19TH-CENTURY BIOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
“I look upon Phrenology as the guide of Philosophy, and the handmaid of Christianity; whoever disseminates true Phrenology, is a public benefactor.” — Horace Mann, Sr.
Henry played a phrenology game with Ellen, feeling her cranium and announcing that he could find no bumps, which indicated that she was either an idiot or a genius. To put this into context, I have felt it to be necessary to attempt a chronology of this 19th-Century science and its ramifications. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1790
Early in the decade, Franz Joseph Gall created his system of organology and brain anatomy. PHRENOLOGY
ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.
Dr. Franz Anton Mesmer’s apparent success in calming Parisian mental patients began a spiritualist fad in this decade, called Mesmerism, which at times would amount almost to a religion. This was the first of the great “harmonial” schemes which professed to get their results by aligning the individual with the cosmos, thus enabling mental composure, physical health, and prosperity.
ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL; ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT WHEN HE INSISTED THAT ALL TRUTH IS SPECIFIC AND PARTICULAR (AND WRONG WHEN HE CHARACTERIZED TRUTH AS A GENERALIZATION).
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1796
Franz Joseph Gall began to offer lectures in his home in Vienna on his system of organology and brain anatomy. I have everything all figured out. Just listen to me, I’ll tell you what you want to hear. PHRENOLOGY
“HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1798
December: The first account of Franz Joseph Gall’s system of organology and brain anatomy in own words was published in the Neue Teutsche Merkur. PHRENOLOGY
YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1800
Johann Gaspar Spurzheim began to attend the lectures of Dr. Franz Joseph Gall. PHRENOLOGY
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1801
December: The Emperor Francis II issued a decree forbidding Franz Joseph Gall to lecture and banning him from publishing on the subject of his previous lectures — his new system of organology and brain anatomy. Go bother somebody else, doctor. PHRENOLOGY
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1804
Having attended high school in Edinburgh, and the University of Edinburgh, George Combe entered a lawyer’s office in order to learn the law.
Johann Gaspar Spurzheim became Dr. Franz Joseph Gall’s dissectionist and assistant. PHRENOLOGY
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1805
From this year into 1807 Dr. Franz Joseph Gall would be on a successful lecture tour throughout Europe accompanied by Johann Gaspar Spurzheim. PHRENOLOGY
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1807
Dr. Franz Joseph Gall arrived in Paris. PHRENOLOGY
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1808
March: Drs. Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim submitted a MÉMOIRE to the Institut de France outlining (for the first time) “their” anatomical and physiological claims. PHRENOLOGY
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1810
Franz Joseph Gall had studied medicine in Vienna and had become a neuroanatomist and physiologist. He was a pioneer in the study of the localization of mental functions in the brain. At about the turn of the century, he had devised “cranioscopy,” a method to divine the personality and development of mental and moral faculties on the basis of the external shape of the skull.
So round So firm So fully packed
Dr. Gall had been forced out of Vienna and out of Austria, and in 1805 had settled in France. His cranioscopy would, among his followers, become phrenology. His phrenological theories and practices were being best accepted in England, where the ruling class had a need to justify their molestations of colonial subjects such as the Irish, and in the USA, where from 1820 to 1850 it would be very popular due to the absence of any aristocratic device for the establishment of one’s priority over others. In this year he and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1832) began publication in Paris of their ANATOMIE ET PHYSIOLOGIE DU SYSTÈME NERVEUX EN GÉNÉRAL, ET DU CERVEAU EN PARTICULIER, AVEC DES OBSERVATIONS SUR LAS POSSIBILITÉ DE RECONNOÎTRE PLUSIEURS DISPOSITIONS INTELLECTUELLES ET MORALES DE L’HOMME ET DES ANIMAUX, PAR LA CONFIGURATION DE LEURS TÊTES. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY (Dr. Spurzheim would be involved in the first two of these volumes only, as he and Dr. Gall would part company permanently in 1812 and the entire set of four volumes would not be completed until 1819.)
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1812
George Combe hung out his shingle as a lawyer in Edinburgh.
Drs. Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim parted company forever. You turn left and I’ll turn right. PHRENOLOGY
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1814
Johann Gaspar Spurzheim arrived in Britain to lecture on “his” and Franz Joseph Gall’s system of organology and brain anatomy. PHRENOLOGY
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1815
The term phrenology was coined by Dr. Thomas Ignatius Maria Forster.
YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.
An article on the system of “craniology” of Franz Joseph Gall and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim appeared in the Edinburgh Review. The article denounced this as “a piece of thorough quackery from beginning to end” in a manner that persuaded the local attorney George Combe of its absurdity. However, when Dr. Spurzheim came to Edinburgh and at a friend’s house offered a demonstration of the dissection of a human brain, Combe was sufficiently impressed to begin to attend the Doctor’s lectures, and became convinced “that the brain is the organ of mind; that the brain is an aggregate of several parts, each subserving a distinct mental faculty; and that the size of the cerebral organ is, caeteris paribus, an index of power or energy of function.” PHRENOLOGY
Johann Gaspar Spurzheim began to publish on “his” new system of organology and brain anatomy, starting with THE PHYSIOGNOMICAL SYSTEM OF DRS. GALL AND SPURZHEIM; FOUNDED ON AN ANATOMICAL AND PHYSIOLOGICAL EXAMINATION OF THE NERVOUS SYSTEM IN GENERAL, AND OF THE BRAIN IN PARTICULAR; AND INDICATING THE DISPOSITIONS AND MANIFESTATIONS OF THE MIND. PHRENOLOGY
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1816
During this year and the following one, Dr. Johann Gaspar Spurzheim would be facing down his critics, especially Dr. John Gordon in Edinburgh, and making devout converts for his useful1 new “science.” PHRENOLOGY
1. Try to imagine how useful it would be to you in distinguishing between true theories and false theories in science, if you were able to measure the character of the motivation of the proponent of a new theory, and repudiate it as the product of avarice or as the product of an over-eager imagination without ever condescending to evaluate it on its merits as a scientific hypothesis! Imagine, for instance, being able to detect that global warming is a mere fantasy, or is a product of a desire to create alarm, in the Michael Crichton STATE OF FEAR manner, merely by inspecting the bumps on the skull of the advocate, without needing to learn anything at all about either meteorology or ecology! THE SCIENCE OF 1816 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1817
George Combe’s initial essay on phrenology appeared in The Scots Magazine, and shortly afterward he offered a series of papers on phrenology in the Literary and Statistical Magazine. His younger brother Andrew Combe, having served an apprenticeship in a surgery, passed at Surgeon’s Hall and went to Paris to complete his medical studies.
IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT IT IS MORTALS WHO CONSUME OUR HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS, FOR WHAT WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO IS EVADE THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE HUMAN LIFESPAN. (IMMORTALS, WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, TAKE NO HEED OF OUR STORIES.)
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1819
George Combe’s ESSAYS ON PHRENOLOGY, OR AN INQUIRY INTO THE PRINCIPLES AND UTILITY OF THE SYSTEM OF DRS GALL AND SPURZHEIM, AND INTO THE OBJECTIONS MADE AGAINST IT (Edinburgh: Bell & Bradfute), made up of his articles in The Scots Magazine and Literary and Statistical Magazine (later editions would bear the title A SYSTEM OF PHRENOLOGY). Sir George Steuart Mackenzie’s ILLUSTRATIONS OF PHRENOLOGY.
THE AGE OF REASON WAS A PIPE DREAM, OR AT BEST A PROJECT. ACTUALLY, HUMANS HAVE ALMOST NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE DOING, WHILE CREDITING THEIR OWN LIES ABOUT WHY THEY ARE DOING IT.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1820
The Edinburgh Phrenological Society was established by George Combe, Andrew Combe, David Welsh, James Brownlee, William Waddell, and Lindsey Mackersey.
ONE COULD BE ELSEWHERE, AS ELSEWHERE DOES EXIST. ONE CANNOT BE ELSEWHEN SINCE ELSEWHEN DOES NOT. (TO THE WILLING MANY THINGS CAN BE EXPLAINED, THAT FOR THE UNWILLING WILL REMAIN FOREVER MYSTERIOUS.)
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1821
The father of William Jardine, Sir Alexander Jardine, was dying, and the son returned from medical school at Paris to Scotland to attend to the details of being 7th Baronet of Applegirth, Dumfriesshire, a large landed proprietor.
Augustin Jean Fresnel of France presented the laws which would for the 1st time enable the intensity and polarization of reflected and refracted light to be calculated. HISTORY OF OPTICS
Jean-Pierre Abel-Rèmusat’s “Sur la succession des 33 premiers patriarches de la religion de Bouddha” appeared in the Journal des Savantes. For the following decade, Professor Abel-Rèmusat and Humboldt would be producing LETTRES ÉDIFIANTES ET CURIEUSES SUR LA LANGUE CHINOISE.
In Edinburgh, Transactions of the Phrenological Society.
While on a visit to Paris, Dr. Charles Caldwell (1772-1853), a Philadelphia racist who had become a professor at a university in Kentucky, met the phrenologists Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1823) and decided to combine their doctrine of brain differences between individuals with his own doctrine of racial differences to form a much needed doctrine of brain differences between races.
“Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY By the end of the 1820s, Dr. Caldwell had examined enough native American skulls found in mounds, and had felt the heads of enough native Americans visiting the cities, to be comfortable that hasn’t going to hurt anybody, in announcing that
when the wolf, the buffalo and the panther shall have been completely domesticated, like the dog, the cow, and the household cat, then, and not before, may we expect to see the full-blooded Indian civilized, like the white man.
In 1830, Dr. Caldwell would present his THOUGHTS ON THE ORIGINAL UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE, (NY: E. Bliss), one of his thoughts on the original unity of the human race being that “To the Caucasian race is the world indebted for all the great and important discoveries, inventions and improvements, that have been made in science and the arts, [while the African has remained] Motionless; fixed to a spot, like the rocks and trees, in the midst of which they dwell; each generation pursuing the same time-beaten track.... Even century succeeds to century, and the last finds them the same degraded and unimproved beings with the former.” One medical historian has asserted that “phrenology ... was certainly at least as influential in the first half of the nineteenth century as psychoanalysis was in the first half of the twentieth.”2 Dr. Caldwell would become such an advocate of phrenology, the scientistic doctrine that was so amply supporting his racism, that he would even become a vigorous opponent of the teaching of the science of chemistry! By the end of the 1830s, Dr. Caldwell would become the most popular phrenologist in America, partly by pandering to the American need for a scientific legitimation of genocide at a time before the mainline American scientific establishment had –under the leadership of the American school of ethnology based in Philadelphia– taken up the cudgel on
2. Ackerknecht, Erwin H. MEDICINE AT THE PARIS HOSPITAL, 1794-1848. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1967, page 172. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY behalf of genocide beginning in about 1839.
“The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlers will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.” — Lyman Frank Baum, author of the OZ books
Mr. Trust Me, the White Man’s Ambassador HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Dr. Richard Harlan was elected as Professor (Lecturer) of Comparative Anatomy at Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum. Here is his illustration of a hermaphrodite orangutan that was found to have perfectly formed male and female genitalia:
During this year and the following one, Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s lectures on representative government would be appearing in two volumes as HISTOIRE DES ORIGINES DU GOUVERNERNENT REPRÉSENTATIF. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1822
The Philadelphia Phrenological Society was established (the 1st in the US). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1823
Franz Joseph Gall lectured briefly on phrenology in London.
The London Phrenological Society was established by John Elliotson, B. Donkin, and J. DeVille.
December: This was the year in which Dr. Andrew Combe was beginning his medical practice. He had defended phrenology before the Royal Medical Society of Edinburgh. At this point the Phrenological Society of Edinburgh began to publish the Phrenological Journal.
Speaking of popular delusions and the madness of crowds, this was also the month of publication of an anti- Roman Catholic novel that would be a real crowd-pleaser, running through some dozen editions and being translated into most of the languages of Europe, FATHER CLEMENT; A ROMAN CATHOLIC STORY. GRACE KENNEDY
CONTINGENCY ALTHOUGH VERY MANY OUTCOMES ARE OVERDETERMINED, WE TRUST THAT SOMETIMES WE ACTUALLY MAKE REAL CHOICES.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1824
George Combe’s ELEMENTS OF PHRENOLOGY.
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1825
The Wakefield Phrenological Society was established by William Ellis.
THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO INSTANT HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1826
Francis Jeffrey rebutted phrenology in the Edinburgh Review.
During this year and the following one, Sir William Hamilton would be engaging in a controversy over phrenology with Drs. George Combe and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim.
BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1827
During this year and the following one a schism would take place in the Edinburgh Phrenological Society over George Combe’s doctrine of natural laws, between the Combeans and a group that self-described as “the Evangelicals.”
Combe began a series of public discussions with Sir William Hamilton, which would continue into the following year. He would offer himself as a candidate for the chair of logic at Edinburgh but Sir William would be selected.
FIGURING OUT WHAT AMOUNTS TO A “HISTORICAL CONTEXT” IS WHAT THE CRAFT OF HISTORICIZING AMOUNTS TO, AND THIS NECESSITATES DISTINGUISHING BETWEEN THE SET OF EVENTS THAT MUST HAVE TAKEN PLACE BEFORE EVENT E COULD BECOME POSSIBLE, AND MOST CAREFULLY DISTINGUISHING THEM FROM ANOTHER SET OF EVENTS THAT COULD NOT POSSIBLY OCCUR UNTIL SUBSEQUENT TO EVENT E.
January 18, Thursday: Mormonism founder Joseph Smith, Jr. eloped with Emma Hale and they got married in South Bainbridge (her father had opposed their union because Joseph had no visible means of support and was involved in the questionable activities of magic and treasure hunting).3 Joseph’s employer in money digging, Josiah Stowell, would help the young couple move back to Manchester, New York.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5th day 18th of 1st M / A Solid good meeting — In the last (Preparative) a person (J B) requested membership which was refered to a committee. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
HISTORY’S NOT MADE OF WOULD. WHEN SOMEONE REVEALS, FOR INSTANCE, THAT SOMEONE WOULD HELP THIS YOUNG COUPLE MOVE BACK TO MANCHESTER, NEW YORK, S/HE DISCLOSES THAT WHAT IS BEING CRAFTED IS NOT REALITY BUT PREDESTINARIANISM, BECAUSE WHAT’S HAPPENING ON THIS DAY IS A WEDDING, NOT A MOVE. THE RULE OF REALITY IS THAT THE FUTURE HASN’T EVER HAPPENED, YET.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
3. According to a phrenological chart published later by the Mormon Church, Joseph had the skull bump of “Amativeness-11, L[arge]. Extreme susceptibility; passionately fond of the company of the other sex.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1828
George Combe’s THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN CONSIDERED IN RELATION TO EXTERNAL OBJECTS (J. Anderson jun.) in some quarter led to his denunciation as a materialist and an atheist.
Franz Joseph Gall died near Paris. PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1830
The Manchester Phrenological Society was established.
Dr. Charles Caldwell (1772-1853), a noted American phrenologist, presented his THOUGHTS ON THE ORIGINAL UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE, (NY: E. Bliss), one of his thoughts on the original unity of the human race being that “To the Caucasian race is the world indebted for all the great and important discoveries, inventions and improvements, that have been made in science and the arts, [while the African has remained] Motionless; fixed to a spot, like the rocks and trees, in the midst of which they dwell; each generation pursuing the same time-beaten track.... Even century succeeds to century, and the last finds them the same degraded and unimproved beings with the former.” One medical historian has asserted that “phrenology ... was certainly at least as influential in the first half of the nineteenth century as psychoanalysis was in the first half of the twentieth.”4 Dr. Caldwell would become such an advocate of phrenology, the scientistic doctrine that was so amply supporting his racism, that he would even become a vigorous opponent of the teaching of the science of chemistry! –What are chemicals when there is soul! By the end of the 1830s, Dr. Caldwell would become the most popular phrenologist in America, partly by pandering to the American need for a scientific legitimation of genocide at a time before the mainline American scientific establishment had –under the leadership of the American school of ethnology based in Philadelphia– taken up the cudgel on behalf of genocide beginning in about 1839.
