Lynne Saginaw was introduced as our new boss of the book reviewers, and swiftly made it clear that Chairman Jacobs' Simon Legree tradition lives on. Lynne embellished her opening remarks with a handout entitled: Ye Olde Guide for the Reviewing of Bookes. The basic message was in the first line: "When thou accepteth a Commission, be thou in some Decent Haste to complete it." Lynne said she wanted to widen the number of reviewers. She expected those who accepted a "Commission" to report at the next meeting, and supply a typed copy of the effort for the newsletter. She urged candor and plain speaking on one and all. "If the book stinks, it stinks." Let's call her Simone Legree.
Before we got to all this heavy stuff, Chairman Dave Jacobs enlivened things with a pass-around -- a New Yorker ad suggesting how Thomas Jefferson's immortal document might have been handled in the age of email. Above the manuscript is a box from TJ saying: "This draft feels pretty good. What do you guys think?" At the bottom is an online response from BF (Ben Franklin): "First of all declaration is spelled wrong. Second of all can't this wait until I get back on the 6th?"
After starring in an offBroadway play, as reported in our February newsletter, our best known traitor has repeated the performance on the A&E channel in "Benedict Arnold, A Question of Honor." The reviewers were not kind to Aidan Quinn, who played the general. One newspaper said he performed in only two gears, angry and really angry. Kelsey Grammar was even worse as a simpering Washington, who urges Arnold to sample the women of Philadelphia. Arnold takes his advice and his subsequent defection is attributed largely to the charms of Peggy Shippen, a covert loyalist like most of her family. Arnold biographer James Kirby Martin harshly condemned the film. But our favorite Arnold correspondent, Bill Stanley of Norwich, Ct. (Arnold's home town) took a more benevolent view. He thought it was a "good start" on achieving a new view of Arnold's role in our revolutionary struggle.
Round Tabler John Herzog is basking in the glow of a rave New York Times review of his brainchild, The Museum of American Financial History. Now affiliated with the Smithsonian, in itself a testament to its historical quality, the MAFH is in the basement of the Standard Oil Building, just a steps from Wall Street. The museum is devoted to scripophily, the hobby of (or passion for) collecting stock and bond certificates. You can read large chunks of America's financial history on its walls. Among the current exhibits is a bond from Insull Utilities Investments, which encapsulates the financial collapse of Samuel Insull's midwest electric utilities trust in the Depression. Worth 21.5 billion in today's dollars, the Insull crash reminds us that Enron was not the first electric business to implode. The MAFH also publishes a fascinating magazine, Financial History and is now getting into the book business, as you will discover in the next article. Membership costs $40.00 a year and entitles you to a subscription to Financial History and the pleasure of being a first comer at new exhibits. It may well put you on the road to becoming a Scripophilyist in your own right.
John Herzog's original enthusiasm in the scripophily game was the stocks and bonds of the Revolution and early republic. When he heard that Udo Hielscher, an historian at the University of Leipzig, had written a history of financial side of the revolutionary story, he went to work. Soon Charles R. Haller was translating the book, with Richard Sylla of the Stern School of NYU providing editorial oversight. Next Tom Fleming agreed to write an introduction. For illustrations, John chose judiciously from the Museum's collection and drew on his wide knowledge of sources such as the Library of Congress. There are no less than 81 full colored plates, ranging from a war bond issued by the Province of Massachusetts Bay in 1773 to stock certificates from the First and Second Banks of the United States. In his introduction, Tom Fleming says the book will make readers proud of the way Americans "made wealth work to create freedom and freedom work to create wealth." You can get a copy for $35.00 from the Museum of Financial History, 26 Broadway, NYC 10004.
While cleaning out a basement storage room in the Capitol, two Senate staffers made a stunning discovery: a volume that covered the Senate's first 90 years and included the signatures of John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, Aaron Burr and other big names from the early republic. Senate historian Richard A. Baker calls it a "Wow document." The six pound volume is two inches thick and jams 400 pages between its brown leather covers. It records the payment of Senate salaries ($6 a day) and travel expenses (30 cents per mile). It goes up to the 21st Congress of 1849-50, which had John C. Calhoun, Jefferson Davis, Henry Clay and Daniel Webster in its ranks. When the Capitol's new visitor center opens in 2005, this discovery will be a featured attraction.
