Category Archives: NEHGS Collections

‘By dint of much skipping’

American History, NEHGS Collections, ,

[Author’s note: This series, on Mrs. Gray’s reading habits, began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
In May 1860, Regina Shober Gray[1] was visiting her family in Philadelphia.

245 South Eighteenth Street, Wednesday, 9 May 1860: Shopping with [her sisters] Sue & Liz [Shober][2] all the morning – a call from my old school mate Sallie Newbold[3] p.m. – and quite a pleasant party … in the evening, 12 or 15 ladies to 2 gentlemen – a lack of beaux which gave much merriment. [Her younger sons] Reginald & Morris [Gray][4] grow too independent here – trotted off after breakfast to Aunt Annie [Shober]’s[5] to play with Baby John – and Uncle John [Shober][6] keeps them too abundantly supplied with cash. [They] buy the most abominable trash – I must keep possession of their purses myself.

Thursday, 10 May 1860: Another dull day – which gave us a long quiet morning for reading about [Eliot’s] “The Mill on the Floss.”[7] Poor little Mary [Gray][8] suffering with tooth ache, and could not screw herself up to going to the dentist, notwithstanding I offered the brightest gold dollar if she would – but she scorned being bribed into it! Continue reading ‘By dint of much skipping’ →

‘What a wonderful experience’

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, ,

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Regina Shober Gray[1] was an energetic and well-educated woman of her time. Her diary abounds with visits to the theater and to commercial art galleries (the precursors of museums), so I thought it might be interesting and valuable to dip into her reading material, often left to the end of the day and for the benefit of her young children.

61 Bowdoin Street, Boston, Massachusetts

Tuesday, 14 February 1860: Have finished “Hodson’s Twelve years in India”[2] – a most interesting book but, oh, so painful. Must the world and life always be so crowded with “oppression and deceit, of unsuccessful and successful war”! But he was truly a noble fellow – one of “Arnold of Rugby’s”[3] men – said to be the “Scud East” of School Days at Rugby.[4] Oh, that terrible, terrible Indian mutiny – how it mowed down the best and bravest, fair women and innocent babes. Continue reading ‘What a wonderful experience’ →

‘Veiling mists and disguising clouds’

Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, ,

[Author’s note: This post concludes the series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary which began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
Mrs. Gray’s[1] summer was winding down, and while autumn impended she could still write with exaltation of her summer visit to New Hampshire:

Plaisted House, Jefferson, N.H., Monday, 30 August 1880: Early this morning a heavy cloud – we should call it a fog-bank on the sea-shore – blotted out the world; but gradually out of it arose the great peaks – and it has lifted now – in a blaze of sun shine & beauty.

Last evening we had the most glorious sunset, with lurid red & pink clouds over head, on which was flung a blazing rainbow, all its colours transmuted into “something rich and rare” by the red Sunset glow. Low in the western sky, a sea of green – that inimitable tint, which comes only in sunset skies; then, bars & banks of gold and purple and crimson; then, deep indigo blue fading up into the paler sky where floated the ragged mass of fleecy cloud across whose red glory this rainbow, like a flaming sword, was flung! A glorious sight! Continue reading ‘Veiling mists and disguising clouds’ →

‘Blazing out into flaming crimson’

American History, NEHGS Collections, ,

[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
By the third week in August 1880, Mrs. Gray[1] was comfortably settled in New Hampshire, where she had evidently not lost her discerning eye for nature or the capacity to translate her views into prose.

Plaisted House, Jefferson, Sunday, 22 August 1880: We came here yesterday, having had a comfortable ride up – part of it, along the shores of Winnisquam & Winnipesaukee, and very beautiful. We found more change of the leaf than we expected so early in the season; but in low lying, moist grounds, the young maples, swamp alders, sumach &c blazed out into flaming crimson, scarlet and orange colours, like tongues of living fire against the dense, solid greens of the summer foliage; and the banks and wild pastures were carpeted with bloom – the golden-rod & yellow tansy, the white yarrow that “heals the wounded heart,” and every variety of pink spireas and purple asters & immortelles, and rich red cardinal flowers that made a glory whenever they nodded to the breeze, and great beds of night-shade, with their gay, rank, poisonous-looking blossoms of orange and purple. Continue reading ‘Blazing out into flaming crimson’ →

‘As if my home were shattered indeed’

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections,

[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
In 1880, Regina Shober Gray[1] became a grandmother (in January) and a widow (in February). The Gray family was probably already considering the sale of their Beacon Hill house – they would later move to Mount Vernon Place – as time wrought its changes on the family’s composition.