4. Ackerknecht, Erwin H. MEDICINE AT THE PARIS HOSPITAL, 1794-1848. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1967, page 172. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY January: Piracy was again punished by hanging, this time on the Rock of Gibraltar. (Gosh, what will it take to persuade these guys that they shouldn’t be just offing people in cold blood?). The lumps and bumps on the head of Benito de Soto would be examined by phrenologists, to figure out how the guy had gone so wrong. (Wouldn’t it be nice to be able to identify the pirates among us while they are still small children, so they can be hanged long before they have a chance to commit their first act of depredation?):
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY THE LIFE OF BENITO DE SOTO, PIRATE OF THE MORNING STAR5
The following narrative of the career of a desperate pirate who was executed in Gibraltar in the month of January, 1830, is one of two letters from the pen of the author of “the Military Sketch-Book.” The writer says Benito de Soto “had been a prisoner in the garrison for nineteen months, during which time the British Government spared neither the pains not expense to establish a full train of evidence against him. The affair had caused the greatest excitement here, as well as at Cadiz, owing to the development of the atrocities which marked the character of this man, and the diabolical gang of which he was the leader. Nothing else is talked of; and a thousand horrors are added to his guilt, which, although he was guilty enough, he has no right to bear. The following is all the authentic information I could collect concerning him. I have drawn it from his trial, from the confession of his accomplices, from the keeper of his prison, and not a little from his own lips. It will be found more interesting than all the tales and sketches furnished in the ‘Annuals,’ magazines, and other vehicles of invention, from the simple fact — that 5. THE PIRATES OWN BOOK, OR AUTHENTIC NARRATIVES OF THE LIVES, EXPLOITS, AND EXECUTIONS OF THE MOST CELEBRATED SEA ROBBERS, by Charles Ellms (Portland: Published by Sanborn & Carter; Philadelphia: Thomas, Comperthwait, & Co., 1837. This would be republished in 1842 by A. and C.B. Edwards of New-York & Philadelphia, and in 1844 in Portland by Sanborn & Carter, and in 1855 by A. and C.B. Edwards of New-York, and in 1924 by Marine res. of Massachusetts, and in 1996 by Random House of New York.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY it is truth and not fiction.” Benito de Soto was a native of a small village near Courna; he was bred a mariner, and was in the guiltless exercise of his calling at Buenos Ayres, in the year 1827. A vessel was there being fitted out for a voyage to the coast of Africa, for the smuggling of slaves; and as she required a strong crew, a great number of sailors were engaged, amongst whom was Soto. The Portuguese of South America have yet a privilege of dealing in slaves on a certain part of the African coast, but it was the intention of the captain of this vessel to exceed the limits of his trade, and to run farther down, so as to take his cargo of human beings from a part of the country which was proscribed, in the certainty of being there enabled to purchase slaves at a much lower rate than he could in the regular way; or, perhaps, to take away by force as many as he could stow away into his ship. He therefore required a considerable number of hands for the enterprise; and in such a traffic, it may be easily conceived, that the morals of the crew could not be a subject of much consideration with the employer. French, Spanish, Portuguese, and others, were entered on board, most of them renegadoes, and they set sail on their evil voyage, with every hope of infamous success. Those who deal in evil carry along with them the springs of their own destruction, upon which they will tread, in spite of every caution, and their imagined security is but the brink of the pit into which they are to fall. It was so with the captain of this slave-ship. He arrived in Africa, took in a considerable number of slaves, and in order to complete his cargo, went on shore, leaving his mate in charge of the vessel. This mate was a bold, wicked, reckless and ungovernable spirit, and perceiving in Benito de Soto a mind congenial with his own, he fixed on him as a fit person to join in a design he had conceived, of running away with the vessel, and becoming a pirate. Accordingly the mate proposed his plan to Soto, who not only agreed to join in it, but declared that he himself had been contemplating a similar enterprise during the voyage. They both were at once of a mind, and they lost no time in maturing their plot. Their first step was to break the matter to the other members of the crew. In this they proceeded cautiously, and succeeded so far as to gain over twenty-two of the whole, leaving eighteen who remained faithful to their trust. Every means were used to corrupt the well disposed; both persuasion and threats were resorted to, but without effect, and the leader of the conspiracy, the mate, began to despair of obtaining the desired object. Soto, however, was not so easily depressed. He at once decided on seizing the ship upon the strength of his party: and without consulting the mate, he collected all the arms of the vessel, called the conspirators together, put into each of their possession a cutlass and a brace of pistols, and arming himself in like manner, advanced at the head of the gang, drew his sword, and declared the mate to be the commander of the ship, and the men who joined him part owners. Still, those who had rejected the evil offer remained unmoved; on which Soto ordered out the boats, and pointing to the land, cried out, “There is the African coast; this is our ship — one or the other must be chosen by every man on board within five minutes.” This declaration, although it had the effect of preventing any resistance that might have been offered by the well disposed, HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY to the taking of the vessel, did not change them from their purpose; they still refused to join in the robbery, and entered one by one into the boat, at the orders of Soto, and with but one pair of oars (all that was allowed to them) put off for the shore, from which they were then ten miles distant. Had the weather continued calm, as it was when the boat left the ship, she would have made the shore by dusk; but unhappily a strong gale of wind set in shortly after her departure, and she was seen by Soto and his gang struggling with the billows and approaching night, at such a distance from the land as she could not possibly accomplish while the gale lasted. All on board the ship agreed in opinion that the boat could not live, as they flew away from her at the rate of ten knots an hour, under close reefed topsails, leaving their unhappy messmates to their inevitable fate. Those of the pirates who were lately executed at Cadiz, declared that every soul in the boat perished. The drunken uproar which that night reigned in the pirate ship was in horrid unison with the raging elements around her; contention and quarrelling followed the brutal ebriety of the pirates; each evil spirit sought the mastery of the others, and Soto’s, which was the fiend of all, began to grasp and grapple for its proper place — the head of such a diabolical community. The mate (now the chief) at once gave the reins to his ruffian tyranny; and the keen eye of Soto saw that he who had fawned with him the day before, would next day rule him with an iron rod. Prompt in his actions as he was penetrating in his judgment, he had no sooner conceived a jealousy of the leader than he determined to put him aside; and as his rival lay in his drunken sleep, Soto put a pistol to his head, and deliberately shot him. For this act he excused himself to the crew, by stating to them that it was in their protection he did the act; that their interest was the other’s death; and concluded by declaring himself their leader, and promising a golden harvest to their future labors, provided they obeyed him. Soto succeeded to the height of his wishes, and was unanimously hailed by the crew as their captain. On board the vessel, as I before stated, were a number of slaves, and these the pirates had well secured under hatches. They now turned their attention to those half starved, half suffocated creatures; — some were for throwing them overboard, while others, not less cruel, but more desirous of gain, proposed to take them to some port in one of those countries that deal in human beings, and there sell them. The latter recommendation was adopted, and Soto steered for the West Indies, where he received a good price for his slaves. One of those wretched creatures, a boy, he reserved as a servant for himself; and this boy was destined by Providence to be the witness of the punishment of those white men who tore away from their homes himself and his brethren. He alone will carry back to his country the truth of Heaven’s retribution, and heal the wounded feelings of broken kindred with the recital of it. The pirates now entered freely into their villainous pursuit, and plundered many vessels; amongst others was an American brig, the treatment of which forms the chef d’oeuvre of their atrocity. Having taken out of this brig all the valuables they could find, they hatched down all hands to the hold, except a black man, who was allowed to remain on deck for the special purpose of affording in his torture an amusing exhibition to HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Soto and his gang. They set fire to the brig, then lay to, to observe the progress of the flames; and as the miserable African bounded from rope to rope, now climbing to the mast head — now clinging to the shrouds — now leaping to one part of the vessel, and now to another, — their enjoyment seemed raised to its heighest pitch. At length the hatches opened to the devouring element, the tortured victim of their fiendish cruelty fell exhausted into the flames, and the horrid and revolting scene closed amidst the shouts of the miscreants who had caused it. Of their other exploits, that which ranks next in turpitude, and which led to their overthrow, was the piracy of the Morning Star. They fell in with that vessel near the island Ascension, in the year 1828, as she was on her voyage from Ceylon to England. This vessel, besides a valuable cargo, had on board several passengers, consisting of a major and his wife, an assistant surgeon, two civilians, about five and twenty invalid soldiers, and three or four of their wives. As soon as Benito de Soto perceived the ship, which was at daylight on the 21st of February, he called up all hands, and prepared for attacking her; he was at the time steering on an opposite course to that of the Morning Star. On reconnoitring her, he at first supposed she was a French vessel; but Barbazan, one of his crew, who was himself a Frenchman, assured him the ship was British. “So much the better,” exclaimed Soto, in English (for he could speak that language), “we shall find the more booty.” He then ordered the sails to be squared, and ran before the wind in chase of his plunder, from which he was about two leagues distant. The Defensor de Pedro, the name of the pirate ship, was a fast sailer, but owing to the press of canvas which the Morning Star hoisted soon after the pirate had commenced the chase, he did not come up with her so quickly as he had expected: the delay caused great uneasiness to Soto, which he manifested by muttering curses, and restlessness of manner. Sounds of savage satisfaction were to be heard from every mouth but his at the prospect; he alone expressed his anticipated pleasure by oaths, menaces, and mental inquietude. While Barbazan was employed in superintending the clearing of the decks, the arming and breakfasting of the men, he walked rapidly up and down, revolving in his mind the plan of the approaching attack, and when interrupted by any of the crew, he would run into a volley of imprecations. In one instance, he struck his black boy a violent blow with a telescope, because he asked him if he would have his morning cup of chocolate; as soon, however, as he set his studding sails, and perceived that he was gaining on the Morning Star, he became somewhat tranquil, began to eat heartily of cold beef, drank his chocolate at a draught, and coolly sat down on the deck to smoke a cigar. In less than a quarter of an hour, the pirate had gained considerable on the other vessel. Soto now, without rising from where he sat, ordered a gun, with blank cartridge, to be fired, and the British colors to be hoisted: but finding this measure had not the effect of bringing the Morning Star to, he cried out, “Shot the long gun and give it her point blank.” The order was obeyed, but the shot fell short of the intention, on which he jumped up and cursed the fellows for bunglers who had fired the gun. He then ordered them to load with canister shot, and took the match in his own hand. He did not, however, fire immediately, but waited until he was nearly abreast of his HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY victim; then directing the aim himself, and ordering a man to stand by the flag to haul it down, fired with an air that showed he was sure of his mark. He then ran to haul up the Colombian colors, and having done so, cried out through the speaking trumpet, “Lower your boat down this moment, and let your captain come on board with his papers.” During this fearful chase the people on board the Morning Star were in the greatest alarm; but however their apprehensions might have been excited, that courage, which is so characteristic of a British sailor, never for a moment forsook the captain. He boldly carried on sail, and although one of the men fell from a wound, and the ravages of the shot were every where around him, he determined not to strike. But unhappily he had not a single gun on board, and no small arms that could render his courage availing. The tears of the women, and the prudent advice of the passengers overcoming his resolution, he permitted himself to be guided by the general opinion. One of the passengers volunteered himself to go on board the pirate, and a boat was lowered for the purpose. Both vessels now lay to within fifty yards of each other, and a strong hope arose in those on board the Morning Star, that the gentleman who had volunteered to go to the pirate, might, through his exertions, avert, at least, the worst of the dreaded calamity. Some people here, in their quiet security, have made no scruple of declaring, that the commanding officer of the soldiers on board should not have so tamely yielded to the pirate, particularly as he had his wife along with him, and consequently a misfortune to dread, that might be thought even worse than death: but all who knew the true state of the circumstances, and reflect upon it, will allow that he adopted the only chance of escaping that, which was to be most feared by a husband. The long gun, which was on a pivot in the centre of the pirate ship, could in a few shots sink the Morning Star; and even had resistance been made to the pirates as they boarded her — had they been killed or made prisoners — the result would not be much better. It was evident that the Defensor de Pedro was the best sailer, consequently the Morning Star could not hope to escape; in fact, submission or total destruction was the only choice. The commanding officer, therefore, acted for the best when he recommended the former. There was some slight hope of escaping with life, and without personal abuse, by surrendering, but to contend must be inevitable death. The gentleman who had gone in a boat to the pirate returned in a short time, exhibiting every proof of the ill treatment he had received from Soto and his crew. It appears that when the villains learned that he was not the captain, they fell upon and beat him, as well as the sailors along with him, in a most brutal manner, and with the most horrid imprecations told him, that if the captain did not instantly come, on his return to the vessel, they would blow the ship out of the water. This report as once decided the captain in the way he was to act. Without hesitation he stepped into the boat, taking with him his second mate, three soldiers and a sailor boy, and proceeded to the pirate. On going on board that vessel, along with the mate, Soto, who stood near the mainmast, with his drawn cutlass in his hand, desired him to approach, while the mate was ordered, by Barbazan, to go to the forecastle. Both these unfortunate individuals obeyed, and were instantly slaughtered. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Soto now ordered six picked men to descend into the boat, amongst whom was Barbazan. To him the leader addressed his orders, the last of which was, to take care to put all in the prize to death, and then sink her. The six pirates, who proceeded to execute his savage demand, were all armed alike, — they each carried a brace of pistols, a cutlass and a long knife. Their dress was composed of a sort of coarse cotton chequered jacket and trowsers, shirts that were open at the collar, red woollen caps, and broad canvas waistbelts, in which were the pistols and the knives. They were all athletic men, and seemed such as might well be trusted with the sanguinary errand on which they were despatched. While the boat was conveying them, Soto held in his hand a cutlass, reddened with the blood of the murdered captain, and stood scowling on them with silence: while another ruffian, with a lighted match, stood by the long gun, ready to support the boarding, if necessary, with a shot that would sweep the deck. As the boarders approached the Morning Star, the terror of the females became excessive; they clung to their husbands in despair, who endeavored to allay their fears by their own vain hopes, assuring them that a quiet submission nothing more than the plunder of the vessel was to be apprehended. But a few minutes miserably undeceived them. The pirates rapidly mounted the side, and as they jumped on deck, commenced to cut right and left at all within their reach, uttering at the same time the most dreadful oaths. The females, screaming, hurried to hide themselves below as well as they were able, and the men fell or fled before the pirates, leaving them entire masters of the decks. When the pirates had succeeded in effectually prostrating all the people on deck, they drove most of them below, and reserved the remainder to assist in their operations. Unless the circumstances be closely examined, it may be wondered how six men could have so easily overcome a crew of English seamen supported by about twenty soldiers with a major at their head: — but it will not appear so surprising, when it is considered that the sailors were altogether unarmed, the soldiers were worn out invalids, and more particularly, that the pirate carried a heavy long gun, ready to sink her victim at a shot. Major Logie was fully impressed with the folly of opposing so powerful and desperate an enemy, and therefore advised submission as the only course for the safety of those under his charge; presuming no doubt that something like humanity might be found in the breasts even of the worst of men. But alas! he was woefully deceived in his estimate of the villains’ nature, and felt, when too late, that even death would have been preferable to the barbarous treatment he was forced to endure. Beaten, bleeding, terrified, the men lay huddled together in the hold, while the pirates proceeded in their work of pillage and brutality. Every trunk was hauled forth, every portable article of value heaped for the plunder; money, plate, charts, nautical instruments, and seven parcels of valuable jewels, which formed part of the cargo; these were carried from below on the backs of those men whom the pirates selected to assist them, and for two hours they were thus employed, during which time Soto stood upon his own deck directing the operations; for the vessels were within a hundred yards of each other. The scene which took place in the cabin exhibited a licentious brutality. The sick officer, HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Mr. Gibson, was dragged from his berth; the clothes of the other passengers stripped from their backs, and the whole of the cabin passengers driven on deck, except the females, whom they locked up in the round-house on deck, and the steward, who was detained to serve the pirates with wine and eatables. This treatment, no doubt hastened the death of Gibson; the unfortunate gentleman did not long survive it. As the passengers were forced up the cabin ladder, the feelings of Major Logie, it may be imagined, were of the most heart-rending description. In vain did he entreat to be allowed to remain; he was hurried away from even the chance of protecting his defenceless wife, and battened down with the rest in the hold, there to be racked with the fearful apprehensions of their almost certain doom. The labors of the robbers being now concluded, they sat down to regale themselves, preparatory to the chef d’oeuvre of their diabolical enterprise; and a more terrible group of demi-devils, the steward declares, could not be well imagined than commanded his attention at the cabin table. However, as he was a Frenchman, and naturally polite, he acquitted himself of the office of cup- bearer, if not as gracefully, at least as anxiously, as ever did Ganymede herself. Yet, notwithstanding this readiness to serve the visitors in their gastronomic desires, the poor steward felt ill-requited; he was twice frightened into an icicle, and twice thawed back into conscious horror, by the rudeness of those he entertained. In one instance, when he had filled out a sparkling glass for a ruffian, and believed he had quite won the heart of the drinker by the act, he found himself grasped roughly and tightly by the throat, and the point of a knife staring him in the face. It seems the fellow who thus seized him, had felt between his teeth a sharp bit of broken glass, and fancying that something had been put in the wine to poison him, he determined to prove his suspicions by making the steward swallow what remained in the bottle from which the liquor had been drawn, and thus unceremoniously prefaced his command; however, ready and implicit obedience averted further bad consequences. The other instance of the steward’s jeopardy was this; when the repast was ended, one of the gentlemen coolly requested him to waive all delicacy, and point out the place in which the captain’s money was concealed. He might as well have asked him to produce the philosopher’s stone. However, pleading the truth was of no use; his determined requisitor seconded the demand by snapping a pistol at his breast; having missed fire, he recocked, and again presented; but the fatal weapon was struck aside by Barbazan, who reproved the rashness with a threat, and thus averted the steward’s impending fate. It was then with feelings of satisfaction he heard himself ordered to go