Words of wander: travel writing in the collections of Queens’ College Library

Tags

17th Century, 19th century, Exhibition, maps, plates, travel

The popularity of travel writing is immediately evident from the ever-increasing travelogues available on any library bookshelf or via the internet. In recognition of this literary success, a new exhibition in Queens’ College student library examines examples of historic travel texts from Queens’ Library’s collections, and their respective significance to the enduring travel genre.

Travel writing covers a vast array of forms and intended audiences, ranging from the traditional seaside postcard to comprehensive published volumes recording overseas expeditions, such as Charles Darwin’s 1839 Voyage of the Beagle. The genre can be personal or public, handwritten or published, autobiographical or educational, practical or entertaining, informal or political. Its purpose can range from merely recording memoirs for private use to providing information and/or guidance to a public readership. Even when essentially autobiographical in nature, a travel narrative intended for public distribution provides an edited version of the author in print. Edward Said’s work on Orientalism, for example, has analysed deliberate inaccuracy and political connotations in some travel writing.

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, depicted in the 1679 French edition of his Six voyages [P.5.35]

Examples of both personal and public travel accounts survive from classical antiquity: Roman magistrate Pliny described his voyage to Bithynia in letters to the Emperor Trajan in 111AD, and Greek geographer Pausanias composed his Description of Greece later the same century. Commonly, travel narratives draw from personal experience and a desire to share this with a readership who have not visited the destination. Seventeenth century French travel writer, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, in his Six voyages, part I (1676), recalled being “unable to tear his eyes away” from maps drawn by his cartographer father, and his delight to pen observations of his subsequent travels for Louis XIV. The 17th century saw an explosion in demand for travel writing across Europe: poet and critic Jean Chapelain, in 1663, declared it to be the “top choice at court and in the town”. Tavernier’s text alone was reprinted multiple times and translated from French into English, German, Italian and Dutch.

Queens’ Old Library holds examples of early printed travel writing dating back more than 300 years. These texts together illustrate the many guises of this complex genre through history: personal, public, political and practical.

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Mark Twain, Life on the Mississippi (1883) [S.17.5]

From the age of four, Samuel Langhorne Clemens (1835-1910, pen-name Mark Twain) spent several years living, travelling and then working on the Mississippi River. His experiences there were to influence much of his writing – including his acclaimed novels, The Adventures of Tom Sawyer (1876) and Adventures of Huckleberry Finn (1885). During the 1860’s to 1870’s, Twain established himself as a travel writer, with travelogues for the Sacramento Union and Alta California newspapers, as well as travel-related books The Innocents Abroad (1869) and Roughing it (1872).

The volume is illustrated throughout, lending a visual aspect to the written descriptions

His success culminated in the Old Times on the Mississippi series, recounting experiences as a steamboat pilot in his youth. Originally penned for the journal Atlantic Monthly in 1875, these articles were subsequently expanded into Twain’s book Life on the Mississippi in 1883. As well as utilising his own experiences for the book, Twain drew on other accounts of the region, including Mrs Trollope’s Scenes on the Mississippi (1836) and Charles Dickens’ American Notes for General Circulation (1842). He featured direct quotes and paraphrased passages from the publications; even going so far as to send his editor a copy of Mrs Trollope’s text annotated with passages he wanted to include. There is debate about whether Twain, in haste to meet his deadline, relied on other travel narratives to ‘pad out’ his newspaper segments into a full book, or whether their inclusion was deliberate recognition of the broader travel corpus. Either way, the combination of Twain’s own anecdotes, quotes from other journals, and selected illustrations build a vivid image of travel on the Mississippi River in the 19^th century.

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A map illustrating Tavernier’s description of the journey from Erivan (present-day Yerevan in Armenia) to Tauris (present-day Tabriz in Iran)

Jean-Baptiste Tavernier, The Six Voyages of John Baptista Tavernier (1677) [I.1.19]

As with many forms of literature, travel writing can assume political importance. Following the discovery of a trading route around the Cape of Good Hope in 1498, European countries, keen to acquire highly marketable Indian goods, competed for trade deals with the Mughal Empire. By the 17^th century this competition was at its height. In France, those few travellers to have already explored India saw an opportunity to advise Louis XIV’s newly founded Compagnie Française pour le Commerce des Indes Orientales (est.1664). Gem merchant, Jean-Baptiste Tavernier (1605-1689), had travelled to India on six occasions between 1631 and 1668, becoming experienced in both mining and trading Indian diamonds. Most notably, he sold the French Blue (Hope Diamond) to Louis XIV himself in 1668. To demonstrate his expertise, Tavernier produced narratives of his travels: Les Six voyages de Jean Baptiste Tavernier (Parts I and II, 1676) and Recüeil de plusiers relations et traitaz singuliers et curieux de J. B. Tavernier (1679). Copies of both the 1676 French edition of Six voyages and the subsequent 1677 English translation are held in Queens’ Old Library.

