Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute awarded federal Community Heritage Grant

Friends of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute has been awarded a federal Community Heritage Grant to fund a significance assessment of its book collection.

The grant was announced at the National Library of Australia, Canberra, on Tuesday, 28 October, 2014.

This year, grants worth $386,577 have been distributed to 73 community groups and organisations from around Australia to assist in the identification and preservation of community owned but nationally significant heritage collections. In addition, Peter Richardson from FOLMI attended a three-day intensive preservation and collection management workshop held at the National Library, the National Archives of Australia, the National Museum of Australia and the National Film and Sound Archive in Canberra.

Mr Richardson said the grant was important in supporting the effort to preserve the Institute's book collection at the grassroots level. “While the grant provides the funds, the workshop offers the expertise to help us protect our collection and make it accessible while it remains in the local context,” he said.

Director-General of the National Library of Australia, Ms Anne-Marie Schwirtlich, said the CHG program showed the commitment by the National Library, along with its partner institutions and the Federal Government, in encouraging communities to care for the nation’s heritage, be it in small country towns or capital cities.

“It is all about working together to help spread the message that if we don’t preserve our history now, it could be lost forever,” she said. “Through sharing this knowledge, the information can be taken back to the communities where it is most needed to ensure that local heritage collections are still there for future generations.”

The grant money is used for significance assessments, preservation needs assessments, conservation treatments, preservation training, digitisation, and purchasing quality storage materials or environmental monitoring equipment.

The Community Heritage Grants Program is funded by the Australian Government through the National Library of Australia; Ministry for the Arts, Attorney-General’s Department; the National Archives of Australia; the National Film and Sound Archive; and the National Museum of Australia.

Ossian's Poems

In a collection such as the Library of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute, formed by and for its community, there will invariably be found many books with interesting and significant connections.

An early edition (1) of Fingal, an ancient and epic poem. In six books: together with several other poems, composed by Ossian the son of Fingal. Translated from the Gallic language, by James Macpherson   is just such an example.

A handwritten note on the title page indicates that the book was originally gifted by Hector McNeil to Robert Ross in 1762.

However our attention was drawn to a later inscription on the front free endpapers of this volume, in the form of a letter;

Ossian's Poems

These volumes are presented to Mr. John De Little, as a token of respect and admiration of that truly powerful parental affection for the welfare of his children, which  separates  him from those friends and relations with whom he has lived and had amiable relations for nearly a quarter of a century. The best criterion of their estimation being in their tears, and assertions of there goes "A truly honest man".

Should he enjoy a momentary pleasure, in perusing them It will more than compensate his (shall he name himself friend? And admirer ---

Bryan O'Reilly

139 Mecklinburgh Street

Dublin

Ireland

June 23rd, 1830

For many months we were unable to decipher the surname of the presentee, and it was only through the inspired work of FOLMI member Sue McClarron, that the name De Little was recognised and the question of how the book found its way into our collection could be resolved.

The date of Mr O'Reilly's letter is the key, because it was on June 26, 1830, that John De Little and his family left Ireland on the Cleopatra, bound for Van Diemen's Land, where Mr De Little was to take up the position of Superintendent of the Government Farm at New Town.

John De Little died just four years after his arrival in Hobart. Two of his sons, Robert and Joseph, had relocated to Launceston and were later joined there by John's widow. Robert and Joseph were important figures in the development of Launceston, and were connected with the design and construction of many of the City's buildings.

Both men served on the Board of Management of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute. Robert was Vice-President of the Institute from 1859-60, and donated one hundred pounds towards to cost of the Institute's new building. In 1861 he donated twenty volumes to the Institute's library collection, although the Ossian poems do not appear to have been among these.

It is more likely that this 12vo volume, rebound in brown calf with the binder's title Erse Poems, Vol I in gold on a red ground, was preserved among the De Little family for many more years, and found its way into the Institute in the twentieth century.

In publishing this first Irish edition of Ossian's poems, Richard Fitzsimons, a Dublin bookseller, participated in a literary sensation which lasted for more than a century, was an important marker in the genesis of the Romantic movement, and provoked a controversy which has exercised the minds of scholars to this day.

For the De Little family no doubt it was a treasured memento of the land John De Little had left, as Brian O'Reilly wrote "for the welfare of his children".

 

(1) Dublin: Printed for Richard Fitzsimmons in High Street, 1762. See the National Library of Scotland's Ossian Collection, Item 53 for this edition.

Rev H R Haweis, M.A.

In September 1895, Launceston was favoured with a visit from the Reverend Hugh Reginald Haweis, then undertaking the third leg of a world speaking tour which included Australia, New Zealand, the Pacific and Ceylon.