down to the hold, and in a moment he was bolted in among his fellow sufferers. The ruffians indulged in the pleasures of the bottle for some time longer, and then having ordered down the females, treated them with even less humanity than characterized their conduct towards the others. The screams of the helpless females were heard in the hold by those who were unable to render them assistance, and agonizing, indeed, must those screams have been to their incarcerated hearers! How far the brutality of the pirates was carried in this stage of the horrid proceeding, we can only surmise; fortunately, their lives were spared, although, as it afterwards appeared, the orders of Soto were to butcher every being on board; and it is thought that these orders HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY were not put into action, in consequence of the villains having wasted so much time in drinking, and otherwise indulging themselves; for it was not until the loud voice of their chief was heard to recall them, that they prepared to leave the ship; they therefore contented themselves with fastening the women within the cabin, heaping heavy lumber on the hatches of the hold, and boring holes in the planks of the vessel below the surface of the water, so that in destroying the unhappy people at one swoop, they might make up for the lost time. They then left the ship, sinking fast to her apparently certain fate. It may be reasonably supposed, bad as their conduct was towards the females, and pitiable as was the suffering it produced, that the lives of the whole left to perish were preserved through it; for the ship must have gone down if the women had been either taken out of her or murdered, and those in the hold inevitably have gone with her to the bottom. But by good fortune, the females succeeded in forcing their way out of the cabin, and became the means of liberating the men confined in the hold. When they came on deck, it was nearly dark, yet they could see the pirate ship at a considerable distance, with all her sails set and bearing away from them. They prudently waited, concealed from the possibility of being seen by the enemy, and when the night fell, they crept to the hatchway, and called out to the men below to endeavor to effect their liberation, informing them that the pirate was away and out of sight. They then united their efforts, and the lumber being removed, the hatches gave way to the force below, so that the released captives breathed of hope again. The delightful draught, however, was checked, when the ship was found to contain six feet of water! A momentary collapse took possession of all their newly excited expectations; cries and groans of despair burst forth, but the sailors’ energy quickly returned, and was followed by that of the others; they set to work at the pumps, and by dint of labor succeeded in keeping the vessel afloat. Yet to direct her course was impossible; the pirates having completely disabled her, by cutting away her rigging and sawing the masts all the way through. The eye of Providence, however, was not averted from the hapless people, for they fell in with a vessel next day that relieved them from their distressing situation, and brought them to England in safety. We will now return to Soto, and show how the hand of that Providence that secured his intended victims, fell upon himself and his wicked associates. Intoxicated with their infamous success, the night had far advanced before Soto learned that the people in the Morning Star, instead of being slaughtered, were only left to be drowned. The information excited his utmost rage. He reproached Barbazan, and those who had accompanied them in the boarding, with disobeying his orders, and declared that now there could be no security for their lives. Late as the hour was, and long as he had been steering away from the Morning Star, he determined to put back, in the hope of effectually preventing the escape of those in the devoted vessel, by seeing them destroyed before his eyes. Soto was a follower of the principle inculcated by the old maxim, “Dead men tell no tales;” and in pursuance of his doctrine, lost not a moment in putting about and running back. But it was too late; he could find no trace of the vessel, and so consoled himself with the belief that she was at the bottom of the sea, many fathoms below the ken and HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY cognizance of Admiralty Courts. Soto, thus satisfied, bent his course to Europe. On his voyage he fell in with a small brig, boarded, plundered, sunk her, and, that he might not again run the hazard of encountering living witnesses of his guilt, murdered the crew, with the exception of one individual, whom he took along with him, on account of his knowledge of the course to Corunna, whither he intended to proceed. But, faithful to his principles of self-protection, as soon as he had made full use of the unfortunate sailor, and found himself in sight of the destined port, he came up to him at the helm, which he held in his hand, “My friend,” said he “is that the harbor of Corunna?” — “Yes,” was the reply. “Then,” rejoined Soto, “You have done your duty well, and I am obliged to you for your services.” On the instant he drew a pistol and shot the man; then coolly flung his body overboard, took the helm himself, and steered into his native harbor as little concerned as if he had returned from an honest voyage. At this port he obtained papers in a false name, disposed of a great part of his booty, and after a short stay set out for Cadiz, where he expected a market for the remainder. He had a fair wind until he came within sight of the coast near that city. It was coming on dark and he lay to, expecting to go into his anchorage next morning, but the wind shifted to the westward, and suddenly began to blow a heavy gale; it was right on the land. He luffed his ship as close to the wind as possible, in order to clear a point that stretched outward, and beat off to windward, but his lee-way carried him towards the land, and he was caught when he least expected the trap. The gale increased — the night grew pitchy dark — the roaring breakers were on his lee-beam — the drifting vessel strikes, rebounds, and strikes again — the cry of horror rings through the flapping cordage, and despair is in the eyes of the demon-crew. Helpless they lie amid the wrath of the storm, and the darkened face of Heaven, for the first time, strikes terror on their guilty hearts. Death is before them, but not with a merciful quickness does he approach; hour after hour the frightful vision glares upon them, and at length disappears only to come upon them again in a more dreadful form. The tempest abates, and the sinners were spared for the time. As the daylight broke they took to their boats, and abandoned the vessel to preserve their lives. But there was no repentance in the pirates; along with the night and the winds went the voice of conscience, and they thought no more of what had passed. They stood upon the beach gazing at the wreck, and the first thought of Soto, was to sell it, and purchase another vessel for the renewal of his atrocious pursuits. With the marked decision of his character, he proposed his intention to his followers, and received their full approbation. The plan was instantly arranged; they were to present themselves as honest, shipwrecked mariners to the authorities at Cadiz; Soto was to take upon himself the office of mate, or contra maestra, to an imaginary captain, and thus obtain their sanction in disposing of the vessel. In their assumed character, the whole proceeded to Cadiz, and presented themselves before the proper officers of the marine. Their story was listened to with sympathy, and for a few days every thing went on to their satisfaction. Soto had succeeded so well as to conclude the sale of the wreck with a broker, for the sum of one thousand seven hundred and fifty dollars; the contract was signed, but fortunately the money was HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY not yet paid, when suspicion arose, from some inconsistencies in the pirates’ account of themselves, and six of them were arrested by the authorities. Soto and one of his crew instantly disappeared from Cadiz, and succeeded in arriving at the neutral ground before Gibraltar, and six more made their escape to the Carraccas. None are permitted to enter the fortress of Gibraltar, without permission from the governor, or a passport. Soto and his companion, therefore, took up their quarters at a Posade on the neutral ground, and resided there in security for several days. The busy and daring mind of the former could not long remain inactive; he proposed to his companion to attempt to enter the garrison in disguise and by stealth, but could not prevail upon him to consent. He therefore resolved to go in alone; and his object in doing so was to procure a supply of money by a letter of credit which he brought with him from Cadiz. His companion, more wise than he, chose the safer course; he knew that the neutral ground was not much controllable by the laws either of the Spanish or the English, and although there was not much probability of being discovered, he resolved not to trust to chance in so great a stake as his life; and he proved to have been right in his judgment, for had he gone to Gibraltar, he would have shared the same fate of his chief. This man is the only one of the whole gang, who has not met with the punishment of his crimes, for he succeeded in effecting his escape on board some vessel. It is not even suspected to what country he is gone; but his description, no doubt, is registered. The steward of the Morning Star informed me, that he is a tall, stout man, with fair hair, and fresh complexion, of a mild and gentle countenance, but that he was one of the worst villains of the whole piratical crew. I believe he is stated to be a Frenchman. Soto secured his admission into the garrison by a false pass, and took up his residence at an inferior tavern in a narrow lane, which runs off the main street of Gibraltar, and is kept by a man of the name of Basso. The appearance of this house suits well with the associations of the worthy Benito’s life. I have occasion to pass the door frequently at night, for our barrack, (the Casement,) is but a few yards from it. I never look at the place without feeling an involuntary sensation of horror — the smoky and dirty nooks — the distant groups of dark Spaniards, Moors, and Jews, their sallow countenances made yellow by the fight of dim oil lamps — the unceiled rafters of the rooms above, seen through unshuttered windows and the consciousness of their having covered the atrocious Soto, combine this effect upon me. In this den the villain remained for a few weeks, and during this time seemed to enjoy himself as if he had never committed a murder. The story he told Basso of his circumstances was, that he had come to Gibraltar on his way to Cadiz from Malaga, and was merely awaiting the arrival of a friend. He dressed expensively — generally wore a white hat of the best English quality, silk stockings, white trowsers, and blue frock coat. His whiskers were large and bushy, and his hair, which was very black, profuse, long and naturally curled, was much in the style of a London preacher of prophetic and anti-poetic notoriety. He was deeply browned with the sun, and had an air and gait expressive of his bold, enterprising, and desperate mind. Indeed, when I saw him in his cell and at his trial, although his frame was attenuated almost to a skeleton, the color of his HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY face a pale yellow, his eyes sunken, and hair closely shorn; he still exhibited strong traces of what he had been, still retained his erect and fearless carriage, his quick, fiery, and malevolent eye, his hurried and concise speech, and his close and pertinent style of remark. He appeared to me such a man as would have made a hero in the ranks of his country, had circumstances placed him in the proper road to fame; but ignorance and poverty turned into the most ferocious robber, one who might have rendered service and been an honor to his sunken country. I should like to hear what the phrenologists say of his head; it appeared to me to be the most peculiar I had ever seen, and certainly, as far as the bump of destructiveness went, bore the theory fully out. It is rumored here that the skull has been sent to the savans of Edinburg; if this be the case, we shall no doubt be made acquainted with their sage opinions upon the subject, and great conquerors will receive a farther assurance of how much they resemble in their physical natures the greatest murderers. When I visited the pirate in the Moorish castle where he was confined, he was sitting in his cold, narrow, and miserable cell, upon a pallet of straw, eating his coarse meal from a tin plate. I thought him more an object of pity than vengeance; he looked so worn with disease, so crushed with suffering, yet so affable, frank, and kind in his address; for he happened to be in a communicative mood, a thing that was by no means common with him. He spoke of his long confinement, till I thought the tears were about to start from his eyes, and alluded to his approaching trial with satisfaction; but his predominant characteristic, ferocity, appeared in his small piercing black eyes before I left him, as he alluded to his keeper, the Provost, in such a way that made me suspect his desire for blood was not yet extinguished. When he appeared in court on his trial, his demeanor was quite altered; he seemed to me to have suddenly risen out of the wretch he was in his cell, to all the qualities I had heard of him; he stood erect and unembarrassed; he spoke with a strong voice, attended closely to the proceedings, occasionally examined the witnesses, and at the conclusion protested against the justice of his trial. He sometimes spoke to the guards around him, and sometimes affected an air of carelessness of his awful situation, which, however, did not sit easy upon him. Even here the leading trait of his mind broke forth; for when the interpreter commenced his office, the language which he made use of being pedantic and affected, Soto interrupted him thus, while a scowl sat upon his brow that terrified the man of words: “I don’t understand you, man; speak Spanish like others, and I’ll listen to you.” When the dirk that belonged to Mr. Robertson, the trunk and clothes taken from Mr. Gibson, and the pocket book containing the ill-fated captain’s handwriting were placed before him, and proved to have been found in his room, and when the maid servant of the tavern proved that she found the dirk under his pillow every morning on arranging his bed; and when he was confronted with his own black slave, between two wax lights, the countenance of the villain appeared in its true nature, not depressed nor sorrowful, but vivid and ferocious; and when the patient and dignified governor, Sir George Don, passed the just sentence of the law upon him, he looked daggers at his heart, and assumed a horrid silence, more eloquent than words. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY The criminal persisted up to the day before his execution in asserting his innocence, and inveighing against the injustice of his trial, but the certainty of his fate, and the awful voice of religion, at length subdued him. He made an unreserved confession of his guilt, and became truly penitent; gave up to the keeper the blade of a razor which he had secreted between the soles of his shoes for the acknowledged purpose of adding suicide to his crimes, and seemed to wish for the moment that was to send him before his Creator. I witnessed his execution, and I believe there never was a more contrite man than he appeared to be; yet there were no drivelling fears upon him — he walked firmly at the tail of the fatal cart, gazing sometimes at his coffin, sometimes at the crucifix which he held in his hand. The symbol of divinity he frequently pressed to his lips, repeated the prayers spoken in his ear by the attendant clergyman, and seemed regardless of every thing but the world to come. The gallows was erected beside the water, and fronting the neutral ground. He mounted the cart as firmly as he had walked behind it, and held up his face to Heaven and the beating rain, calm, resigned, but unshaken; and finding the halter too high for his neck, he boldly stepped upon his coffin, and placed his head in the noose, then watching the first turn of the wheels, he murmured “adios todos,”6 and leaned forward to facilitate his fall. The black slave of the pirate stood upon the battery trembling before his dying master to behold the awful termination of a series of events, the recital of which to his African countrymen, when he shall return to his home, will give them no doubt, a dreadful picture of European civilization. The black boy was acquitted at Cadiz, but the men who had fled to the Carraccas, as well as those arrested after the wreck, were convicted, executed, their limbs severed, and hung on tenter hooks, as a warning to all pirates.
6.“Farewell, all.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1831
The study of paradigms of bridge failure by Louis Joseph Vicat, RAPPORT SUR LES PONTS EN FIL DU FER SUR LE RHONE, was necessitated by the collapse of a number of France’s suspension bridges.
The French removed one of the massive obelisks of red granite still surviving at Luxor in Egypt (after its temples had been plundered by the Persians in 520BCE), and this would be set up in the Place de la Concorde in Paris in 1836 (what’s the point? — Oh, you know).
The phrenologist Dr. George Combe’s OBSERVATIONS ON MENTAL DERANGEMENT. The Phrenological Society of Paris was established.
Heinrich Heine went to Paris as a journalist, and there would write newspaper articles about the development of democracy and capitalism in France.
Jean-Baptiste Say became Professor of Political Economy at the College de France. A chair of Egyptian antiquities was created there, especially for Jean-François Champollion.
ONE COULD BE ELSEWHERE, AS ELSEWHERE DOES EXIST. ONE CANNOT BE ELSEWHEN SINCE ELSEWHEN DOES NOT. (TO THE WILLING MANY THINGS CAN BE EXPLAINED, THAT FOR THE UNWILLING WILL REMAIN FOREVER MYSTERIOUS.)
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1832
Johann Gaspar Spurzheim’s OUTLINES OF PHRENOLOGY was published in Boston, elaborating on the work of Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) in Europe.
The skull of the downtown lawyer and politician Daniel Webster, he noted, was all of 25 inches in circumference. According to Spurzheim’s phrenology parlor a few blocks away from Webster’s law practice,
there was unquestionably a great mind inside that great chamber — and this pronouncement about the political mind was the best science of the day. Yet how different were Webster’s attitudes than the attitudes of a man like Thoreau, a small man whose ideas had to fit within a small head! For instance, Webster’s definitive attitude toward the tribes: he knew it to be quite obvious, that there was nothing “in the languages of the tribes as in their laws, manners, and customs, worth studying or knowing.” (It is strange to note that we now suspect HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY dark Daniel to have had some Native American ancestry: was he “protesting too much”?) And Daniel was well known to the Thoreau family, for he had courted Louisa Dunbar on a buggy ride in Boscawen while a student at Exeter preparing for Dartmouth College.
If ever a school had an unblemished record, it was this New Hampshire powerhouse. Set in the state’s third- oldest town, Exeter’s ivy-clad buildings give it the appearance of a geographically displaced Harvard. It is. Only slightly smaller than arch-rival Andover, Exeter turns out students who are verbally acute, organized, and programmed to achieve; its graduates include Daniel Webster, Jay Rockefeller, and John Irving.
— Jesse Kornbluth, “Exeter’s Passion Play,” Vanity Fair, December 1992, page 218.
Yet over the years Webster had come to obtain less and less credibility in Thoreau’s eyes.
Daniel the big-headed politician, becoming more and more financially successful, acquired a large property, HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY “Green Harbor,” the country estate in Marshfield that Thoreau would later visit.
“Power naturally and necessarily follows property.” — Daniel Webster
To prepare you for what Thoreau was to see on this visit, I will quote at length from Tamara Plakins Thornton’s CULTIVATING GENTLEMEN: THE MEANING OF COUNTRY LIFE AMONG THE BOSTON ELITE 1785-1860 (New Haven CT: Yale UP, 1989):
78910111213141516
7. (Charles Henry Charles Thomas), Appraisal of the Estate of the late Hon. Danl. Webster, Marshfield, December 14, 1852, Boston Athenæum; M. Wiltse, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Correspondence, 6 vols. (Hanover NH: UP of New England, 1974-84), esp. correspondence with Charles Henry Thomas; C.H. Van Tyne, ed., The Letters of Daniel Webster (NY: McClure, Phillips, 1902), pages 641-89; N. Parker Willis, Hurry-Graphs; or, Sketches of Scenery, Celebrities and Society, Taken from Life (NY: Charles Scribner, 1851), pp. 18-19; Charles Lanman, The Private Life of Daniel Webster (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1852), pp. 69-75; George Curtis, The Life of Daniel Webster (NY: D. Appleton, 1870), 2:107-11; Peter Harvey, Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown, 1877), pages 275-9; The Cultivator, n.s., 3 (November 1846): 355; “Sketches of Farms: The Farm of the Hon. Daniel Webster,” The Cultivator, n.s., 6 (January 1849): 9-11; Emeline Stuart Wortley, “A Visit at Mr. Webster’s,” Harper’s New Monthly Magazine 3 (June 1851): 94-6; Irving H. Bartlett, Daniel Webster (NY, W.W. Norton, 1978), pages 122-3; 208-9; 211-4; Maurice G. Baxter, One and Inseparable: Daniel Webster and the Union (Cambridge: Harvard UP, 1984), pages 282-6; Merrill D. Peterson, The Great Triumvirate: Webster, Clay, and Calhoun (NY: Oxford UP, 1987), page 385; and Rexford B. Sherman, “Daniel Webster, Gentleman Farmer,” Agricultural History 53 (April 1979): 475-87. 8. Irving H. Bartlett, Daniel Webster (NY: W.W. Norton, 1978), page 208. 9. Irving H. Bartlett, Daniel Webster (NY: W.W. Norton, 1978), pages 74-5, 122, 200. 10. Irving H. Bartlett, Daniel Webster (NY: W.W. Norton, 1978), pages 158-61; C.H. Van Tyne, ed., The Letters of Daniel Webster (NY: McClure, Phillips, 1902), pages 647-51; Rexford B. Sherman, “Daniel Webster, Gentleman Farmer,” Agricultural History 53 (April 1979): 483. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
Lecture Season: The 4th course of lectures offered by the Salem Lyceum.
November 10, Saturday: While on one of his phrenology lecture tours, Johann Gaspar Spurzheim died of typhoid fever in Boston, Massachusetts.
The Wilderness and the Solitary Place, an anthem by cathedral organist Samuel Sebastian Wesley, was performed for the initial time, during ceremonies for the opening of the rebuilt Hereford Cathedral.
