Beecher reforms women’s exercise: From the library of Vassar's first graduate.

Catharine Beecher on reforming women’s exercise and fashion.
Copy from the library of Vassar’s first admittee and first graduate, Maria Loraine Dickinson (1842-1920).
 
Beecher, Catharine E. Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools. [Bound as issued with:] Calisthenic Exercises for Schools, Families, and Health Establishments. New York: Harper & Brothers, 1856. 8vo [16.6 x 10.6 cm], viii pp., 9-193 pp., (1) p. blank verso, vi pp (including separate title), (1) f. table of contents, 9-58 pp., with 55 and 77 figures in the text. In original publisher’s brown cloth blocked in blind. Spine faded with some wear to extremities, covers a bit rubbed and with some edge wear, a few small water spots. Label inside upper cover (“Vassar College Library gift of Mrs. Thomas McGraw ‘67” with “withdrawn” stamp), stamped number with “withdrawn’ stamp on p. iii, blind stamp in upper blank margin of title page (“Vassar College Library”), the occasional minor stain.
 
 
First edition of this important illustrated work by the American educator Catharine Beecher (1800-78) on reforming women’s physical fitness and fashion, here in an ex-library copy from Vassar College that once formed part of the book collection of Vassar’s first admittee and first graduate, Maria Loraine Dickinson (1842-1920) (Mrs. Thomas McGraw), class of 1867. Maria Dickinson likely used this copy of Beecher’s Physiology and Calisthenics/Calisthenic Exercises (1856) while a student at Vassar, given that the college was at the forefront of promoting calisthenics, and that each of the 17 volumes carrying the “Gift of Mrs. Thomas McGraw” bookplate that now are recorded in the Vassar College library catalogue were published before or during Dickinson’s time at the college, This suggests that she did not later in life indiscriminately donate books to the library, but gave only choice volumes she had retained from her college years.  
 
Throughout her life Dickinson participated in alumnae activities at Vassar, and her reminiscences about her Vassar experiences are well recorded (anticipation of the opening of the college, application, acceptance, matriculation, study, graduation, etc.). I quote here a fine summary from the online Vassar Encyclopedia: “Maria Loraine Dickinson was one of four students in Vassar’s first graduating class in 1867. Born on October 26, 1843, in Detroit, to Moses Field Dickinson and Maria Loraine Wesson, Dickinson was brought up in an educational environment … Having ‘signed an agreement’ to attend college together after completing their preparatory courses in 1863 and having heard of the proposed female college in Poughkeepsie, Maria Dickinson and her high school ‘seatmate,’ Harriet Warner, made inquiries about its status, but only received word back that buildings were not yet ready for use. A similar inquiry in 1864 met with a similar response. The two waited patiently in Michigan, taking one-year English courses and other preparatory classes, and in June 1865, notices were sent them that Vassar Female College would open in September. A 1915 Vassar Miscellany article suggests that Dickinson may have been the first student admitted to Vassar because ‘the official printed letter bears the date July 19, 1865.’ ‘The long delay had whetted, rather than dulled, our appetites,’ Dickinson recalled, ‘and our parents thought well of the venture, so formal applications were made, and we carefully followed all directions to would-be students’ … Dickinson described her first days at Vassar at the annual luncheon of Associate Alumnae in Cleveland, Ohio, in February 1913. She arrived at Vassar’s gates with her fiancé, Thomas Stanley McGraw, at the age of 22 … Dickinson’s fellow classmates—the ‘more than three hundred female persons ranging between fourteen and twenty-four, or more, years of age’ who were ‘mostly strangers to each other and to the teachers’ quickly united—founding of the Philalethean Society in their first public meeting, participating in the first Founder’s Day and the Thanksgiving and Christmas celebrations—all Vassar traditions still alive. In a letter to the Warner sisters in December 1866, Dickinson recounted her daily activities including an evening sleigh ride into town with some professors. In this letter, it is clear that the students and teachers during these first years were very close, and spent a great deal of time together … After graduation, Dickinson returned to Detroit with her husband, where the two remained until their deaths” (“The First Students,” www.vassar.edu/vcencyclopedia/). 
 
The Maria Dickinson volumes now at Vassar, which she generally signed (with her maiden name), treat the subjects of geology, geography, history, moral philosophy, Classics, elocution, French, American national government. Her copy of Beecher’s Physiology and Calisthenics/Calisthenic Exercises offered here further records the type of education she received at Vassar. “The most outspoken advocate of exercise for women in America was Catharine Beecher, a vociferous critic of tight lacing and, between 1837 and the Civil War, author of many volumes of self-help advice literature for women. She disliked corsets, tight shoes, and other ‘unnatural’ forms of dress, and believed that this restrictive clothing was a danger to future generations. In her Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Families (1856), she included an illustration that showed the natural skeleton of a woman compared to one deformed by ‘Art’: that is, by the fashionable corset … Calisthenics was the name given to female gymnastics … Calisthenics included stretching exercises, extensions of arms and legs, bending from the waist, deep knee bends, leg raises, high stepping, and the use of some small three- to five-pound weights … Beecher observed that English women were healthier because they had opportunities for physical exercise, especially out of doors, which had been denied to American girls and women. Eventually many colleges shared the philosophy of the health reformers and included hygiene, calisthenics, and sports activities in their curricula. Health issues were a premier concern of Oberlin College … And by 1865, Vassar College also required education and hygiene instruction for women” (Cunningham, pp. 28 and 58).
 
“Beecher is widely regarded by historians as the most significant popularizer of calisthenics for women … In the 1850 edition of her Treatise on Domestic Economy, Beecher mentioned that she had begun preparing a guidebook to calisthenics exercises ‘of her own invention’ … Despite this mention of a work in progress, it was 1856 before Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools and Calisthenic Exercises for Schools, Families and Health Establishments finally appeared in one binding. Physiology and Calisthenics was a textbook written for school use … Bound in the same volume with Physiology and Calisthenics for Schools was Exercises for Schools, Families, and Health Establishments, a pamphlet-length book that contains the only written record of Beecher’s ‘system’” (Todd, pp. 137, 153-4).
 
 
*P. A. Cunningham, Reforming Women’s Fashion, 1850-1920: Politics, Health, and Art; J. Todd, Physical Culture and the Body Beautiful: Purposive Exercise in the Lives of American Women, 1800-1870; Maria Dickinson McGraw, “A Glimpse Backwards,” The Vassar Miscellany, Vol. XLIII, no. 5 (1 March 1914).