ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
Robert Michael Ballantyne “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1825
April 24, Sunday: Robert Michael Ballantyne was born in Edinburgh, Scotland, a scion of a well-known family of printers and publishers. His father was newspaper editor and printer Sandy Ballantyne. One uncle was James Ballantyne, printer for the most famous writer in Scotland, Sir Walter Scott, and he grew up in and around the Scott home. This was the Ballantyne Press:
When Sir Walter made bad investments, this Ballantyne family would also be financially ruined.
In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 24th of 4 M / Our forenoon Meeting was pretty well attended, & our frd Abigail Robinson was largely engaged in testimony beyond any thing we have heard from her in some time — “What will a Man give up in exchange for his soul” was her opening which branched out into much wise counsil & warning & the Youth was feelingly included in the testimony. — Hannah Dennis was also lively in a short communication In the Afternoon, the Meeting small but a season of some favour — With John & Richard & set the evening at D Buffums RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
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1826
Early in this year Sir Walter Scott’s publishers and business associates, Ballantynes, found themselves bankrupt to the tune of some £130,000. The English government began to consider a proposal to forbid the Scots from printing their own banknotes. A publishing firm had once gotten off paying a shilling and threepence on the pound on a similar debt of £300,000 but Ballantyne, at Scott’s insistence, would in the end pay off its entire debt. ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Robert Michael Ballantyne “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1830
The 4th series of Sir Walter Scott’s TALES OF A GRANDFATHER and the 2d volume of his HISTORY OF SCOTLAND. In New-York, his LETTERS ON DEMONOLOGY AND WITCHCRAFT ADDRESSED TO J.G. [JOHN GIBSON] LOCKHART (Illustrated by George Cruikshank; Harper’s Family Library; J. & J. Harper). LETTERS ON DEMON...
In two years the author had paid off nearly £40,000 of his publisher’s debt. He had a fainting fit. By a couple of years after Scott’s death in 1832, nearly £90,000 had been paid off by income including that from a LIFE OF SIR WALTER SCOTT written by his son-in-law Lockhart. The remainder would be paid off by copyright income over the next 14 years. In this year also, his play “The Doom of Devergoil.” ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
From the 2nd act of this white delight, a snippet of tribalist tunefulness would eventually be added by Louisa HDT WHAT? INDEX
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May Alcott which would prove useful to young folks tussling on the living-room couch:
“I’d rather stay here, thank you.” “Well, you can’t, there isn’t room. Go and make yourself useful, since you are too big to be ornamental. I thought you hated to be tied to a woman’s apron-string?” retorted Jo, quoting certain rebellious words of his own. “Ah, that depends on who wears the apron!” and Laurie gave an audacious tweak at the tassel. “Are you going?” demanded Jo, diving for the pillow. He fled at once, and the minute it was well ‘Up with the bonnets of bonnie Dundee,’ she slipped away to return no more till the young gentleman departed in high dudgeon.
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.
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1832
September 21, Friday: Maria W. Stewart, a free black New Englander who had been reduced to domestic service after being cheated out of inheriting her dead husband’s estate, desiring, like Emerson, to do nothing which she could not do with her whole heart, made a speech about the wrong she had been forced to endure, in the Franklin Hall in Boston.1
Walter Scott died in Abbotsford, Roxburgh, Scotland at the age of 61. “About half past one on 21st September Sir Walter breathed his last in the presence of all his children. It was a beautiful day so warm that every window was wide open — and so perfectly still that the sound of all others most delicious to his ear, the gentle ripple of the Tweed over its pebbles, was distinctly audible as we knelt around his bed, and his eldest son kissed and closed his eyes.” ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
1. Although this speech has often been cited by historians as the 1st public lecture delivered by an American woman (apparently unaware that Maria W. Stewart had made a public speech in the previous year), Catherine A. Brekus, in STRANGERS AND PILGRIMS: FEMALE PREACHING IN AMERICA, 1740-1845 (Gender and American History Series; Chapel Hill and London: U of North Carolina P, 1998, pages 38, 49, 197), contends that this sort of reconstruction actually is far off the mark. During the 1740s and 1750s, black and white women emboldened by a new “heart-centered piety” were, while being careful not to formally interpret Scripture, publicly exhorting lay men and women to seek emotional conversions. Brekus has discovered the names of only 13 full-time female public exhorters during this period, none of whom left letters or written accounts of their own, but nevertheless has been able to conclude on the basis of ministers' journals, letters, memoirs, and revival accounts that “scores or even hundreds of women may have witnessed to their faith every Sunday” by speaking and praying out loud in Separate churches. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1841
Robert Michael Ballantyne, 16 years of age, traveled from Scotland to Canada for employment as an apprentice clerk with the Hudson Bay Company. During six years in the fur trade, he would serve at Upper Fort Garry, Norway House, York Factory, and Tadoussac. During his absence he would be writing frequently and lengthily to his mother, who was in effect his first literary audience. Later he would comment on this: To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
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1847
Robert Michael Ballantyne returned from Canada to Scotland and learned that his father Sandy Ballantyne had deceased.