11. Bartlett, Webster, page 208.
12. “Sketches of Farms: The Farm of the Hon. Daniel Webster,” The Cultivator, n.s., 6 (January 1849): 9. 13. Description of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society festival of 1845, in Transactions of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society for the Years 1843-4-5-6 (Boston: Dutton and Wentworth, 1847), page 102. 14. Charles Lanman, The Private Life of Daniel Webster (NY: Harper and Brothers, 1852), page 71; Bartlett, Webster, page 214; Speech of Edward Everett, in In Memory of Daniel Webster, page 30. 15. Peter Harvey, Reminiscences and Anecdotes of Daniel Webster (Boston: Little, Brown, 1877), page 277; Webster to Charles Henry Thomas, February 4, 1836, in Charles M. Wiltse, ed., The Papers of Daniel Webster: Correspondence, 6 vols. (Hanover, NH: UP of New England, 1974-84), 4:82. 16. Harvey, Webster, page 295; Centennial Year, p. 74. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Because the ordinary farmer of Massachusetts was nothing but a symbol to elite Bostonians, they “played” yeoman in a way that earlier generations neither could nor did. Retirement to a country estate at the end of a business career was thus depicted not only as evidence of personal refinement but also as a longed- for return to the peaceful life of a farmer. “The stripling,” commented Charles T. Russell at a county fair in 1850, “just mounted at the counting house desk, or for the first six months, fingering laces, or measuring off cambrics and ginghams, or it may be, just emerging from college walls, looks back to the farm as an escape from drudgery. The merchant, the manufacturer, the professional man, on the crowded and heaving ocean of middle life, turns to it, as the sailor, to his distant home.”* It made no difference, of course, that most such men had no farm to “look back” to or that the only “home” they had ever known was a Boston town house. ——————— * Charles T. Russell, “Agricultural Progress in Massachusetts for the Last Half Century,” an address to the Hampden County Agricultural Society, in Transactions of the Agricultural Societies...1850, pp. 410-11. See also “[Review of Andrew Jackson] Downing on Rural Architecture,” North American Review 56 (January 1843): 1-2. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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No individual epitomized the simultaneous self- characterization as both landed aristocrat and simple yeoman better than the Marshfield Farmer himself, Daniel Webster. Webster first acquired the Marshfield property known as Green Harbor in 1832. What began as a modest enough 160-acre farm expanded over the years into a spread of no fewer than fourteen hundred acres, encompassing thirty buildings and requiring the labor of twenty-five men, most of them tenant farmers. It has been estimated that Webster spent a total of ninety thousand dollars on the estate —an enormous sum for that era— sometimes at the rate of twenty-five hundred a month, about the same amount of money he was simultaneously borrowing. It took that kind of money to turn what had been a marginal New England farm into a squire’s estate. Webster not only acquired more land, he also renovated a modest eighteenth-century farmhouse into an elegant residence; transformed the farmstead into a proper English country landscape, complete with ornamental geese, peacocks, and llamas; undertook numerous agricultural experiments, most inspired by British agricultural reformers; and stocked his barns with imported livestock of impeccable pedigree. As early as his days as Christopher Gore’s law clerk, Webster had been attracted to an aristocratic way of life. He liked good wines, fine dining, and elegant company. The English landed aristocracy particularly appealed to him, as a class invariably endowed with style and at least potentially with a sense of public duty. If, on his journey through Britain in 1839, Webster did not approve of every extravagance indulged in by the English aristocracy, he was certainly attracted by their elegant manner of living. Part of this style of life, of course, was a fashionable interest in experimental agriculture. It was entirely in character, then, for Webster as something of an American squire to attend a meeting of the Royal Agricultural Society, compose a memorandum on new methods of field drainage, and make careful note of local farming conditions. But Webster as the country gentleman and Marshfield as the manor are only half the story. Squire Webster, as his Marshfield overseer always referred to him, also cultivated an image as the Farmer of Marshfield, a sturdy yeoman at heart. The pomp, the glory, the power of political life were not really what Webster desired; they were instead the sacrifices he made to serve the public. “Nothing affords him more true pleasure,” wrote one agricultural writer in 1849, “than the personal supervision of the farming operations on his estate, and social and familiar discussion of the principles of good husbandry with his brethren of the plow. He retires from the noise and bustle of the world, and the wearing duties of public life, during a winter at Washington, to his pleasant and modest country seat, with much delight.... Here ... none can be more cheerful and familiar in all that pertains to agreeable companionship, than the yeoman, —the Farmer of Marshfield.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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And the part of the yeoman he played. It was Senator Webster, whose huge estate boasted vast orchards and an acre-large flower garden, who commented disingenuously in 1845 at a horticultural society dinner: “We, who belong to the class of farmers, are compelled to bring nothing but our applause to those whose taste, condition, and position enable them to contribute these horticultural excellencies which we see around us.” What part of the yeoman image was deliberately cultivated by Webster himself and what part was ascribed to him by others, how much was fact and how much fiction, are almost impossible to determine. There are stories of Webster as he “descant[ed] upon the goodness and beauty of his Alderney cows”; pitched hay faster than his hired hands; insisted that his horses be buried standing up and in their halters; and, during his last fatal illness, called for his “favorite yoke of Syrian oxen” to be passed before his window. This is the man who, while feeding ears of corn to his cattle, allegedly remarked to his son, “I had rather be here than in the Senate,” and who in truth wrote his farm agent from Washington: “Amidst the toil of law, & the stunning din of politics, any thing is welcome, which calls my thoughts back to Marshfield, tho’ it be only — to be told which way the wind blows.” The same statesman who supposedly addressed the steward of his New Hampshire estate as “Brother Farmer” was in fact toasted in 1832 at an MSPA dinner as “Our senator in Congress — a New Hampshire farmer.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
Webster’s manipulation of his Marshfield image should come as no surprise. As much as he was by temperament drawn to men of wealth and power and to their elegant mode of living, Webster could not afford to cultivate an exclusively aristocratic image, lest he lose his popularity with the voters. Representing his life at Marshfield as a return to his yeoman roots was a stroke of political brilliance. But it may have been more than that. Webster’s career was in large part based on his evocation of myths and manipulation of symbols. The American union was one such symbol, of course, but so too was New England’s rich heritage. As memorable as his “Liberty and Union” speech were his addresses at the dedication of Plymouth Rock and of the Bunker Hill monument. Both of these dedication speeches drew tremendous power by evoking images of New England’s moral glory. In the gallery of New England heritage, the Massachusetts yeoman hangs next to the Pilgrim Fathers and Boston’s Revolutionary war heroes, much as the portrait of Webster as the Marshfield Farmer hangs side by side with that of him as preserver of the Union. In the same way that Webster’s oratory heightened the power of important cultural symbols, his cultivation of a yeoman image elevated the power of that cultural icon. Webster’s estate “Green Harbor”
Webster’s estate “Green Harbor” [SUMMARY] In addition to speculating in Western land in 1836 (much to his post-Panic dismay), Webster owned farms in his native village of Franklin, New Hampshire, and the far more famous Green Harbor, his estate in Marshfield, Massachusetts. The New Hampshire holdings consisted of the original family farm, the Elms, much enlarged by the purchase of contiguous land. Although HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Daniel Webster entrusted the management of the farm to a local farmer in exchange for half of the farm’s income, he nonetheless chose to involve himself in many of the day-to-day workings of the farm, sending detailed instructions in frequent letters. The Webster family did occasionally visit the Elms, setting up house in a wing of the farmhouse put aside for their use. The real country seat of the Websters, however, was Green Harbor, purchased in 1832. Over the years, Webster invested no less than ninety thousand dollars in the estate — and the farm never turned a profit. The Marshfield holdings were expanded from the original 160 acres to a full 1,400 acres cultivated with the labor of twenty-five men, most of them tenant farmers. The old-fashioned farmhouse (just one of thirty buildings) was enlarged and renovated into an elegant residence. The scruffy farmstead was transformed into a proper English landscape with the planting of huge numbers of ornamental trees and a full acre of flowers; the construction of a trout pond and a stone bridge over the pond to complete a circuit walk of the estate; and the importation of Indian peacocks and Peruvian llamas. Webster’s Marshfield pastimes were consistent with his image as country squire — fishing, boating, hunting for waterfowl, and, probably the most important, the pursuit of experimental farming. Many of Webster’s agricultural activities –carried out by his resident overseer, Charles Henry Thomas, and Porter Wright, his head farmer– bordered on the extravagant; his “scientific” application of kelp as a fertilizer, for example, involved the construction of a road to the sea and the labor of 150 teams of oxen. Guiding this and other agricultural operations at Green Harbor —the cultivation of turnips, for example— was the desire to implement reforms put forth by the aristocratic “book farmers” of Britain. As part of that reform program, and again in line with his “cultivated breed” of agriculture, Webster stocked his farm with the finest in pedigreed cattle, horses, sheep, swine, and poultry, many imported directly by Webster from England and Scotland. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
The Salem Lyceum — 4th Season Rufus Choate of Salem Applicability of American Scenes and History to the performances and genius of Sir Walter Scott W.H. Brooks of Salem Advantages of Commerce, with sketches of its history as connected with Salem William Sullivan On the Rules of Evidence as Applied to Common Life George S. Hillard Comparison of Ancient and Modern Literature Caleb Foote of Salem Value of the Union and Consequences of Disunion James W. Thompson of Salem Connexion of Literature with Morality R.D. Mussey Anatomy of the Chest and Spine Samuel Worcester Indian Eloquence James Walker Phrenology M.S. Perry Diseases peculiar to the different classes of society Nathaniel West, Jr. of Salem Imprisonment for Debt George H. Devereux of Salem Feudal Ages Amos D. Wheeler Geology Samuel G. Howe Education of the Blind Lowell Mason Science of Music Nehemiah Cleaveland Poetry Professor John Farrar Advantages of Knowledge Joshua H. Ward of Salem History of Spain Rufus Babcock of Salem Moral Nature of Man Thomas Spencer of Salem History of India William B. Calhoun Political Economy HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY November 17, Saturday: The Reverend Charles Follen delivered the oration at the grand society funeral of Dr. Johann Gaspar Spurzheim, coiner of the term “phrenology,” whose death due to typhoid fever in Boston had sadly cut short an American lecture tour.
THE FUNERAL ORATION
NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE NOVEMBER 17TH, 1832 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST). ALL THAT THE AUDIENCE KNEW AS OF THIS DAY WAS THAT THIS FOUNDER OF PHRENOLOGY HAD DIED; THEY HAD NO IDEA WHAT WOULD HAPPEN TO PHRENOLOGY ITSELF.
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1833
Lecture Season: The 5th course of lectures offered by the Salem Lyceum is shown on a following screen.
During this winter Abba Alcott became pregnant. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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The Salem Lyceum — 5th Season Edward Everett Agriculture E. Evans Geography, Manners and Customs of various Countries (1st lecture) E. Evans Geography, Manners and Customs of various Countries (2nd lecture) E. Evans Geography, Manners and Customs of various Countries (3rd lecture) E. Evans Geography, Manners and Customs of various Countries (4th lecture) Dr. Barber Phrenology (1st Lecture) Dr. Barber Phrenology (2nd Lecture) Dr. Barber Phrenology (3rd Lecture) Dr. Barber Phrenology (4th Lecture) Dr. Barber Phrenology (5th Lecture) Dr. Barber Phrenology (6th Lecture) Dr. Barber Phrenology (7th Lecture) Dr. Barber Phrenology (8th Lecture) Dr. Barber Phrenology (9th Lecture) George H. Devereux of Salem Adaptation of Philosophy to the Wants and Condition of Man David Merritt of Salem History of the Jews J.V.C. Smith Mechanism of the Eye Charles G. Page of Salem Pneumatics Charles G. Page of Salem Acoustics Charles A. Andrew of Salem ????????? Stephen P. Webb of Salem History of Turkey Lemuel Willis of Salem Progress of Society HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1834
The red-hot idea in the study of the mental powers and dispositions of this era was that an individual’s intellectual abilities and personality traits could be revealed through measurement of his or her skullbone. E L E M E N T S OF P H R E N O L O G Y.
BY GEORGE COMBE, LATE PRESIDENT OF THE PHRENOLOGICAL SOCIETY. ______SECOND AMERICAN EDITION
IMPROVED AND ENLARGED, FROM THE THIRD EDINBURGH, BY THE AUTHOR. ______W I T H E N G R A V I N G S. B O S T O N : M A R S H, C A P E N & L Y O N. 1834.
December 9, Tuesday: In David Henry Thoreau’s absence, “The ‘Institute of 1770’” voted to have him and other members debate, at their January meeting, on the topic “Is political eminence more worthy of admiration than literary?”: “Is early marriage beneficial?” Interesting lecture from Hale on “Phrenology.” Question selected for debate at the next meeting: “Is political eminence more worthy of admiration than literary?” The debaters: Messrs. Thoreau, Thomas, Richardson, Lane. The lecturers: Messrs. Holmes 2d and Huidekoper. Absent from this HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY meeting: Holmes 2d, Kendall, Kimball, Thomas, Thoreau, Tuckerman.
PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY A FULL MEASURE OF PHRENOLOGY
H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [email protected] (April, 1999). Reviewed for H-SHEAR by Michael Sappol
In an old Saturday Night Live skit, an inept sleight-of-hand artist, played by Steve Martin, calls on a volunteer from the audience, played by Bill Murray. Martin proceeds to forceably relieve Murray of his change, then his watch, then his wallet, then his underwear. The skit ends with Martin knocking the hapless Murray to the ground, stripping him of everything he possesses. Charles Colbert’s study of phrenology and fine art in nineteenth-century America, A MEASURE OF PERFECTION, has something of this antic singlemindedness. Colbert mugs his subject in a highly entertaining and instructive fashion — and succeeds wildly, excessively, in his aims. In the early decades of the nineteenth century, phrenology took America by storm. After Johann Gaspar Spurzheim’s tour of 1832 and George Combe’s tour of 1838-1840, phrenological societies formed in nearly every major city; phrenological lecturers crisscrossed the country, giving public readings of the skulls of eminent personages and local townspeople before large and enthusiastic audiences; Combe’s THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN outsold every other book except the BIBLE and PILGRIM’S PROGRESS. Phrenology’s vogue came at a fortuitous historical juncture: the moment at which a new economic order (based on mass production and mass consumerism), a new political order (based on democratic procedures and the expansionistic nation-state), and a new social order (based on class, nationality, gender and race), were all coming into being. In this period of flux and contradiction, Americans obsessively struggled to acquire, sort out, and navigate between, highly unstable identities. Phrenology’s appeal lay in its claim to be a “science of mind”: the phrenological individual was legible, fixed and susceptible to scientific management. By mapping the brain onto a template of regions (“organs”) corresponding to fixed aspects of moral character (“faculties” or “aptitudes”), which in turn corresponded to the “conformation” of the enfolding skull, phrenology promised to reveal a person’s distinctive mixture of attributes to produce a geography of the individual. Nelson Sizer, a far-ranging mid-century phrenologist, would customarily blow into town, preceded by posters and advertisements in local papers, lecture on the theory of phrenology, and analyze the cranial bumps of volunteers on stage. The show’s dramatic tension would often revolve around attempts to deceive the lecturer: the leading man of the town would cloak himself in rags; a beggar would be shaved and dressed up in expensive clothes. A skillful phrenologist, according to Sizer, could never be fooled. But more than social identity was at stake: the moral economy of industrial capitalism and the ethos of American republicanism were up for grabs. Here again the pull of phrenology was almost irresistible: it provided a cultural logic which harmonized morality, physiology, and aesthetics, a set of scientific methods and doctrines that could transform self, society, and Other. At the heart of the discourse was an obsession with surveying, inventorying, and labelling the self and its constituent physical and moral components, of textualizing and disembodying the body, while at the same time embodying abstract text and moral principle, a double impulse which phrenologists and fellow travellers termed “physical metaphysics.” Interactions between mind and body, spirit and matter, individual and society, could be rationalized and taxonomized, mapped onto the body and society, a procedure that would inevitably further individual and collective progress. Phrenology had far-reaching implications and far-reaching goals. But, until fairly recently, scholars have scanted it. Notwithstanding the enthusiasm with which influential figures like Horace Mann, Henry Ward Beecher, and other reform-minded citizens greeted the Europeans Spurzheim and Combe, literary critics and art historians have typically regarded or disregarded phrenology as an anomaly. The old conventional wisdom went something like this: After a brief fling with respectability, in the mid-1840s phrenology passed into the American hands of the Orson and Lorenzo Fowler and their followers, and thereafter devolved into a hucksterish entertainment for small town hicks and big city proles, a sideshow to the main event of American culture. Phrenology was never more than a passing fad and did not merit the commitment of serious HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY intellectual resources (unlike Transcendentalism, which drained many gallons of literary historical ink). A diversion phrenology may have been, but the dismissive assessment of it has not been tenable since 1955, when Norman Davies came out with PHRENOLOGY, FAD AND SCIENCE. Phrenology, Davies argued, laid the intellectual and professional foundations of psychology, criminology, health reform, neurology, and racial taxonomy, and it provided a characterology and moral philosophy that was widely influential in mid-nineteenth-century literature, especially in the writings of those great eccentrics, Poe and Whitman. (Tellingly, Davies justified his interest in phrenology by reference to its role as a progenitor of more respectable scientific endeavors and as an influence on high literature, rather than as an intrinsically meaningful cultural phenomenon.) After Davies, studies in phrenology lay pretty much dormant until Roger Cooter’s vibrantly contentious 1986 social history, THE POPULAR MEANING OF SCIENCE. Focusing on Great Britain, Cooter demonstrated that phrenology captivated, activated, and ultimately diverted social activists and reformers — and a large middle- and working- class audience. (THE POPULAR MEANING OF SCIENCE is structured around the “Why is there no socialism in Great Britain?” problem.) Phrenology, according to Cooter, figured as a scientific program for induction into the bourgeois order (a science of the bourgeois self) and, in certain variants, a program for radically transforming that order. In Marxian terms, phrenology was a historically specific variant of bourgeois ideology, and therefore, a form of false consciousness, but one which at moments contained an authentic revolutionary impulse. Neither Cooter nor Davies, both historians, has made much of an impact on art history or literary criticism, but revived interest in phrenology is now emerging out of the current preoccupation with non-canonical (but often influential) cultural movements, forms, and discourses, the most notable example being David S. Reynolds’s stellar 1995 WALT WHITMAN’S AMERICA: A CULTURAL BIOGRAPHY (which devotes considerable attention to things phrenological). Colbert’s work falls roughly into this genre: it demonstrates the presence of non-canonical sources in canonical objects and revalues non-canonical works, paintings, and sculptures as part of a larger cultural matrix. Colbert detects phrenology in rarefied domains, places where the enormous condescension of posterity says it shouldn’t be. Well-known nineteenth-century American fine artists –Hiram Powers, William Sidney Mount, Harriet Hosmer, Asher B. Durand, Henry Inman, William Rimmer, and Thomas Cole– and their most influential works were informed by phrenological doctrine, or were in dialogue with it. In its prime, phrenology achieved a status roughly comparable to that of psychoanalysis, and, like psychoanalysis, continued to find a respectable audience even after high science