Melvilliana: Black Snake

Showing posts with label Black Snake. Show all posts

Saturday, April 6, 2024

Doolittle "the Lenox expressman" in Leyda's postscript to THE MELVILLE LOG

In 1850 George Doolittle (1808-1894) operated Doolittle's Express with service from Lee to Pittsfield, MA via Lenox. This Doolittle I take it was the "Mr. Doolittle" named by Herman Melville in connection with a near collision between Doolittle's sleigh and an oncoming train that… pic.twitter.com/fHQRDc3ppn
— Scott Norsworthy 🇺🇸 (@Melvilliana) April 6, 2024

Wednesday, April 14, 2021

Bay Area Black Quake

San Francisco Chronicle - September 6, 1972 via Genealogy Bank

Black Quake was the name of an amazing cultural exposition that took place almost (update: more than) fifty years ago in San Francisco. Also known as Black Expo. As announced in the San Francisco Chronicle on September 3, 1972, the event included “live performances by black singers, musicians, poets, dancers, and theatrical companies and exhibitions of the works of black sculptors and painters." Ray Charles and B. B. King headlined at the Civic Center! Of the advertised big names in music, only Gladys Knight was a no-show (San Francisco Examiner, 11 September 1972).

Much of the poetry was radical and openly racist according to Christ Savaria in the University of San Francisco Foghorn (15 September 1972):

“The underlying theme of the poetry presented was strongly anti-white and expressive of black rebellion.”

And Gordon Parks, director of Shaft, got heckled at the film festival by militants from Los Angeles (William Zakariasen, "Militants Shout Down Gordon Parks," S.F. Examiner, 11 September 1972). In such "polarized times," business and organization exhibits demonstrated wonderful diversity:

There’s a Marine booth AND a Black Muslim booth (selling bean pies) AND a Bank of America booth AND a booth where they sell coloring books aimed at black children.

-- San Francisco Chronicle, 10 September 1972.

Black Quake returned the next year when headliners included Buddy Miles, Barry White, and Richard Pryor. Founder Ray Taliaferro called the 1973 event "An infusion of positivism for the whole Bay Area" (Chronicle, 2 November 1973). But attendance in the second year was disappointing, especially for a jazz program featuring Donald Byrd that "should have sold out the Civic" (Examiner, 10 November 1973).

Perhaps misreading Augusta Melville's handwriting, Hershel Parker in Herman Melville: A Biography Volume 1 gave the name Black Quake to Sarah Morewood's unfortunate horse--that "fine young colt" injured in a railway accident, as Herman Melville reported from Arrowhead farm in a December 1850 letter to Evert Duyckinck. It's not really a name you would give a horse back then, if ever. More likely, as suggested previously on Melvilliana, the colt's name was "Black Snake." There's a real horse's name!

Greenleaf's New York Journal and Patriotic Register - March 21, 1795
via Genealogy Bank

Looking further into this interesting and influential misnomer, I see both of the Bay Area Black Quakes happened when Hershel Parker was Professor of English at USC, 1970-1979. I'm guessing Parker would have been way too busy prepping for fall classes to travel so far north. The sacrifices of tenured college professors--who can tell? I mean, think of missing Ray Charles, B. B. King, Sonny Rollins, Bobby Womack and all at the '72 Black Quake. And yet, I can't help wondering if a tremor or two from that glorious California expo snuck into Parker's later transcription "Black Quake" from Augusta Melville's letter of December 21, 1850 to her and Herman's sister Helen. The letter in question is part of the Augusta Melville papers, only discovered in 1983 and now accessible online courtesy of The New York Public Library Digital Collections.

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Letters sent, notebooks and keepsakes" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1841 - 1854. https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/752fe150-5889-0136-238d-3dcc24fb54fc

In Melville in Love (HarperCollins, 2016) Michael Shelden took Parker's re-christening for gospel and ran with it. Shelden painted Black Quake as "a rambunctious horse with a name that suggested the thudding force of its galloping speed." A missed opportunity there, if the horse's true name could somehow have been implicated in the romance of Melville's involvement with his vivacious neighbor.

