{"id":427,"date":"2016-03-21T00:10:14","date_gmt":"2016-03-21T00:10:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/?p=427"},"modified":"2016-03-21T00:23:02","modified_gmt":"2016-03-21T00:23:02","slug":"further-evidence-of-the-jersey-city-volee-ca-1880","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/?p=427","title":{"rendered":"Further Evidence of the Jersey City Vol\u00e9e, ca. 1880"},"content":{"rendered":"

 <\/p>\n

An associate of ESTAR(SER) who is a bookseller in Ohio (and who wishes to remain anonymous, but who tells us he was connected, until two years ago,\u00a0with the midwestern\u00a0Ausonian Fellowship<\/a>) writes with a find:<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

Dear Sir or Madam,<\/p>\n

Into my possession came lately a copy of an uncommon volume:\u00a0Echoes of the Aesthetic Society of Jersey City<\/em> (New York: Thompson and Moreau, 1882). \u00a0I include a snapshot of the cover here:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

I had heard of the body, and had come to suspect that the patroness of this salon-association, Mrs. Erminnie A. Smith, was in fact a devotee of the Order, having come under the influence of Susan Elizabeth Blow<\/a>, who will be familiar to your readers. I therefore perused\u00a0the volume closely, with an eye toward uncovering any Birdish “Easter Eggs” it might secrete. \u00a0I have persuaded myself that I have been successful, and wish to test my hypothesis by means of this informal correspondence with your “Notes and Queries” — in the hope that, should my argument withstand scrutiny, I might elaborate it into a contribution to the Proceedings<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Initially, I must confess, I was disheartened to discover, in these yellowed pages of high-quality paper, a quite conventional assortment of poetic appreciations and Victorian-sentimental chapbook squibs. \u00a0I caught no glimpse of any substantive texts that might be read as allegories of the Practice or as veiled allusions to its rites and forms.<\/p>\n

But my persistence was, I believe, ultimately rewarded. \u00a0It was on examining the frontispiece…<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

…with a high-powered loupe<\/em>\u00a0that I discovered two highly suggestive vignettes, which I believe confirm our longstanding suspicions about Mrs. Smith and her aesthetical acolytes of Jersey City.<\/p>\n

First, then, take a closer look at the left hand margin of the (inert) inset of the poetaster’s labors:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

A close look reveals a rather mysterious aggregation of figures:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Could it be doubted that this is a “formation” of the Birds — indeed, something very close to the traditional “Phalanx”? \u00a0I think your readers will, on spending some time with the image, come to agree that it must be this and nothing else.\u00a0 Though questions do remain. \u00a0First, the screens that the figures are holding before their faces strongly suggested the “reduction screens” heretofore thought to have their origin in the work of Inyard Kip Ketchem<\/a>. \u00a0But if I am not mistaken, this image (from 1880) predates the existing terminus a quo<\/em> for the “Ketchem Screen.” \u00a0In light of this discovery, more work is clearly needed on the history of the use of this optical prosthetic in Bird exercises. Second, it is difficult to deny that the group looks very much as if they are “attending” on the top-hatted figure to the left. \u00a0He does not appear to be a statue, much less a painting. \u00a0Rather, he seems quite wholly to be a human person. \u00a0To the best of my knowledge, the only\u00a0Protocol that positions Birds in attendance on a human being is the so-called “Prosphorion,” on which much ink has been spilled in ESTAR(SER) circles of late (I allude to your recent three-part\u00a0series<\/a> on the “renaissance” of this Practice). \u00a0Needless to say, if the\u00a0image above can be taken to represent a Prophorion,<\/em> the entire extant history of this Practice will need to be re-written — since to date it is associated closely with the work of Erich Auerbach, Istanbul in the 1930s, and the now well-known\u00a0“Bo\u011fazi\u00e7i Rolls.”<\/a>\u00a0More work is evidently in order.<\/p>\n

Nor, I think, does all of this exhaust the document in question, as far as the history of the Order is concerned! \u00a0Since a closer look at the lower right\u00a0hand corner of the same page…<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

…reveals another highly-suggestive scene:<\/p>\n

\"Screen<\/a><\/p>\n

Modern devotees of the Practice will here descry a nearly shockingly blatant depiction of the commencement of an “Action” (the easel\/print-stand to the right looks ready to receive the “object” in the hands of the bearded gentleman-caller; the well-appointed table in the lower right has clearly been arranged for “colloquy”). \u00a0It would seem that Mr. B. B. Chamberlin<\/a> — a well-known draftsman-naturalist and\u00a0collector of minerals in the Hudson Valley — chose to be surprisingly explicit in his\u00a0celebration of Mrs. Erminnie Smith’s gracious hosting of her vol\u00e9e!<\/p>\n

Thank you for your attention,<\/p>\n

R.C.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

 <\/p>\n

We are ourselves, I think, largely convinced here — but critical responses are welcome, and may\u00a0be addressed to the corresponding secretary: corrsecretaryEST@gmail.com.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  An associate of ESTAR(SER) who is a bookseller in Ohio (and who wishes to remain anonymous, but who tells us he was connected, until two years ago,\u00a0with the midwestern\u00a0Ausonian Fellowship) writes with a find:   Dear Sir or Madam, Into my possession came lately a copy of an uncommon volume:\u00a0Echoes of the Aesthetic Society […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-427","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=427"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":437,"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/427\/revisions\/437"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=427"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=427"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.estarser.net\/communiques\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=427"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}