The powerful VOC (Vereenigde Oostindische Compagnie, or Dutch East India Company) was France’s main competitor for trade in the East

While combining the typical autobiographical and practical style of travel publications (such as a personal observation of the Emperor’s jewelled peacock throne), Tavernier also emphasised professional trade advice (for example, how to navigate roads, how and where to mine, and procedures for trading diamonds). Mindful of his intended royal audience, the narrative was unfailingly pro-French, anti-Dutch (France’s principal adversary at the time) and careful to downplay Mughal importance, power or wealth. As this plate of gems Tavernier supplied to French nobility illustrates (from the 1677 English edition of Six Voyages), he was sure to promote his own unique skills. Tavernier was rewarded for his efforts: he was ennobled by Louis XIV in 1668 and, with his new wealth, purchased the Seigneury of Aubonne.

Plate depicting the diamonds Tavernier sold to Louis XIV – the heading emphasises Tavernier’s rewards for his travels

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Plate depicting the old Balmoral Castle. Purchased by Prince Albert in 1852, they had it rebuilt and it became Queen Victoria’s main residence in Scotland

Queen Victoria, Leaves from the Journal of our Life in the Highlands (New York, 1868) [S.17.6]

 

Queen Victoria kept a daily journal from the age of 13 until her death in 1901, filling 121 volumes over her lifetime. Her first diary in 1832 began with the words, “This book, Mamma gave me, that I might write the journal of my journey to Wales in it”. While diaries are generally reserved for the writer alone, Victoria’s diaries were never private: her mother read the entries each day until she became queen, and two volumes from her visits to the Highlands were published during her lifetime (Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, 1868 and More Leaves from the Journal of Our Life in the Highlands, 1884). This published form presents an interesting crossover of travel writing and private journal. Victoria’s diaries were edited for publication but were not originally written with publication or a global audience in mind. Thus, their focus is not the description of a foreign place for a third-party audience, but rather the personal record of a queen on holiday. Likewise, their interest to the reader lies not so much in the description of an unknown place, as in the experiences of the author herself. Queens’ Old Library’s copy, the first American edition of the initial volume (1868), includes additional illustrative plates to engage the reader.

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A photo of Queens’ College from A.L. Maycock’s Things seen in Cambridge (1936) [Local Collection]

Cambridge travel guides

Not all travel literature is autobiographical in nature. Travel guides, like this copy of Things seen in Cambridge by A.L. Maycock (1936), assume an impersonal, authoritative and purely practical role, with the aim of helping their audience to travel rather than recounting travel anecdotes. As such they are generally more structured and comprehensive. Maycock offers his readers a thorough guide to the highlights of Cambridge (including Queens’ College), as well as cultural and historical context for the city and the university.

This paperback copy of Frank Rutter’s Varsity Types ([1903?]) is compact and cheap, perfect for travelling [Local Collection]

This is not to say that travel guides cannot be entertaining, though. Former Queens’ student, Frank Rutter, takes a satirical approach in his Varsity Types guide ([1903?]), offering an alternative ‘insider’s’ cultural context through the characters a visitor to Cambridge might encounter (such as ‘the snob’ and ‘the bedder’). Despite their differences, both guidebooks are in compact format to be practical for travelling; and, likewise, both provide an interesting snapshot in time of the city they describe.

 

 

 

 

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The Words of Wander exhibition is now on display in Queens’ College War Memorial Library.

