By Viv Williams, Library Assistant

Happy New Year, Readers!

As 2020 crawls to a close, I’m sure many people will be keeping with the tradition of preparing some hope or goal they intend to carry with them into the coming year while reflecting on the lasting impacts of the year departing. I can imagine after the very unusual toll 2020 has taken on all of us, a few more distinctive resolutions and reflections will be made alongside the typical list of starting a new fitness journey, getting organized, or learning a new skill or hobby. 2020 has been particularly dark for many of us, but with a new calendar year comes new hope. When seeking hope amidst troubled times, I believe much can be gained from remembering that few struggles in this world are unprecedented. And so, I can think of a no more appropriate endeavor than to invoke the ghosts of New Year’s past by diving into our collections and observing the reflections and resolutions of previous years. Come in, and know our collections better, Readers! (Figuratively of course, we are still closed to the public for now.)

Our first New Year’s reflection comes from the Everett-Noble papers which include the diary of Alexander Hill Everett, brother to the famous Massachusetts orator, Edward Everett. In December of 1809, Alexander finds himself in Russia serving as secretary to John Quincy Adams. He writes:

This day brings the year to a close. On casting back a glance, I find it marked for me with events that will probably fix, fortunately or otherwise, the color of my life. As a matter of naked prudence, perhaps it was rather questionable whether I ought to harken such a step as to leave my country for so long a time and sacrifice for the present, the study of a profession. Hitherto, however, instead of repenting I have applauded myself more and more: I have placed myself in a way of distinction; it will only be unfortunate for me if my abilities are not adequate to support the situation.

Reader, have you made any “questionable” decisions this year or maybe taken a great risk? I can ascertain from the rest of this collection that Alexander’s “questionable” decision panned out nicely for him. He continued in the field of foreign diplomacy until his death. So, perhaps there is hope for you. Only time will tell. Keep going.

We move on to our next New Year’s reflection which I can only describe as a big “2020 Mood,” though it was actually written in 1816 which New England historians might recognize as “the year without a summer.” After spending the year in lockdown, I find that phrase to be all too relatable. This excerpt comes from the diary of Hannah Dawes Newcomb, a resident of Keene, N.H. She writes:

The New Year opens upon me with my feelings gloomily impressed. May God grant me strength of mind to endure his chastening with suitable firmness and humility & may it be consistent with his decrees to remove the difficulties which now await me.

Not all resolutions can be cheerful. While we can all be grateful to make it to another year, it can be hard to be hopeful when the “difficulties” of the previous year have no determined end in sight. May we all find the strength to push forward in hopes of happier times.

Many people this year have been forced apart from family and other loved ones. This is of course a burden that is relatable across time. If you find yourself in this predicament, perhaps you will find your own New Year’s hopes reflected in this 1862 letter from Richard Cary to his wife:

My dear wife,

Happy New Year to you & may this day twelve months see us once more together & settled down to a regular hum-drum Darby & Joan which sort of life I look upon now as the most desirable possible existence & may the country be quiet united & contented as we shall be if my hopes might come true.

At the time this letter was written, Richard Cary was serving as a captain in the 2nd Massachusetts Infantry Regiment, Company G. I take no pleasure in telling you that his hopes did not come true. He was killed at the Battle of Cedar Mountain at the age of 26. Sobering, I know, but more than 300,000 people were permanently separated from their family members in the United States this year, many of them just as young. In this New Year, may we hold our loved ones closer and be so much kinder to one another.

Each of us has had to endure so much this year. But we did just that–endured–and we did it together as many have before us. Thank you for continuing to stand by us, the MHS, and each other as we’ve all learned to adapt and survive. My wish for the New Year is that we would all experience fewer moments of pure survival and more opportunities to thrive. I leave you with this last brief but all-encompassing New Year’s entry from the diary of Andrew Oliver who said simply, “Thus ends the year 1953 with its ups and downs!”

Happy New Year!

