Blog Archive for Sarah Albee, Writer of History and Science Books for Kids

Knockdown, Drag-Along

Posted June 2, 2016

It’s been a long time since I was in high school, but I’m still in touch with my favorite teacher—who taught history, naturally—Mr. Heller. (It took me about twenty five more years to call him by his first name, Miles.) Anyway he read my blog from last week about portable writing desks and messaged me:

Did you ever hear of campaign furniture?

In the Am Revolution, they carried huge collapsible furniture, like chests, tables etc. with arms on them so that they could be carried. Sometime, they had to cut trees down to get the stuff through. . . . Look it up. It is pretty interesting. I can’t imagine being one of the guys who had to carry things like wardrobes.

So of course I looked it up, and it’s fascinating. Campaign furniture was specially designed to be assembled and disassembled, and was made for wealthy officers to take along with them when they went to war. Officers of the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries did not pack light. They brought along dressers, dining room tables, and elegantly upholstered seating. Some even brought canopied beds. The campaign furniture varied from simple to quite ornate, and was often ingeniously designed.

In 1782, General Washington wrote to his Quartermaster, Timothy Pickering, about whether horse or ox teams ought to pull the column of officers’ baggage:

General Officers should be accommodated with Horse Teams than others, as they may frequently have occasion to make more expedition in their movements than other Officers; whereas the Baggage of the Officers of the Staff and the Line will rarely if ever be separated [sic] from the column of Baggage, on a march…

SC-5; Secondary object number RP-440; Outdoor scene of George Washington in a military encampment.

Outdoor scene of George Washington in a military encampment. (MountVernon.org)

Also known as “knockdown” furniture, the trend became immensely popular with the British in India during the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries. Wealthy British officers and their ladies, stationed in India, tended to be oblivious to local culture, dress, and social customs, and they dressed in clothing that was completely ill-suited to the climate. They required Western-style furniture that could accommodate stuff like tight breeches and corsets.You can see some examples of Civil War-era knockdown furniture at this website.

Jones, Robin D. Studies in the Decorative Arts 11.1 (2003): 137-39. Web.

Miller, Judith Furniture, page 180

Thomas Sheraton The cabinet dictionary. To which is added a supplementary treatise on geometrical lines, perspective, and painting in general 1803

Desk Jobs

Posted May 27, 2016

I’ve been researching the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, and I got curious about writing desks. They’ve evolved quite a bit over the past two hundred years, from this:To this:Yeah, that’s my treadmill desk. Not that my desk represents the most highly evolved of writing desks, but desks have definitely changed a lot.

Robespierre at his desk.

Edison at HIS desk.

What had me flummoxed me was how often I was seeing references to Enlightenment-era writers taking their writing desks along with them wherever they went.

Alexander Hamilton and George Washington brought theirs along to every campaign throughout the American Revolution. Lewis and Clark lugged theirs across the rugged Louisiana territory, over the Rockies, and all the way to the Pacific Ocean. And then there was the ill-fated Franklin expedition.

In 1845, British explorer and nineteenth century celebrity John Franklin set off from England across the Atlantic Ocean with two ships, 129 officers and crew, and enough food for three years. Their mission was to find a northwest route to Asia by sailing around the top of Canada. Many Europeans eagerly awaited their news. A few months after setting sail, the expedition vanished.

A major search effort was organized. Little by little, a few clues were revealed. Eventually the remains of twenty-five sailors were recovered. They’d been pulling a lifeboat across the icy terrain on ropes, hoping to reach mainland Canada. In the boat were strange items like button polish, curtain rods, and…a writing desk. Not exactly what you’d expect to find in an Arctic survival kit. The exact fate of the Franklin expedition remains a mystery, but a plausible theory is they developed severe lead poisoning from their lead-soldered cans of provisions.

Anyway, it turns out, the writing desks that all of these guys brought with them were the traveling kind. They looked like this:

This is Thomas Jefferson’s desk.

Henry VIII's writing desk. Not know for his moderation.

Henry VIII’s writing desk. Not known for his moderation.

The first laptops.

Read It And Weep

Posted May 15, 2016

I’m researching colonial America, and just spent the morning reading a book written in 1660, by one Thomas White. The full title doesn’t exactly trip off the tongue, but here it is: A Manual for Parents: Wherein is Set Down Very Particular Directions in Reference to the Baptising, Correcting, Instructing, and Chusing a Calling for Their Children : to which is Added A Little Book for Little Children : Wherein Besides Several Instructions, and Encouragements, Several Examples.

The book was later republished in Boston, in 1702, with the much more succinct title A Little Book for Little Children (you can see it online here).

Puritan parents and preachers tended to select the most frightening verses of the Bible to scare the living daylights out of children, in order to get them to behave. But even for kids who were used to hearing that stuff, this book is tough going. There’s a section of horrific stories of martyrs and what happened to them (burned, flayed, tongues pulled out, thrown to beasts, “fryed” in a frying pan). I actually felt physically ill after reading that part.

