Here's a great image from our truly astounding Rhode Island Collection--one of thousands of photos which you can view at our online album, at http://www.provlib.org/ri_image/providence_library/index.html

This description of the Providence Grays is from Wikipedia:

In 1884, Providence was a major league baseball city. The Providence Grays played at the long-gone Messer Field in the Olneyville neighborhood, as one of the eight teams in the National League. They were led by ace pitcher Charles "Old Hoss" Radbourn (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charley_Radbourn),

who is still remembered for winning a record 59 games that year and leading the Grays to the pennant. When the team's other pitcher defected to a rival league in July, it looked like the Grays' season was over, but "Old Hoss" offered to pitch the rest of the team's games. The Grays went on a twenty-game winning streak and blew past their hated rivals, the Boston Red Stockings.

When the season was over, the Grays had won the league title by five games. They then played the New York Metropolitans, champions of the rival American Association, in a three-game championship series, and won all three games. It wasn't officially called the "World Series", but the Grays became undisputed world champions.

The Providence Grays disbanded after the 1885 season. A minor league by the same name played in Providence from 1891 to 1929; at one time its roster included a promising young pitcher, Babe Ruth.

A Civil Action in 19th century Italy

David Kertzer, current Provost of Brown University and professor of Anthropology and Italian studies, has written a book about a peasant woman in nineteenth-century Italy named Amalia Bagnacavalli who contracted syphilis from a baby she nursed (for pay) from the Bologna foundling home, and was subsequently persuaded to sue the institution by a young lawyer looking to make his reputation.

Amalia’s Tale is a work of “microhistory,” a genre used with varied success by social historians to focus on one place, event, or (often obscure) person in order to illustrate a larger story or theme. Kertzer uses Amalia’s case and its impact to portray the social and economic issues surrounding child abandonment and public health in Italy in the 1890s. By the late nineteenth century, foundling homes, begun in twelfth-century Italy, were common throughout Europe. Bologna’s was formed in the sixteenth century out of a Benedictine convent.

This book could as easily be titled “Augusto’s Tale,” as we see more into the life and motivations of Amalia’s lawyer, Augusto Barbieri, than that of his client (mostly due to the extant records which survive surrounding the case). It is Barbieri who drives the story of this ten-year struggle, which (unfortunately) is not as dramatic as the jacket blurbs promise.

Kertzer’s style is clear and direct, and he manages to tell Amalia’s tale without the standard passive and self-referential voice of the academic. In that sense, the book works very well. Kertzer himself anticipates criticism in his “Postscript,” admitting that his two goals—to write a history, and to recount a dramatic story for a wider audience—often work at cross purposes. His training and orientation comes through clearly in the writing, making this a solid and interesting work of history, but a relatively flat work of drama.

Although we are asked to sympathize with Amalia’s plight, she is so powerless and voiceless that she rather falls below our radar. We certainly feel for her and the thousands of women who contracted syphilis from foundlings, and subsequently infected their husbands and later children. However, it is Barbieri, the lawyer, who is more accessible to the general reader.

As Barbieri’s story unfolds—as he borrows more and more money, as he works to convince Amalia and her husband to let him appeal decisions and to have faith in eventual success—we become more involved in the case as a legal contest of wit and will, rather than a simple “fight for justice.” The message we end up with is a fine mix of irony and pain, which so often characterizes the drama of history.

The Bard's birthday

Today is Shakespeare's birthday. Well, we really don't know that, actually. He was baptized on April 26, 1564 (almost exactly 444 years ago), but when he actually was born is debatable. We do know that he died fifty-two years later, on this day in 1616, which is why we celebrate this date.

There are some interesting books related to Shakespeare in the collections, but I will pass them by and focus on another, for a couple of reasons. First, this book was printed that same year (1616), across the channel in France. Second, it is unlikely that I would blog about this book for any other reason, so in the interests of kicking things into the light, here it is:


Johannes Cassianus (ca. 360–445 AD) was educated in a monastery at Bethlehem, made a pilgrimage to Egypt, where he remained for seven years, and then traveled to Constantinople, where he was consecrated a deacon; in 404 he went to Rome. The sack of Rome by Alaric convinced him that peace and safety could not be attained except by settling down in solitude. he went to Massilia, founded two monasteries (one for men and one for women), and wrote, for the instruction of his pupils, the external rules after which a hermit’s life is led, and the internal labor by which the final goal is reached. By his books, and by his two foundations, he introduced monasticism in the Western Church. Shown here is the standard edition of his complete works, printed in Douay (a small town in France), prepared by a Benedictine monk of the Abbey of St. Vaast at Arras, Allart Gazet (1566-1626).

Americana

With a nod to our current exhibits on Franklin, I hasten to resume blogging--many apologies for the long (10-day) silence; the press of events, as it were, quite overwhelmed me.

I notice in a recent catalog of an eminent antiquarian dealer a previously unknown letter by Franklin, dated May 7, 1773 and addressed to Abbe Morrellet. In this two-page letter (which anyone with $75,000 can have for their very own), Franklin expresses his growing concern over threats to American liberties. He distrusts the British, loves the French, and shares his thoughts on the subject: "I thank you for your caution against that sommeil [sleep] that usually precedes slavery. We Americans are at present much awake and upon our Guard, and I think we shall long preserve our liberties. Where they are no longer so, they do not deserve it."

Along similar lines, just this afternoon I discovered a wonderful piece of Americana, printed in London over a year later. Admittedly incomplete, our 35 issues (of 91) of The Crisis, dated January to September 1775, is a find indeed. This weekly periodical, according to John Russell Bartlett, "is of great rarity, [and] contains a remarkable collection of papers attacking the ministry and the British government in terms of the greatest severity. Indeed, one can hardly believe that, in time of war, a publication of such a character would be tolerated."

According to one reference, copies were burned by order of a vote of the House of Commons, by the hangman no less. Not too many survive (perhaps 30 libraries worldwide have copies in various states of completeness). Our first issue is the true first (Friday, January 20, 1775); it was re-issued the next day, on the 21st, presumably because it had sold out so quickly.

Back in the day, they wrote in stone...

Here are a few examples of early writing. In ancient Mesopotamia (current-day Iraq), baked clay tablets incised with tiny cuneiform script, which was based on picture-symbols, were used in the writing of several languages, most notably Sumerian, Babylonian, and Assyrian. Although examples have been discovered bearing portions of literary texts such as the epic of Gilgamesh, most of these tablets were essentially the equivalent of administrative documents, detailing the receipt of goods and lists of commodities or services exchanged or sold. The texts of these tablets are in Sumerian and Babylonian (sister languages of the Fertile Crescent), ca. 2000 BCE; these are temple records, as far as we have been able to determine.