How many of us know we are celebrating Gouverneur Morris's 250th birthday? This quintessential New Yorker's natal day is saluted in a small but powerful exhibit at the New York Historical Society. It includes portraits, copies of letters and a summary of his remarkable career, which included stellar service in the Continental Congress and Constitutional Convention, where he was a major voice, ambassador to France during their blood-soaked revolution, and a tour in the U.S. Senate. The exhibit also has Morris's wooden leg, a formidable looking pegleg apparatus. But the NYHS fudges on how he lost it. They demurely say there are two versions, one a carriage accident caused by a runaway horse, another that he was fleeing an enraged husband. They ignore Tom Fleming's book, Duel, in which he reports straitlaced John Jay's comment to Robert Morris after the accident: "Gouverneur's leg has been a tax on my heart. I am almost tempted to wish he had lost something else."
Things are heating up for the biggest bash of the 225th celebration of the Revolution: the reenactment of the Battle of Monmouth. Our own Peter Ford is in command of the British side of the slugfest. Starting June 21-22, the British column will cross the Delaware and march across New Jersey, stopping to reenact skirmishes at Crosswicks and Doctor's Creek. The climax will be the refighting of the battle at Manalapan, NJ on June 28-29. There will be hundreds of reenactors from many states. Along with the big clash, there will be demonstrations of tactics and drills, colonial music, crafts and gifts. Col. Ford urges all Round Tablers to put this event on their calendars.
A recently closed exhibition, "Likenesses & Landskips: A Portrait of the Eighteenth Century," at the Hirschl & Adler Galleries, 21 East 70th Street, features a story worth repeating.
Highlighting the collection of works by John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, John Trumbull, Benjamin West and other painters was Charles Wilson Peale's "George Washington at Princeton." Or was it? For Nassau Hall was nowhere to be found.
It seems that Peale painted the original in 1779, making at least 25 copies. The portrait on exhibit had been purchased by Count Rochambeau in 1782, and based on GW's uniform (not updated) and the fact that the Count received his order in ten days, it is known to be one of the first copies.
So where is Nassau Hall? The Count, of course, was not at the battle of Princeton, but he was at Yorktown, thus he requested an adjustment. A very careful examination of the painting will reveal the outline of Nassau Hall covered by clouds and replaced by hills and French naval ships. The customer is always right.
Where did Peale acquire his knowledge of Yorktown? His brother James had been there painting "The Reunion of American & French Generals after the Battle of Yorktown," and Charles lifted his brother's background work, although there is also a theory that James himself painted it for Rochambeau. No one knows for sure; the brothers' styles were almost identical. For the record, the portrait is entitled "George Washington at Yorktown."
A recent news article related the story of Tereza Demoody of Norristown, PA, who was sentenced for fraud. It seems she collected cash and services of $65,500, based on the promise of her receiving part of the $47,000,000 estate of her ancestor, Polish immigrant Haym Solomon, who helped bankroll the American Revolution. The only problem is that Solomon died both bankrupt and penniless. As Poor Richard said, "A fool and his money are soon parted." (Fredericksburg Lance-Star, 2/16/03)
The Round Tables of New York are saddened by the death of George Craig on February 9. George, 88 years young and known to all as a great fan of General George Thomas, had served as President of the Civil War Round Table, as a founder and President of the Lincoln Group, and as a founder of the Lincoln Forum. He was, of course, a longtime member of the ARRT, but never served on our board because "no one ever asked me."
Our loss and everyone else's.
Fred Cookinham, Peter Ford and Sal Weir all correctly answered the February "Unsung Heroine" quiz. Mary Pickersgill was the seamstress who created the flag that flew over Fort McHenry. She lived in Baltimore and her home is called "The Star-Spangled Banner Museum."
What do the literary classics Thomas Paine's Common Sense, Adam Smith's Wealth of Nations, and Edward Gibbons's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire have in common?
A free drink to each of the first three winners.