White is full of helpful advice for the child reader. In Chapter 9, entitled What Books Children Are to Read, White warns kids to: “read no Ballads and foolish Books, but the Bible,” although further reading might include “the Practice of Piety; Mr. Baxter’s Call to the Unconverted; [and] the Histories of the Martyrs that dyed.”

He admonishes his reader to “speak to thy play-fellows to pray oftner” and “to reprove them for any sin,” and also to remind Play-mates “of Heaven, and Hell, and the Day of Judgment.” Imagine having that kid sitting behind you in class. Here’s an excerpt where White uses sensory details to help kids understand how painful it would be to be consigned for eternity to the flames of Hell–and bear in mind, he’s talking about what will happen to the “Play-mates” of our reader–those who don’t honor their parents and/or who swear:Yeah, kids books have come a long way.

Racine and Reason

Posted May 9, 2016

I have a couple of vivid memories from my high school AP French literature class. Our teacher, Madame Sorrell, was a lovely woman whose bright red hair tumbled in tendrils to her shoulders, and who was all chiffon scarves and jingly jewelry and heady perfume. Once she gave our class a cooking lesson. We watched her douse the baba au rhum with a healthy few glugs of rhum until it was deeply saturated. The cake tasted pretty much like a kitchen sponge soaked in rum, but I think we all thought it would have been immature not to eat it.

But my clearest memory is studying Racine’s Phèdre, which Madame Sorrell read with such passion. She seemed to transform herself into Phèdre’s character: “Sers ma fureur, Oenone,” read Madame Sorrell, in her deep, breathy voice, “et non point ma raison.”

I came across an interesting bit of information about the playwright, Jean Racine (1639 – 1699). He was one of three great seventeenth century French playwrights, along with Molière and Corneille, but he sounds like he was a big jerk. As a young poet, he was one of the king’s favorite “men of letters,” and he had his first play produced by Molière’s drama company. But in 1665, while his second play was being produced by Molière’s company, he made a secret agreement with a rival acting troupe to present the same play a few days later. He thought the acting was better at the other place. He also lured away Molière’s lead actress, Thérèse du Parc, and got her to join the other acting company. And also she became his mistress. That was the end of his friendship with Molière. A year into their relationship, she died.

At the height of his fame Racine retired from writing for the theater, took a cushy job as royal historiographer, and married a pious woman with whom he had seven children. In short, he opted to follow his “raison” and not his “fureur.” I doubt Mme Sorrell approved.

In 1679, eleven years after du Parc’s death, a poison scandal emerged in the court of Louis XIV. A number of people were accused of murdering prominent members of the French nobility with the help of a famed poisoner Catherine Monvoisin, known as La Voisin. Du Parc’s daughters and her stepmother accused Racine of poisoning the actress in a fit of jealousy. But his fame and favoritism with the king protected him from being prosecuted.

Erika Carroll, Potions, Poisons and "Inheritance Powders": How Chemical Discourses Entangled 17^th Century France in the Brinvilliers Trial and the Poison Affair http://journals.chapman.edu/ojs/index.php/VocesNovae/article/view/330/709#_ftn87

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/488151/Jean-Racine

On the Banks of Blumb Creek

Posted May 5, 2016

I’ve been reading the journals of Lewis and Clark and others from the Corps of Discovery expedition (which began in May, 1804). (You can read them online here.)

It’s compelling, entertaining reading, and not just because of Clark’s hilarious spelling.

During the first two weeks of September, 1804, the expedition was traveling through Knox County Nebraska, heading toward South Dakota. They lugged their pirogues and keelboat up a creek, which, in Clark’s words, “abounds with blumbs of a Delicious flavor.” But fresh fruit was a luxury for the men of the Corps (Sacagawea had not yet joined them). They lived on cornmeal and meat. Lots and lots of meat. Moving the keelboat and pirogues upriver was hard work. Every soldier consumed up to nine pounds of meat per day.

But let’s let Clark tell it. On July 13, 1805, Clark wrote: “We eat an emensity of meat; it requires 4 deer, or an elk and a deer, or one buffaloe to supply us plentifully 24 hours.”

Anne Hutchinson, Cheeky Preacher

Posted April 25, 2016

The road I drive on to get in and out of New York City is called the Hutchinson River Parkway. It was named, of course, for the Hutchinson River. But I wonder how many people know who the Hutchinson River was named after.

Anne Hutchinson, that’s who. If she hadn’t been a woman, she would have been a powerful minister at the level of her contemporaries, John Winthrop, Roger Williams, and John Cotton. But she was a woman, and in 1637 she was banished from the Massachusetts Bay Colony and excommunicated by the Puritan church because she was acting like a minister. Also, she espoused a ‘covenant of grace” rather than a “covenant of works.” If you think that sounds like a petty distinction, it is, at least to us. But the Massachusetts Bay Colony was not known for its religious tolerance. Also, she’d assembled a bunch of women in her large home several days a week for the purpose of “resolving questions of doctrine and expounding scripture” (in the words of John Winthrop). In so doing, Winthrop said, she had “troubled the peace of the Commonwealth.”