John Charlton Fisher became president of the Québec Library Association and vice-president of The Literary and Historical Society of Québec.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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1848
Henry Youle Hind joined the staff of the Ontario Normal School in Toronto, Canada as lecturer in chemistry and mathematics.
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s HUDSON’S BAY: OR, LIFE IN THE WILDS OF NORTH AMERICA. Here is an illustration from that book, representing a Christmas ball the author had attended in Bachelors’ Hall, at the Hudson Bay Company outpost of York Factory during the 1840s.
His own family’s publishing house being defunct, he went into the employ of the publishing house Messrs Constable. Our visitor had travelled in a dog cariole. This machine is very narrow, just broad enough to admit one person. It is a wooden frame covered with deer-skin parchment, painted gaudily, and is generally drawn by four Esquimaux dogs. Dogs are invaluable in the Arctic regions, where horses are utterly useless, owing to the depth of snow which covers the earth for so large a portion of the year. The comparatively light weight of the dogs enables them to walk without sinking much; and even when the snow is so soft as to HDT WHAT? INDEX
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be incapable of supporting them, they are still able to sprawl along more easily than any other species of quadruped could do. Four are usually attached to a sledge, which they haul with great vigour; being followed by a driver on snow-shoes, whose severe lash is brought to bear so powerfully on the backs of the poor animals, should any of them be observed to slacken their pace, that they are continually regarding him with deprecatory glances as they run along. Should the lash give a flourish, there is generally a short yelp from the pack; and should it descend amongst them with a vigorous crack, the vociferous yelling that results is perfectly terrific. These drivers are sometimes very cruel; and when a pack of dogs have had a fight, and got their traces hopelessly ravelled (as is often the case), they have been known to fall on their knees in their passion, seize one of the poor dogs by the nose with their teeth, and almost bite it off. Dogs are used for dragging carioles, which vehicles are used by gentlemen in the Company's service who are either too old or too lazy to walk on snow-shoes. The cariole is in form not unlike a slipper bath, both in shape and size. It is lined with buffalo robes, in the midst of a bundle of which the occupant reclines luxuriously, while the dogs drag him slowly through the soft snow, and among the trees and bushes of the forest; or scamper with him over the hard- beaten surface of a lake or river; while the machine is prevented from capsizing by a voyageur who walks behind on snow-shoes, holding on to a line attached to the back part of the cariole. The weather during winter is so cold that it is often a matter of the greatest difficulty for the traveller to keep his toes from freezing, despite the buffalo robes; and sometimes, when the dogs start fresh in the morning, with a good breakfast, a bright, clear, frosty day, and a long expanse of comparatively open country before them, where the snow from exposure has become quite hard, away they go with a loud yelp, upsetting the driver in the bolt, who rises to heap undeserved and very improper epithets upon the poor brutes, who, careering over the ground at the rate of eleven miles an hour, swing the miserable cariole over the snow, tear it through the bushes, bang it first on one side, then on the other, against stumps and trees, yelling all the while, partly with frantic glee at the thought of having bolted, and partly with fearful anticipation of the tremendous welting that is to come; until at last the cariole gets jammed hard and fast among the trees of the forest, or plunges down a steep bank of a river head over heels till they reach the foot - a horrible and struggling compound of dogs, traveller, traces, parchment, buffalo robes, blankets, and snow! HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1856
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s rule became, and would remain, that in every case he would write as far as possible from a personal knowledge of the scenes described. At this point he produced a volume based on his personal experiences as an employee of the Hudson Bay Company from 1841 to 1847, complete with his own illustrations, SNOWFLAKES AND SUNBEAMS; OR, THE YOUNG FUR TRADERS. A TALE OF THE FAR NORTH2 (he also produced in this year MISTER FOX. A CHILDREN’S NURSERY RHYME).
2. In the following year Henry Thoreau would obtain information from this for his Indian Notebook #10. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Here was R.M. Ballantyne at age 30 (two years earlier): HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1857
Henry Thoreau read, and made notes on in his Indian Notebook #10, Robert Michael Ballantyne’s 1856 SNOW FLAKES AND SUNBEAMS; OR, THE YOUNG FUR TRADERS.