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

I don’t know about you, but just two days after the official start of winter and six days after Winter Storm Gail, I’m already dreaming of tropical climes. To whet my appetite, I turn to a fun old travel guide in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s collection, Appleton’s Illustrated Hand-book of American Winter Resorts; for Tourists and Invalids.

This small, attractive hardcover volume, only 138 pages long, is chock full of terrific illustrations and maps.

It was published in 1879 by D. Appleton and Co., a major New York publishing company run by five sons of founder Daniel Appleton. The company put out a number of targeted guidebooks like this; there’s one about summer resorts, too. In the front and back, you’ll find advertisements for hotels, banks, railroads, steamship companies, and, of course, other Appleton publications.

The book is divided into twelve sections: Florida, Georgia, South Carolina, North Carolina, Minnesota, Arkansas Hot Springs, Colorado, California, the Lower Mississippi, the West Indies, the Bermudas, and the Sandwich Islands. Sections include general descriptions; descriptions of major cities, towns, rivers, etc.; lists of hotels and boarding houses; and information on climate, history, and points of interest.

As you can tell from its unfortunate title, this book is targeted not only at recreational travelers, but also “invalids,” primarily tuberculosis patients, or “consumptives” in the vernacular of the time. Included are “all the facts as to climatic and local conditions” in each location, as well as testimonials by physicians and even mortality rates!

The largest section by far is the one on Florida, a popular destination for “those afflicted with pulmonary complaints.” The anonymous author waxes almost poetic about the state’s many rivers, including the St. Johns and the Ocklawaha. My favorite illustration, depicting Green Cove Springs, also appears in this section.

The guidebook contains some fascinating factoids that give us a snapshot of what vacations were like in 1879. Travel by train cost 2-3 cents per mile (more in the southern and western United States); steamboats were even cheaper; the going rate for first-class hotels was $4.00-$4.50 per day; and only gold and silver, not U.S. Treasury notes or National Bank bills, were legal tender in California. A train ticket from New York to San Francisco would run you $138.

Speaking of California, I particularly enjoyed the description of a quaint little town called Los Angeles.

Its present population is about 12,000, and the adobe buildings, of which it was originally composed, are fast giving way to larger and more imposing structures. It has a large and varied trade with the interior, and contains three banks, a Roman Catholic college, several public schools, a public library, three daily and two weekly newspapers, churches of the various denominations, and good hotels.

What other tips did the Appletons have for the resourceful tourist or “consumptive” in search of relief?

Our American climate is very changeable, and the traveler had better suffer at noonday from too much clothing than expose himself at night, in storms, or to sudden changes of temperature, with too little. One should wear woolen underclothing, both summer and winter, and always have a shawl or extra wrapper of some kind at hand.

Here’s hoping you are enjoying whatever weather you happen to be in!

By Heather Wilson, Library Assistant

On the evening of her tenth birthday, 22 December 1863, María Teresa Carreño García de Sena (1853-1917), known as Teresa Carreño, sat at the grand piano in the Boston Music Hall. She was ending the year much as she’d begun it–performing for large crowds in Boston. That year she had also played throughout New England, in New York City, at the White House for President Lincoln, and in Havana, Cuba.

In addition to playing pieces by eminent composers and virtuoso pianists–on this night the concert program shows that she played pieces by American Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Europeans Franz Liszt and Sigismond Thalburg–Teresa ended the concert with a work of her own composition. La Emilia Danza was a genre of dance music native to her home country of Venezuela, from which she had emigrated to New York with her family in 1862.

I began learning about Teresa Carreño when I read the picture book Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln [1], with my five-year-olds. So, I was excited to spot a record of her in ABIGAIL, the MHS online catalog, as I worked from home on my laptop. After a colleague working in the building emailed me scans of the two items, I showed the photograph to my kids. “Look; this is Teresa Carreño the year she played for President Lincoln! She played for lots of people in Boston, too!”

 In fact, she found large and appreciative audiences wherever she went.

