Stephen Z. Starr, director of the Cincinnati Historical Society, has called us down on a blithe assertion we made last summer: The caption of the beautiful cover of your August, 1974, issue reads in part: “‘The Queen City of the West,’ Cincinnati, seems to deserve its proud—and doubtless sell-bestowed—nickname …” (emphasis mine). It is not local pride but a desire for historical accuracy that impels me to take you to task over that “doubtless self-bestowed” phrase. (With some reluctance I overlook the word “seems” in “seems to deserve.”)
The “nickname” was first used by Timothy Flint in 1832 in Volume 1, page 411 of his The History and Geography of the Mississippi Valley (second edition, 1832). It next appears in 1835, in Volume 11, page 130 of Charles Fenno Huffman’s A Winter in the West. The locus classicus of the phrase, however, is Henry Wadsworth Longfellow’s poem, titled “Catawba Wine,” written in 1854. The occasion for the poem was the receipt by Longfellow of a gift of Catawba wine from Nicholas Longworth of Cincinnati. Longworth made his money by judicious investment in Cincinnati real estate; aside from being a generous patron of the arts (Hiram Powers was one of his protégéés) he also tried with initial success to establish a wine industry on the banks of the Ohio River.
For those classicists in our audience here is the stanza in question from Longfellow’s poem:
And this Song of the Vine,
This greeting of mine,
The winds and the birds shall deliver
To the Queen of the West,
In her garlands dressed,
On the banks of the Beautiful River.
THE FIRST BATHTUB
While we are redressing the wrong we did Cincinnati, we will give that city the credit it deserves by reprinting this interesting note, which appeared in a recent issue of the “Gilcrease Gazette,” the newsletter of the Thomas Gilcrease Institute of American History and Art in Tulsa, Oklahoma: Portable bathtubs were in use in the early 1800’s, but they were not placed in a “bathroom” as we know it today. Following the English custom, in the larger homes, these sometimes strange devices were carried to the sleeping room when a bath was desired. Water had to be carried for such tubs and, of course, they had to be emptied by hand. There was no standard shape or style, and more often than not, the bathtub was simply the family washtub.
One authority has said that the first bathtub into which water was piped was installed in a home in Cincinnati in 1842 by one Adam Thompson. It was a large coflfinlike affair made of mahogany and lined with sheet lead. It has been written that he gave a party for his friends so that they might examine this extraordinary invention. Some of the guests were so fascinated with it that they promptly took a bath in the new tub.
It soon caught the public’s fancy, but the tub had a hard time with the legal and medical professions. Some authorities considered it a useless luxury and a rather heavy tax was placed on it. Physicians disapproved of it because it encouraged too frequent bathing which endangered one’s health. In some cities, laws were passed regarding the bathtub. In i845, Boston passed an ordinance that no one could take a bath in the new tub without the consent and advice of a physician. In 1843, because of the growing popularity of the tub, Philadelphia passed a bill to prohibit bathing between November i and March 15. Various cities imposed heavy water rates on the owners of the new bathtubs.
The first bathtub in the White House was installed in 1850 by President Millard Fillmore soon after he saw the first tub in Cincinnati. President Fillmore, it is said, tested the new tub and was so taken with this remarkable invention that he ordered one installed in a special room of the White House.
(The above was condensed from an undated and unidentified clipping from the files of the Gilcrease Library. Any resemblance to actual fact is strictly incidental!)
TRANSPOSED PATROONS
The two Van Rensselaers shown on page 97 of our October, 1974, issue are erroneously identified. William Patterson is on the right and Stephen iv on the left, rather than the other way around.
BURKE IN THE NEW WORLD
Professor Laurence Senelick of Tufts University writes: The information in your August, 1974, issue that an American version of Burke’s Peerage is forthcoming reminded me of an earlier British jibe at Yankee genealogy. In one of its many fulminations against the “Newgate novel” Fraser’s Magazine for April, 1836, set forth a tongue-in-cheek explanation of the American market for tales of crime: “Any one initiated into the secrets of the book-trade must be aware that copies of the Newgate Calendar are in constant and steady request through President Jackson’s dominions; most families being anxious to possess that work from motives connected with heraldry and genealogical science. It is the same pardonable weakness that secures among us the sale of Mr. Burke’s Peerage and Commoners”
A BRIEF EXCURSION INTO THE OBVIOUS
As a sort of bleak handmaiden to the article on federal bureaucracy in our August, 1974, issue, we would like to reveal the results of a recent survey undertaken by the Agriculture Department. With admirable thoroughness the department interviewed more than two thousand mothers with children under fourteen years of age in order to determine whether the mothers preferred children’s clothing that requires no ironing to clothing that does need to be ironed. The conclusion, published in a 113-page research report entitled “Mothers’ Attitudes Toward Cotton and Other Fibers in Children’s Lightweight Clothing,” is: yes indeed, mothers do prefer children’s clothes that don’t need ironing. This none-too-startling revelation cost the taxpayer $113,147.
ANCESTORS
It is always a little surprising to realize how condensed our eventful history has been. The following cheerful letter from Frances Gladys Latta Dunn of San Mateo, California, gives an indication of how close we really are to the men who founded our republic: With the Bicentennial coming up soon, I want to tell someone about my own heritage. I am very proud to be one of a few who can claim to be a fourth generation from the American Revolution. My greatgrandfather, Joseph Bartholomew, was born in New Jersey in 1766. He died and was buried at Clarksville, Illinois, in 1840. His early life was spent on the Pennsylvania frontier, where he became a guide, scout, and patrol for colonial forces, especially for General Anthony Wayne. He had eighteen children, and my grandfather, William M. Bartholomew (born 1821), was the eighteenth. My mother (born 1860) was William’s seventh and youngest child, and I am her youngest. I was born in 1899. Thus I am fourth generation from our beginning in 1776. I have always been a student of history, having read all I could find during my early schooling. Later I majored in it at the University of California, graduating in 1946 along with one of my three sons. You can see why I am a proud woman at age seventy-five.
CIVIL WAR ARTISTS
The eloquent drawings that make up The American Heritage Century Collection of Civil War Art, a few of which we ran in our October, 1974, issue, are currently on tour around the country, in a travelling exhibition organized under the auspices of the International Exhibitions Foundation. The exhibition opened in January at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. The following itinerary lists additional museums where the drawings may be seen:
February 15-March 15:
Brooks Memorial Art Gallery, Memphis, Tennessee.
April 1-June 15:
Museum of Our National Heritage, Lexington, Massachusetts.
July 1-July 31:
The Columbus Gallery of Fine Arts, Golumbus, Ohio.
August 15-September 15:
Putnam Museum, Davenport, Iowa.
October 1-October 31:
Wichita State University, Wichita, Kansas.
November 15-December 15:
Mobile Art Gallery, Mobile, Alabama.
GENTILZ
The self-portrait of Theodore Gentilz that opens the portfolio of his work in the October, 1974, issue, is incorrectly credited. The credit should read “Daughters of the Republic of Texas Library, San Antonio.”
LOST COUNTRY
We have come to grief on our foray outside the boundaries of the continental United States. A number of readers have pointed out that on the map of the Trans-Siberian railroad that appeared on page 13 of our August, 1974, issue, we have located Korea on the Kamchatka Peninsula, a good sixteen hundred miles north of where it actually is. And on the same page the date we give as August a, 1919, should read August 2, 1918.