Rev. Haweis was a prolific author, noted preacher and gifted orator on a variety of subjects. Naturally the Launceston Mechanics' Institute was the venue for his public lectures in Launceston, and he spoke on three consecutive nights on the topics of "Music and Morals", "Tennyson, Browning, Oliver Wendell Holmes, with personal recollections and dramatic recitations" and "The music of nature and the music of man", the last with violin, whistle and other accompaniments. On the following Sunday he preached at St John's in the morning and Holy Trinity in the evening.

The Launceston Examiner provided extensive coverage of Rev. Haweis's lectures, describing him as possessing "a wonderful power of eloquence, his only fault perhaps being the extraordinary rapidity of his utterances." (5 Sept 1895, p.6) A small attendance on the opening nights was attributed to the unsettled state of the weather, but better crowds were reported at the final address on Friday night.

No doubt many in his audience would have been familiar with his ideas, as the Institute had in its library at least fifteen of his books, principally on religious and musical topics. His wife Mary was also a well-known writer and her book The Art of Beauty (1878) was held by the Library.

Additionally, the Library held copies of Cassell's Magazine, which Haweis edited for a time around 1870. It was under Haweis's editorship that Garibaldi, with whom Haweis had served in 1860, was persuaded to contribute his memoirs to the magazine.

Port. of Rev. Haweis engr. by G J Stodart from Music and Morals

Following Haweis's return to England he published a two-volume account of his world tours entitled Travel and Talk, 1885-93-95 : My hundred thousand miles of travel through America, Australia, Tasmania, Canada, New Zealand, Ceylon and the paradises of the Pacific in 1896. The Institute received its copy in May 1898, and surely readers must have turned eagerly to the second volume to read his impressions of Tasmania. If so they would have been disappointed. Despite the promise of the title, four pages only were dedicated to Tasmania, and most of those to a letter Haweis received from Bishop Montgomery on his return to London.

These volumes are now held in the Local Studies collection at Launceston LINC still carrying the original bookplates of the Institute. Other titles held in the surviving Mechanics' Institute collection include his best known works Music and Morals (in the 12th ed.), My Musical Life (1884), the five volumes in his Christ and Christianity series (1886-7), American Humourists (1883), and the early works Thoughts for the Times (1872), Speech in Season (1874) and Current Coin (1876).

A curiously belated account of the Reverend's life and career was contributed to the Launceston Examiner and published on 17 September, eight days after his departure for Melbourne;

REV. H. R. HAWEIS, M.A. (Communicated.) Now that this famous London preacher and lecturer has been heard in Launceston, some particulars concerning his life and work will be read with interest. Outside of Great Britain, Mr Haweis is far better known in America than in the Australian colonies, and the fact of his name not being so familiar to Tasmanians may account, in same measure, for the rather moderate audiences at his first two lectures in Launceston. He has preached and lectured on many occasions in the United States, and has also been one of the "Lowell" lecturers in Boston.

Mr Haweis was born in England and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated and took his B.A. degree in 1859. After a few years' work as curate in the East End of London, he was appointed incumbent of St. James's, Westmoreland-street, Marylebone, where he continues to draw crowded congregations, his church, perhaps, attracting more leading men and women in the world of art and letters than any other in London. His best known works are "Music and Morals," " My Musical Life," (in which one can get a fine idea of Wagner's music), "Speech in Season," "Current Coin," "Winged Words," "Thoughts for the Times," " Arrows in the Air," and " Christ and Christianity." He has also written a number of hymns and "Unsectarian Family Prayers." Mr Haweis is a brilliant and a many sided man, and he has built up such a force of thought that it can be turned at will upon almost any subject, and his shrewd common sense, aided by his powerful intellect and subtle thought, enables him to dive beneath the surface and analyse swiftly and unerringly the various subjects which he takes up. As a preacher he excels in clear, logical, and common sense expositions of the Scriptures, and he thinks out and preaches upon the various social problems of the day. His language is simple, yet forcible, and it at once denotes the scholar, although at times he can soar into beautiful imagery. His illustrations are peculiarly apt and very frequently humourous, and he delivers sterling home truths in such a manner that they never fail to carry conviction to his hearers, and his earnestness and the intensity of his thought often lead to that wonderful rapidity of utterance which carries his congregation entirely with him. The great charm about Mr Haweis is his personality; he is thoroughly natural, and there is a powerful magnetism about him which attracts one and all. As a clergyman he is ever ready to extend the hand of fellowship to preachers of other denominations, irrespective of their creed or nationality; he is essentially cosmopolitan. As a lecturer he is both original and humourous, and he has the faculty of completely riveting the attention of his audience the whole time he is on the platform. His subjects cover a wide range, and include music, poetry, the drama, and science, and he has also given a series of lectures on "American Humourists" He has lectured on "Violins" and "Church Bells," on both of which he is considered an authority. When in practice he was probably the best amateur violinist in England. He is also accounted an excellent judge of violins, and numerous applications are made to him by professionals and amateurs alike for his opinion, which is always freely given. Mr Haweis was at one time editor of Cassell's Magazine; he also wrote for Good Words, and he was on the original staff of the London Echo for leading articles and musical criticisms. He was one of the select preachers appointed by the Dean of Westminster for the course of Services for the People at the Abbey, and he has at times lectured for the Royal Institution. He was one of the first to advocate the establishment of "penny readings" in London. He is in favour of cremation, and he has written a cremation prelude entitled "Ashes to Ashes." This is necessarily a short and incomplete sketch of one of London's foremost preachers and thinkers of to-day, and of a man who in the number and variety of his talents is probably unique.