THE YOUNG FUR TRADERS
Ballantyne’s THE CORAL ISLAND. Due to an infelicity that had crept into this writing, Ballantyne would in the future insist upon visiting all his sites, to gain first-hand knowledge of the subject matter and research the backgrounds of his stories. Despite this infelicity, Robert Lewis Stevenson would be so impressed with Ballantyne’s THE CORAL ISLAND as a youth, that as an adult writer he would echo themes from it in his TREASURE ISLAND. There would be nothing covert about this borrowing, as he would straightforwardly HDT WHAT? INDEX
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memorialize Ballantyne in his Introduction:
To the Hesitating Purchaser If sailor tales to sailor tunes, Storm and adventure, heat and cold, If schooners, islands, and maroons, And buccaneers, and buried gold, And all the old romance, retold Exactly in the ancient way, Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of today: So be it, and fall on! If not, If studious youth no longer crave, His ancient appetites forgot, Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave, Or Cooper of the wood and wave: So be it, also! And may I And all my pirates share the grave Where these and their creations lie!
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Robert Michael Ballantyne “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1858
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s UNGAVA: A TALE OF ESKIMO LAND, MARTIN RATTLER, and HANDBOOK TO THE NEW GOLDFIELDS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1860
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE DOG CRUSOE AND HIS MASTER and THE WORLD OF ICE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1861
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE GORILLA HUNTERS, THE GOLDEN DREAM, and THE RED ERIC. Boys [should be] inured from childhood to trifling risks and slight dangers of every possible description, such as tumbling into ponds and off of trees, etc., in order to strengthen their nervous system.... They ought to practice leaping off heights into deep water. They ought never to hesitate to cross a stream over a narrow unsafe plank for fear of a ducking. They ought never to decline to climb up a tree, to pull fruit merely because there is a possibility of their falling off and breaking their necks. I firmly believe that boys were intended to encounter all kinds of risks, in order to prepare them to meet and grapple with risks and dangers incident to man’s career with cool, cautious self-possession....
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
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1863
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s AWAY IN THE WILDERNESS, FIGHTING THE WHALES, THE WILD MAN OF THE WEST, MAN ON THE OCEAN, and FAST IN THE ICE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1864
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s GASCOYNE, THE LIFEBOAT, CHASING THE SUN, and FREAKS ON THE FELLS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1865
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE LIGHTHOUSE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1866
Robert Michael Ballantyne got married with Jane Dickson Grant. The couple would produce four sons and two daughters. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1867
After serving as a London fireman while doing needed literary research, Robert Michael Ballantyne produced in this year SILVER LAKE and FIGHTING THE FLAMES. ... when a fire occurred in any part of London at the time of which we write, the fire-station nearest to it at once sent out its engines and men, and telegraphed to the then head or centre station at Watling Street. London was divided into four districts, each district containing several fire stations, and being presided over by a foreman. From Watling Street the news was telegraphed to the foremen’s stations, whence it was transmitted to the stations of their respective districts, so that in a few minutes after the breaking out of a fire the fact was known to the firemen all over London. As we have said, the stations nearest to the scene of conflagration turned out engines and men; but the other stations furnished a man each. Thus machinery was set in motion which moved, as it were, the whole metropolis; and while the engines were going to the fire at full speed, single men were setting out from every point of the compass to walk to it, with their sailors’ caps on their heads and their helmets on their arms. And this took place in the case of every alarm of fire, because fire is an element that will not brook delay, and it does not do to wait to ascertain whether it is worth while to turn out such a force of men for it or not. In order, however, to prevent this unnecessary assembling of men when the fire was found to be trifling, or when, as was sometimes the case, it was a false alarm, the fireman in charge of the engine that arrived first, at once sent a man back to the station with a “stop,” that is, with an order to telegraph to the central station that the fire turns out to be only a chimney or a false alarm, and that all hands who have started from the distant stations may be “stopped.” The “stop” was at once telegraphed to the foremen, from whom it was passed (just as the “call” had been) to the outlying stations, and this second telegram might arrive within quarter of an hour of the first. Of course the man from each station had set out before that time, and the “stop” was too late for him, but it was his duty to call at the various fire stations he happened to pass on the way, where he soon found out whether he was to “go on” or to “go back.” If no telegram had been received, he went on to the fire; sometimes walking four or five miles to it, “at not less than four miles an hour.” On coming up to the scene of conflagration, he put on his helmet, thrust his cap into the breast of his coat, and reported himself to the chief of the fire brigade (who was usually on the spot), or to the foreman in command, and found, probably, that he had arrived just in time to be of great service in the way of relieving the men who first attacked the flames. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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If, on the other hand, he found that the “stop” had been telegraphed, he turned back before having gone much more than a mile from his own station, and so went quietly home to bed. In the days of which we write the effective and beautiful system of telegraphy which now exists had not been applied to the fire stations of London, and the system of “stops” and “calls,” although in operation, was carried out much less promptly and effectively by means of messengers. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1868
