Taking a cold shower

College Archive

Image from the Book of the Society of Psychrolutes

In 1828, a new society was founded in Cambridge, dedicated to swimming. Called the Society of Psychrolutes, the qualification for membership was the practice of bathing outdoors between November and March. In 1832, the Eton Royal Philolutic Society was established, for the lovers of bathing in general, with William Evans (of Evans’ house fame) as a leading light. In 1833, they merged to form the Eton Philopsychrolutic Society.

Winter bathing was a recommended treatment for strengthening the body, and the supposed improvements it would bring can be seen in this illustration from the book of the Psychrolutes in which the rivers, lochs and glacial lakes that they had bathed in that year were listed. In addition, it would keep impure thoughts away – the Victorian equivalent of “take a cold shower”.

The Philolutes were supported by Dr Hawtrey, Head Master, who authorised them to do anything that would promote ‘the safe and efficient practice of Philolutism’. Evans worked to regularise the teaching of swimming at Eton and to ensure that no boy went on the river until he could swim. It was therefore this Society, and especially Evans, who placed swimming and boating on an organised footing at Eton, saving many lives in the process.

By Eleanor Hoare, College Archivist

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19th century, School activities

A spoonful of brimstone and treacle

College Archive

From a book held in the College Archives [COLL EST HL 1], dated 1693, a recipe for aches and pains:

Recipe for curing ache, 1693

 

A reicut to Coore the Eche [A receipt to cure Ache]

A hanfull of box

A hanfull of wormwood

A hanfull of Isope [hissop]

A hanfull of Rewe [rue]

A pound of Lard

Boill it woll to gether

Strain it and take a litell brim stone and store it to gether till its cold

take trekell [treacle] and brim stone for five or six days drive it out well, then take the ointment and nint your self

Brimstone, a form of sulphur, and treacle or molasses were commonly used as a cure-all at a time when medicine was not readily available to the masses. Charles Dickens mentions its use in Nicholas Nickleby, showing that even 150 years after this recipe was written its popularity had not decreased. It is the threat of this treatment that makes Michael and Jane Banks write their definition of a good nanny in Mary Poppins, when their father’s choice and former nanny says “Brimstone and Treacle and codliver oil, liberal doses of each. These are the treats from which children recoil, the lessons I’m going to teach”.

The benefits of sulphur as an anti-oxidant and detox agent have been known for thousands of years. Part of the popularity of spas was the sulphurous content of the water, and modern day diets such as the cabbage soup diet are based on these properties. It has been used to cure skin complaints, as a laxative, and as here, to relieve aching joints.

By Eleanor Hoare, College Archivist

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17th century, Medicine

Mad scientist

College Archive

Recently digitised for the archives are two superbly illustrated notebooks kept by Guy Speir (HEL, 1893) of his science lessons with Dr Thomas Porter. These are a rare example of class work, and it is wonderful to see the imaginative drawings which Speir has added afterwards.

Thomas Porter taught science at Eton from 1885 until 1930. Science was a relatively new addition to the curriculum at the time, and Porter was one of the first specialists to be appointed. He campaigned during his time for improved facilities and to enhance the status of the separate sciences. He was also the founder of the Photographic Society, and his work in this area helped develop 3D film cinematography. He had his own room to carry out experiments in, and it was reported among boys that he had even raised a dead cat to life with a galvanic battery. The college was lucky to have such a dedicated teacher and brilliant scientist, who even has a law named after him – the Ferry-Porter law.

These notebooks give a glimpse into the style of teaching employed in the 1890s, which was very much dictation and note taking. Little notes and comments by Porter show an informal side to the image of a Victorian schoolmaster. They are a fantastic survival, and one we are very pleased to have in the collections.

By Eleanor Hoare, College Archivist

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19th century, Science

Dame Judi Dench’s rehearsal script

College Library

The coffee stained pale blue card cover of this item does not divulge what you will find inside. There are some clues; some doodles, the handwritten name “Jude”, but it is otherwise unassuming. Opening it up you quickly realise it is a typescript of a play, and a good one, Edward Bond’s The Sea. Concurrently there is the recognition that this is covered with highlighted lines, annotations, a ms. cast list, and character and costume sketches, all in the hand of the person whose name appears at the top of the first page: “Judi Dench.”

