Special Collections

You know, some very cool historical things exist out there in the world. They specifically seem to coagulate in library collections. Perhaps because nerdy librarian-types are the only kind of people who would think to preserve a lock of Mary Shelley’s hair, presumably sent to Thomas Jefferson Hogg (is it me, or am I detecting an unusual number of split ends? Not Shelley’s fault, I’m sure).

The MS lock is at the New York Public Library. They also have Malcolm X’s Koran, Charlotte Bronte’s writing desk, and Charles Dickens’ letter opener, made from his deceased cat’s paw.

Harvard College just opened an exhibit called Tangible Things, indeed full of tangible things. Strange, tangible things. Like a rock-like mineral that formed in the body of a wounded Civil War veteran. They also possess Mark Twain’s telescope, with which he was researching a never-finished novel about microbes. The protagonist was to be a cholera germ. Seriously.

As a Chicago native, I’m particularly fond of the Newberry Library, where I spent a semester as an Undergrad learning about island culture and colonialism: the Philippines, Hawaii, Haiti, and more. (Did you know that previous to the Revolutionary, there was an epidemic of a disease called “the jaw-sickness” among the slave population in Haiti? Despairing slave women would secretly perform an operation on newborns that would effectively force the child’s jaws to remain shut; thus, the baby would starve rather than grow up in slavery. True story, according to C.L.R James.)

Anyway, the Newberry has a vast collection of books, manuscripts, and maps. They have the Latin Vulgate Bible, c.a 1250. One of the previous owners was Calvin Ellis Stowe, husband of Harriet Beecher Stowe (Happy Birthday Mrs. Stowe!). Also, they’ve got an original Lewis and Clark map. Impressive.

I think people, myself among them, like historical artifacts because, unlike the information you look up on Wikipedia, such objects have a physical, tangible presence. Something more substantial than a fact to be memorized. I can imagine Charlotte Bronte’s work space all day, but if I go to the New York Public Library I can prove to myself that such a space existed in reality, too. Sometimes we need that kind of reassurance.