refuted many of its central claims (in the case of phrenology, the experiments of eminent French physiologists Pierre Flourens [1845] and Paul Broca [1861]). If psychoanalysis has failed to assimilate or refute the antagonistic findings of cognitive psychology and neuroscience, it remains compelling to therapists, patients, literary theorists, novelists, historians, and filmmakers because it provides a satisfyingly complex narrative of self development, a rich vocabulary of subject formation. Similarly, as an authoritative vocabulary of characterological description, phrenology continued for many decades to be deployed by novelists, theologians, sculptors, and painters — even by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Sr., professor of anatomy at Harvard, who scattered phrenological descriptions and essays, despite utterly rejecting the scientific validity of the doctrine. Phrenology was in the air, you had to breathe it, and it often had intoxicating effects. The bulk of A MEASURE OF PERFECTION is taken up with a wild thicket of close readings of specific mid- nineteenth-century sculptures and paintings, set next to meticulously researched accounts of the activities of their creators, patrons, audiences, and phrenological influencers. The method is simple: Colbert demonstrates that the subject had the means, the opportunity and the motive to commit phrenology, and in many cases produces a signed confession (in the form of correspondence to a patron or friend, a published commentary by the artist, etc.). Colbert asks (and answers): How did the artist and patron regard the work? How did contemporary critics and viewers? What immediate phrenological influences and themes were close at hand? What lectures did the artist attend (or might have attended)? What publications did he own or subscribe to or make reference to? In what phrenological forms and forums did representations of the piece and its creator circulate? In what aesthetic forms and forums did phrenology and its procedures circulate? Colbert shows that art anatomy and drawing manuals, artists’ letters, and journals devoted to art were full of phrenology and kindred doctrines; phrenological journals likewise were full of references to sculptors and sculptures, paintings and painters. Fine art took to phrenology; phrenology took to fine art. Once the multiple links are established, phrenology turns out to be an art historian’s Rosetta Stone. Individual works of art can be analyzed like a hieroglyph, easily decoded. Colbert’s research demonstrates that they were intended to be read precisely in this fashion; artist, patron, and audience were immersed in the same phrenological HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY idiom, spoke the same patois. The result is a series of fresh and authoritative interpretations of well-known and obscure pieces and genres. Where a previous generation of art historians assumed that the Hudson River School was informed by Emersonian Transcendentalism, Colbert shows instead a direct phrenological connection. Where a previous generation dismissed Hiram Powers’ “The Greek Slave” as a derivative softcore take on classical art, Colbert produces a rich assortment of contemporary reviews, letters, etc., to show that “The Greek Slave” embodied phrenological ideals of robust femininity, figured as a phrenological critique of Greek and Renaissance sculpture (Venus de’ Medici got the proportions wrong), and so on. This approach is extremely fruitful –after Colbert you have to look at “The Greek Slave,” the Hudson River School, and practically every other work of nineteenth-century American art, with new eyes– but reductionism is a danger. Colbert rejects any interpretation that reads it from an abolitionist perspective or foregrounds the slave’s erotic subordination. But is that all that can be said? Surely contemporary audiences reacted to the statue ambivalently, in ways that printed discourse, or even private correspondence, may not have given full voice to. From our vantage point, it is reasonable to suspect that “The Greek Slave” could have said one thing and done another. Having thoroughly researched a private and public critical apparatus that gives detailed instructions on how to read the piece, Colbert is not one to look for double messages. But given the specificity and historicity of the readings, reductionism is not much of a problem. The strength of A MEASURE OF PERFECTION lies in its thick description of the uses of phrenology for nineteenth- century fine artists (and of fine art for phrenology): the encoding of abstract (moral or immoral) principles in the skull, face, body, and life narrative, of individuals. The artist (along with the phrenologist and the physician) was assigned a privileged cultural role: to precisely, scientifically, represent in his artworks the embodiment of moral, racial, sexual, national, historical character — for the moral instruction of the viewer. The body materializes in particular, scientifically discernible matrixes, the combination of abstract principles, governed by the overall laws of physiology. But social identity has always been a moving target and a joint production, one that even a protean discourse like phrenology ultimately failed to keep up with. Here, one wishes that Colbert cut back a bit on the exuberant readings of individual pieces and extended his analysis outward to the broader cultural and social significance, uses, and trajectory of phrenology. Particularly lacking is any periodization of phrenology, its circulation among different social classes and different professional settings, its relation to kindred and competing doctrines and to its critics. Colbert picks and chooses from different decades and authors and domains. Evidence from the 1880s (a low-brow Zeus Franklin text), and the 1890s (a Winslow Homer doodle) butt up against middle- and high-brow evidence from the 1830s, 40s and 60s. This demonstrates the longevity and consistency of phrenological doctrines, but the opportunity for historicizing phrenology, even confined to the domain of fine art, is lost. The end of the story is not narrated: we have the rise but not the fall. Phrenology ultimately came to be accounted by artists as a crude, plebeian, embodied, irrational thing. Phrenology’s debarment from the canon of aesthetic theory and, subsequently, scholarly consideration, was almost certainly based on an identification of phrenology with a philosophically vulgar materialism, an aesthetically vulgar commercialism, and a socially vulgar audience: phrenology in bodifying abstract principle became tainted by body; phrenological readings were too easy to stage and too easy to read, and came to be regarded as dime-museum entertainments with no moral purpose. Emersonian Transcendentalism, in contrast, was purged of tropes that referenced the body and was full of abstract moral purpose; transcendentalism, never the sport of plebes, became the sport of scholars. The question then arises: If scholars now and for over a hundred years have dismissed phrenology as a cultural waste product, how did this come to pass? On this point, the usually talkative Colbert is silent; he argues against the “particular reticence of art historians” (p. 2) to grapple with phrenology, but doesn’t name or quote or analyze them. In so doing, he passes up the chance to offer a historical account of the academy’s “curious” refusal to acknowledge (or determination to erase evidence of) phrenology’s influence on fine art, architecture, and literature. What does that refusal tell us, other than that the scholarship is wrong? Another problem: The relation of phrenology to other discourses of mind and body, other sciences, religions and movements. “The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing,” said the seventh-century B.C. poet Archilochus and, in our own century, Isaiah Berlin. Colbert is a hedgehog, but is phrenology one big thing? The mid-nineteenth century was an extremely fertile era in American culture, a period in which isms, ologies, and reforms proliferated: dress reform, abolitionism, popular anatomy, revivalism, dietary physiology, hydropathy, homeopathy, mesmerism, temperance, electromedicine, spiritualism, moral reform, free love, free thought, botanical medicine, utopian socialism, etc. These enthusiasms imbued each other, commingling in both HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY discourse and adherents, while often contradicting each other in key ways. What we want to know is how one fed off another, how one supported another, or how one offshoot deprived another of light and soil (in many cases there was a particular succession). Colbert tends to lump them together under the sign of phrenology, elides the differences or tensions between them. This may seem a quibble, given the fact that the American Journal of Phrenology and other phrenological publications, lectures, and presses included much more than just phrenology. Phrenologers were cultural sponges, soaking up everything around them, but so were popular anatomists and spiritualists and utopian socialists and moral reformers. How much, then, of Colbert’s phrenology is really phrenological? A lot, but not everything. William A. Alcott, a popular anatomical author and educational reformer of the antebellum period, recommended that his readers should “study” George Combe’s CONSTITUTION OF MAN “with great care,” but allowed that they might “Reject, if you choose, his Phrenology.”17 What Alcott valued in Combe was the principle of regulatory physiological “laws of organization,” and his emphasis on self-formation and reformation, sustaining themes in the works of many American writers on body and self, and notions that preceded Combe, although he greatly popularized them. THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN had an immense impact, but so did Paley’s NATURAL THEOLOGY, Alcott’s THE HOUSE I LIVE IN and numerous advice books, the Bridgewater treatises, and Sylvester Graham’s publications and lectures on physiology. These works were influences on, and in some cases influenced by, phrenology, but they were not phrenology. Colbert tends to stuff too many doctrines into his phrenological black box. (The confusion, however, is understandable: some of the material Colbert quotes from the Fowlers and other phrenological sources are close paraphrases of Alcott and Graham.) But not to make too much of this. A MEASURE OF PERFECTION is rich and messy and insightful. Colbert amply demonstrates the multiple ways in which nineteenth-century fine art is imbued with the enthusiasms of the period, and proves that a knowledge of them is essential. The book explodes with juicy detail — the chapters are almost impossible to synopsize. For the moment, and maybe a long time to come, Colbert’s book is the state of the art for cultural historians and students of American Studies, and especially art historians, who now are obliged to know their phrenology (and every other enthusiasm of the period). Those looking for a roadmap to phrenology or nineteenth-century American culture will have to look elsewhere; the joy of A MEASURE OF PERFECTION lies in the way it saturates the reader with phrenological texts and acts and objects and careers. Copyright (c) 1999 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact [email protected].
17. Library of Health 1 (1837): 130 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1835
Philip Henry Gosse abandoned Newfoundland for Compton, Lower Canada where he would farm, originally as an attempt to establish a commune with two of his religious friends, for three years. Despite this failure at farming, the experience would deepen his love for natural history, and the locals would begin to refer to him as “that crazy Englishman who goes about picking up bugs.”
During this period of self-teaching he would become a member of the Natural History Society of Montréal and submit specimens to its museum — the man without much by way of a formal education had placed himself on a track that would eventuate with him being welcomed as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and well accepted by those much more credentialed and well-positioned naturalists.
After being let go by Harvard College, Christopher Dunkin removed to Canada where his step-father was making a good living by giving public lectures in physical, moral and intellectual education and Phrenology (professing to be able to distinguish, by the bumps on the skull, between the bold and determined offender and the novice in crime; the ruffian and the man of gentle disposition; the abandoned wreck destitute of religious principles and he who maintains his belief in Christian revelation).
“I look upon Phrenology as the guide of Philosophy, and the handmaid of Christianity; whoever disseminates true Phrenology, is a public benefactor.” — Horace Mann, Sr.
The population of the border city of Buffalo reached 15,573 with the arrival of escaped slave William Wells Brown, a steamboat crew member. He would begin to help other escapees onward and upward, to safety in Canada.
The 1,000-acre Section system of township surveys commenced in Upper Canada. It would be continued to 1906. CARTOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1836
The Aberdeen Phrenological Society was established. George Combe’s LECTURES ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY: DELIVERED BEFORE THE “EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY,” AND REPORTED FOR THE “EDINBURGH CHRONICLE.” (Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon; New-York: Daniel Appleton & Co.). The student David Henry Thoreau would check out this new book from the collection of the Institute of 1770 at Harvard College on December 8th. MORAL PHILOSOPHY
December 8, Thursday: David Henry Thoreau supplemented his borrowings from the Harvard Library by checking out, from the library of the “Institute of 1770”, William Beckford’s ITALY: WITH SKETCHES OF SPAIN AND PORTUGAL (London and Philadelphia: R. Bentley, 1834),
WM. BECKFORD, ITALY SPAIN AND PORTUGAL HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY George Combe’s LECTURES ON MORAL PHILOSOPHY: DELIVERED BEFORE THE “EDINBURGH PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY,” AND REPORTED FOR THE “EDINBURGH CHRONICLE.” (Boston: Marsh, Capen & Lyon; New-York: Daniel Appleton & Co.),
MORAL PHILOSOPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY TERRIBLE TRACTORATION, AND OTHER POEMS. BY CHRISTOPHER CAUSTIC, M.D. FELLOW OF THE ROYAL COLLEGE OF PHYSICIANS, ABERDEEN, AND HONORARY MEMBER OF NO LESS THAN NINETEEN VERY LEARNED SOCIETIES [pseud.]. 3d American ed. (Boston: Russell, Shattuck & co., 1836, a book of poetry and commentary of a sort which can be best described by suggesting that it might have been better had the author of it, the journalist Thomas Green Fessenden, persisted in his prior career as an attorney at law), TERRIBLE TRACTORATION
and the 3d of the five volumes of his Professor Adam Ferguson’s THE HISTORY OF THE PROGRESS AND HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY TERMINATION OF THE ROMAN REPUBLIC (1773, new edition, Edinburgh, 1813).
THE ROMAN REPUBLIC, III
This volume covers the period from Gaius Julius Caesar’s departure for Gaul to his defeat of Pompey at Pharsalus in Thessaly.
Our guy would comment later of the catacombs full of preserved death, of our museums full of stuffed animals, and of such history textbooks stuffed full with irrelevant facts, that: “I hate museums, there is nothing so weighs upon the spirits. They are catacombs of nature. They are preserved death. One green bud of Spring one willow catkin, one faint trill from some migrating sparrow, might set the world on its legs again. I know not whether I muse most at the bodies stuffed with cotton and sawdust — or those stuffed with bowels and fleshy fibre. The life that is in a single green weed is of more worth than all this death. They are very much like the written history of the world — and I read Rollin and Ferguson with the same feeling.” –JOURNAL; September 24, 1843 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1838
Harriet Martineau’s RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL:
H-NET BOOK REVIEW Published by [email protected] (January, 2001) Harriet Martineau. RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL. Daniel Feller, ed. Armonk, NY: M.E. Sharpe, 2000 Reviewed for H-SHEAR by Jamie Bronstein
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY chronological and reportorial work than her first, more thematic, book. Feller’s abridgment of Martineau’s work omits thirteen chapters of scenic description and biography to focus on her firsthand observations. Martineau’s travels take her from her transatlantic ship to New York City and West Point. She attends three weddings, many church services, and several holidays, including Thanksgiving Day and Christmas. She tours upstate New York, transported by a highly unpleasant canal-boat. She visits American prisons, interviewing prisoners about their crimes, and observes education in action at schools for the deaf and blind. She visits Washington DC, and finds President Jackson feeling paranoid after an assassination attempt. She travels to Jefferson’s Virginia, cuts south to New Orleans, then travels up the Mississippi on a packed steamboat. She visits Cincinnati, which for her encapsulates the promise of the west, and ends her juggernaut among abolitionists in Boston. Everywhere she looks, Martineau sees a cheering prosperity. “The young women all well-dressed, the men all at work or amusement, the farms all held in fee-simple, the stores all inadequate to their custom.” (32) This promise balances out a certain immaturity, which Martineau chronicles like a kindly parent. Although the Americans seem to her to be imitative in their culture and lacking rigor in their science (too easily led into such childish fancies as phrenology, spiritualism, and animal magnetism), she has no doubt that they will eventually settle down to cultural richness. In contrast with some European visitors, even Martineau’s harshest condemnations of the Americans are not very harsh. She finds Southerners deluded about the benefits of slavery, and Northerners largely deluded that colonization is the answer, and hints several times at the possibility that the slavery question will provoke open conflict. Nonetheless, she believes that the honesty and integrity of the American public (in contrast with some of its leaders) will resolve the question. Her book also includes short but bitingly honest sketches of many of the leaders of Jacksonian politics – Jackson, Clay, Calhoun, and Webster, among others. Her willingness to describe their appearances and modes of speaking, their vices and their achievements, originally elicited some bad reviews for the book in the American press, but it makes the book a wonderful resource for students of the period. Most engagingly, Martineau’s somewhat detached and anthropological commentary reveals the otherwise hidden texture of early American life. West Point cadets sneak cigarettes, while lecturing new students about the evils of smoking. A Quaker bridegroom works hard to stifle a laugh during a long silence at his own wedding. Vandals add speech-balloons to the mouths of people portrayed on hotel wallpaper. An “eminent professor” staves off boredom during a Harvard graduation by doodling on the commencement program. Hardy New England boys get their exercise in winter by “coasting” down the snow-covered hills and streets on planks of wood. These little continuities of human nature link the reader to an America that otherwise seems distant and surprising. The edited version of Martineau’s book flows smoothly and feels like an integrated whole — testimony to Feller’s judicious editing. He has also added a helpful index and footnotes that identify most figures and events. Although many contemporary American critics panned Martineau’s book, Feller is an unabashed admirer of Martineau: “Whatever flaws her American books contain are outweighed by her talent for insightful reporting, her great store of good sense, and above all the shining clarity of her moral purpose.” (xix) Anyone looking for student readings on the early republic will want to acquire a copy of RETROSPECT OF WESTERN TRAVEL, and see whether they agree. Copyright (c) 2001 by H-Net, all rights reserved. This work may be copied for non-profit educational use if proper credit is given to the author and the list. For other permission, please contact [email protected].
Dr. George Combe’s ON THE FUNCTIONS OF THE CEREBELLUM BY DRS. GALL, VIMONT, BROUSSAIS, ROGET, RUDOLPHI, PRICHARD, TIEDEMANN; ALSO ANSWERS TO THE OBJECTIONS URGED AGAINST PHRENOLOGY, WITH DR. A. COMBE (Edinburgh: MacLachlan & Stewart). The author visited the United States to investigate the treatment of criminals. His brother Dr. Andrew Combe became personal physician to the British royal family. The Phrenological Association, formed as an alternative to the British Association which had spurned the phrenologists, first met in Newcastle. The Birmingham Phrenological Society was established. It was a good year for phrenology. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY At some point between this year and the year 1844, one or another of the burial sites for the fallen redcoats in Concord or Lexington was disturbed by Doctor Walton Felch, a phrenologist who had obtained the prior permission of Town selectmen. He would later be using the two skulls he obtained in his lectures and exhibitions. DIGGING UP THE DEAD
After his death one of these skulls would disappear but one, with a bullet hole, would be recovered by the Concord Antiquarian Society. In darkness and secrecy on the night of December 5, 1891, Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and a helper would reinter that skull, and would choose to do so at the Old North Bridge gravesite in Concord. It is not known for sure, however, from which burial locale this skull had originally been removed. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1839
The Phrenological Association met in Birmingham. THE SCIENCE OF 1839
Hiram Powers finished his white marble bust of President Andrew Jackson, for which Jackson had sat to be modeled from life while at the White House at the age of 68. “Make me as I am,” the old man had instructed, which pretty well excluded carving the bust out of ebony, perhaps even out of hickory! The bust is now in the Metropolitan Museum of Art. It would be interesting to determine how craniologically PC or non-PC this bust is, in consideration of contemporaneous phrenological theory.
Dr. Charles Caldwell, a racist who was a professor at a university in Kentucky, had at this point become the most popular phrenologist in America partly by pandering to the American need for a scientific legitimation of genocide.
