Women and Children First: Females Featured in CHF's Book Collections

The collections of CHF's Othmer Library depict women in unusual places. This Mother's Day special features women, children, and a few chickens that have been hiding in our rare-books collections for many centuries.

Clever chick
Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, was not only pretty and clever but also spoke her mind quite freely. She stated, in her Female Orations, that

men are so unconscionable and cruel against us [women] that they endeavor to bar us of all sorts of liberty, and will not suffer us freely to associate amongst our own sex; but would fain bury us in their houses or beds, as in a grave. The truth is, we live like bats or owls, labor like beasts, and die like worms.

What saved Margaret from this fate was her natural curiosity and her penmanship: she published many works in a variety of genres and disciplines. In Grounds of natural philosophy (1668), she juggled natural philosophy as well as her male contemporaries. No wonder that her frontispiece shows the male figures as statues with plinths for legs, whereas Margaret poses proud and beautiful as a monument to her own work!

Chicken feed
While Margaret Cavendish indulged in mental gymnastics, most of her fellow women spent their days looking after their families. From the 16^th century onward, German authors produced Hausväterliteratur, that is, books for wealthy farmers and their families, including information on farming and hunting as well as recipes for the domestic cook and medical home remedies. Johann Joachim Becher’s Kluger Hauss-Vater, verständige Hauss-mutter, vollkommner Land-medicus of 1702 belongs to this genre. Its frontispiece depicts a woman and two small children feeding chickens.

William Salmon's Polygraphice (1685)

Working mothers
Some of the women shown in books related to chemistry are quite recognizable in their tasks: for instance, a woman in The wonders of science (1855) is sitting at a boy’s bedside, clearly reading to her ill son. In this instance, the son is Humphry Davy, who would later become a famous chemist and teacher to Michael Faraday. The author of The wonders of science, Henry Mayhew, hoped that it would be read by boys for inspiration, not only when they were sick. In Johannes Kunckel’s revised edition of the Vollständige Glassmacherkunst (1756), however, we see three women sitting around a table, engaged in some activities that must be related to glassmaking—but what?

Beautiful ladies
Wonderful sketches of beautiful women appear in William Salmon’s Polygraphice (1685), an encyclopedic book whose first section is dedicated to drawing techniques. Its full, exhaustive (and exhausting) title is:

Polygraphice, or, the arts of drawing, engraving, etching, limning, painting, washing, varnishing, gilding, colouring, dying, beautifying and perfuming : in seven books : Exemplified, in the drawing of men, women, landscapes, countreys, and figures of various forms ; the way of engraving, etching and limning, with all their requisites and ornaments ; the depicting of the most eminent pieces of antiquities ; the paintings of the antients ; washing of maps, globes or pictures ; the dying of cloth, silk, horns, bones, wood, glass, stones and metals ; the vernishing, colouring, and gilding thereof, according to any purpose or intent : the painting, colouring and beautifying of the face, skin and hair ; the whole doctrine of perfumes (never published till now,) together with the original, advancement and perfection of the art of painting : and a discourse of perspective, chiromancy and alchymy. To which also is added, I. The one hundred and twelve chymical arcanums of Petrus Johannes Faber, a most learned and eminent physician, translated out of Latin into English. II. An abstract of choice chymical preparation, fitted for vulgar use, for curing most diseases incident to humane bodies.

Le parfumeur françois (1696)

Preserving beauty in real life, rather than conserving it in a drawing, naturally involves much chemistry, too. On the frontispiece of Beauties treasury (1705), a collection of cosmetic secrets written by the elusive "J. W.", we see angels presenting flowers, crowns, music, and drinks to a woman on a throne—a celebration and entertainment suitable for any beautiful lady, and certainly a good advertisement to potential buyers of the book.

The French are famous for their perfumes, and their keen interest in scents, whether in the form of perfumed powders and mouth waters, incense, perfumed gloves and soap, or indeed snuff. In Simon Barbe’s Le parfumeur françois (1696) we see a noble lady and her suitor trying on perfumes, while their lapdog chases far more canine whiffs on the floor of the perfumer’s shop. The French version of Kenelm Digby’s Choice & Experimental Receipts, now entitled Nouveaux secrets expérimentez: pour conserver la beauté des dames, et pour guérir plusieurs sortes de maladies (1715), shows a lady triumphantly raising a vial toward the heavens. One can only wonder whether she is holding the elixir of life, a perfume, or the latest facial lotion in her hands!

Bibliography and further reading

• Johannes Kunckel, Vollständige Glassmacherkunst (1756)
• Simon Barbe, Le parfumeur françois (1696)
• Sir Kenelm Digby, Nouveaux secrets expérimentez pour conserver la beauté des dames, et pour guérir plusieurs sortes de maladies (1715)
• Johann Joachim Becher, Kluger Hauss-vater, verständige Hauss-mutter, vollkommner Land-medicus (1702)
• William Salmon, Polygraphice, or, the arts of drawing, engraving, etching, limning, painting, washing, varnishing, gilding, colouring, dying, beautifying and perfuming (1685)
• Marie Meurdrac, La chymie charitable et facile, en faveur des dames (1687)
• Henry Mayhew, The wonders of science, or, Young Humphry Davy: (the Cornish apothecary's boy, who taught himself natural philosophy, and eventually became president of the Royal Society). The life of a wonderful boy: written for boys (1855)
• J. W., Beauties treasury, or, The ladies vade mecum (1705)
• Margaret Cavendish, Duchess of Newcastle, Grounds of natural philosophy (1668)
• Voltaire, Elémens de la philosophie de Neuton (1738)