) for personal consumption, but wines of quality remained an imported good for the elite, which gave it an undemocratic taint in the Revolutionary era and beyond. That, too, did not stop the greatest of the Revolutionary leaders from indulging their taste for it. In the book, Ms. Hirsch aptly characterizes Thomas Jefferson as "perhaps the most famous colonial oenophile," and Ben Franklin as "a sot, marinating in porter, Champagne, brandy, Madeira and the fine wines of France." And as for Washington, "He was a man of all things alcoholic, but he was not an alcoholic." In the book, she calls him "a fanboy of small beer . . . and enthusiastic swiller of porter" as well as a failed vintner and very successful distiller.
It was ironic, Ms. Hirsch noted, that, in 1794, George Washington put down the Whiskey Rebellion that arose in opposition to the new federal tax on spirits, and then went on to become a distiller himself (of course he paid his tax). Between 1797 and 1799, his production rose from 600 to 11,000 gallons, making him one of the leading producers in the country.
Many popular Colonial drinks were also mixtures involving some elements of the above. Each often had several variants, depending on one's taste and the availability of the ingredients.
Among the most famous (and most misunderstood; we all read pirate tales as kids, right?) is grog: essentially, a dilution of rum including water, citrus, and a sweetener.
Syllabub might consist of "cider blended with cream, rum and sugar, although wine could be used in place of the cider."
Flip was "a blend of beer; rum; a sweetener such as molasses, sugar or dried pumpkin; and occasionally eggs and cream." (Ms. Hirsch recommends a light brown ale rather than a porter or other darker brew). It could be expensive: in at least one town, it cost more than a night's accommodation. I myself have always admired the large glasses in which it was traditionally prepared or served.
flip glass from the collections of Historic Deerfield
It also made history. As Ms. Hirsch tells it: the Minutemen of Lexington dutifully assembled when the first alarm was sounded in the wee hours back in 1775, but after they were dismissed at around 2 a.m., some eighty of them repaired to the Buckman Tavern (rather than their homes), where they continued to drink flip until they stumbled out to confront the British regulars toward daybreak. As more than one commentator has noted, the guns were not the only things that were loaded on that famed April Morning.
Punch--derived from the Hindi "panch," or five--referring to the number of ingredients (which varied considerably) was, in Ms. Hirsch's words, "quite a democratic drink in a way." It was meant to be shared communally, after all. It was thus a serious business and once again confounds simplistic stereotypes of religious Christians. As the book notes, "At the 1785 ordination of a Beverly, Massachusetts, minister, the eighty attendees drank seventy-four bowls of punch as well as twenty-eight bottles of wine and eight bottles of brandy." Not exactly your stereotypical evangelical buzzkills. I'd wager that the congregants of Amherst's First Church (separate story on that institution to follow) could come nowhere near that achievement nowadays, for more than one reason.
As Ms. Hirsch explained, "Drinking in America really exploded after the [Revolutionary] War."
Per capita consumption for every person over the age of 15 amounted to 5 gallons of spirits, 34 gallons of beer, and 1 gallon of wine. Today, by contrast, the US has the lowest per capita alcohol consumption in the developed world. Even at a respectable 14th place in beer consumption (20.4 gallons), for example, we lag well behind not only our forebears, but also the second- and third-place Germans and Austrians (28 and 28.5 gallons, respectively), and the world-leading Czechs at 39.3. But our founding fathers would have earned us a clear second place.
Oh, yes, the infamous, intriguing and appropriately named "Rattle-Skull" consisted of a pint of porter or other dark beer, along with rum, brandy, sherry, and (optional) lime juice and nutmeg. As Ms. Hirsch noted, you probably wouldn't want to drive home after one of these, which go down with surprising ease.
Boozing peaked around 1825, and the high point of the drinking culture also marked the birth of the temperance movement. Perhaps we have always oscillated between unhealthy extremes. As Ms. Hirsch writes in her book, "That American society could reach a nadir of drunkenness only a few decades before outlawing drinking altogether speaks to an all-or-naught national psychology."
After the lecture, many members of the audience adjourned to the neighboring c. 1750 Simeon Strong House, site of the Amherst History Museum, for hors d'oeuvres and a sampling of representative historical beverages: Flip, made with ale, rum, molasses, a beaten egg and nutmeg; Syllabub, made with white wine, lemon juice, heavy cream, sugar, and nutmeg; a mulled wine, and hard cider from All Things Local.