Who knows what the white man knows? — The white man knows. However, the mainline American scientific establishment –under the leadership of the American school of ethnology based in Philadelphia– would over the course of the next ten years take this cudgel away from phrenology, by developing their own scientific legitimations for genocide that could not so easily be dismissed as a sideshow-tent fad. You may have been exposed, in your early schooling, to some of this ethnological material, in the strange scientific case study called “the Dukes versus the Kalikaks” — in which the names of two Appalachian families were changed in order to protect innocent victims of scientific study and in order to protect guilty perpetrators of scientific fraud. In this day and age, to be against slavery was to be antiscientific. In this year Alexander Kinmont’s TWELVE LECTURES ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF MAN and Professor HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Samuel George Morton’s CRANIA AMERICANA; OR, A COMPARATIVE VIEW OF THE SKULLS OF VARIOUS ABORIGINAL NATIONS OF NORTH AND SOUTH AMERICA: TO WHICH IS PREFIXED AN ESSAY ON THE VARIETIES OF THE HUMAN SPECIES. ILLUSTRATED BY SEVENTY-EIGHT PLATES AND A COLOURED MAP (Philadelphia: J. Dobson) changed the American focus for such theorizing, by supposedly demonstrating that the inferiority of the Native American race was based on breeding rather than on environment, a conclusion supported by detailed scientific examination of the world’s largest collection of human skulls (world’s largest in pre-Nazi times, that is). The intellectual faculties of this great family appear to be of a decidedly inferior cast when compared with those of the Caucasian or Mongolian races. CRANIA AMERICANA
Henry David Thoreau would read and make notes on Professor Morton’s CRANIA AMERICANA, including in his notes the professor’s remark that the American Indians “have made but trifling progress in mental culture or the useful arts.” “Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429
The prevailing viewpoint in America had for many years been that attitude enunciated by the Reverend Samuel Stanhope Smith (1750-1819) in his influential 1787 treatise, AN ESSAY ON THE CAUSES OF THE VARIETY OF COMPLEXION AND FIGURE IN THE HUMAN SPECIES... in which he had argued that the intellectual and moral condition of black people in America had been produced by “the humiliating circumstances in which they find themselves” just as the color of their skin had been produced by their long exposure to the African sun and thus eventually could be expected under better conditions to fade to whiteness. Race, in other words, rather than constituting an inflexible biological category, had been considered to be mutable. This presumption was apparently being demolished at this point by the “objective” craniological analyses being presented in such great detail in Dr. Morton’s treatise.
June 25, 1852: What a mean & wretched creature is man by & by some Dr Morton may be filling your cranium with white mustard seed to learn its internal capacity. Of all the ways invented to come at a knowledge of a living man — this seems to me the worst — as it is the most belated. You would learn more by once paring the toe nails of the living subject. There is nothing out of which the spirit has more completely departed — & in which it has left fewer significant traces. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
In CRANIA AMERICANA Professor Morton divided humankind primarily into four races with the following racial characteristics:18 • Europeans: “The Caucasian Race is characterized by a naturally fair skin, susceptible of every tint; hair fine, long and curling, and of various colors. The skull is large and oval, and its anterior portion full and elevated. The face is small in proportion to the head, of an oval form, with well- proportioned features.... This race is distinguished for the facility with which it attains the highest intellectual endowments.... The spontaneous fertility of [the Caucasus] has rendered it the hive of many nations, which extending their migrations in every direction, have peopled the finest portions of the earth, and given birth to its fairest inhabitants....” • Asians: “This great division of the human species is characterized by a sallow or olive colored skin, which appears to be drawn tight over the bones of the face; long black straight hair, and thin beard. The nose is broad, and short; the eyes are small, black, and obliquely placed, and the eyebrows are arched and linear; the lips are turned, the cheek bones broad and flat.... In their intellectual character the Mongolians are ingenious, imitative, and highly susceptible of cultivation [i.e. learning]....So versatile are their feelings and actions, that they have been compared to the monkey race, whose attention is perpetually changing from one object to another....” • Native Americans: “The American Race is marked by a brown complexion; long, black, lank hair; and deficient beard. The eyes are black and deep set, the brow low, the cheekbones high, the nose large and aquiline, the mouth large, and the lips tumid [swollen] and compressed.... In their mental character the Americans are averse to cultivation, and slow in acquiring knowledge; restless, revengeful, and fond of war, and wholly destitute of maritime adventure. They are crafty, sensual, ungrateful, obstinate and unfeeling, and much of their affection for their children may be traced to purely selfish motives. They devour the most disgusting [foods] uncooked and uncleaned, and seem to have no idea beyond providing for the present moment.... Their mental faculties, from infancy to old age, present a continued childhood.... [Indians] are not only averse to the restraints of education, but for the most part are incapable of a continued process of reasoning on abstract subjects....” • Africans: “Characterized by a black complexion, and black, woolly hair; the eyes are large and prominent, the nose broad and flat, the lips thick, and the mouth wide; the head is long and narrow, the forehead low, the cheekbones prominent, the jaws protruding, and the chin small. In disposition the Negro is joyous, flexible, and indolent; while the many nations which compose this race present a singular diversity of intellectual character, of which the far extreme is the lowest grade of humanity.... The moral and intellectual character of the Africans is widely different in different nations.... The Negroes are proverbially fond of their amusements, in which they engage with great exuberance of spirit; and a day of toil is with them no bar to a night of revelry. Like most other barbarous nations their institutions are not infrequently characterized by superstition and cruelty. They appear to be fond of warlike enterprises, and are not deficient in personal courage; but, once overcome, they yield to their destiny, and accommodate themselves with amazing facility to every change of circumstance. The Negroes have little invention, but strong powers of imitation, so that they readily acquire mechanic arts. They have a great talent for music, and all their external senses are remarkably acute.”
In this year Dr. Samuel George Morton was made Professor of Anatomy at Pennsylvania College (later to be known as the University of Pennsylvania).
18. Professor Morton claimed to be able to evaluate the intellectual capacity of a race as a function of its skull volume. A large skull meant a large brain and high intellectual capacity, and a small skull indicated a small brain and decreased intellectual capacity. Of course, since female skull sizes are smaller than male skull sizes ... but I don’t know that Professor Morton went there. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY July 20, Saturday: Miss Ellen Devereux Sewall, age 17, joined her young brother, Master Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr., and her aunt, Miss Prudence Ward, at the Thoreau boardinghouse in Concord, for a stay of a couple of weeks. Both John Thoreau, Jr., age 24, and his younger brother Henry Thoreau, would be falling in love with Ellen — who was also at that time being courted by another Harvard man:
GOD IN CONCORD by Jane Langton © 1992 Penguin Books USA Inc. 39 There is no remedy for love but to love more. Journal, July 25, 1839 Viking Penguin
Hope Fry didn’t know what to do about Ananda Singh. Here he was in her own house, sleeping in the room across ISBN 0-670-84260-5 — PS3562.A515G58
Thoreau would take her to see the camelopard (giraffe) that was on tour through Concord, and take her and her aunt sailing. The only request he would refuse would be her request that he accompany her to church on a Sunday morning. They would play a phrenology game: manipulating Ellen’s cranium, Henry would announce that he could feel no bumps at all (which, in the evaluations of the time, was an ambiguous reading indicative either of idiocy or genius).
July 20. THE BREEZE’S INVITATION Come let’s roam the breezy pastures, Where the freest zephyrs blow, Batten on the oak tree’s rustle, And the pleasant insect bustle, Dripping with the streamlet’s flow.
What if 1 no wings do wear, Thro’ this solid-seeming air 1 can skim like any swallow; Whoso dareth let her follow, And we’ll be a jovial pair.
Like two careless swifts let’s sail, Zephyrus shall think for me; Over hill and over dale, Riding on the easy gale, We will scan the earth and sea.
Yonder see that willow tree HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Winnowing the buxom air; You a gnat and I a bee, With our merry minstrelsy We will make a concert there.
One green leaf shall be our screen, Till the sun cloth go to bed, I the king and you the queen Of that peaceful little green, Without any subject’s aid.
To our music Time will linger, And earth open wide her car, Nor shall any need to tarry To immortal verse to marry Such sweet music as he’ll hear.
Nature doth have her dawn each day, But mine are far between; Content, I cry, for, sooth to say, Mine brightest are, I weep.
For when my sun doth deign to rise, Though it be her noontide, Her fairest field in shadow lies, Nor can my light abide.
Sometimes I bask me in her day, Conversing with my mate; But, if we interchange one ray, Forthwith her heats abate.
Through his discourse I climb and see, As from some eastern hill, A brighter morrow rise to me Than lieth in her skill.
As ’t were two summer rla.vs in one. Two Sundays come together, Our rays united make one sun. With fairest summer weather. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1840
THE LAW AND CUSTOM OF SLAVERY IN BRITISH INDIA IN A SERIES OF LETTERS TO THOMAS FOWELL BUXTON, ESQ. BY WILLIAM ADAM (Boston: Weeks, Jordan, & Company, No. 121 Washington Street). SLAVERY IN BRITISH INDIA
The Phrenological Association met in Glasgow. The Exeter Phrenological Society was established. Dr. Andrew Combe completed his PHYSIOLOGICAL AND MORAL MANAGEMENT OF INFANCY. George Combe returned from the United States to Scotland and his MORAL PHILOSOPHY was published. The most reputable phrenologist in the English-speaking world, he pronounced that a man of science could tell, merely by looking at the skull of a Hindu, how it was that “one hundred millions of them are at this moment kept in subjection by forty or fifty thousand Englishmen.” See, you can just look at his skull and tell, that sucker’s dead. During the 1840s George Combe, Robert Noel, and Dr. Gustav Scheve would be lecturing on phrenology in Germany — which would turn out to be as fertile a field as England.
This sort of thing is needed, in order to help us understand how such a public personage as Charles Dickens could speak as he would in 1857 upon the mutiny in the Indian colony: I wish I were Commander in Chief of India. The first thing I would do to strike that Oriental race with amazement ... should be to proclaim to them in their language, that I considered my holding that appointment by leave of God, to mean that I should do my utmost to exterminate the Race upon whom the stain of the late cruelties rested. Hold it hard against them, Chuck! During this year, serial publication began of Charles Dickens’s MASTER HUMPHREY’S CLOCK as an initial part of his THE OLD CURIOSITY SHOP. ATTITUDES ON DICKENS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY January 2, Thursday: The Honorable Edward Everett, LL.D. re-delivered the inaugural lecture of “The Lowell Institute” honoring the quarter-million dollars of its benefactor the deceased John Lowell, Jr.
Subsequently, subscribers would fill Odeon Hall at the corner of Federal Street and Franklin Street in Boston to its capacity of 2,000 seats twice a week to hear a series of lectures on natural theology, by the Reverend James Walker, D.D. The relation between the dual sources of knowledge –reason and revelation, the world and the book– that was indeed one hot topic!
In New Haven, Connecticut, The U.S. v. The Libelants, etc., of the Schooner Amistad case resumed, while in the Richmond VA Inquirer the declaration was being made that what the case meant was that white Americans might become the victims of “black masters” to whom they would owe –the horror– “compassion” and “sympathy.” In the current issue of the American Phrenological Journal and Miscellany, the phrenologist L.N. Fowler was announcing that examination of the head of Joseph Cinqué had enabled him to verify that this specimen was “superior to the majority of negroes.” The base of this one’s brain was smaller, indicating that his personality was not being dominated by the “lower animal propensities.” LA AMISTAD HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1841
The Phrenological Association met in London.
The Dumfries Phrenological Society was established.
The most reputable phrenologist in the English-speaking world, George Combe, offered his NOTES ON THE 19 UNITED STATES OF NORTH AMERICA, in which he pronounced: that the existing races of native American Indians show skulls inferior in their moral and intellectual development to those of the Anglo-Saxon race, and that, morally and intellectually, these Indians are inferior to their Anglo-Saxon invaders, and have receded before them.
November 16, Tuesday: The consumptive doctor Andrew Combe wrote to his brother George Combe, the phrenologist, indicating that the reason why he had not married and produced children was that they were supposing his familial predisposition to tuberculosis, otherwise known as the tubercular diathesis, to be hereditary.20 (Were many tubercular people refraining from marrying and producing children because they suspected the hereditary transmissibility of the constitution, or diathesis? Might this have been something that was on people’s minds in the Thoreau family?)
After the fighting of November 13th, in which the Afghans had been repulsed, there had not been further attacks. Lieutenant Walker, with a resalah of irregular horse, had been taking advantage of this lull in the fighting to rush magazine supplies from time to time under cover of darkness into the Bala Hissar. Lieutenant Eyre would comment21 that “the manifest superiority of the Bala Hissar as a military position, led to the early discussion of the expediency of abandoning the cantonment, and consolidating our forces in the above- mentioned stronghold. The Envoy himself was, from the first, greatly in favour of this move, until overruled by the many objections urged against it by the military authorities; to which, as will be seen by a letter from him presently quoted, he learned by degrees to attach some weight himself; but to the very last it was a measure that had many advocates, and I venture to state my own firm belief that, had we at this time moved into the Bala Hissar, Cabul would have been still in our possession. But Brigadier Shelton having firmly set his face against the movement from the first moment of its proposition, all serious idea of it was gradually abandoned, though it continued to the very last a subject of common discussion.” AFGHANISTAN
19. Let’s consider this to be the case of the receding Indian with the receding Indian skull. 20. George Combe, ed., THE LIFE AND CORRESPONDENCE OF ANDREW COMBE, M.D. London: Longman, 1850, page 402 21. Lieut. V. Eyre (Sir Vincent Eyre, 1811-1881). THE MILITARY OPERATIONS AT CABUL: WHICH ENDED IN THE RETREAT AND DESTRUCTION OF THE BRITISH ARMY, JANUARY 1842, WITH A JOURNAL OF IMPRISONMENT IN AFFGHANISTAN. Philadelphia PA: Carey and Hart, 1843; London: J. Murray, 1843 (three editions); Lieut. V. Eyre (Sir Vincent Eyre, 1811-1881). PRISON SKETCHES: COMPRISING PORTRAITS OF THE CABUL PRISONERS AND OTHER SUBJECTS; ADAPTED FOR BINDING UP WITH THE JOURNALS OF LIEUT. V. EYRE, AND LADY SALE; LITHOGRAPHED BY LOWES DICKINSON. London: Dickinson and Son, [1843?] HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1842
At Ruprecht Karl University in Heidelberg, George Combe delivered a course of 22 lectures on phrenology, in the German language. He traveled in Europe, studying the management of schools, prisons, and asylums.
Another great schism arose at a meeting of the Phrenological Association in London, when W. Engeldue declared that phrenology proved materialism to be true. What’s this spiritual bullshit — thoughts and emotions arise in brains, which are material objects!
The Sheffield Phrenological Society was established.
A Christian Phrenological Society was established by John Epps and J. Hawkins in London.
A practical (that is, practicing) phrenologist, Orson Squires Fowler, published the booklet FOWLER ON MATRIMONY: OR PHRENOLOGY AND PHYSIOLOGY APPLIED TO THE SELECTION OF COMPANIONS FOR LIFE; INCLUDING DIRECTIONS TO THE MARRIED FOR LIVING TOGETHER AFFECTIONATELY AND HAPPILY:
Orson say: compatibility and incompatibility are to be foreseen in the bumps on your heads:
July 2, Saturday: The Mormon newspaper The Wasp published a phrenological chart of its leader Joseph Smith, Jr., pointing out his skull bump of “Amativeness-11, L[arge]. Extreme susceptibility; passionately fond of the company of the other sex.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
November 16, Wednesday: Frederick Douglass spoke at the annual meeting of the Rhode Island Anti-Slavery Society in Providence.
Would this have been the occasion described by Frederic May Holland,22 quoting from Nathaniel Peabody Rogers? Holland, pages 63-65: Convention after convention was mobbed, but still the friends of equal suffrage went on pointing out the black spot in the Dorr constitution. Its supporters were indignant, and its opponents rejoiced to see the suffragists at war among themselves. Of the last of these conventions, and one of the noisiest, that held in Providence, while the vote was being taken on the merits of the new plan, we have the following description, from the pen of Mr. N.P. Rogers, who was making the Herald of Freedom, published at Concord, New Hampshire, a noble ally of the Liberator: Friday evening was chiefly occupied by colored speakers. The fugitive Douglass was up when we entered. This is an extraordinary man. He was cut out for a hero. In a rising for liberty, he would have been a Toussaint or a Hamilton. He has the “heart to conceive, the head to contrive, and the hand to execute.” A commanding person — over six feet, we should say, in height, and of most manly proportions. His head would strike a phrenologist amid a sea of them in Exeter hall, and his voice would ring like a trumpet in the field. Let the South congratulate herself that he is a fugitive. It 22. Frederic May Holland. FREDERICK DOUGLASS: THE COLORED ORATOR. Concord edition 1891. (A revised edition prepared by the author in 1895 was eventually published, NY: Haskell House, 1969.) FREDERICK DOUGLASS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY would not have been safe for her, if he had remained about the plantations a year or two longer. Douglass is his fugitive name. He did not wear it in slavery. We don’t know why he assumed it, or who bestowed it on him — but there seems fitness in it, to his commanding figure and heroic port. As a speaker he has few equals. It is not declamation — but oratory, power of debate. He watches the tide of discussion with the eye of the veteran, and dashes into it at once with all the tact of the forum or the bar. He has wit, argument, sarcasm, pathos — all that first-rate men show in their master efforts. His voice is highly melodious and rich, and his enunciation quite elegant; and yet he has been but two or three years out of the house of bondage. We noticed that he had strikingly improved since we had heard him at Dover NH in September. We say thus much of him, for he is esteemed by our multitude as of an inferior race. We should like to see him before any New England legislature or bar, and let him feel the freedom of the anti-slavery meeting, and see what would become of his inferiority. Yet, he is a thing, in American estimate. He is the chattel of some pale-faced tyrant. How his owner would cower and shiver to hear him thunder in an anti-slavery hall. How he would shrink away, with his infernal whip, from his flaming eye when kindled with anti-slavery emotion. And the brotherhood of thieves, the posse comitatus of divines, we wish a hecatomb or two of the proudest and flintiest of them, were obliged to hear him thunder for human liberty, and lay the enslavement of his people at their doors. They would tremble like Belshazzar. Poor Wayland, we wish he could have been pegged to a seat in the Franklin Hall the evening the colored friends spoke. His “limitations” would have abandoned him like the “baseless fabric of a vision.” Sanderson, of New Bedford, Cole, of Boston, and Stanley, of North Carolina, followed Douglass. They all displayed excellent ability.... These are the inferior race, these young black men, who, ten years ago, would have been denied entrance into such an assembly of whites, except as waiters or fiddlers. Their attempts at speaking would have been met with jeers of astonishment. It would have amazed the superior race as the ass’s speech did with Balaam. How they mingle with applause in the debates with Garrison, and Foster, and Phillips. Southern slavery —“hold thy own”— when the kindred of your victims are thus kindling Northern enthusiasm on the platform of liberty and free debate. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1843
The Lancaster Phrenological Society was established. At about this point the Dublin Phrenological Society was being established. The Zeitschrift für Phrenologie was founded in Heidelberg by Dr. E Hirschfeld and Gustav von Struve. This stuff was on a roll. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1844
The British royal family had the lumps on the head of their toddler Bertie examined by a reputable phrenologist, Dr. Andrew Combe, author of the reputable textbook PHYSIOLOGICAL AND MORAL 23 MANAGEMENT OF INFANCY, and were assured that their child’s brain was “defective.”
