Staycation: Rosenbach Museum & Library Hands-On Tour

Upstairs in the Rosenbach brothers’ townhouse is their library lined with beautiful dark wood bookcases and a display case set on a partner’s desk.

Here Farrar Fitzgerald, the Rosenbach’s Assistant Director of Education, led me on a personal Hands-On Tour, showcasing pieces of the collection with a Philly connection that are featured on a variety of tours offered. Typical tours are organized around a different theme.

Hands-On Tours, Fitzgerald explained, are designed to “give people the experience of handling and really looking closely at the collection in a curated way.”

A pit stop to wash hands first is a must, but you really do get the chance to touch some delicate, rare objects. It feels a bit forbidden and it’s a total treat to come into such close contact with the collection.

The Rosenbachs passed away in the 1950s and established a foundation in their will. They may have been contemporaries of Albert Barnes, but had a decidedly different approach to their collection. The foundation is allowed to interpret, acquire or deaccession pieces of the collection. So some of the books here were actually purchased by the Rosenbachs while others were added after their death to augment or because they relate to other pieces of the collection.

Fitzgerald began by showing me a bit from the Irish Authors tour: a postcard written by Oscar Wilde from Philadelphia. He wrote: “I go to see Walt Whitman at his invitation tomorrow. Tonight I lecture to 1500 people.” Imagine that conversation. The library also has rare editions of Wilde’s books.

That led us to Bram Stoker – another Irishman and contemporary (and sometimes rival) of Oscar Wilde. Stoker’s manuscript for Dracula – lengthy sketches and notes really – is at the Rosenbach and reveals Stoker’s painstaking process for crafting that mystery.

Stoker’s manuscript isn’t strictly the text. It includes copious notes (one of which is written on Stratford Hotel stationery), a datebook charting the sequence of events in the story, sketches and diagrams, clippings correspondence, and a list of local slang he wanted to use. It was utterly fascinating. Fans can handle Stoker’s work is on the Dracula tour as well as Irish Authors tour.

The real treat for me, an unapologetic American history nerd, was putting a first edition of the first printing (1732) of Ben Franklin’s Poor Richard’s Almanack in my hands. It’s a petite pamphlet with dates marked up by the almanac’s user, notes about agriculture (Killed a good calf.) or the weather (Rain). And of course Franklin’s witty quips (Men and melons are hard to know.) gracing the pages to fill otherwise blank spaces.

Almanacs like those in the Rosenbach collection are very rare; Fitzgerald said noting the brief life spans of most date books. But this one is especially rare: It’s the only surviving copy of the first printing of Poor Richard’s Almanack. It can be seen on the Founding Father’s Tour.

We finished with a pick from Fitzgerald’s “The Sea” Hands-On Tour: The Whale. That’s what Herman Melville’s Moby Dick was called when it was first published in England.

I got to hold this first edition, published in three volumes, beautifully bound in cobalt blue with a gold right whale on the spine. It is a gorgeous object to behold, in addition to its historic value.