For all the mothers and the mothers-at-heart, thank you for your care and kindness. Happy Mother’s Day!

Mother’s Day is an unlikely popular tradition of Villanova history. From the early 1900s, Mothers were invited on campus to celebrate Mother’s Day with their child. The day’s events would include tree-planting ceremony, corsage giving, mass, luncheon, games, and entertainment. Mother’s Day activities were incorporated into Junior Week festivities which began in 1935. By the 1950s, more than 400 Mothers and Grandmothers would visit marking it as one of the largest events each year. Parents Weekend overtime replaced Mother’s Day traditions. Though having Mothers partake in Junior celebrations bolstered the idea of Villanova’s community representing families of students too.

 

 

 

 

 

An especially long-standing tradition, that started long before it was incorporated with Mother’s Day activities, was the Junior tree-planting ceremony. The tree-planting ceremony was considered the class tree, a precursor to more elaborate class gifts. Typically, the event was held after Mass and students would walk in a parade to plant the tree. With time, the tradition evolved to include Mothers participating in the planting ceremony.

 

 

 

 

 

 

More about Mother’s Day and Junior Week can be found in Blazers and Class Rings digital exhibit and Digital Library.

 

Villanova University’s Digital Library presents and preserves digital collections of selected holdings from our University Archives and Special Collections, as well as partner materials including institutional partners as well as individual donors. A recently added title from my own family’s bookshelf, Along the Pathway from Fibre to Paper, shares a rare, illustrated history and step-by-step detail of the papermaking process in one of Philadelphia’s many paper mills at the turn of the twentieth century.

 

Riverside Paper Mills

The booklet was produced by W.C. Hamilton & Sons, owners of the Riverside Paper Mills, “where good paper has been made since 1853” – according to its title page.  The description opens with the history and long tradition of the papermaking industry in the Philadelphia region including the very first paper mill built in North America, established by William Rittenhouse in 1690.

The Riverside Paper Mills were located in Whitemarsh township, Montgomery County, situated on the Schuylkill River. The area, adjacent to Roxborough, Philadelphia and formerly known as Lafayette Station, is now known as Miquon.

An explanation of the company’s trademark image and the name “Miquon” is given. The trademark, appearing on nearly every page as well as the book’s endpapers, depicts the face of William Penn within a round circle over a feather quill pen, with the words – MIQUON – RIVERSIDE MILLS.

The origin of the name Miquon is said to derive from a meeting of Lenape people with William Penn. Penn’s interpreter, searching for a way to translate Penn’s name, pointed to a goose quill on the ground and said, “Onas, signifying a Quill or Pen. But his familiar name was Miquon” [8].

 

 

The Papermaking Process

The book then details the many steps and processes of turning wood fiber to paper, with large photographic plates of the machinery and workers to illustrate each step. The second half of the book incudes samples of the final products, including Hamilton’s Fine Writing paper, buff colored paper, and envelope papers.

 

 

 

My favorite part of the whole publication is, of course, that it belonged to my great-great-grandfather. A dedication bookplate on the front fly leaf reads, “Harry West, associated with W.C. Hamilton & Sons / Riverside Paper Mills / Lafayette / Montgomery County / Pennsylvania / for twenty-seven years / is the owner of this descriptive-history of the institution he has helped to build.” Signed by Freas B. Snyder, President. [Dated] 7/1/21. being no. 19 of 350 copies.” The italicized words are hand-written in the intentional blank spaces left in the printed text. I love that there is a blank space for he (and therefore, also presumably for she) indicating that copies were likely given to both men and women who worked in or were associated with the mills.

Unfortunately, Harry West died at the mill in 1925. His death certificate indicates that he was working as “Head Drainer” and cause of death listed as “crushed skull, cervical vertebrae, and left shoulder by belt driven pulley at W/C Hamilton & Sons White Marsh Township, Monty Co., Pa.”

In 1999, the former mill buildings were preserved and redeveloped into an office complex (named River Park I and River Park II). Since 2012, River Park II has been home to the campus of AIM Academy, an independent school for grades 1-12.

For more on Paper and Papermaking in Greater Philadelphia see also: https://philadelphiaencyclopedia.org/essays/paper-and-papermaking/

If you have a unique or interesting item you would like to see digitized, please reach out to us at digitallibrary@villanova.edu.

 

---

Rebecca Oviedo is Distinctive Collections Archivist at Falvey Memorial Library.

