Home Tags Posts tagged with "American Antiquarian Society"
Tag:

American Antiquarian Society

Isaiah Thomas Prints a Guide to Sweet Talk in 1795

by

Isaiah Thomas is best known as a newspapermen and supporter of the American Revolution. But as a printer and publisher he did not limit himself to politics. Among his many printed works were a flattery how-to guide.

Thomas, like many 18th-century American printers, published European works for an American audience, including the popular: A New Academy of Compliments: Or, the Lover’s Secretary: Being Wit and Mirth Improved, by the Most Elegant Expressions Used in the Art of Courtship … To which is Added, a Choice Collection of Above One Hundred and Twenty Love Songs.

Isaiah Thomas

Born poor in Boston on Jan. 19, 1749, Isaiah Thomas had the good luck to apprentice to Zachariah Fowle. The two formed a partnership in 1770 to publish the Massachusetts Spy. Three months later they split up, but the Spy continued as an anti-British, pro-independence newspaper.

A few days before the Battles of Lexington and Concord, Thomas took his printing press and decamped to Worcester. There he read the Declaration of Independence in public and reported on the war. In 1779, he married his hal cpusin, Mary Fowle.

Isaiah Thomas

Postwar Isaiah Thomas

After the war, Thomas published an almanac, much like Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard. He also printed music (the first in America to use a musical font) and most of the Bibles and school books in the United States. He built a paper mill and bindery, opened a bookstore in Boston and founded the American Antiquarian Society in 1812.

Thomas had a lifelong ambition, which he accomplished, to publish a history of printing. He died in Worcester on April 4, 1831.

In 1795, he printed A New Academy of Compliments. The book went through dozens of editions and was popular on both sides of the Atlantic. It was chock full of inspirations for tongue-tied people looking to impress with their skill in conversation and flattery. Today, the compliments he suggested might provoke guffaws or head scratching.

The chapter on “Witty and ingenious sentences to introduce and grace the art of well speaking,” included flattering phrases for many situations. Why not try one today?

1. Good one!

The virtues of your mind would compel a stone to become a lover, and devote himself your humble servant.

2. That’s the best idea I’ve heard in a while.

Not the mountain ice congealed to crystal is more bright than you.

3. Whatever you say.

I’d rather doubt an oracle than question what you deliver.

4. Thanks.

Sir, your noble deeds transcend all precedents.

5. Thanks, I owe you one.

Sir, the ocean is not so boundless as the obligations you daily heap on me. I lodge them in my bosom, and always keep them in my heart.

6. Thanks, you’re really a good friend.

I prize your chaste love above all the wealth of India.

7. You look good.

Others seem glimmering stars when compared with you, who outshine them like Luna.

8. Well said.

Report could never have gotten a sweeter air to fly in than your breath.

9. What do you want to do?

I totally submit myself to your directions, govern me as it pleases.

10. Hey, friend me.

Sir, I must enroll you in the Catalogue of my dearest friends.

Thanks to A New Academy of Compliments: Or, the Lover’s Secretary: Being Wit and Mirth Improved, by the Most Elegant Expressions Used in the Art of Courtship … To which is Added, a Choice Collection of Above One Hundred and Twenty Love Songs.

Image: ‘Isaiah Thomas 1818’ by Ethan Allen Greenwood, courtesy American Antiquarian Society. Licensed under Public domain via Wikimedia Commons. This story last updated in 2022.

 

0 comment 187 views
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail

Johnny Tremain Inspired by John Adams’ Boyhood Friend

by

The classic young adult book Johnny Tremain is still popular 80 years after Esther Forbes first wrote it (despite Walt Disney’s treatment). National Park Service guides say tourists tell them they came to Boston because of the book.

Johnny Tremain

As devotees of the book know, Johnny Tremain was training to be a silversmith when he burned his hand badly. He then had to leave his apprenticeship.

He got a job working for the Boston Observer, a Whig newspaper, and his encounters with patriots led him to embrace the cause of liberty. Part of the novel’s appeal is Forbes’ rich evocation of Boston in the years before the American Revolution. Forbes delved deeply into the American Antiquarian Society’s archives for the details to bring 18th-century Boston to life.

John Adams’ handwriting

Another historian who digs into archives has written about Forbes’ inspiration for her main character. J.L. Bell, who publishes the marvelous Boston 1775 blog, concluded Forbes got the idea for Johnny Tremain’s injury from John Tileston, a North End writing teacher with an injured hand. Forbes wrote about Tileston in her Pulitzer Prize winning book, Paul Revere and the World He Lived In.

Tileston, Bell tells us, lived from 1735 to 1826 and taught at Boston’s public writing school in the North End for 65 years. It was one of the town’s three writing schools, which taught more boys than the two better-known Latin Schools. The curriculum was, well, narrow: boys were taught penmanship so they could produce dignified-looking documents. It was an important skill for business people, but a limited education.

House of John Tileston, master of the North Writing School on North Bennet Street in Boston's North End. (Boston Public Library)

House of John Tileston, master of the North Writing School on North Bennet Street in Boston’s North End. (Boston Public Library)

John Tileston

In his book John Tileston’s School Boston 1778-1789 ; 1761-1766, D.C. Colesworthy writes that Tileston fell into the fire as an infant and burned his hand badly. He was shut out of jobs requiring manual dexterity, but he could still hold a pen. His parents sent him to school, and at 14 he became an apprentice at the North Writing School. During that time, Tileston became friends with John Adams, who “through a long and busy life tenderly remembered his early friend.”

J.L. Bell also discovered a remembrance of John Tileston by the great orator Edward Everett. Tileston confiscated toys, and his desk was a repository of 40 years’ worth of balls, tops, penknives and marbles. His disabled hand was strong enough to thwock students upside the head with a force “that would have done credit to the bill of an albatross,” Everett said.

Spoiler alert: Johnny Tremain had more luck than John Tileston: at the end of the book, a doctor mends his hand.

This story last updated 2021. Image of Johnny Tremain By http://www.abebooks.co.uk/servlet/BookDetailsPL?bi=17811146665±, Fair use, https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?curid=24115934. John Adams handwriting CCO 1.0 Universal. 

0 comment 408 views
0 FacebookTwitterPinterestEmail