That Puritan Funster, John Winthrop

Anne and her husband and large family (she’d had fifteen kids, not all of whom survived infancy) and many of Anne’s followers settled Portsmouth, Rhode Island, in 1638. All the men signed a pledge called the Portsmouth Compact, but Anne couldn’t sign the pledge to the colony she founded, because she was a woman.

After her husband died in 1642, Anne and her surviving children moved to New Netherland, in what is now part of the Bronx. In 1643, Anne and all but one of her children were killed by Indians who were battling with the Dutch.

Boy Oh Boy

Posted April 11, 2016

I love fashions of the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and fun fact: men were every bit as into fashion, if not more so, than were women. In the days when an outfit could cost as much as a house, one wore one’s wealth and image on one’s back. Here’s a little picture show for you, with some of my most favorite crazy, outlandish men’s fashions. First, the sixteenth century: A And moving into the seventeenth century: And just one more, a jump to the early nineteenth but I couldn’t resist showing you these absurdly tight pants, in the era before stretch:

Way to Glow

Posted April 4, 2016

In the course of my research for an upcoming book about poison in history (Spring, 2017), I came across a lot of cool facts that, for space reasons, I was unable to include in the book. One of these is luminous glassware. That would be glass that contains uranium. Under an ultraviolet light, the glass glows bright green. And yes, the glass emits radiation.

Luminescence_of_various_kinds_of_uranium_glass

In ancient times, glassmakers discovered that adding uranium, a naturally-occuring element found most commonly in the mineral called pitchblende, would tint glass yellow or green. It became super-popular in the late-19^th century (the heyday of Poison Products). It wasn’t until after 1970 that glass and ceramics makers stopped using it in the U.S. Collectors still collect this so-called “Vaseline” glass (because it’s sort of the color of petroleum jelly).

Uranium_Glass_-_Marcia_White_collection_-3

Top pictures:EPA: https://www3.epa.gov/radtown/images/antiques-glass-2.jpg

Middle picture:By Łukasz Karolewski (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Bottom picture: By LuisVilla (Own work) [CC BY-SA 4.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

Oh, Baby!

Posted March 28, 2016

From National Library of Medicine

I remember that anxiety I felt when we brought our first baby home (he’s now in college). Everything in our apartment became a Potential Hazard that might hurt my precious child. New parents are given a lot of advice, and I was all ears. Also, I worked at Sesame Street at the time, so I’d read a LOT of safety articles already. Most of the advice I received seemed pretty reasonable. Stuff like—be sure to swivel pot handles around so they’re not easy to grab off the stove. And—keep small swallowable items like magnets and loose change out of baby’s reach. And—keep chords and window blinds away from baby’s crib.

I came across this site at the New York Academy of Medicine, which includes baby advice from 1924. It’s worth a click-through, but I’ll give you a few highlights on the 1920s version of “How to Keep Well Babies Well.” The list is “Things Which Are Bad for All Babies,” and includes:

Candy
Pacifiers
Soothing syrups [because they often contained opium]
Patent medicines [see soothing syrups]
Whiskey, gin, tea and coffee [Must have been an issue if they felt the need to put these on the list—but also, this was smack-dab in the middle of Prohibition, so the whiskey and gin wouldn’t even have been of good quality]
Spitting on the handkerchief to remove dirt from baby’s face
Sitting on the floor in winter
Allowing a person with tuberculosis to take care of the baby
This would be okay because it contains NO LAUDANUM!

I’m guessing some of these situations would have made the list, had they occurred to the writer.

Duel Purpose

Posted March 21, 2016

I saw the show Hamilton last week. My family is somewhat obsessed with it, and we knew every note of the soundtrack. Still, it exceeded our expectations.

One question left unanswered by the musical is: what became of Alexander Hamilton’s killer, Aaron Burr? Why was he not arrested for murder?

Quick summary: Burr, the Vice President under Thomas Jefferson, challenged Hamilton to a duel, after years of simmering tensions and mutual badmouthing of one another in the press. On July 11^th, 1804, Burr shot Hamilton, and by the afternoon of the following day, Hamilton was dead.

The duel had been fought in New Jersey, where dueling was legal. Still, there was a movement to have Burr arrested for murder in both New York and New Jersey. Dueling was a misdemeanor, but murder was a felony. Burr temporarily fled to Georgia, but in November, he returned to Washington to complete his vice-presidential term.

He then moved west, became embroiled in a conspiracy to seize some western territories, was arrested for treason, and acquitted. Whatever was left of his reputation was now destroyed. He left for exile in England, and lived there until 1812. He returned to New York, practiced law in relative obscurity, and died in 1836 at the age of eighty.

At the time of the Burr-Hamilton incident, dueling as a way to resolve grievances and defend one’s honor had become unfashionable in the North. Both George Washington and Benjamin Franklin had condemned the practice. It was still common in the South. But even in places where it was illegal, lawmakers tended not to enforce punishments for duelists. It wasn’t until the Civil War that dueling went completely out of fashion, even in the South.