 

---

 

A Magic Letter from God

A Himmelsbrief, which translates to “heaven’s letter” is a miraculous religious textual object believed to have been written by God himself. The object’s purpose is to protect the owner of a copy from all evil and danger and punish disbelievers, so long as the owner follows the moral covenants detailed in the letter. These divine letters could also be invoked to communicate with someone departed, or to request assistance from God in heaven. Scholars today consider Himmelsbrief to be part of the Folk Medicine tradition.

Pennsylvania Dutch Powwow

The Pennsylvania Dutch participate in a magical worldview, where superstitions and charms have apotropaic properties. The Powwow was a popular method of physical and spiritual healing for believers. The integration of the Native American term “powwow” illustrates the diverse cultural influences of the Pennsylvania Dutch beyond their German ancestry.

Performing a Powwow hinges on repetition of specific Bible verses and other incantations to ensure that their owners would be protected from death, injury, and other misfortune. In addition to verbal repetition of magical and religious phrases, simply owning a copy of a Himmelsbrief can serve as a protective talisman against evils and ailments. Although the text of these letters is often written in a formulaic rhyming scheme, Powwow practitioners charged steeply for these magical letters–with prices dependent on the reputation of the practitioner (referred to as a Hexenmeister or Braucher).

Falvey’s Magdeburg Himmelsbrief

The two most popular examples of these Powwow letters are the Koenigsberg Fire Brief of 1714 and the Magdeburg Himmelsbrief of 1783. Falvey Library holds a copy of the latter, described on the bottom of the page as “Magdeburg, 1783.” The title at the top of the letter reads:

Ein Brief, so von Gott selbsten geschrieben, und zu Magdeburg niedergelassen worden ist. // A letter written by God himself found in Magdeburg.

It is believed that these divine letters miraculously fall from the sky, and are subsequently found by the devout (in this case, found in Magdeburg–historically one of the most populous cities in the Holy Roman Empire). The title is followed by 27 lines of prose, and tacked on the back of the frame are six nails with the note “Original hand-made nails used on frame backing—frame refinished March ‘82”.

 

My exhibit case for Poetic License: Seven Curators’ Poetry Selections from Distinctive Collections focused on epic poetry from the Western tradition and the poets who played a key part in translating these works. A reader’s encounter with epic poetry is often through a translation, and so the craft of the translator becomes an integral element, acting as a conduit between the original language of the epic and the audiences of the translator.

My selections included four translated works from the library’s Special Collections. This journey naturally begins with The Iliad of Homer, translated by Alexander Pope between 1715-1720. Pope drew wide acclaim at the time of its publication, and the work helped fulfill a longtime fascination he had with Homer. However, Pope may have taken a few liberties in his translation, as the critic Richard Bentley is reported to have said, “It is a pretty poem, Mr. Pope, but you must not call it Homer.” The edition on display, published in 1853 by Ingram, Cooke, and Co., includes designs and illustrations throughout by John Flaxman.

In addition to translation, Homer’s epics would prove inspirational for original works. The Roman poet Virgil created his own epic with The Aeneid, about the hero Aeneas’ wanderings after the Trojan War, which bear similarity to the wanderings of Homer’s Odysseus. On display is The Aeneid from the Works of Virgil : In Latin and English, translated by Christopher Pitt, who was a contemporary and friend to Alexander Pope. This edition, published in 1778 by J. Dodsley in London, includes the Latin text of the original facing Pitt’s English translation. Though the English text may also require some deciphering to modern audiences, as the printed type used the ‘long S’ throughout.

Our journey continues to northern Europe and the land of the Danes, of the king Hrothgar, the monster Grendel, and a hero named Beowulf. Considered a foundational work in English poetry, Beowulf was introduced to a new generation of readers thanks to the translation of Irish poet Seamus Heaney, who brought a fresh, visceral energy to the text. The limited edition on display includes the opening of the poem in Old English, with text replicated from the only surviving manuscript, facing the English translation. The edition is also autographed by Heaney, who was a frequent visitor to Villanova University thanks to the Center for Irish Studies.

Our journey ends in Ireland itself with The Táin, the Irish Iron Age epic about Queen Medb and King Ailill’s war against Ulster, and the demigod Cuchulainn who stood against them. Irish poet Thomas Kinsella serves as the translator for the edition on display, and while much of the epic is a prose work, the monologues and dialogues are presented in a verse form, connecting it to a poetic tradition. This edition also includes ink drawings by Louis le Brocquy, which bring a brutal, raw, and mysterious atmosphere to the battles that the poem recounts.