Isobel Goodman, Graduate Library Trainee, Queens’ College, Cambridge

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References

Primary sources

Maycock, A.L., Things seen in Cambridge (London, 1936) [Local Collection]

Queen Victoria, Leaves from the journal of our life in the Highlands (New York, 1868) [S.17.6]

Rutter, Frank, Varsity types (London, [1903?]) [Local Collection]

Tavernier, J. B., The Six Voyages of John Baptista Tavernier, Baron of Aubonne; Through Turky, into Persia and the East-Indies, for the Space of Forty Years (London, 1677)

Twain, M., Life on the Mississippi (Boston, 1883) [S.17.5]

Secondary sources

Attar, Karen, ‘Queen Victoria’s journal reveals her rosy view of Scotland’, Talking Humanities website, (2018), https://talkinghumanities.blogs.sas.ac.uk/2018/08/14/queen-victorias-journal-reveals-her-rosy-view-of-scotland/

Ganzel, Dewey, ‘Twain, travel books, and Life on the Mississippi’, American Literature, 1962, Vol. 34(1), pp. 40-55

Goodman, I., ‘Reading between the rhetoric: the aims and impact of French travellers to Mughal India, and their travel accounts, during the early decades of Louis XIV’s reign’ (B.A. thesis, University of Oxford, 2018)

Kruse, Horst Hermann, Mark Twain and “Life on the Mississippi” (Amherst, 1981)

Peterson, Linda H., Traditions of Victorian women’s autobiography: the poetics and politics of life writing (Charlottesville, 1999)

Said, E., Orientalism, 4^th edn (London, 2003)

Ticknor, Caroline, ‘Mark Twain’s Life of the Mississippi’, in Glimpses of authors (Boston, 1922)

 

A Spotlight on Theatre: Uncovering the history of the stage in Queens’ Library special collections

Tags

archives, books, Exhibition, library, manuscript, stage, theatre

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…but a walking shadow; a poor player, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage, and then is heard no more

— William Shakespeare, Macbeth, Act V Scene 5.

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Theatre is a complex medium to capture, being transitory by nature. Before the advent of film, in the late 19^th century, it was not possible to record a play as a performance. Yet theatre encompasses a wide range of mediums beyond the live presentation: material (costumes, staging), textual (scripts) and decorative (illustrations, photographs). Through these physical remnants of theatrical history we are able to trace the practicalities of rehearsal and performance, as well as audience interaction on and off the stage.

In addition to early printed books, Queens’ College Old Library is custodian to noteworthy special collections, including two key deposits of theatre memorabilia. These comprise an archive of books, pamphlets, directorial and financial material bequeathed to the Library by Henry Burke, founder of the Norwich Playhouse; and an extensive collection of theatrical books and programmes donated by former Queens’ College member, Bruce Cleave. In conjunction with this blog post, the latest exhibition in the college’s student library focuses the spotlight on some of the items from these collections – and from the college’s own Archive – to consider what they tell us about the history of theatre, both at Queens’ and further afield.

From an advertisement in a playbill for a production of Dick Whittington [Burke Theatre Collection]

Queens’ College has a long-established history of theatre and performance. In the 16^th and 17^th centuries it was renowned as one of the most theatrically-active colleges in Cambridge. Indeed, so much so that a college statute from 1559 dictated that the Professor of Greek must stage two comedies or tragedies between 20^th December and Ash Wednesday, and that any Scholars who did not take part were to be punished by the President! During this period, plays were performed in Queens’ Old Hall on a makeshift stage which could be assembled and disassembled as needed.

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The manuscript instructions [Queens’ College MS 75] – Each part of the stage is given a small symbol to make the instructions easier to follow

A surviving document dating from 1639/40 outlines instructions for constructing the stage, and also for a ‘stage-house’ (erected nearby to store the stage when not in use). The document’s late date, only a few years before Puritan legislation banned theatre in 1642, may suggest that the Queens’ stage dated from the 17^th century. However, Wright (1986) argues that it had been in use for many years previously, and that the instructions were only formally recorded at this point in reaction to dwindling theatrical productions under Puritan influences.

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QC Book 76, fol. 11r. The list includes costumes made of expensive materials like ‘satten’, ‘sylk’ and damask

Other college records support a long theatrical history: most obviously the statute from 1559, which proves the perceived importance of theatre to life at Queens’. A list of elaborate ‘players’ garments’ signed by former Fellow ‘Rychard Thorpe’, who staged a tragedy at Queens’ in the winter of 1552-3, confirms not only that college members performed in these plays but also that substantial sums of money were allocated for them. Such expensive costumes would have been securely stored in the muniments room with other college valuables.

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Play scripts preserved in the college collections add a textual record of the performances themselves, and in some cases even the audience. The Old Library holds a 1910 edition of a script entitled Laelia, performed at Queens’ College for the Earl of Essex in 1594/5. The edition acknowledges the play’s performance history on its title-page but is principally a print reproduction of the original script rather than a working document for a production.

