January 2011

We are proud to announce that Emma Landau, our art director, was highly honored at the recent award dinner given by the prestigious Society of Publication Designers. She took the Award of Distinctive Merit for her layout of Daniel Kramer’s photographs of Death Valley in the October, 1973, issue. Then she went on to receive four certificates of merit for “The Late Late Silents,” December, !9731 “Gems of Symmetry and Convenience,” February, 1973; “Vanishing Heritage,” June, 1973; and War News from Mexico , the cover of our February, 1973, issue.

Lynne Vincent Cheney’s article on the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition in our April, 1974, issue prompted Henry F. Lippitt H, of Los Angeles, to write us about an extraordinary controversy that surrounded the fair: The article mentions that the Exhibition’s Machinery Hall was powered by the magnificent steam engine built by George Corliss of Providence, Rhode Island, shown on pages 24-25 [and in a drawing below]. Mr. Corliss was a man of profound religious convictions. His code of moral ethics was one of arch puritanism, both in theory and in practice. This was strikingly illustrated by the great controversial issue that attended the Exhibition.

It was proposed to open the Exhibition on Sundays in order that the working people might have an opportunity of attending. This was bitterly fought by George Corliss and a faction which contended that Sunday was a day of rest and that the sanctity of the day should be preserved.

THE WINNER A WINNER OF OUR OWN TYPOGRAPHIC LIBERTY BELL CORLISS AND GOD PRESIDENTIAL EXPENSES

In January, 1708, a Mr. William Hallett, Jr., of Newton, Long Island, was murdered in his sleep with his pregnant wife and his five children. Two of Hallett’s slaves, an Indian man and a Negro woman, were tried for the crime and found guilty. They and two alleged accomplices, both blacks, were executed, being “put to all the torment possible for a terror to others,” according to a contemporary newspaper account. The Negro woman was burned alive at the stake. The Indian was hung from a gibbet and placed astride a bar of metal with a sharpened edge, “in which condition he lived some time, and in a state of delirium which ensued, believing himself to be on horseback, would urge forward his animal with the frightful impetuosity of a maniac, while the blood oozing from his lacerated flesh streamed from his feet to the ground.”

None of that incessant entertaining, party giving, feasting, and feting would have been possible, of course, without a large and industrious servant corps. It’s a pity that the recorded history of Newport contains so little information on the backstage crew that supported the efforts of all the social stars on the brightly lighted stage. A scholarly monograph could be written on the suave butlers and major-domos, the long-schooled chefs who made many of the more dazzling social careers possible, the nannies who relieved society ladies of their maternal duties and responsibilities, the social secretaries who tactfully saved their employers from error, the real sailors who prevented the yachtsmen from going aground.

Around the turn of the century the parties and balls became so sumptuous that they might have been produced and directed by David Belasco, the lavishness of whose productions had become a Broadway legend. Newport was, in fact, becoming more and more influenced by Broadway and sheer theatricality, as was demonstrated by Grace Vanderbilt’s Fête des Roses gala at her Beaulieu estate. “The great party of our century,” Wayne Andrews, a social historian, called it. It was so expensive and multifaceted an extravaganza, mock-modestly styled an “at-home” by the hostess, that one of the guests, Grand Duke Boris of Russia, gasped, “Is this really America or have I landed on some enchanted isle? Such an outpouring of riches! It is like walking on gold.”

BUCHANAN DYING

by John Updike

Alfred A. Knopf, Inc.

1974

272 pp. $6.95

BURR: A NOVEL

by Gore Vidal

Random House, Inc.

1973

430 pp. $8.95

If you are someone who thought the Texas longhorn was as dead as the passenger pigeon, here is a bit of news. At one time closer to extinction than the buffalo ever was, this historic breed is again doing quite well, thanks to a few dedicated cattlemen who recognized the debt owed by the Southwest to the millions of longhorn beeves that plodded up the Chisholm and Western trails to Kansas and Nebraska railheads in the two decades following the Civil War and brought a large measure of prosperity to the impoverished Lone Star State.