Perhaps if Rev. Haweis's publicity had preceded rather than followed him attendance at his lectures would have been improved. The Reverend had elected to travel to Tasmania independently of his Australian agent, R. S. Smythe. In Travel and Talk, Rev. Haweis describes Smythe's promotional skills thus; "in every town I entered, my name in letters two feet long, white on a pale blue ground, stared me in the face, at the railway stations, on the omnibuses, at the hotels. The descriptive handbills were wonderful. One might suppose the whole civilised world was nothing but one vast listening ear, waiting for the least whisper that might fall from my lips." (Vol 2, p.149).

Dr Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia

One of the immutable laws of library stocktaking is that a book is much more likely to survive a weeding program if it is part of a set. And so, when reviewing the non-fiction collection of the Launceston Mechanics' Institute, we were struck by the number of volumes of Dr Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia that were still held.

The remarkable Dionysius Lardner pitched his idea of a thematic cyclopaedia to Longmans in the late 1820s, and the first volume was published in 1830. When the final volume appeared in 1844 it brought the total to 133.

Dr Lardner was the author of the Arithmetic, Heat, Hydrostatics and Pneumatics, Geometry, Electricity and Magnetism volumes, and co-author of Mechanics.

He commissioned works from notable writers and authorities to expand his Cyclopaedia into the areas of History, Biography, the Arts, Natural Science, Philosophy, Manufactures, and even a volume on Taxidermy. Sir Walter Scott wrote a two volume history of Scotland; Thomas Moore the history of Ireland; Robert Southey three of the four volumes on the lives of British Naval Commanders. Mary Shelley contributed to the biographies of Eminent French Authors.

In a Catalogue of the Distinct Works of Dr Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopaedia published in 1840, the series was recommended as being "very advantageous for FAMILIES resident in the country who are not provided with a library, - for the libraries of MECHANICS' INSTITUTIONS and of LITERARY and PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETIES."

Lardner was a popular lecturer, appearing regularly at London's mechanics' institutions, and on the circuit of provincial literary and philosophical societies and mechanics' institutes. He wrote for the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge on a variety of scientific topics. He can be seen as an important mediator of scientific knowledge, dedicated to providing the general populace with an understanding of new technologies in a time of rapid change.

Title Vignette from Dr Lardner's Treatise on Arithmetic, Vol LV of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia

A feature of the Cyclopaedia's appeal was its low cost. Each uniformly bound octavo volume cost six shillings. In 1853, Longmans reduced the price to three shillings and sixpence, and a complete set could be had for nineteen guineas.

At present 97 volumes, including some duplicates and donations, have been located in the Launceston Mechanics' Institute collection. Most show the external evidence of heavy use. When the entire collection was re-accessioned circa 1890, the Cabinet Cyclopaedia was one of the first priorities and was given running numbers from 305- 410, suggesting it was collocated and occupied a prominent place in the Reading Room's reference collection despite its age. Later, when the collection was reclassified using the Dewey Decimal system, volumes were moved to their subject areas but continued to form part of the working collection.

Much could be written about Lardner's colourful career. The interested reader is directed to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography for a balanced account which ranges across his personal life, scientific achievements and his other writing and publishing activities. It also references some varied, and at times satirical, personal assessments by his contemporaries.

While Lardner is a largely forgotten figure today, it is worth noting as a gloss that he was Karl Marx's "go-to" man on matters relating to the economics of railways, and is quoted extensively in 'Das Kapital'.

For a detailed account of the Cabinet Cyclopaedia, Morse Peckham's  ‘Dr Lardner's Cabinet Cyclopedia’, in the Papers of the Bibliographical Society of America, 45 (1951), pp 37–58, is recommended.