Illustrating Life

Last week Rich Malley posted about the Billings and Spencer Company complex in Hartford. He illustrated his post with an amazing watercolor done in 1898 by Hiram P. Arms, a Hartford-based illustrator.  When I first saw the painting, which is quite large, I was intrigued by all of the little vignettes Arms included, as Rich pointed out, to suggest the residential nature of the neighborhood in which the complex stood.  I thought it would be fun to explore a few of those small scenes this week.

An epic poem about a dastardly man

We find some really amazing material while we catalog our manuscript backlog with funding from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission. My least favorite part of all of this discovery, however, is finding something really neat that has no author and no record of how we acquired the item! Such is the case with this epic poem I “discovered”. It is based on Byron’s poem about Don Juan, although it is not an exact copy of the verse from what I can tell. What attracted me most were the amazingly bright illustrations.

The first page of the poem.

The first page is decorated at the top by a romantic scene of a castle. Other pages (not all are shown here) are illustrated with figures–including one on a horse–a ship, a knight, and a lady in her boudoir. Several empty spaces within the text lead me to believe that this work of art was never finished. If only this document could talk and tell me about the maker!!

You may see this piece of combined literature and artwork by asking to see MS 101108.