Mr Sullivan, Lilly, and Me: A 19th Century Fan-Girl Moment
Lilly Martin Spencer Selfie about 1848
One of my all-time favorite genre artists of the mid-19th century is Lilly Martin Spencer, the England-born daughter of French immigrants to Marietta, Ohio. Lilly (Angelique Marie) was eight when she arrived in America (New York), and about eleven when the family moved to Ohio in 1833. She was educated at home by her parents, and spent many hours of her formative years immersed in art, presenting her first solo exhibition in August of 1841.
She married in August 1844; her husband gave up his tailoring profession and instead supported his young wife in her art career and through his own domestic work at home. She would give birth to 13 children, 7 of whom survived to adulthood, without significant diversion from her art career, though the family was never terribly wealthy, and maintained gardens and a home-flock of hens to make the budget work.
Her paintings have a certain good humor to them, and her skill with emotion in her brushwork is absolutely fascinating! Painting mostly domestic scenes of everyday life, her work is also highly realistic (some criticism of variable skill as to precise noggin-sizing is valid in a few pieces), and becomes a gorgeous way to research home interiors, tools, furnishings, clothing, hairstyles, and how everything combines in “average” US households at mid-century.
And basically, I just really love her work.
So, rewind just a bit to late March 2018, when I was a presenter at the second annual Citizens Forum conference in Monroe, Michigan, and met up with an old friend, Bob Sullivan of Sullivan Press. Go click through to his site. I’ll wait while you explore a bit.
Mr Sullivan does a cool thing: he reproduces paper stuff for the mid-19th century, and he doesn’t limit himself to military minutia. One of his major lines is the reproduction of Beadle’s Dime Everythings… fiction as well as the useful non-fiction publications that not only add to any mid-century impression, but also inform the impression along the way! And because he puts painstaking effort into the physical elements of each item, you can have his goods out in historical settings and they look RIGHT, without the additional patina of age an original would have, and without risk to original paper in an interpretive setting, too. Reasonably priced at $10-$12 for Dime Guides and reprinted magazines, he’s a resource for anyone with a yen to read original publications in historical or modern settings. It’s kind of awesome.
Several of us stayed in the same hotel for the conference, and Thursday night, we bumped into Mr Sullivan during check-in. He said he had something he thought I’d enjoy seeing, so we met up a bit later and I had two very fun moments: one a Nerd-Girl Tech Moment, and the other a Lilly Martin Spencer Fan-Girl Moment, and both of them were highlights of my day!
Nerd-Girl Tech Moment
Original magazines were published with covers in the same paper as the contents, with the intent that subscribers and readers could have their issues bound into volumes if they liked. Some individuals put together homemade portfolio-style bindings (another friend shared a youth newspaper in a home-bound portfolio later that weekend, and that was awesome as well). Some had them bound at the book-binders.
But, ever the clever ones, the Original Cast had additional options, including the Emerson Binder, and didn’t Mr Sullivan have a year’s volumes of The Home magazine, still in their Emerson Binder? What a treat! Though the hinges that attach the steel strips have failed in the intervening 150 years, the overall structure is still visible, and it made my office-supply-loving heart sing!
The makers of the Binder were quite firm in their instructions, still pasted into the end-paper of the strong boards or “lids”, and advertised cost-effective and specifically-sized binder kits for different publications and types of papers one might like to bind.
Read The Directions.
Directions for Binding.
Place the first paper squarely on one lid of the Binder and mark it opposite each eyelet hole about one half-inch from back of Music and Newspapers and about one-fourth inch from back of Magazines. Punch holes where marked, and mark succeeding numbers by this first one, being careful to place the tops and back of the publications even.
Passing the threads through the papers, and eyelet-holes in the last strips, draw them TIGHTLY, causing the steel strips to close on the papers like a vise, and fasten firmly by “belaying,” as seen in the illustration.
For permanent binding, tear off inside covers and advertisements, placing title page and index in front.
Because the cords (with needles helpfully and permanently attached) are “belayed” on just as you’d lash down a window cord to a cleat with a figure-8 wrap, the system can be opened up and more numbers added over the course of a year.
So. Very. Nifty.
The Fan-Girl Moment
But wait, there’s more!
Inside those lids were twelve issues of The Home: A Fireside Monthly Companion and Guide for the Wife, the Sister, the Mother, and the Daughter. Edited by Mrs. Metta Victoria Victor. (Not the same sort of Victoria-Victor as in the 20th century, though. Metta Victoria is just a fine name for a lady in the late 1850s, and Victor is a sturdy and fortuitous surname to add to it.)
And the very first article in the June issue (No. 6 in Volume 7) was a profile of and interview with none other than Lilly Martin Spencer!
This latter-day, in widening the sphere of woman’s labor, will become historically memorable. The changes of custom, of old and time-honored usage, in regard to woman’s “sphere,” are of a very important character, even if they cease to attract much public attention; and the future historian will have reason to christen this century as the one in which Woman’s Humanity gained its first proper recognition and standing. It is now honorable for her to compete with man in any of the trades for which her strength fits her; it is proper for her to do business in her own name, to hold property, and to sell it; to manage schools, to direct great public and private institutions is her privilege; to practice medicine her conceded province; to become writer, artist, publisher, her right. No other age ever gave her such recognition of equality.
Following that glowing start, the author of the piece (not identified, but possibly Mrs Victor herself) describes my favorite Mrs Spencer’s work in terms I support wholly: “They are fresh, finely-colored, delightful designs, showing something merry in the artist’s conception of life. Indeed, in the field of humorous characterization, she may be pronounced the first artist in America. Her intuitions are sure and strong, and none can work them out with more power and truthfulness.”
I couldn’t agree with the author more.
And of course, Mr Sullivan’s very fine replication of the issue came home with me.
Happy, happy Fan-Girl Day!
