"Virginia hoe-down" [graphic] / Dallas del.
Title
"Virginia hoe-down"
Description
Aboard a steamer on the Mississippi River, a black deck-hand and a fiddler hold their own "Virginia hoe-down." The engraving accompanies T.B. Thorpe's "Remembrances of the Mississippi," and corresponds with a passage in which he describes the festive, light-hearted, and "happy" nature of "the negroes of the Mississippi." "With professional boat-men," Thorpe wrote," they are always favorites, and at night, when the 'old ark' is tied up, their acme of human felicity is a game of 'old sledge,' enlivened by a fiddle. On such ocassions the master of the instrument will touch off the 'Arkansas traveler,' and then gradually sliding into a 'Virginia hoe-down,' he will be accompanied by a genuine darkie keeping time, on the light and fantastic heel-and-toe tap." (p. 37) As the deck-hand dances and the fiddler plays, two boatmen play cards and a third looks on., Illustration in Harper's New Monthly Magazine, vol. 12, no. 67 (December 1855), p. 38., Fels Afro-Americana Image Project, Scenes from Slave Life.
Date
[December 1855]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Books & Other Texts | Rare Per H 9 62992.O v 12 n 67 December 1855 p 38, https://digital.librarycompany.org/islandora/object/Islandora%3A2868
Intelligent contraband. 2d ed.
Title
Intelligent contraband. 2d ed
Description
Racist photograph showing a seated African American man, attired in a gorilla mask, a coat, striped, patterned pants, socks, and shoes, facing right. Also included in the image is a patterned, tile floor., Title from manuscript note on mount., Date inferred from content., During the Civil War, the U.S government declared African American freedom seekers as "contraband of war.", Originally part of a McAllister scrapbook of humorous caricatures and photographs. McAllister Collection, gift, 1886., RVCDC, Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Created postfreeze., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date
[ca. 1863]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department cdv - miscellaneous - Civil War - Caricatures & cartoons [5780.F.51j]
Southern tombstones
Title
Southern tombstones
Description
Photographic reproduction of an anti-Confederate political cartoon showing a dilapidated graveyard of tombstones and a mausoleum inscribed with vitriolic epitaphs for predominately prominent military figures from the Confederate States. The fictionalized deceased include Generals P.G.T. Beauregard, Braxton Bragg, John B. Floyd, Robert E. Lee, Leonidas Polk and Henry A. Wise in addition to Vice-President Alexander Stephens. Within the cemetery, an African American man with a bayonet peers out from behind a tombstone near a debris-strewn path marked "secession, mob rule, and nullification." Plantations burn in the background., Title from item., Date inferred from content., Publisher's imprint printed on verso., Originally part of a McAllister scrapbook of humorous caricatures and photographs. McAllister Collection, gift, 1886., Created postfreeze., Description revised 2021., Access points revised 2021., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014.
Date
[ca. 1863]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department cdv - McAllister & Brother - Caricatures & cartoons [5780.F.52o]
Plates from "Sketches supposed to have been intended for Fanny Kemble's journal"
Title
[Plates from "Sketches supposed to have been intended for Fanny Kemble's journal"]
Description
Series of eight prints satirizing journal entries published in 1835 that were written 1832-1833 by the British-born actress during her American tour. Includes citations to the lampooned "Journal" entries from the two-volume Philadelphia edition published by Carey, Lea & Blanchard in 1835. Plates 1 and 2 depict scenes from her sea voyage. The first shows her "embroidering one of [her] old nightcaps" in "sea sickness" surrounded by a "Bible Cover," Dante's "Opera," a journal page, and a basin as she is a "Dear Good Little Me" and an "Angel." The second shows Kemble being served dinner by a caricatured African American servant as she is "lying on [her] back" surrounded by "[her] dinner followed [her] thither" above quotes comparing her appetite to "Danaides' tale of credilable [sic] memory" and her being as fat as an "overstuffed pin cushion." The African American figure is portrayed with exagerrated features.[Plate 3?] satirizes a poem "To bed - to sleep - To sleep -perchance to be bitten!" she wrote about the onslaught of insects at night in her New York hotel room. Shows Kemble aghast as she raises her blanket inscribed with the names of New York newspapers in her attempt to get into a bed swarmed by bed bugs, ants, and mosquitoes. [Plate 4?] caricaturizes her actor father, Charles Kemble, as a stumbling drunk "who a little elated made me sing to him" while muttering "To be or not to be that is the q-q-qu-question" in a parlor near his consternate daughter beside a piano above her quote about his "gallant, graceful, courteous, deportment.", [Plate 5?] shows a small-framed "interesting youth" delivering "a nosegay as big as himself" to Ms. Kemble who reflects "How they do rejoice my spirit." [Plate 6?] depicts the death scene from a December 1832 performance of Romeo & Juliet when the prop dagger was misplaced and Kemble improvised 'Why were the devil is your dagger.." as she rummages the body of the prostrate Romeo in front of the Capulet mausoleum. [Plate] 7 " A Funny Idea of My Father's" shows another caricature of Charles Kemble as a drunk satirizing her entry about a playful moment during a walk past kegs on Market Street in Philadelphia when her father joked 'How I do wish I had a gimlet. What fun it would be to pierce every one..." An illusion of a gimlet floats in front of her father as she cowers behind him beside the kegs. [Plate] 8 mocks the horsemanship of Kemble who criticized Americans' abilities and wrote of an impromptu jaunt on a cart horse in Lockport, NY Niagara where she 'got upon the amazed quadruped and took a gallop..' Shows she and her mount in a barnyard being chased by a dog and trampling ducks as she exclaims "Go it, old fellow" in front of her "father and good old D." in the background., Title supplied by cataloger., Published as Sketches supposed to have been intended for Fanny Kemble's journal (New York: Endicott, 1835). [LCP *Am 1835 7196.F]., Four of the eight prints contain plate numbers: 1, 2, 7, and 8., [Plate 5?] inscribed: G.H.B. [P.2006.17.3], Gift of Michael Zinman, 2006., Part of digital collections catalog through a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services as administered by the Pennsylvania Department of Education through the Office of the Commonwealth Libraries, and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Tom Corbett, Governor, 2013-2014., Access points revised 2021., Description revised 2021.
Date
[ca. 1835]
Location
Library Company of Philadelphia | Print Department GC - Kemble [P.2006.17.1-8]