The Center of the Universe

by Bethany Groff Dorau, Executive Director

Picture the scene - yours truly, perched on the edge of a comfortable leather sofa in a recreated pub below decks on the ship Queen Victoria, cruising through the Bay of Biscay between France and Spain. The occasion is the nightly pub quiz, a British tradition that, like other British traditions, forms the social calendar of our recent voyage. We are part of a team of 6, trying to identify songs by Fats Domino and Whitney Houston. I'm shouting over the throbbing strains of "I Wanna Dance with Somebody", recapping our plans for port excursions in Spain. One of the party declares that I must see the Alhambra. "The bus is full," I shout. "We’re going to Cordova."

The Spanish city of Cordova has been an important craft, trade, and religious center since the 2nd century BC. Courtesy image.

And then it happens. My quiz buddy says something about cordovan leather, and we're off to the races. “You know what's funny” I say, “I was always seeing these early Newbury records that refer to cordwainers. Did you know a cordwainer is someone who works in new leather? It's a derivation of an old French word meaning someone who works in cordovan leather, originally the finest leather from Cordova! The term cordwainer was used to distinguish people who made shoes from new leather from cobblers, who repaired shoes, in the medieval guild system in England. Did you know that cordovan leather is made from the connective tissue under the skin of a horse’s rump? Cordovan leather was so expensive that the term became synonymous with the finest quality leather, and so it became sort of a high-end brand, and everyone started using it on all kinds of leather goods.” My friend’s eyes were glazing over.

“Anyway, you probably know all that already,” I said, making the natural assumption that British people are all fonts of historical knowledge. “I didn’t, actually” he shouted politely, “but I do know that this song is 'Hip to be Square' by Huey Lewis!” 

These tiles mark the shop of a leather merchant in Cordova in eight different languages.

I had so much more to say about arcane adventures in leather. I wanted to tell someone about my recent discovery in several account books that dog carcasses, DOGS, were sold en masse to the Coffin tannery on High Road in Newbury, and that far from being some sort of aberration, dog skin was widely harvested, considered the best for making strong but supple gloves, particularly for women. William Shakespeare himself mentions the article in his jointly written play, Two Noble Kinsmen, as a character notes that “the next gloves that I give her shall be dog skin.” Our own Louisa May Alcott mentions the offending article in Little Women. "Uncle rushed out and bought a pair of dogskin gloves, some ugly, thick shoes, and an umbrella, and got shaved _à la_ mutton chop, the first thing." 

Of course, how these dogs were acquired is a depressing thought, but in the days before spaying and neutering, packs of semi-feral dogs were routinely rounded up and…this is usually where the look of horror on my audience’s face reminds me that I have gone too far. And then I make it worse.

The last time I told this story, I finished it up with a full run-down of the dog-skin products available to Newburyport consumers. In 1849, the newspaper related a humorous story involving a dogskin saddle. Twenty years later, nearly every shop in town had several varieties of dogskin gloves for sale. As late as 1930, at Harrington’s Men’s Store at 19 Pleasant Street, one could pick up the finest “Genuine Arabian Mocha (sheepskin), Peccary, Pigskin, Dogskin, or Cape (South African goatskin)” gloves. Gross, right?

This advertisement for Easter accessories at Harrington's store appeared in the Newburyport Daily News on April 10, 1930.

But, but…everything is illuminated by its history, I want to plead. Even the unpleasant things – perhaps nothing teaches us so much about our own lives as an examination of the things that were once part of everyday life and are now repugnant. We wonder how people could wear dogskin gloves much like people in the future might wonder how we can eat cows and pigs on such an industrial scale. I’m not preaching – I am wearing leather shoes at this very moment, but doesn’t it make you think? And isn’t that the point of life – gathering enough context and detail to become insufferable at parties? 

As we piled into the bus and wound our way through arid mountains from the Spanish port of Malaga to Cordova, I thought about another reason I am insufferable at parties (there are many). Anywhere I go, anywhere in the world, I think of Newbury(port). But unlike the generalized affection many people feel for their home, my thoughts are very specific. I think of Thomas Jillings, cordwainer, who bought a house on Middle Street in April, 1725 from John Norton, also listed as a cordwainer. Later that same year he married my distant cousin Hannah Myrick, and they were both members of the Third Parish Meetinghouse, whose weathervane, a stunning gilded rooster, was brand new then, and is now the centerpiece of an exhibit upstairs from my office. I think of how newspapers from Cordova were passed from ship to ship in 1808, reaching Newburyport with the breathtaking news of the plunder of the city by French forces and the subsequent defeat of Napoleon’s army as the Spanish people took their revenge. I think of all the Newburyport adventurers who sailed into Malaga, and Lisbon, and Cadiz, all stops on my recent journey. The structure upon which I hang my experience of the wider world is built of the stone and earth of this community.

Cordwainer's apron from an unidentified Newbury shop, c. 1820-1840. Courtesy photo.

I have described Newburyport as the center of the universe – it certainly is the center of my life and work, but that’s not exactly what I mean. It is something about how this place, which over time has been Indigenous land, an early New England immigrant community, a thriving port, a factory town, an artist community, a seaside resort, has cast out and reeled in so many threads that connect us, over time, to the rest of the world.

A few nights later, another pub quiz. The question is something about Elvis Presley. We all whisper, confer, choose a likely answer. My friend from earlier leans in conspiratorially. “You know what’s funny,” he says, “Elvis only visited the UK once, and it was right down the road from my house in Prestwick”. His eyes sparkle. “And the British Open was first played there in 1860. Nobody’s ever heard of Prestwick, but it’s an amazing place. Robert the Bruce was supposedly cured of leprosy in a well behind the church…!” As it turns out, his hometown is the center of the universe too, another thread connecting us across this wild and wonderful world.