 

 

Poetic License is currently on display on the first floor of Falvey Library. Join us on Thursday, April 20 from 4-5:30pm to celebrate the exhibit, which will include an open mic event. Attendees are invited to share a favorite poem or piece of creative writing to share with the community during the reception.

Eichenberg is adept at using his tools to create the atmosphere of Brontë’s world. In one illustration of young Catherine Earnshaw, the fine lines in the background can be interpreted as both the rolling hills and the clouds covering the Yorkshire moors. In another, these fine lines mimic fog while also defining the features of Heathcliff’s face, representing a feverish, internal obsession weighing upon Catherine’s mind. Finally, this doubling nature appears in an illustration where Heathcliff and Catherine embrace, the lines in the background defining both the folds of the curtain and the wind from the open window, defining the lifelong companions and would-be lovers.

“I have not broken your heart – you have broken it; and in breaking it, you have broken mine.” (page 102)

On a final technical note, an editor’s description at the beginning of this edition states that the illustrations were reproduced using electrotype. This is a process where a metal plate reproduces the original wood engraving, making it easier to fit in with the type when the book is put into production. This process still maintains the relief quality of the wood engraving, so what we see on the printed page remains true to Eichenberg’s work.

Charles Garvice was a very popular author around the turn of the twentieth century, churning out formulaic but sometimes witty romances about upper class British life. Many of his works were reprinted in dime novel format, and so quite a few have made their way into our Digital Library, and a handful from there into Project Gutenberg, thanks to the efforts of Distributed Proofreaders.

The latest such book to be released as a free eBook is Olivia; or, It Was for Her Sake, a fairly typical example of Garvice’s output. The titular heroine is the daughter of a country squire, and the story focuses on her interaction with two neighbors who both grow to love her: a disgraced but self-sacrificing noble who has retired to the country to escape scandal, and a wealthy but ruthless and uncultured “self-made man.” As the setup implies, this is yet another Garvice novel built almost entirely upon its author’s class prejudices. The story is not without its sensational moments, but compared to the twist-packed work of some of Garvice’s contemporaries (like Mrs. Alex. McVeigh Miller), it seems rather slow-moving and conventional. Still, in spite of its flaws, its author’s style occasionally makes it distinctive, as demonstrated by the dry, ironic humor of its opening paragraph:

It was in the “merry month” of May, the “beautiful harbinger of summer,” as the poets call it; and one of those charming east winds which render England such a delightful place of residence for the delicate and consumptive, and are truly a boon and a blessing to the doctors and undertakers, was blowing gaily through one of the lovely villages of Devonshire, and insidiously stealing through the half opened French windows of the drawing-room of Hawkwood Grange.

If you want to read any further, you can find the entire book available for free online reading (or for download in popular eBook formats) through Project Gutenberg.

My case in the exhibit, “Poetic License: Seven Curators’ Poetry Selections from Distinctive Collections,” showcases examples of weird and fantastical poetry from Falvey Library’s holdings. Here, the term “weird” is used not colloquially, but rather in reference to the genre of weird fiction, which emerged in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Owing much to Gothic horror, weird fiction reinvented the creatures and themes of Gothic horror and other forms of speculative fiction, as portrayed by writers such as Edgar Allan Poe. In fact, H. P. Lovecraft, the most widely known practitioner of weird fiction, considered Poe’s writings the origin of the genre. While writers like Lovecraft are now remembered largely for their contributions to prose, my exhibit case highlights their lesser known, but equally interesting, poetic works. Examples are drawn from Weird Tales, arguably the most popular periodical to ever publish weird fiction and poetry. These poems explore themes that are central to the genre, including the supernatural, the passage of time, and the futility of human pursuits in an indifferent cosmos. Formally, the poems tend to implement consistent rhyme and meter, which amplify the haunting quality of these works.

Some poems in the case are quite literally fantastical, like Lovecraft’s “Night Gaunts,” which describes the dreadful flying creatures that first appeared in the author’s posthumously published novella, The Dream-Quest of Unknown Kaddath (1943). Other poems adopt a more grounded approach, such as Sudie Stuart Hager’s “Inheritance,” which examines how folklore can pass fantastical notions from one generation to the next. Meanwhile, Leah Bodine Drake’s “The Steps in the Field” uses fantastical motifs to develop a resonant metaphor about the afterlife, but also emphasizes the idea that some knowledge is dangerous and best left undiscovered—a popular theme in weird fiction and poetry. Together, these and other poems in the case paint a vivid picture of weird and fantastical poetry, its primary thematic concerns, and its formal techniques in the first half of the twentieth century.

