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July/August 2005 · Historically Speaking 23 1897 Bruce Mazlish • n this spot in 1897, nothing happened ." On a gray November afternoon , in the year 2004, walking along Brattle Street (formerly Tory Row) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, I encountered a small, greenish copper sign with these words on it. The sign was stuck in the ground at die outer edge of die property, some distance from the white house in back of it. Its meaning seemed obvious: a whimsical expression of the owner's gentle mocking of all the other signs along the street, proclaiming that soand -so had lived here; or that Washington's generals had quartered here; or that shots had been exchanged on tiiis spot by colonists and British troops. Why 1897? A random choice, a premonition that something might occur a year later (the outbreak of the Spanish-American War), or an awareness that, in fact, nothing happened on this spot in 1897? But what does it mean to say tiiat nodiing happened on this spot in 1897? Whatever its owner's intention, that sign provoked a series of reflections on my part that almost caused me to slip on die snow-covered patii, now partly iced, and lasted until I returned home and sat in front of a fire, warming myself and my thoughts. The assertion diat nothing happened on tiiis spot, I reflected, meant first that nothing of historical significance had taken place. Oh happy, unhallowed ground, free of memories. As Hegel had remarked, happy people have no history. This was certainly a fortunate spot in 1897, on this account. But had nothing really happened? Surely, tiiis would not be die case from a bird's eye view, or better still a worm's eye view. If one bore in mind Darwin's evocation of the "tangled bank," with its myriad creatures and their activities, such could not be the case. An enormous pursuit of life, a ceaseless destruction and creation, must have gone on literally underneatii where the sign I had encountered now sat. Such unwearied turning over of the soil gave this spot a kind ofhistory of its own. It was a part of natural history, of course, and only tangentially part of human history, though it was on the land now owned by die house's present occupant. Was there anything further of interest to a historian of human life? A few decades ago, probably not. In the past few decades, however , a new sub-field of history has arisen, the history of everyday life. Its practitioners have Portrait of a tea in a domestic setting, circa. 1890-1910. Library of Congress, Prints and Photographs Division [reproduction number, LC-USZ62-127363]. turned away from the large-scale, monumental concerns of many of their colleagues and turned instead to the study of the quotidian and to die evocation of ordinary life as lived by previously non-historical actors at various points in the past. A 16th-century miller in Friuli, a small town in medieval Spain—these have become historical subjects. Why not the same for late 19th-century Cambridge, Massachusetts? What might research show? It might be sometiiing like die following. A young lady had been courted in that place by a local boy whose plebian background was unacceptable to die highly status conscious parents of their daughter. Blocking their child's errant pursuit of happiness, they had run the improper suitor off their property. Sending their daughter to Europe broke up die liaison, a blow from which she never recovered. For the rest of her days she remained a spinster, inheriting the house from her parents, and devoting her days to feeding die birds on the spot at which she had formerly met her lover. Her other task in life was to entertain the odd scholar at Harvard, offering him tea and feeding him cucumber sandwiches, for which she was famous throughout the Yard. The local boy, meanwhile, after a suitable period of moping, had gone into business, eventually setting up a factory that produced highquality ice skates and making a small fortune. He subsequently had five children, three of whom went to Harvard, and one of whom became a famous and...

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