1 Beacon Hill Place, Boston, Friday, 20 August 1880: Morris [Gray][2] left us last Wednesday in the 6 p.m. train (Aug 18th) to go round the world! He was to stop a few hours at Niagara; a few, at Chicago; and then take the train across the Continent, getting out at Lathrop [California], to visit the Yo Semite[3] &c, which requires three days, and he expected to reach San-Francisco in time to sail in the Oceanic, Sept. 1st, for Yokohama, Japan; thence by China, visiting Pekin, and getting a sight of the great wall and the seaports; thence to Singapore, Batavia, Calcutta, across Hindoostan to Bombay, visiting en route Benares, Agra, Delhi, Lucknow &c; thence by the Red Sea to Suez & the Nile. Continue reading ‘As if my home were shattered indeed’ →

‘Is that kind of imitation high art?’

Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, ,

[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
With the end of the summer in sight, I thought I would finish up this review of the Gray diary between 1860 and 1880 with several August entries from the latter year. Dr. Gray[1] had died in February 1880, and his widow was visiting her Gray in-laws before retreating to New Hampshire for a stay at a hotel.

East Milton, Massachusetts, Sunday, 8 August 1880: I left Beverly on Monday last, and came out here the same afternoon – Sallie [Gray][2] having sent me word the barouche would call for me after leaving Isa Loring[3] at the Eastern Depot, on her way to Beverly Farms. I was very glad to drive out comfortably, instead of hurrying to the [train] cars. The place is very lovely in its quiet secluded way; the house is surrounded by fine woods, oaks, elms, beeches, maples, and evergreens, the aromatic piny odors of wh. last are very delightful. Continue reading ‘Is that kind of imitation high art?’ →

A modern Wolsey

American History, Genealogical Writing, NEHGS Collections, ,

[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary began here.]

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
In August 1879, the Grays[1] were back in Massachusetts after their lengthy European sojourn, and Mrs. Gray’s diary listed a fatiguing (if doubtless engaging) social round. The Grays’ adult children were in and out of the house: daughter Mary and sons Frank, Sam, Rege, and Morris, along with Sam’s wife Carrie, who was expecting their first child.[2] On the dates of these diary entries, Dr. Gray was in reasonably good spirits, but he remained in chronic pain:

Beverly Farms, Sunday, 3 August 1879: It seems to me I never suffered more with heat than yesterday & today; blazing, breathless, sultry August weather, without the delicious sea change, which has heretofore given us such refreshment daily at 11 a.m. – the thermom at 93 & 4 for hours – and even at 5 p. m. up to 87! There is some promise of thunder gusts by & by, which may cool us off a little. Continue reading A modern Wolsey →

‘A crescent moon followed the day god down’

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, , , ,
Vevey steamer courtesy of Wendy McGuire
Courtesy of Wendy McGuire

[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from the Regina Shober Gray diary began here.]

For those of us wiling away the summer in offices in the United States, yearning for a glimpse of blue water, here is a living portrait of a Swiss summer 138 years ago from the Gray[1] diary:

Hotel Monnet, ou “Les Trois Couronnes,” Vevey, Sunday, 4 August 1878: We are delightfully accommodated here; our rooms, including a handsome parlor with a broad balcony to our own use, look upon the lake, and to-day there has been a rowing race, wh. we watched with some interest; a sailing regatta fails to take place for want of a wind. The weather to-day has been lovely – but it seems clouding over now. Continue reading ‘A crescent moon followed the day god down’ →

‘May we have strength’

American History, Family Stories, NEHGS Collections, , ,

PP231.236 Regina Shober Gray. Not dated.
Regina Shober Gray by [Edward L.] Allen, ca. 1860. Courtesy of the Maryland Historical Society, Item PP231.236
[Author’s note: This series of excerpts from Regina Shober Gray’s diary began here.]

The 1878 Gray diary[1] is unusual in filling two full volumes instead of the more usual single one Mrs. Gray devoted to the events in her life. Volume 1 ends with this entry, one that mixes hope and anxiety, sightseeing and sickbeds.

Hotel Monnet, Vevey,[2] Saturday, 3 August 1878: We left Berne yesterday morning (Friday), having really had, on Thursday, from 7½ to 8½ a.m., a full, magnificent view of the whole great range of snow-clad Alps [and] the Bernese Oberland; and a grand sight it was. There they were in their great, white glory, when I opened my shutters, and I rushed up two flights of stairs to call Mary & Sam [Gray], who felt well repaid for being so unceremoniously disturbed in their morning slumbers. Continue reading ‘May we have strength’ →

A mappa mundi

NEHGS Collections, News,
A_Mappi Mundi _Hereford_Cathedral_at_NEHGS
The Society’s copy of the Mappa Mundi. Photo by Dani Torres

The Society has, hanging on its walls, a reproduction of the famous thirteenth-century Hereford Mappa Mundi, the original of which is in the collection of Hereford Cathedral in the west of England. A mappa mundi – from Medieval Latin mappa (cloth or chart) and mundi (of the world) – is any medieval European map of the world.  Approximately 1,100 of these maps are known to exist today, of which the Hereford Cathedral version is the largest. In fact, it’s the largest medieval map in the world. Continue reading A mappa mundi →