The case also displays four covers of Weird Tales issues, illustrated by Margeret Brundage, Matt Fox, and Virgil Finlay. These expressive, colorful images, which depict eerie and otherworldly scenes, nicely complement the similarly evocative poetic works that accompany them.

Lastly, the case includes two works by authors who influenced the poetry in Weird Tales. First and foremost, Poe’s 1845 narrative poem “The Raven,” with its exploration of a depressed man’s desperate attempt to derive meaning from a bird’s repetitive sounds, lays the groundwork for numerous character arcs in weird fiction and poetry. The edition of this poem that is displayed in my case has been digitized and made available on the Villanova Digital Library, and may be read in full here. Furthermore, the case includes the Anglo-Irish author Lord Dunsany’s “A Walk in the Wastes of Time,” a metaphorical poem about communal memory, which was published in The Smart Set in 1917. This title has also been digitized and is available here. (A couple of years after this poem’s publication, Lovecraft would attend a talk by Dunsany in Boston; Dunsany’s influence on Lovecraft’s writings during this period is evident in many of Lovecraft’s works. Comic-book writer Alan Moore portrays the Boston talk in his Lovecraftian series Providence, which serves as both sequel and prequel to Moore’s Neonomicon.)

For more content related to weird fiction and poetry, read our digitized copy of Lovecraft’s personal journal of astronomical observations from 1909 to 1915, as well as this blog article that explains the significance of this rare manuscript. The Digital Library also includes other nineteenth- and twentieth-century texts that explore the occult, including several issues of The Paragon Monthly, a handbook on spiritualism, and other examples.

Please join us on Thursday, April 20, from 4 to 5:30 p.m. in Speakers’ Corner, Falvey Library, for the official launch and introduction of “Poetic License: Seven Curators’ Poetry Selections from Distinctive Collections,” followed by an open-mic poetry reading. This ACS-approved event is free and open to the public. In the meantime, make sure to view the full exhibit on the first floor of Falvey, and check the library’s blog for additional articles on individual curators’ cases!

In the early years of the 20th century, author Bertram Lebhar wrote a series of novels for publisher Street & Smith about Frank Hawley, an adventurous photojournalist known as “the Camera Chap.” Our latest Project Gutenberg release, produced by the Distributed Proofreaders project using images from our Digital Library, is one of the later “Camera Chap” novels: The Presidential Snapshot; or, The All-Seeing Eye.

In this book, Hawley is sent on a mission by the president of the United States to investigate rumors that a former president of a South American country has been illegally imprisoned by his successor. His mission is made more complicated by government spies, a growing revolution, and the appearance of an old rival. Fortunately, he also finds aid from a variety of allies….

As always, if you’d like to learn more, you can find the entire book available for free online reading, or for download in popular eBook formats, through the Project Gutenberg website.

“The Oracle” of Mystery Magazine

This Friday Favorite from the Distinctive Collections at Falvey Library is the pulp magazine series Mystery Magazine. One of the earliest examples of the ‘crime pulp’ genre, Mystery Magazine published a total of 216 issues from November 1917 to July 1927. Produced in New York City, readers could purchase the latest issue for just 10cents a copy.

What is Mystery Magazine?

In the words of publisher Frank Tousey in the inaugural issue:

Mystery Magazine has been issued to fill a unique niche in the field of literature. Its objects are both to amuse and instruct. […] Many of the stories are based on such subjects as fortune-telling, astrology, hypnotism, dreams, spiritualism, palmistry, etc., and some will be splendid detective stories.

 

 

 

 

The Oracle: The Mystery of Man and How to Solve It

Mystery Magazine ran a seven-part recurring column called “The Oracle: The Mystery of Man and How to Solve It” (issues 103 – 109) written by Russell Raymond Voorhees, a contemporary fiction author who published in a variety of pulp magazines. On the latest episode of Spare Change Library Podcast I am joined by Erica Hayes (Digital Scholarship Librarian) to read and discuss fortune telling with astrology in “The Oracle.”

Spare Change Library Podcast Episode 2: “The Oracle”

Not only was the content mysterious and strange, but the magazine featured advertisements from mystical sponsors as well, such as the fortune teller Parashira the Adept.

Are you interested in reading your own Oracle horoscope, or learning more about fortune telling in Mystery Magazine? Read your horoscope based on the day you were born in Mystery Magazine, The Oracle Part I: Astrology and decide for yourself if you ‘believe’ in the stars.

Spare Change Library Podcast is a dime novel and popular literature podcast, featuring audio editions of stories and scholarly discussion–available through a shared RSS feed on dimenovels.org