The title page of Laelia, with the library stamp [A.37.53]

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In contrast, this ‘acting edition’ of the comedy Ladies’ Battle [Burke Theatre Collection], published by Samuel French in the 19^th century, was intended for practical use in rehearsals. In the 1840s, French and his business partner, Thomas Hailes Lacy, developed an affordable and functional printed format which allowed each actor to have their own copy of an entire script rather than just their individual lines (as had previously been common practice). These basic and compact paperback editions, which are still in production today, included practical staging and costume descriptions alongside the performers’ lines.

Another script from the Queens’ collection demonstrates an early crossover with modern printed theatre programmes. This promotional booklet for the pantomime Dick Whittington [Burke Theatre Collection], performed at Birmingham’s Theatre Royal in the late 19^th century, comprises of the play script interspersed with advertisements for local retailers. The production starred several key music hall figures of the day whose presence is advertised on the first page: Marie Loftus, George Robey, and Syria Lamonte (one of the first women to make a commercial recording outside of America). As with modern programmes, this publication sought to both promote the production and to establish a material link between performance and audience.

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A selection of postcards from Richard Bonynge’s book, A collector’s guide to theatrical postcards (1988) [Cleave Theatre Collection]

Encouraged by the invention of photography in 1839, the Victorian and Edwardian era experienced a shift towards a more visual culture, and popular demand for associated theatre ephemera accelerated. This development is reflected in the college’s theatre collections. For the first time, plays could be captured in still, live pictures and recorded in a more theatrical sense. The on-stage trend of ‘tableaux vivants’ (static poses held by the actors at key moments) translated off-stage into postcard images depicting costumed actors in character as mementos of productions.

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The publication of The Play Pictorial magazine [Cleave Theatre Collection], from 1902, demonstrates a deliberate and comprehensive approach to capturing theatre in photographs, in conjunction with the oral and aural elements. Each magazine was devoted to a specific West End play; recording plot, score and costumes alongside photographs of the live performance.

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The theatre collections housed at Queens’ College represent far more than mere examples of theatrical performance and associated ephemera. Within them lie clues to the history and practicalities of staging productions: statutes and funding, stage-direction and rehearsal, performers and performances, words and music, audiences and audience interaction. Evidently, whilst a performance itself may be transitory, it need be far from “heard no more”.

By Isobel Goodman, Library Graduate Trainee

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The exhibition, ‘A spotlight on theatre: uncovering the history of the stage in Queens’ Library special collections’, is available to view in the War Memorial Library display case (on the ground floor) from April 2019-October 2019.

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References

For a detailed overview of the theatrical history of the college, see the dedicated page on the college website, compiled by Dr Robin Walker.

Primary sources

Bonynge, Richard, A collector’s guide to theatrical postcards (London, 1988) [Cleave Theatre Collection]

Dick Whittington, playbill (Birmingham, 18–) [Burke Theatre Collection]

Moore Smith, G.C., Laelia: a comedy acted at Queens’ College, Cambridge probably on March 1st, 1595 (Cambridge, 1910) [A.37.53]

Robertson, William Thomas, The ladies’ battle: a comedy in three acts (London, 18–) [Burke Theatre Collection]

The Play Pictorial, Volume 40 (London, 1922) [Cleave Theatre Collection]

Bursar’s book [QC Book 76]

‘The Colledge stage Feb 18 1639′ [Queens’ College MS 75]

Secondary sources

Boas, Frederick S., University drama in the Tudor age (Oxford, 1914)

Cooper, Charles Henry and Cooper, Thompson, Athenae Cantabrigienses, Vol 1. (Cambridge, 1858), p. 552

Diamond, M., ‘Theatre posters and how they bring the past to life’, in Nineteenth century theatre and film, Summer, 2012, Vol. 39(1), pp. 60-77

Moore Smith, G. C., College plays performed in the University of Cambridge (Cambridge, 1923)

Schoch, Richard W., ‘Pictorial Shakespeare’, in The Cambridge companion to Shakespeare on stage (Cambridge, 2002)

Walker, Robin (ed.) ‘The Bats drama society’, Queens’ College Cambridge website, https://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/life-at-queens/about-the-college/college-facts/the-bats-drama-society#overlay-context=

Walker, Robin, ‘Theatre’, Queens’ College Cambridge website, https://www.queens.cam.ac.uk/life-at-queens/about-the-college/college-facts/theatre

Wright, I. R., ‘An early stage at Queens’’, in Cambridge: Magazine of the Cambridge Society, 1986, Vol. 18, pp. 74-83

Wright, I.R., ‘What was the Queens’ Stage-house?’, in Queens’ College Record, 1991, pp. 13-14