Ms. Hirsch prepared and served some of the more complex beverages. Among
the highlights: making flip the traditional way by plunging a red-hot
poker into the pitcher of liquid. Admittedly, not all traditions can be
observed due to the modern preservation policy and safety regulations in
historic structures: we used a propane-fired barbecue a safe distance
away from the house.
the final product: Corin Hirsch serves the flip
As guests sampled a half-dozen drinks, Hampshire College students Emma John and Deidre Kelly performed traditional songs. I happened to walk in as they were singing "The Bonnie Banks of Loch Lomond." First published in 1841, it seems to refer to the events of the Jacobite Rebellion of 1745. It's a personal favorite of mine because I grew up with it: my father learned it while in the military in Scotland during World War II.
Appropriately enough, the portrait beneath which they are seated at the historic piano, on loan from the Heath Historical Society, reflects the shared musical interest of the Emerson family of Amherst (which owned this house) and their relatives to the east. Records describe the painting as "a family group which Dr. Emerson allowed a deaf and dumb travelling man to paint, out of pity for him." Scholars surmise that the painter was Augustus Fuller (b. 1812, Deerfield, d. 1872) and that the portrait was painted circa 1837.
The proverbial (to cite that awkward and oft-parodied phrase) "good time was had by all." So much so, in fact, that we hope to repeat the event in the future.
In the meantime, if you're tempted, you will enjoy Corin's essay on "5 Colonial-Era Drinks You Should Know" (from Seriouseats). But this is one of the few occasions on which it is wiser to give in to temptation. So, just buy the book: you know you want to. It will make a great holiday present.
For that matter, I suppose, I never have anything truly new to say about Thanksgiving: just my occasional musings based on old histories or new coverage in the media.
But that's the point, I suppose: Thanksgiving is the quintessential and universal American holiday. To be sure, July 4th is the official national holiday, but although it is far older, its rituals and practices are more variable: we celebrate in our mulitfarious ways, from barbecues to nothing in particular. By contrast, "The Thanksgiving dinner" (whatever its varied constituents) is the national norm and in that sense unique as a means of celebration transcending cultures, ethnicities, and faiths (taking into account of course, some modern resistance to the traditional political-historical narrative: 1, 2 ).
Because I've already posted a good many times on this favorite American holiday, I thought I would content myself with offering an overview of those earlier posts rather than introducing a new theme this year.
In addition, I'll upload the collected images to the tumblr for better viewing. [Update: okay, didn't happen. That's life, too.]
Amuse yourselves as best you can. Wishing all a pleasant holiday feast and extended weekend.
• 2008 The Inevitable Thanksgiving Piece : focusing on food and fable as well as historiography: how the holiday came to assume its familiar form. Among my minor favorites are the mystery of the cranberry (pregnant insects?! wtf?) and Pilgrim drinking habits (a shot and a brew).
• 2009 Thanksgiving Day (Thanksgiving Again): brief piece with focus on historiography--contrasting historical approaches of the focus on material culture and the larger narrative (including the long-term consequences), exemplified by James and Patricia Deetz on the one hand and Nathaniel Philbrick, on the other (with links to a variety of topics, from the date of the holiday to presidential turkey pardons and the relation between poultry and dinosaurs).
• 2010 (a) The Annual Thanksgiving History Buffet: a smorgasbord of topics, starting with foodways (eels and sweet potato) and moving on to the conservative canards about Pilgrims, socialism, and capitalism.
• 2010 (b) Thanksgiving Miscellany: e.g. never rocked to the Turkey Gobbler's Ball? Here's your chance.
Conservatives in recent years have for some reason decided to make much of a supposed contrast between the early failures of the Pilgrims under what is termed a "socialist" arrangement vs. their great successes once they abandoned this Obama-avant-la-lettre policy and threw themselves into the sluttish welcoming arms of free-market capitalism.
This is not my field, but one doesn't need to be a specialist--only to understand historical perspective and use of evidence--in order to see that this is bunk. As any historian worth his or her salt (a valuable commodity in Colonial days) can tell you, the whole notion of a struggle between "socialism" and "capitalism" in seventeenth-century America is unhistorical nonsense. And what is more, the Pilgrims and their descendants--before and after the supposed great transformation--intruded in the lives of citizens in a way that would be anathema to modern socialists and libertarians alike. Myth busted. QED.