On December 19, 1863, The Boston Evening Transcript ran an advertisement for the concert:

Theresa [sic] Carreno, the wonderful little artiste, is announced to give a grand concert at the Music Hall, on Tuesday evening next, the 22d inst. Her visit to Boston last season created unusual interest and excitement in musical circles, and she comes now better fitted than ever to astonish by her truly wonderful powers. She has acquired a greater degree of physical force in the meanwhile, and now performs the most difficult compositions of Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, Thalberg, and Gottschalk. He [sic] has also composed some beautiful pieces, which will be heard in Boston for the first time. [2]

Many reviewers attributed Carreño’s talent to prodigious abilities and lessons she received from pianists such as Gottschalk, but a fuller picture includes lots and lots of practice at home. Carreño’s father, Manuel Antonio Carreño (1812-1874), played a major role in Teresa’s development as a pianist and composer. Under his tutelage in Caracas, Teresa began studying piano and composing at the age of six. Looking back on her earliest years of lessons, she said she practiced, “two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, and the rest of the day I played with my doll.” [3] By the time the family emigrated to New York, she had been playing private concerts for years.

Looking at this carte de visite of nine-year-old Teresa, taken in Boston in January 1863, I couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking. Wearing a dress and earrings, with a stool placed beneath her feet, she strikes a more restful pose than audiences would have seen while she performed. Referring to her ideal style, she once said, “One should be able to play with a glass of water balanced on the wrist.” [4]) Is she thinking about her doll? School lessons? Is she itching to travel back to New York, or eager for spring and her upcoming concerts in Cuba? Does she love to play as much as Dancing Hands suggests?

Indeed, some reviewers were skeptical of Carreño, and child pianists as a whole. The reviewer John Sullivan Dwight attended Carreño’s January 1863 performances in Boston. Although he called her “a wonder” he also wrote:

The danger is lest her talent, by such early continual exhibition and exposure, should all run to waste in superficial, showy music; and no less, that such abnormal and excessive tasking of the brain should wear the life out soon.” [5]

Dwight may not directly call her father a “stage dad” here, but if anyone was responsible for Carreño’s ‘continual exhibition’ it would have been him. In adulthood, however, Teresa Carreño credited her father with seeing her love of piano and teaching her so well:

You see what a foundation I had from my father who, in all his busy life […] found joy in training his little girl in the art which he so dearly loved, and of which he was himself in reality a master. [6]

Later in life, Carreño taught piano in the style her father had taught her as a child. She also continued to perform around the world for more than 50 years.

I was struck by Teresa’s fond memories of learning the piano from her father. Could her story, I asked myself, inspire my own parenting? Eight months into remote PreK (plus two months of summer learning run by yours truly), the only instruments my kids have played have been made out of recycled materials. One of my kids taught himself to whistle(!), but thus far has been unable to teach me to do the same. Perhaps, in the end, it comes down to sharing what you know and love. After all, we’ve read a lot of great historical books. And, besides, they don’t turn six until next year.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Teresa Carreño!

Teresa Carreño’s Archive

Teresa Carreño’s records are split between two institutions. The Teresa Carreño Papers, 1862-1991, are housed at Vassar College Archives and Special Collections Library. A digital exhibit provides access to a few primary source materials housed in the collection. (I personally love the 1886 program to a concert she performed in Caracas that refers to her as “al ilustre Americano.”) The Teatro Teresa Carreño in Caracas, Venezuela also houses a large collection of her personal and professional papers and materials, in addition to concert gowns. [7]

 

[1] Margarita Engle (author) and Rafael López (illustrator), Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln, Simon & Schuster, 2019.

[2] https://documentingcarreno.org/items/show/53, Documenting Teresa Carreño, an open-access website compiling primary source materials related to Carreño’s career, Anna E. Kijas.

[3] Laura Pita, Teresa Carreño’s Early Years in Caracas: Cultural Intersections of Piano Virtuosity, Gender, and Nation-Building in the Nineteenth Century, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Kentucky, 2019, p. 382.

[4] Pita, 412.

[5] Anna E. Kijas, “The Life of Teresa Carreño (1853-1917): A Venezuelan Prodigy and Acclaimed Artist,” Music Library Association, (Volume 76, No. 1), September 2019, p. 42.