Missiskoui Standard [Frelighsburg, Québec, Canada] - March 21, 1837

Through the magic of YouTube, here's The Genius Ray Charles in Copenhagen only a month after the first Bay Area Black Quake. (A commenter has corrected the Denmark concert date to October 10, 1972.)

Black Snake not Quake
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/04/black-snake.html

George Doolittle and Doolittle's Express
https://melvilliana.blogspot.com/2020/04/george-doolittle-and-doolittles-express.html

Friday, April 3, 2020

Black Snake not Quake

Greenleaf's New York Journal and Patriotic Register - March 21, 1795

via Genealogy Bank

This is about the name of Sarah Morewood's "fine young colt" who broke one of his legs on the railroad track, after colliding with a train. As Herman Melville reported to Evert Duyckinck on December 13, 1850, the injured limb of the "luckless" horse was broken "clean into two peices" and had to be professionally treated, "done up by the surgeon." Herman's sister Augusta Melville later gave the name of the horse along with the sad news of his death. Transcribed as "Black Quake" on page 172 in the 1993 Northwestern-Newberry Edition of Herman Melville's Correspondence, edited by Lynn Horth; and Hershel Parker, Herman Melville: A Biography, Volume 1, 1819-1851 (Johns Hopkins University Press, 1996) at pages 800 and 809. In Melville in Love (HarperCollins, 2016) Michael Shelden pictures Black Quake as "a rambunctious horse with a name that suggested the thudding force of its galloping speed."

Black Quake? or Black Snake?

Below is a detail from the letter of December 21, 1850 that Augusta wrote to Helen, now digitized and accessible online courtesy of The New York Public Library Digital Collections. Does other evidence exist for the name Black Quake? Here it looks to me like Black Snake. And farriers (that is, more than one horse doctor) not farmers.

Poor "Black Snake" is dead. -- All the farriers could not save him. What will Mrs Morewood say.

Enlarged:

Citation:

Manuscripts and Archives Division, The New York Public Library. "Letters sent, notebooks and keepsakes" The New York Public Library Digital Collections. 1841 - 1854. http://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/752fe150-5889-0136-238d-3dcc24fb54fc

The second letter seems formed like the "n" in "not." The first letter looks close enough to Augusta's uppercase letter "S" elsewhere, for example in "Says Sophia"

<https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/76289b60-5889-0136-f362-3554d5606ebf>

and "Sam Savage."

<https://digitalcollections.nypl.org/items/77799750-5889-0136-d69f-5d9c6b561b38>

Was another horse (anywhere) ever named Black Quake? Horses named Black Snake may be found with circus animals, celebrated running horses, and registered Morgans. Barnum's Menagerie and Circus had a "black horse" named "Black Snake," one of a hundred and twenty horses sold at auction in 1854.

Mon, Oct 30, 1854 – Page 2 · Pittsburgh Daily Post (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania) · Newspapers.com
Another black horse named "Black Snake" was a "Celebrated American Running Horse" = C. A. R. H., listed thus in the American Race-turf Register:

BLACK SNAKE,

C. R. H. A high formed black horse, bred by Hugh Snelling, (a colored man,) residing in Granville County, State of N. C. foaled about the year 1788 —

Got by the I. H. Obscurity, his dam the running mare Harlot, by the R. H. Old Bacchus —

As noted under "Addenda and Errata" at the end of the 1833 volume of the American Race-Turf Register quoted above:

"Page 116, pedigree of the C.A.R.H. Black Snake, the capital letter A should be inserted before the R. as above...."

Elsewhere "Black Snake" and son "Van Antwerp's Black Snake" are listed in The Morgan Horse and Register with Descendants of Sherman Morgan.

In the absence of evidence that any horse anywhere was ever called "Black Quake," I'm calling Sarah Morewood's unfortunate horse by his real name, Black Snake.