After spending time with the tin miners of Cornwall while doing needed literary research, Robert Michael Ballantyne produced in this year DEEP DOWN and SHIFTING WINDS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1869
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s HUNTING THE LIONS, OVER THE ROCKY MOUNTAINS, SAVED BY THE LIFEBOAT, ERLING THE BOLD, THE BATTLE AND THE BREEZE, UP IN THE CLOUDS, THE CANNIBAL ISLANDS, LOST IN THE FOREST, DIGGING FOR GOLD, and SUNK AT SEA. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1870
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE FLOATING LIGHT OF THE GOODWIN SANDS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1871
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE IRON HORSE, which was not children’s literature but instead an explanation of the Great Victorian Railway System and its accompanying telegraph setup which Ballantyne extrapolated from extensive interviews with managers, clerks, drivers, guards, and porters. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1872
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE NORSEMEN IN THE WEST and THE PIONEERS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1873
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s LIFE IN THE RED BRIGADE, FORT DESOLATION, and BLACK IVORY. In writing this book, my aim has been to give a true picture in outline of the Slave-Trade as it exists at the present time on the east coast of Africa. In order to do this, I have selected from the most trust-worthy sources what I believe to be the most telling points of “the trade,” and have woven these together into a tale, the warp of which is composed of thick cords of fact; the woof of slight lines of fiction, just sufficient to hold the fabric together. Exaggeration has been easily avoided, because –as Dr. Livingstone says in regard to the slave-trade– “exaggeration is impossible” ... I began my tale in the hope that I might produce something to interest the young (perchance, also, the old) in a most momentous case — the total abolition of the African slave-trade. I close it with the prayer that God may make it a tooth in the file which shall eventually cut the chain of slavery, and set the black man free. — BLACK IVORY INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1874
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE OCEAN AND ITS WONDERS, THE PIRATE CITY, and THE BUTTERFLY’S BALL AND THE GRASSHOPPER’S FEAST.
Come take up your Hats, and away let us haste To the Butterfly’s Ball, and the Grasshopper’s Feast. The Trumpeter, Gadfly, has summon’d the Crew, And the Revels are now only waiting for you. So said little Robert, and pacing along, His merry Companions came forth in a Throng. And on the smooth Grass, by the side of a Wood, Beneath a broad Oak that for Ages had stood, Saw the Children of Earth, and the Tenants of Air, For an Evening’s Amusement together repair. And there came the Beetle, so blind and so black, Who carried the Emmet, his Friend, on his Back. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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And there was the Gnat and the Dragon-fly too, With all their Relations, Green, Orange, and Blue. And there came the Moth, with his Plumage of Down, And the Hornet in Jacket of Yellow and Brown; Who with him the Wasp, his Companion, did bring, But they promis’d, that Evening, to lay by their Sting. And the sly little Dormouse crept out of his Hole, And brought to the Feast his blind Brother, the Mole. And the Snail, with his Horns peeping out of his Shell, Came from a great Distance, the Length of an Ell. A Mushroom their Table, and on it was laid A Water-dock Leaf, which a Table-cloth made. The Viands were various, to each of their Taste, And the Bee brought her Honey to crown the Repast. Then close on his Haunches, so solemn and wise, The Frog from a Corner, look’d up to the Skies. And the Squirrel well pleas’d such Diversions to see, Mounted high over Head, and look’d down from a Tree. Then out came the Spider, with Finger so fine, To shew his Dexterity on the tight Line. From one Branch to another, his Cobwebs he slung, Then quick as an Arrow he darted along, But just in the Middle,—Oh! shocking to tell, From his Rope, in an Instant, poor Harlequin fell. Yet he touch’d not the Ground, but with Talons outspread, Hung suspended in Air, at the End of a Thread. Then the Grasshopper came with a Jerk and a Spring, Very long was his Leg, though but short was his Wing; He took but three Leaps, and was soon out of Sight, Then chirp’d his own Praises the rest of the Night. With Step so majestic the Snail did advance, And promis’d the Gazers a Minuet to dance. But they all laugh’d so loud that he pull’d in his Head, And went in his own little Chamber to Bed. Then, as Evening gave Way to the Shadows of Night, Their Watchman, the Glow-worm, came out with a Light. Then Home let us hasten, while yet we can see, For no Watchman is waiting for you and for me, So said little Robert, and pacing along, His merry Companions returned in a throng. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1875