[6] Pita, p. 374.

[7] Ronald D. Patkus, “Musical Migrations: A Case Study of the Teresa Carreño Papers,” RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, (Vol 6. No. 1), 2005.

By Rakashi Chand, Senior Library Assistant

This holiday season is unlike any other we have experienced in our lifetime. We cannot gather, there are no office parties, and some of us cannot risk seeing our families during the pandemic. So why not use the opportunity to take inspiration from the past and celebrate historically?

Have a cup of punch!

Punch was the thing to do in 1773. On the evening of 16 December 1773, guests gathered at the home of Benjamin Edes. While they waited for darkness to fall, the family punch bowl was filled multiple times. Benjamin’s son Peter later wrote in a letter to his grandson:

“I recollect perfectly well that in the afternoon preceding the evening of the destruction of the Tea a number of gentlemen met in the parlour of my father’s house how many I cannot say as…I was not admitted to their presence. my station was in another room to make punch for them in the bowl which is now in your possession and which I filled several times– they remained in the house till dark…”

Benjamin Edes and his guests made their way to his office on Queen Street to disguise themselves as Indians before joining others on Griffin’s Wharf, where the three ships carrying tea were docked. Young Peter followed the group and related the action to his grandson:

“The Indians worked smartly, some were in the hold immediately after the hatches were broken open, fixing the ropes to the tea chests, others were hauling up the chests, and others stood ready with their hatchets to cut off the binding of the chests, and others cast them overboard.”

Strangely well-orchestrated, in three hours they had disposed of three hundred and forty-two chests containing over 92,000 pounds of tea. John Adams, wrote about it admiringly in his diary entry for 17 December:

“This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire.”

Now you must be wondering what was in that punch that could launch three hundred chests in to the sea? Sadly, we don’t have that recipe.

But, we do have another infamous punch recipe: Benjamin Franklin’s Milk Punch! Let me introduce you to the strange world of milk punch, popular in 18nth century festivities. While Franklin is famous for his many inventions, such a cosmopolitan man could certainly invent an amazing drink as well. Luckily, he enclosed a recipe for his milk punch in an 11 October 1763 letter to his dear friend James Bowdoin.

For the adventurous, the following is a modern interpretation of Franklin’s recipe, with portions reduced to one quarter of those suggested by Franklin. The flavor is lemony, with a slightly medicinal kick.

Ingredients:

6 cups (3 pints) of brandy
11 lemons
2 cups lemon juice
4 cups (1 quart) of spring water
1 freshly grated nutmeg
1 1/8 cups (1/2 lb) of sugar
3 cups of whole milk

Directions:

Zest eleven lemons.
Squeeze 2 cups of lemon juice.
Steep the lemon zest in the brandy for 24 hours.
Strain out the lemon zest.
Add 4 cups of spring water, 1 freshly grated nutmeg, 2 cups of lemon juice, and 1 1/8 cups of sugar to the brandy.
Stir until the sugar dissolves.
Bring 3 cups of whole milk to a boil.
As soon as the milk boils, add it hot to the brandy mix and stir.
The heat, lemon juice, and alcohol will begin to curdle the milk.
Let the punch stand for 2 hours.
Strain the punch through a jelly bag (or pillow case) until clear. Serve cold.

Naturally, Franklin and Edes were not the only ones imbibing in punch on late December nights. John Hancock certainly enjoyed a glass or two. Here is Hancock’s own punch strainer:

And to fully understand the importance (and popularity) of punch, here is the story of a punch strainer that began with plundering and international conflict. John Vryling, a Boston merchant and member of the Old South Church, was commissioned as an ensign in Col. William Gooch’s “American” Regiment–a unit of the British Army raised in North America in 1740. Vryling sailed for Jamaica with his regiment in October that year. Boston silversmith William Breed crafted this punch strainer from silver captured by John Vryling during the Siege of Cartagena in 1741.

On that note, punch anyone?

Join us for a cup of Holiday Punch by sharing your favorite recipes, or favorite punch stories in the comments below.