“I look upon Phrenology as the guide of Philosophy, and the handmaid of Christianity; whoever disseminates true Phrenology, is a public benefactor.” — Horace Mann, Sr.
February 25, Sunday: Horace Mann, Jr. was born in Boston. “We can baby it to our heart’s desire.” The father immediately noted, as most fathers do, that the infant seemed to be perfect in form, but then became concerned over the shape of his namesake’s skull: would this be a worthy firstborn son? And a phrenologist was consulted. The phrenologist felt, and took careful measurements, and announced that this would produce a man of “great firmness & self esteem.” Nevertheless Horace Mann, Sr. would suspect, as his son grew, that the back of the skull was growing too fast and the forehead too slowly. He knew that the back of the skull harbored the primitive instincts, such as the combativeness with which he himself was so sorely afflicted, whereas the forehead was the home of the civilized virtues of “conscience & reason,” “veneration & benevolence.” (He would be much more pleased with the skulls of his 2d and his 3d sons.)
“I look upon Phrenology as the guide of Philosophy, and the handmaid of Christianity; whoever disseminates true Phrenology, is a public benefactor.” — Horace Mann, Sr.
23. It just shows to go you, that anybody who has their head examined ought to have their head examined. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Mid-October: The anonymous publication VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, which eventually would turn out to have been by Robert Chambers, took what Henry Thoreau would accept as one of the
“wider views of the universe,” in allowing that since God’s law extended across the entire starry cosmos, we might legitimately hypothesize that elsewhere, circling any number of strange distant stars, HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY there might well be other earths filled with other lives than ours here beside the star known as Sol:
WALDEN: We might try our lives by a thousand simple tests; as, for instance, that the same sun which ripens my beans illumines at once a system of earths like ours. If I had remembered this it would have prevented some mistakes. This was not the light in which I hoed them. The stars are the apexes of what wonderful triangles! What distant and different beings in the various mansions of the universe are contemplating the same one at the same moment! Nature and human life are as various as our several constitutions. Who shall say what prospect life offers to another? Could a greater miracle take place than for us to look through each other’s eyes for an instant?
NICOLAS COPERNICUS TYCHO BRAHE TYCHONIAN/COPERNICAN HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Finding himself unable to overlook the manifest evidences of waste and cruelty in nature, Chambers was hypothesizing anonymously that God must have established two entirely separate sets of laws, one physical and the other moral, codes quite independent of one another, so that “Obedience to each gives only its own proper advantage, not the advantage proper to the other.”
This was of course being attacked as godlessness and so the publication would sell out four editions in seven months. In this year Charles Darwin was drafting an essay on his development theory, a theory very different in every particular, but he would not publish about this for some time either under his name or anonymously. All Thoreau was able to know of Darwin’s work therefore, at this point, was what he was able to read in the published journal of H.M.S. Beagle:
[Bear in mind that these BEAGLE volumes carry not only the name of Darwin on their spine, but also Phillip Parker King and Robert FitzRoy.]
As you remember, Thoreau would later make a passing remark in CAPE COD about this reading of Darwin:
Charles Darwin was assured that the roar of the surf on the coast of Chile, after a heavy gale, could be heard at night a distance of “21 sea miles across a hilly and wooded country.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY One thing the readers of this anonymous volume could tell for sure about its author, was that he or she was a believer in phrenology. Phrenological studies were revealing that on average, the brain of a female would weigh four ounces less than the brain of a male. How then could a woman, on average, possibly be of as strong a mind as her male counterpart? No wonder men are dominant! A woman’s rationality, since it was not as robust as a man’s, would more readily yield to her body and to her emotionality — something which anyway we can observe happening every day. (Had the gender politics of the era been reversed, we may notice, the opposite conclusions could have been derived from such period scientific “observations.” Notice that in our present-day computer CPUs, speed of computation is inversely proportional to size — the more closely the transistors are packed, the shorter the wires between them, the greater the number of megaflops that can be achieved, which is the reason why supercomputers made up of computational boards have been quite replaced with supercomputers made up of computational chipsets. No wonder women are dominant! Obviously, since women’s brains aren’t inflated with water to the same degree as men’s, their brain cells are closer together, resulting in shorter dendrons, resulting in a greater quickness and acuity of mind —something which anyway we can observe happening every day.)
Dr. William Benjamin Carpenter was being suspected, incorrectly, of the authorship. His son Joseph Estlin Carpenter was born (eventually this son would help out in the republication of some of his father’s works).
When this VESTIGES first became available for purchase, its price of 7s. 6d. put it entirely out of the reach of the general public. This was not a pamphlet to unsettle the masses. If available at all for the general reader, it would be found in the lending library of a mechanics’ institute, for a person who had purchased an annual subscription which entitled him to check out books. –But then a “peoples’ edition” would be put out in 1846 at 2s. 6d. A lawyer of Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, would read straight through the anonymous VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION and would proclaim himself “a warm advocate of the doctrine.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY October 15, Tuesday: Friedrich Wilhelm Nietzsche was born to a Lutheran pastor Karl Ludwig Nietzsche and a former teacher Franziska Nietzsche in Röcken near Leipzig, Prussia. The family considered itself not German but Polish (the name “Nietzschy” derives from “Nikolaus”).
Robert Chambers confessed in a letter to a friend that he had made the experiment of reading aloud a chapter from the anonymous sensation VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION to the novelist Catherine Crowe.
At just about this same time (it was a Saturday walk at midmonth) George Combe the noted phrenologist suggested to Chambers that he should be reading VESTIGES —a book Combe was presently studying which Chambers would surely find agreeable. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY October 20, Sunday: George Combe the noted phrenologist wrote to Friend Lucretia Mott about a new work that displayed great scientific learning, that he had just recommended to his friend Robert Chambers, titled VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, which she should read as “another battery erected against superstition.”
The crowd-pleasing heresy offered by this book was that since species had evolved over time directed by divine intervention, to superior forms, we the perusers of this literature must be superior beings and greatly entitled, and authorized to do whatever we want. Although this is of course an ever popular conceit, it was inevitable that some would be wise enough to recognize it as what it is, and so the crowd-pleasing pseudoscientist who had authored it would need to keep his identity secret until his death 27 years later. THE SCIENCE OF 1844
VESTIGES offered enticing opportunities.... [Various cited passages] struck just the right note of tasteful solemnity. Fashionable readers, both women and men, scanned the reviews for such passages ... opening up possibilities for talk.... VESTIGES had the advantage of making an orthodox subject into something just dangerous enough to be attractive.... [Divine creation had been given] a topical frisson for the first time in years.... All in all, VESTIGES offered wonderful opportunities for displaying conversational skill. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1845
Gustav von Struve’s HANDBUCH DER PHRENOLOGIE.
June 27, Friday: The attorney George Combe, the most reputable phrenologist in the English-speaking world, wrote to Horace Mann, Sr., attributing VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION to Robert Chambers but asking that the matter be held in confidence.
“I look upon Phrenology as the guide of Philosophy, and the handmaid of Christianity; whoever disseminates true Phrenology, is a public benefactor.” — Horace Mann, Sr. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1846
Dr. Joseph Leidy was chosen Demonstrator of Anatomy in the Franklin Medical College, but would resign the office at the close of the session in 1847, resumed his position with Dr. Horner and delivering to students a private course of lectures on Human Anatomy. During this year he used his microscope to help investigate the murder of a Philadelphia farmer. A man caught with bloodstains on his clothes and hatchet was claiming it to be chicken blood, but under the microscope Dr. Leidy was not able to find the nuclei in erythrocytes that would have had nuclei had this been the blood of chickens. Testing, he found that when he left chicken blood to stand around for several hours, its erythrocytes did not lose their nuclei, and on that basis reported back to the police that the accused’s claim must be false (subsequently they obtained a confession).
In this year the Phrenological Journal announced that
among nations, as among individuals, force of character is determined by the average size of head; and that the larger-headed nations manifest their superior power, by subjecting and ruling their smaller-headed brethren — as the British in Asia, for example.
PHRENOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Ever careful of the sensitivities of its subscribers, who might for some reason have tender feelings toward their wives, this journal forbore to belabor the obvious, that their average reader’s manly brain was considerably more massive and ponderous than that of his sweet little wife. Their point, after all, was “We can dominate
foreigners,” and they all already knew “We can domesticate domestics.” And in Europe, Louis Agassiz, a professor at Neuchâtel, declared, in regard to the collection of human skulls that Samuel George Morton had created in Philadelphia in order to demonstrate beyond a shadow of a doubt the basic differences between human races, that
This collection alone is worth a journey to America.
(It’s worth a journey to America because it reassures us that we white people are inherently superior to any and all other people, irregardless of whether we comport ourselves with decency.)
“Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY When Louis Agassiz elected to remain in the USA after his lecture tour, to become professor of zoology and geology at Harvard College, Asa Gray promptly escorted him to Philadelphia to meet the famous scientific racist Professor Samuel George Morton.
(In this year Professor Morton’s “Observations on the Ethnology and Archaeology of the American Aborigines” appeared in Silliman’s Journal.)
Professor Agassiz would found the American Association for the Advancement of Science as a vehicle for advancing his covert agenda of favoring the laboratory scientist over the field scientist and the technician/ specialist over the generalist24 and would then condemn Charles Darwin’s development theory as not only “mischievous” but also “unscientific.” He would also enact his overtly declared agenda to preserve the racial purity of our nation’s schools, starting with his own elementary school in which the Emerson children were being educated, and with the sacred halls and classrooms of Harvard.
Professor Agassiz in early 1846, while still at Neuchâtel
Not strangely, this scientist was a follower of the theory of the progressive development of types associated with the name of Jean-Baptiste de Monet de Lamarck, or “Lamarckism,” which was merely a 19th-Century adaptation of the old doctrine of the “great scale of being” (Scala Natura) according to which all of nature
24. To his credit, Henry Thoreau would suspiciously decline to become involved with this group of people. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY reflects human society, some obviously being worth more than others. As an illustration of how such belief systems functioned at that time, Elias Hicks had asserted in a sermon of December 1, 1824 in Philadelphia that “We are on a level with all the rest of God’s creatures.” After theories of evolution had become current, an adherent of a Lamarckian theory put on the hat “objective scientist” to attack such “leveller” allegations as being not only theologically pernicious, but also scientifically false. As a mere lay person, a nonscientist, Friend Elias did not understand, this scientist declared, that some current forms of life have been shown by science to be more advanced, and others more primitive, on the great scale of being! It is not amusing, but profoundly saddening, to see professed scientists oppose the trends that would become established in their own disciplines, and watch them lump Waldo Emerson together with Friend Elias as unscientific thinkers — in order to legitimate social agendas of viciousness such as black slavery. And, likewise, it is notable that some gifted amateurs like Henry Thoreau were able to get past this scientistic smoke screen. What was it in Thoreau’s spirit that enabled him to be a better scientist than some of the most accredited scientists of his day?
June 25, 1852: What a mean & wretched creature is man by & by some Dr Morton may be filling your cranium with white mustard seed to learn its internal capacity. Of all the ways invented to come at a knowledge of a living man — this seems to me the worst — as it is the most belated. You would learn more by once paring the toe nails of the living subject. There is nothing out of which the spirit has more completely departed — & in which it has left fewer significant traces.
I asked what it was in Friend Elias’s spirit, and then in Henry’s spirit, that enabled them to be better scientists than some of the most accredited American scientists of their day. Yes, I do have a theory — can you figure out what it is?
Not a theologian pretending to be a scientist Agassiz standing on his head and stacking BBs (Some of us understood that all along) (Please don’t attempt this at home) HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1847
John Brown allowed himself to be persuaded by his son John Brown, Jr., in training as a phrenologist, to have his skull examined by the world-class phrenologist Orson Fowler, and found that he had “a pretty good opinion of yourself” and that he “would rather lead than be led” (things which presumably he already knew).
“You might be persuaded but to drive you would be impossible. You like your own way, and to think and act for yourself — are quite independent and dignified, open and plain, say just what you think, and most heartily despise hypocrisy and artificiality.” What a marvelous thing was phrenology, in the way of the granting of permission for one’s chosen viciousnesses!
Walton Felch had been lecturing throughout New England, using as exhibits the two skulls he had recovered from the battlefield grave in Concord. He had also been lecturing on mesmerism, hydropathy, geology, and astronomy. A typical review of one of his performance had been that “we were instructed and well entertained by the Lecturer [and] we hope to be able to hear the gentleman further on this subject at future meetings.” However, such a trajectory was not without its controversies, and in consequence a friend of his, James H. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Desper, felt obliged to proclaim for the benefit of the readers of the Barre Gazette of Philadelphia, the following: Veto! Veto!! Veto!!!! I, James H. Desper of Barre, having lately heard a variety of Reports apparently designed to raise a public prejudice against Dr. W. Felch, and thereby hinder him from giving proofs of the healing power of Mesmerism and Pure Water as applied by himself; — 1st, that he was turned out of my house; 2nd, that he injured the health of my wife and others while boarding here; 3rd, that he has been suspected of breaking open our store, &c. &c. I hereby give notice, and my wife sets her signature with mine, that all these reports are most villainous falsehoods. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1849
July: Walt Whitman, who had for three years been clipping and underlining articles about phrenology, articles such as the series by Orson Squires Fowler in the American Phrenological Journal on “Progress,” “Human Progress,” and “Progression, A Law of Nature,” had his head read at the Nassau Street “practical phrenology” office of Fowler and Wells on Manhattan Island.
Walt’s head was examined by Lorenzo Niles Fowler himself, the head man. Fowler awarded Whitman a close- to-perfect score in his 35 categories such as “adhesiveness,” “amativeness,” and “combativeness.”
Whitman, vastly impressed with himself and vastly impressed with such phrenology, would later donate his brain to the American Anthropometric Society in Philadelphia — which would of course drop it on the floor.
September: A comment appeared in the Massachusetts Quarterly Review that “a decided impulse to the study of Ethnology has manifested itself in every scientific circle.” We may now regard this as not surprising, since American Ethnology had taken over from phrenology the job of providing a scientific rationale for the differential treatment of the different races of humankind. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1850
During this decade phrenological societies mostly would go defunct, and there would be few publications on the subject — the early advocates were either already underground or just about ready to be buried. In Britain, this science was largely discredited.
So, to treat phrenology with all due respect — with head-bumps passé, what was the latest buzz? –This would be the decade during which almost any parlor with any pretention to middle-class status would come to sport a marine aquarium, either fresh-water or salt:
[T]he Aquarium ... for its novelty, its scientific attractions, and its charming elegance, deservedly takes the first place among the Adornments of the House.
So the question becomes, were there any such Victorian adornments in Concord during this era? In the parlor of the Thoreau boardinghouse? Were these fresh-water or salt?
May 31, Friday: In processing a journal entry he had made on this date into his WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS manuscript, Henry Thoreau would be creating an enduring confusion between, on the one hand, Sippio Brister of Lincoln who had been a slave of the Hoar family and who had died in 1822 at the age of 78, and, on the other, Brister Freeman who had been the slave of Dr. John Cuming of Concord and who had died in 1820 at the age of 64, his wife Fenda Freeman, and the three Freeman children of Brister’s Hill in Concord.25 TIMELINE OF WALDEN
May 31, 1850: Close by stood a stone with this inscription In memory of Sippio Brister a man of Colour who died Nov 1. 1820 AEt. 64.
25. Thoreau’s “Former Inhabitants” chapter includes some thumbnail characterizations of erstwhile neighbors, with which Thoreau “repeopled the woods and lulled myself asleep.” Thoreau has attired these Concord folk in classic robes: In his imagination Brister Freeman has become the Roman general Publius Cornelius Scipio Africanus Major (234-183BCE) of the Punic Wars who defeated Hannibal at Zama, Wyman the younger is said to have been read about in Scripture, the Hugh Quoil who thought of himself as a veteran of foreign war is made to hang a fresh woodchuck pelt on his house to be “a trophy of his last Waterloo.” Refer to WALDEN, page 257 of the Princeton edition, material added to Version E in late 1852 and in 1853 and further revised in 1853-1854. There were precisely two books published during this period which dealt in such considerate terms with the lives of ordinary persons of color, WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS and the initial 1854 version of NARRATIVE OF THE LIFE OF FREDERICK DOUGLASS AN AMERICAN SLAVE. WRITTEN BY HIMSELF which is ordinarily attributed to the authorship of Frederick Douglass. We may note that at the time of the writing of WALDEN there were at least two black families in Concord, and Thoreau carefully refrains from calling attention to these families. We may presume that an adequate reason for such silence was that such literary attentions would not only have been as unwelcome to them as to Concord whites, but could not have done them any good and might very well have done them harm. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
Brister’s Spring on Brister’s Hill in Walden Woods pertained to Brister Freeman of Concord and not to Sippio Brister of Lincoln
Thoreau also recorded that according to William Wheeler of Lincoln, “a few years ago one Felch a Phrenologist by leave of the select men dug up — and took away two skulls” from the remains of the five grenadiers killed on April 19th near the “Ephraim Hartwell” Tavern during the retreat to Boston, that had there been interred. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY To-day May 31st a red and white cow being uneasy broke out of the steam mill pasture & crossed the bridge & broke into Elija Woods grounds– When he endeavored to drive her out by the bars she boldly took to the water wading first through the meadows full of ditches & swam across the river about forty rods wide at this time & landed in her own pasture again– She was a buffaloe crossing her Mississippi– This exploit conferred some dignity on the herd in my eyes–already dignified–& reflectedly on the river–which I looked on as a kind of Bosphorus. I love to see the domestic animals reassert their native right’s–any ev- idence that they have not lost their original wild habits & vigor.