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE STORY OF THE ROCK and RIVERS OF ICE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1876
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s UNDER THE WAVES. Here is the frontispiece of the book, which represents an dangerous accident caused by a diver’s signal “LESS AIR” having been interpreted as a demand “MORE AIR” from the pump at the surface:
Ballantyne’s humor is exacerbated here by gender bias and race bias (the signal tugs coming up from below are misinterpreted by the diver’s anxious wife, women being emotional rather than rational; the pump is manned by a couple of frantic Chinamen, beings without a clue who are attempting to deal with the white man’s machinery). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1877
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE SETTLER AND THE SAVAGE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1878
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s IN THE TRACK OF THE TROOPS and JARWIN AND CUFFY. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1879
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s PHILOSOPHER JACK and SIX MONTHS AT THE CAPE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1880
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s POST HASTE, THE LONELY ISLAND, and THE RED MAN’S REVENGE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1881
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s MY DOGGIE AND I. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1882
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE LIFE OF A SHIP, THE KITTEN PILGRIMS, and THE GIANT OF THE NORTH. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1883
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE MADMAN AND THE PIRATE, BATTLES WITH THE SEA, THE BATTERY AND THE BOILER, and THE THOROGOOD FAMILY.
November 3, Saturday: The Sudanese followers of the Mahdi in Kurdofan in central Sudan attacked British-Egyptian invaders at El Obeid (al Ubayyid).
TREASURE ISLAND, by Robert Lewis Stevenson. This famous author had been so impressed with Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE CORAL ISLAND as a youth, as to echo themes from it in this famous book (there was nothing covert about this borrowing, as he straightforwardly memorialized Ballantyne in the Introduction). To the Hesitating Purchaser If sailor tales to sailor tunes, Storm and adventure, heat and cold, If schooners, islands, and maroons, And buccaneers, and buried gold, And all the old romance, retold Exactly in the ancient way, Can please, as me they pleased of old, The wiser youngsters of today: So be it, and fall on! If not, If studious youth no longer crave, His ancient appetites forgot, Kingston, or Ballantyne the brave, Or Cooper of the wood and wave: So be it, also! And may I And all my pirates share the grave Where these and their creations lie! HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1884
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE YOUNG TRAWLER and DUSTY DIAMONDS, CUT AND POLISHED. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1885
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s TWICE BOUGHT, THE ISLAND QUEEN, and THE ROVER OF THE ANDES. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1886
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE PRAIRIE CHIEF, THE LIVELY POLL, and RED ROONEY. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1887
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE BIG OTTER and THE FUGITIVES. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1888
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s BLUE LIGHTS and THE MIDDY AND THE MOORS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1889
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE EAGLE CLIFF, THE CREW OF THE WATER WAGTAIL, and BLOWN TO BITS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1890
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE GARRET AND THE GARDEN, JEFF BENSON, and CHARLIE TO THE RESCUE. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1891
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE COXSWAIN’S BRIDE and THE BUFFALO RUNNERS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1892
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE HOT SWAMP and HUNTED AND HARRIED. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1893
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s THE WALRUS HUNTERS, AN AUTHOR’S ADVENTURES, and PERSONAL REMINISCENCES OF BOOK MAKING. To this long-letter writing I attribute whatever small amount of facility in composition I may have acquired. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
1894
February 8, Thursday: Robert Michael Ballantyne died in Rome at the age of 68.
At this point Corning & Company of Peoria, Illinois filed for a government-protected trademark on their “Old Quaker” product, “A Friendly Whiskey” that they had been selling as such since October 1, 1878 — and the product was forthwith granted trademark number 24,384. (It seems clear that in the course of this commercial application and government approval process, no-one must have bothered to consult any actual Quakers, HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
because of course if any actual Quakers had been consulted there would have been the most vigorous protests.)
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
1895
Robert Michael Ballantyne’s WRECKED BUT NOT RUINED (posthumous).
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
Robert Michael Ballantyne “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
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 2014. 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: May 30, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
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. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE ROBERT MICHAEL BALLANTYNE
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in 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