The script really tells the story of working on the 1991 production from an actor’s perspective and shows the evident care that was taken in getting to know the character, in this case that of Mrs. Rafi. One of the best examples of this is the drawings of different glove styles, next to the passage in which Mrs. Rafi is shopping at a drapers’, examining their line in gloves. An amusing annotation appears at the end of a page of ms. notes made after a run-through: “VOICE INSTRUMENT OF BRAIN.” This item was kindly donated by Dame Judi to a charity auction.

By Louise Anderson, @LibrarianLCA

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20th century, Theatre

Discovering the modern collections, one book at a time

College Library

I have now been cataloguing the post 1800s printed collection at ECL for just over three years. Building this extensive collection is the work of half a decade of our Curator of Modern Collections, who started it under the guidance of the bibliophile John Carter in the 1960s. There had been no catalogue made of this collection until I started working on it, book by book. Although we had a good idea of what was there, exact details were hazy.

This is exciting for two reasons: The librarian in me loves creating order out of chaos. The human in me loves the element of discovery; and of these there have been some exciting ones. In the middle of a first edition of W. H. Auden’s City Without Walls sat a postcard about a trip to Europe and Egypt, casually signed from Alfred Wainwright. Scrawled across the front endpapers of Edward Thomas’s Collected Poems in pencil is the name Irene Rathbone, actress turned feminist author of We that were young, a woman’s experience of working in a WWI munitions factory.

Of the first discovery I am fairly confident that the postcard is in the hand of the hiking hero. The second is conjecture based solely on the likely subject of the book and the publication date falling within the lady’s lifespan. But the possibilities keep on coming. Dicken’s illustrators and Thackeray’s Rose and ring carry signatures of Fred Bennett and Mason Jackson respectively, both important illustrators of their time. Most recently I found the signature of an H. Gay Hewlett on the front wrappers of a couple of numbers from Robert Browning’s Bells and pomegranates, possibly the same H. Gay Hewlett that wrote a history of Europe. As I write this, that discovery was only yesterday, I wonder what I’ll find tomorrow…

By Louise Anderson, @LibrarianLCA

Tags:

20th century, Literature

From the garden to the place of skulls: illustrations of the Easter story in a Book of Hours

College Library

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Some of the finest art of the Northern Renaissance can be found hidden in books – painted into Books of Hours. The Book of Hours was a popular form of prayer book, based on the hours of the monastic services (Prime, Terce, Nones, Lauds, etc.), but Books of Hours were usually made for an individual lay patron, and sometimes richly decorated.  The images below are taken from a Book of Hours written and painted in the Netherlands at the end of the 15^th century, which includes a Passion story composed of verses taken from all four Gospels.  The use of contemporary clothing and architecture, and the trompe l’oeil effect of the borders where each flower is painted as if sitting on the surface of the page, were intended to soften the boundaries between reader and the page, and between the worshipper and the scenes of Christ’s suffering.  Late medieval piety emphasised personal identification with Christ’s life, and meditation on his sacrifice.  The flowers in the borders relate to the main images: the red rose symbolises Christ’s Passion, periwinkle, forget-me-not and pansy are associated with remembrance and meditation, and the daisy with St Mary.

By Lucy Gwynn, Deputy Librarian

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15th century, Manuscripts

Incunable fragments

College Library

One of my recent tasks has been the identification and cataloguing of just over twenty loose sheets of printed material, found as fragments at ECL. Most of these are from ‘incunables’, books printed before 1500, when the printing process was in its infancy.  The rarity of printed books surviving from the 15^th century means that even single sheets and fragments have been kept by collectors.

Although the ECL fragments are small and imperfect, they are each unique. For instance, most have had rubrics painted in by hand, so that they look more like the manuscripts fifteenth century readers were used to.  Some, like the fragment from Alphonso de Spina’s Fortaliter Fidei, even have beautiful decorated initials (whilst others, like the Dante, have gaps where painted initials should have been).

A list from the late 19^th century identified some of the fragments, and I visited the Bodleian and Cambridge University Library to compare our fragments with complete copies there, and confirm each identification.  The remaining fragments involved more guesswork, identifying the text (the Bible was easy – bits of Plutarch and St Augustine much less so!) and working through the Incunabula Short Title Catalogue and the Bodleian Incunable Catalogue to seek out likely candidates.  Again, I went to see complete copies in other libraries, and managed to identify most of our fragments this way.  A few still have me completely foxed!  I will put up photos of these some time, to see if anyone can help.

After identifying them, of course, I had to tackle the difficulty of cataloguing fragments. But that’s a whole different blogpost…

By Lucy Gwynn, Deputy Librarian

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15th century, Cataloguing