There is a sweet wild world which lies along the strain of the wood thrush [Wood Thrush Catharus mustelina] –the rich intervales which border the stream of its song–more thoroughly genial to my nature than any other. The blossoms of the tough & vivacious shruboak are very handsome. I visited a retired–now almost unused graveyard in Lincoln to-day where (5) British soldiers lie buried who fell on the 19th April ’75. Edmund Wheeler–grandfather of William–who lived in the old house now pulled down near the present–went over the next day & carted them to this ground– A few years ago one Felch a Phrenologist by leave of the select men dug up–and took away two skulls The skeletons were very large– probably those of grenadiers. Wm Wheeler who was present–told me this– He said that he had heard old Mr. Child, who lived opposite–say that when one soldier was shot he leaped right up his full length out of the ranks & fell dead. & he Wm Wheeler–saw a bullet hole through & through one of the skulls.
The water was over the Turnpike below Master Cheney’s when I returned.
May 31: {One-third page missing} main there is a correspondence–that the fences–to a considerable extent will be found to mark natural divisions– Mowing–(upland & meadow) pasture woodland–& the different kinds of tillage– There will be found in the farmers motive for setting a fence here or there some conformity to natural limits– These artificial divisions no doubt have the effect of increasing the area & variety to the traveller– These various fields taken together seem more extensive than a single prairie of the same size would. The farmer puts his wall along the edge of his cornfield– Unless the land is very minutely divided the divisions will correspond to nature.– If the divisions corresponded to natural ones, I think that {One-third page missing}
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
Phrenology “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1851
June 29, Sunday: An estimate of the talents and dispositions of a lady, Charlotte Brontë, was made by a phrenologist, Dr. Browne (writing to George Smith in the following month, Charlotte would indicate that the estimate made of him during the same visit had been “a sort of miracle — like — like — like as the very life itself.”): Temperament for the most part nervous. Brain large; the anterior and superior parts remarkably salient. In her domestic relations this lady will be warm and affectionate. In the care of children she will evince judicious kindness, but she is not pleased at seeing them spoiled by over-indulgence. Her fondness for any particular locality would chiefly rest upon the associations connected with it. Her attachments are strong and enduring; indeed, this is a leading element of her character. She is rather circumspect, however, in the choice of her friends, and it is well that she is so, for she will seldom meet with persons whose dispositions approach the standard of excellence with which she can entirely sympathise. Her sense of truth and justice would be offended by any dereliction of duty, and she would in such cases express her disapprobation with warmth and energy. She would not, however, be precipitate in acting thus, and rather than live in a state of hostility with those she could wish to love she would depart from them, although the breaking off of friendship would be to her a source of great unhappiness. The careless and unreflecting whom she would labour to amend might deem her punctilious and perhaps exacting, not considering that their amendment and not her own gratification prompted her to admonish. She is sensitive, and is very anxious to succeed in her undertakings, but is not so sanguine as to the probability of success. She is occasionally inclined to take a gloomier view of things than perhaps the facts of the case justify. She should guard against the effect of this where her affection is engaged, for her sense of her own impatience is moderate and not strong enough to steel her against disappointment. She has more firmness than self-reliance, and her sense of justice is of a very high order. She is deferential to the aged and those she deems worthy of her respect, and possesses much devotional feeling, but dislikes fanaticism, and is not given to a belief in supernatural things without questioning the probability of their existence. Money is not her idol; she values it merely for its uses. She would be liberal to the poor and compassionate to the afflicted, and when friendship calls for aid she would struggle even against her own interest to impart the required assistance; indeed, sympathy is a marked characteristic of this organisation. Is fond of symmetry and proportion, and possesses a good perception of form, and is a good judge of colour. She is endowed with a keen perception of melody and rhythm. Her imitative powers are good, and the faculty which gives small dexterity is well developed. These powers might have been cultivated with advantage. Is a fair calculator, and her sense of order and arrangement is remarkably good. Whatever this lady has to settle or arrange will be done with precision and taste. She is endowed with an exalted sense of the beautiful and ideal, and longs for perfection. If not a poet her sentiments are HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY poetical, or at least imbued with that enthusiastic grace which is characteristic of poetical feeling. She is fond of dramatic literature and the drama, especially if it be combined with music. In its intellectual development this head is very remarkable. The forehead is at once very large and well formed. It bears the stamp of deep thoughtfulness and comprehensive understanding. It is highly philosophical. It exhibits the presence of an intellect at once perspicacious and perspicuous. There is much critical sagacity and fertility in devising resources in situations of difficulty; much originality, with a tendency to speculate and generalise. Possibly this speculative bias may sometimes interfere with the practical efficiency of some of her projects. Yet, since she has scarcely an adequate share of self-reliance, and is not sanguine as to the success of her plans, there is reason to suppose that she would attend more closely to particulars, and thereby prevent the unsatisfactory results of hasty generalisation. The lady possesses a fine organ of language, and can, if she has done her talents justice by exercise, express her sentiments with clearness, precision, and force—sufficiently eloquent but not verbose. In learning a language she would investigate its spirit and structure. The character of the German language would be well adapted to such an organisation. In analysing the motives of human conduct this lady would display originality and power, but in her mode of investigating mental science she would naturally be imbued with a metaphysical bias. She would perhaps be sceptical as to the truth of Galle’s doctrine; but the study of this doctrine, this new system of mental philosophy, would give additional strength to her excellent understanding by rendering it more practical, more attentive to particulars, and contribute to her happiness by imparting to her more correct notions of the dispositions of those whose acquaintance she may wish to cultivate. J. P. Browne, M.D. 367 Strand: June 29, 1851. Herman Melville wrote Nathaniel Hawthorne: My dear Hawthorne — The clear air and open window invite me to write to you. For some time past I have been so busy with a thousand things that I have almost forgotten when I wrote you last, and whether I received an answer. This most persuasive season has now for weeks recalled me from certain crotchetty and over doleful chimearas, the like of which men like you and me and some others, forming a chain of God’s posts round the world, must be content to encounter now and then, and fight them the best way we can. But come they will, — for, in the boundless, trackless, but still glorious wild wilderness through which these outposts run, the Indians do sorely abound, as well as the insignificant but still stinging mosquitoes. Since you have been here, I have been building some shanties of houses (connected with the old one) and likewise some shanties of chapters and essays. I have been plowing and sowing and raising and painting and printing and praying, — and now begin to come out upon a less bustling time, and to enjoy the calm prospect of things from a fair piazza at the north of the old farm house here. Not entirely yet, though, am I without something to be urgent with. The “Whale” is only HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY half through the press; for, wearied with the long delay of the printers, and disgusted with the heat and dust of the babylonish brick-kiln of New York, I came back to the country to feel the grass — and end the book reclining on it, if I may. — I am sure you will pardon this speaking all about myself, for if I say so much on that head, be sure all the rest of the world are thinking about themselves ten times as much. Let us speak, although we show all our faults and weaknesses, — for it is a sign of strength to be weak, to know it, and out with it, — not in [a] set way and ostentatiously, though, but incidentally and without premeditation. — But I am falling into my old foible — preaching. I am busy, but shall not be very long. Come and spend a day here, if you can and want to; if not, stay in Lenox, and God give you long life. When I am quite free of my present engagements, I am going to treat myself to a ride and a visit to you. Have ready a bottle of brandy, because I always feel like drinking that heroic drink when we talk ontological heroics together. This is rather a crazy letter in some respects, I apprehend. If so, ascribe it to the intoxicating effects of the latter end of June operating upon a very susceptible and peradventure feeble temperament. Shall I send you a fin of the Whale by way of a specimen mouthful? The tail is not yet cooked — though the hell- fire in which the whole book is broiled might not unreasonably have cooked it all ere this. This is the book’s motto (the secret one), — Ego non baptiso te in nomine — but make out the rest yourself. H.M.
June 29, Sunday: There is a great deal of white clover this year. In many fields where there has been no clover seed sown for many years at least, it is more abundant than the red and the heads are nearly as large. Also pastures which are close cropped and where I think there was little or no clover last year are spotted white with a humbler growth– And everywhere by road sides garden borders &c even where the sward is trodden hard –the small white heads on short stems are sprinkled every where– As this is the season for the swarming of bees –and this clover is very attractive to them, it is probably the more difficult to secure them –at any rate it is the more important to secure their services now that they can make honey so fast. It is an interesting inquiry why this year is so favorable to the growth of clover! I am interested to observe how old-country methods of farming resources are introduced among us. The irish laborer for instance seeing that his employer is contemplating some agricultural enterprise –as ditching –or fencing suggests some old country mode with he has been familiar from a boy –which is often found to be cheaper as well as more ornamental than the common– And Patrick is allowed to accomplish the object his own way –and for once exhibits some skill and has not to be shown –but working with a will as well as with pride – does better than ever in the old country. Even the Irish man exhibits what might be mistaken for a Yankee knack –exercising a merely inbred skill derived from the long teachings and practice of his ancestors. I saw an Irish man building a bank of sod where his employer had contemplated building a bank wall –piling up very neatly & solidly with his spade & a line the sods taken from the rear & coping the face at a very small angle from the perpendicular –intermingling the sods with bushes as they came to hand which would grow & strengthen the whole. It was much more agreeable to the eye as well as less expensive than stone would have been –& he thought that it would be equally effective as a fence & no less durable. But it is true only experience will show when the same practice may be followed in this climate & in Ireland –whether our atmosphere is not too dry to admit of it. At any rate it was wise in the farmer thus to avail himself of any peculiar experience which his hired laborer possessed, That was what he should buy. Also I noticed the other day where one who raises seeds when his ropes & poles failed had used ropes twisted of straw to support his plants –a resource probably suggested & supplied by his foreign laborers. It is only remarkable that so few improvements or resources are or are to be adopted from the old world. I look down on rays of prunella by the road sides now– The panicled or privet Andromeda with its fruit-like white flowers– Swamp-pink I see for the first time this season. –The Tree Primrose (Scabish) Oenothera biennis a rather coarse yellow flower with a long tubular calyx naturalized extensively in Europe.– The clasping bellflower –Campanula perfoliata from the heart shaped leaves clasping the stalk an interesting flower– The Convolvulus Sepium Large Bindweed –make a fresh morning impression as of dews & purity– The HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY Adder’s tongue Arethusa a delicate pink flower. How different is day from day! Yesterday the air was filled with a thick fog-like haze so that the sun did not once shine with ardor but every thing was so tempered under this thin veil that it was a luxury merely to be out doors– You were less out for it. The shadows of the apple trees even early in the afternoon were remarkably distinct The landscape wore a classical smoothness– Every object was as in picture with a glass over it. I saw some hills on this side the river looking from Conantum on which the grass being of a yellow tinge, though the sun did not shine out on them they had the appearance of being shone upon peculiarly.– It was merely an unusual yellow tint of the grass. The mere surface of water was an object for the eye to linger on. The panicled cornel a low shrub in blossom by wall sides now. I thought that one peculiarity of my “Week” was its hypæthral character –to use an epithet applied to those Egyptian temples which are open to the heavens above –under the ether– I thought that it had little of the atmosphere of the house about –but might wholly have been written, as in fact it was to a considerable extent – out of doors. It was only at a late period in writing it, as it happened, that I used any phrases implying that I lived in a house, or lead a domestic life. I trust it does not smell of the study & library –even of the Poets attic, as of the fields & woods.– that it is a hypæthral or unroofed book –lying open under the ether –& permeated by it. Open to all weathers –not easy to be kept on a shelf. The potatoes are beginning to blossom Riding to survey a woodlot yesterday I observed that a dog accompanied the wagon– Having tied the horse at the last house and entered the woods, I saw no more of the dog while there; –but when riding back to the village DOG I saw the dog again running by the wagon –and in answer to my inquiry was told that the horse & wagon were hired & that the dog always accompanied the horse. I queried whether it might happen that a dog would accompany the wagon if a strange horse were put into it –whether he would ever attach himself to an inanimate object. Methinks the driver though a stranger as it were added intellect to the mere animality of the horse and the dog not making very nice distinctions yielded respect to the horse and equipage as if it were human If the horse were to trot off alone without wagon or driver –I think it doubtful if the dog would follow –if with the wagon then the chances of his following would be increased –but if with a driver though a stranger I have found by experience that he would follow. At a distance in the meadow I hear still at long intervals the hurried commencement of the bobolink’s strain the bird just dashing into song –which is as suddenly checked as it were by the warder of the seasons –and the strain is left incomplete forever. Like human beings they are inspired to sing only for a short season. That little roadside –pealike blossomed blue flower is interesting to me. The mulleins are just blossoming. The voice of the crickets heard at noon from deep in the grass allies day to night– It is unaffected by sun & moon. It is a mid-night sound heard at noon –a midday sound heard at mid night. I observed some mulleins growing on the western slope of the sandy railroad embankment –in as warm a place as can easily be found –where the heat was reflected from the sand oppressively at 3 o clock P M this hot day– Yet the green & living leaves felt rather cool than other-wise to the hand –but the dead ones at the root were quite warm. The living plant thus preserves a cool temperature in the hottest exposure. as if it kept a cellar below from which cooling liquors were drawn up. Yarrow is now in full bloom. & elder –and a small many-head white daisy like a small white weed. The epilobium too is out. The night warbler sings the same strain at noon. The song-sparrow still occasionally reminds me of spring. I observe that the high water in the ponds –which have been rising for a year –has killed most of the pitch pines & alders which it had planted & merely watered at its edge during the years of dryness– But now it comes to undo its own work. How aweful is the least unquestionable meanness –when we cannot deny that we have been guilty of it– There seems to be no bounds to our unworthiness HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1855
In response to the commercial crisis of this year, George Combe’s pamphlet THE CURRENCY QUESTION. His PHRENOLOGY APPLIED TO PAINTING AND SCULPTURE (London: Simpkin, Marshall & Co.). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1858
August 14, Saturday: The phrenologist George Combe died at Dr Lane’s hydropathic establishment at Moor Park, Farnham (where Charles Darwin’s daughter Etty also was being treated) while engaged in a revision to the 9th edition of THE CONSTITUTION OF MAN.
There had been miles and miles of leftover cable aboard the US Steam Frigate Niagara, at the completion of the Atlantic Cable project. The initial advertisement for a souvenir chunk of it appeared in the Illustrated London News: HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1860
“Phrenological Fowlers” went to Britain from the US and there revived phrenology. –This thingie wasn’t going to lie down and be dead until somebody drove a stake through its heart. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1861
November 25, Monday: Professor Henri-Frédéric Amiel, who would be referred to as the “Swiss Thoreau,” wrote in his JOURNAL INTIME: “To understand a drama requires the same mental operation as to understand an existence, a biography, a man. It is a putting back of the bird into the egg, of the plant into its seed, a reconstitution of the whole genesis of the being in question. Art is simply the bringing into relief of the obscure thought of nature; a simplification of the lines, a falling into place of groups otherwise invisible. The fire of inspiration brings out, as it were, designs traced beforehand in sympathetic ink. The mysterious grows clear, the confused plain; what is complicated becomes simple — what is accidental, necessary. In short, art reveals nature by interpreting its intentions and formulating its desires. Every ideal is the key of a long enigma. The great artist is the simplifier. Every man is a tamer of wild beasts, and these wild beasts are his passions. To draw their teeth and claws, to muzzle and tame them, to turn them into servants and domestic animals, fuming, perhaps, but submissive — in this consists personal education.”
Worried father Prince Albert visited his son Bertie at Cambridge, to discuss his son’s sexual liaison with the Irish actress Nellie Clifden. The two had a long walk and talk in the rain, the gist of which would have been “For goodness sake keep it in your pants.”
[This seems to be the appropriate place to introduce a comment about self-fulfilling prophesies. Early on these parents had subjected their child to a series of inspections by a reputable phrenologist, Dr. Andrew Combe, who had felt his head bumps and announced, essentially, that due to “defective” brain development Bertie was going to be naturally a sexy sort of guy who would have a lifelong problem with keeping it in his pants. His brain would make him do it! Bertie had grown up knowing that this was his scientific diagnosis and had never been informed that this “science” was hokum. So, what do you expect, question mark? Parents, let this be a warning to you — do not let anyone manipulate your child’s head bumps. Beyond that, do not allow anyone even to cast your child’s horoscope! There is such a thing as the self-fulfilling prophesy and it is the duty of every decent pair of parents to protect their offspring from that sort of mentalist trap.]
“I look upon Phrenology as the guide of Philosophy, and the handmaid of Christianity; whoever disseminates true Phrenology, is a public benefactor.” — Horace Mann, Sr. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1870
Last meeting of the Edinburgh Phrenological Society. It was the night of the living dead: the British Phrenological Society was established. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1891
December 5, Saturday night: In darkness and secrecy Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar and a helper reinterred one of the two Revolutionary-War British skulls which with the consent of local selectmen had been dug up during the late 1830s or early 1840s by the phrenologist Doctor Walton Felch. He chose to re-inter this skull at the Old North Bridge gravesite. In all likelihood he was guessing, as is not known for sure from which burial locale this skull had originally been removed but it seems likely that it had been taken from the burial site in Lincoln. THE MARKET FOR HUMAN BODY PARTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1892
March 26, Saturday: Walt Whitman died at age 72. His brain, when taken to the American Anthropometric Society in Philadelphia,26 would accidentally be dropped on the floor and would have to be discarded. They would be able to take a measurement indicating that it was somewhat smaller than average. TIMELINE OF ACCIDENTS
26. In 1849 Walt Whitman had had his head examined by a phrenologist, who had said nice stuff about him. Whitman, who vastly impressed himself, was vastly impressed that phrenology thought highly of him and therefore made this bequest. HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1965
The British Phrenological Society disbanded. Our long nightmare was over (for the time being). HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY
1996
27 Professor Stephen Jay Gould’s THE MISMEASURE OF MAN, 2d edition revised and expanded.
27. Beware. Revisiting these measurements, by tracking down and re-measuring some of the actual skulls that Morton had measured, has since demonstrated that the original measurements by the use of lead shot, which Professor Gould derogated, actually had been more accurate than his own re-analysis. “Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright ©2016. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: March 11, 2016 HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button.
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with
PHRENOLOGY PHRENOLOGY