James Thomas Fields of Ticknor & Fields1
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JAMES THOMAS FIELDS OF TICKNOR & FIELDS1 Per JAMES T. FIELDS (Boston MA: Houghton Mifflin, 1881, page 102): “I like to see him [Thoreau] come in, he always smells of the pine woods.” 1817 December 31, Wednesday: James Thomas Fields was born in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. 1. “It was part of his reputation that he was generous with his authors.” HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES T. F IELDS JAMES T. F IELDS 1830 During this year 1,700 titles were being printed in America, of which almost half were reprints of books published overseas. 1831 James Thomas Fields went to work at the age of 14 in the Old Corner Bookshop in Boston. 1838 James Thomas Fields was hired by the Boston bookselling firm of William D. Ticknor, which would become Ticknor, Reed & Fields in 1854 and Fields, Osgood & Company in 1868. 1832-1834 Allen & Ticknor 1834-1843 William D. Ticknor 2 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES T. F IELDS JAMES T. F IELDS 1843-1849 William D. Ticknor & Co. 1849-1854 Ticknor, Reed & Fields 1854-1868 Ticknor and Fields 1868-1871 Fields, Osgood & Co. 1871-1878 James R. Osgood & Co. September 13, Thursday: James Thomas Fields delivered an Anniversary Poem before the Mercantile Library Association of Boston (he would print this at the firm of his employer William D. Ticknor at the corner of Washington and School Streets). ANNIVERSARY POEM Early in September, Jones Very had felt within himself the gradual coming of a new will, somewhat like his old wicked self-will but different in that “it was not a feeling of my own but a sensible will that was not my own,” a will “to do good.” There was “a consciousness which seemed to say —‘That which creates you creates also that which you see or him to whom you speak.’” By Thursday, September the 13th, Very was convinced that he had acquired an “identification with Christ.” Moved entirely by this spirit within, he began to declare to all about him at Harvard College that the coming of Christ was at hand. That evening he went to the study of the Reverend Henry Ware, Jr., who was working up his alarmed response to Waldo Emerson’s address at the Divinity School, a response directed against Emerson’s “doctrine of the Divine Impersonality,” which he was scheduled to deliver at the Divinity Hall Chapel on September 23d. Ignoring theology students who happened to be in the professor’s study, Very proceeded to parse Matthew chapter 24 to the professor and to insist that what he was offering was eternal, revealed truth. Ware could not agree with Very’s parsing of the chapter, so Very pulled out his big gun: “You are doing your own will, and not the will of your Father.”2 1842 James Thomas Fields was made a junior partner the Boston bookselling firm of William D. Ticknor, which would become Ticknor, Reed & Fields in 1854 and Fields, Osgood & Company in 1868. 1832-1834 Allen & Ticknor 1834-1843 William D. Ticknor 1843-1849 William D. Ticknor & Co. 1849-1854 Ticknor, Reed & Fields 2. Which although it was true enough to be painful –for in fact the Reverend Professor Henry Ware, Jr. was one of these “heroic champion of the consensual reality” types– or false enough –for in fact the Reverend Professor Ware Junior was trudging along as un-clumsily as he could in the theological footprints of his father, the Reverend Professor Ware Senior– definitely was not a helpful thing to point out. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3 HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES T. F IELDS JAMES T. F IELDS 1854-1868 Ticknor and Fields 1868-1871 Fields, Osgood & Co. 1871-1878 James R. Osgood & Co. 1849 James Thomas Fields’s POEMS were published in Boston by the firm in which he was becoming a junior partner, the firm of William D. Ticknor & Co. JAMES T. FIELD’S POEMS Ellery Channing’s THE WOODMAN, AND OTHER POEMS (Boston: James Munroe & company). THE WOODMAN, &C., &C. This volume would be in Henry Thoreau’s personal library. He would include a portion of “Baker Farm” and a portion of “Walden Spring” in WALDEN, and a portion of “Old Sudbury Inn” in his journal for the autumn of this year. TIMELINE OF WALDEN BAKER FARM. Thy entry is a pleasant field, Which some mossy fruit trees yield Partly to a ruddy brook, By gliding musquash undertook, And mercurial trout 4 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES T. F IELDS JAMES T. F IELDS Darting about. Cell of seclusion, Haunt of old time, Rid of confusion, Empty of crime, Landscape! where the richest element Is a little sunshine innocent; In thy insidious marsh, In thy cold opaque wood, Thy artless meadow, And forked orchard's writhing mood, Still Baker Farm! There lies in them a fourfold charm. Alien art thou to God and Devil! Man too forsakes thee, No one oms to revel On thy rail-fenced lea, Save gleaning Silence gray-headed, Who drains the frozen apple red, Thin jar of winter’s jam, Which he will with gipsy sugar cram. And here a Poet builded, In the completed years, For behold a trivial cabin That to destruction steers. Should we judge it was built? Rather by kind nature spilt To interfere with circumstance, And put a comma to the verse And west trends blue Fairhaven bay, O’er whose stained rocks the white pines sway, And south slopes Nobscot grand, And north the still Cliffs stand. Pan of unwrinkled cream, May some Poet dash thee in his churn, And with thy beauty mad, Verse thee in rhymes that burn; Thy beauty, — the beauty of Baker Farm! In the drying field, And the knotty tree, In hassock and bield, And marshes at sea! Thou art expunged from to-day, Rigid in parks of thy own, Where soberly shifts the play, And the wind sighs in monotone. Debate with no man hast thou, With questions art never perplexed, As tame at the first sight as now, In thy plain, russet gabardine dressed. I would hint at thy religion, Hadst thou any, Piny fastness of wild pigeon, Squirrel's litany,. Never thumbed a gilt Prayer Book, Here the cawing, sable rook! Art thou orphan of a deed, Title that a court can read, Or dost thou stand For the entertaining land, That no man owns, Pure grass and stones? Idleness is in the preaching, Simpleness is all the teaching, “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 5 HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES T. F IELDS JAMES T. F IELDS Churches in the steepled woods, Galleries in green solitudes, Fretted never by a noise, Eloquence that each enjoys. Here humanity may trow, It is feasible to slough The corollary of the village, Lies, thefts, clothes, meats, and tillage! Come, ye who love, And ye who hate, Children of the Holy Dove, And Guy Faux of the State, And hang conspiracies, From the tough rafters of the trees! Still Baker Farm! So fair a lesson thou dost set, Commensurately wise, Lesson no one may forget. Consistent sanctity, Value that cannot be spent, Volume that cannot be lent, Passable to me and thee, For Heaven thou art meant! WALDEN SPRING. Whisper ye leaves your lyrics in my ear, Carol thou glittering bird thy summer song, And flowers, and grass, and mosses on the rocks, And the lull woods, lead me in sober aisles, And may I seek this happy day the Cliffs, When fluid summer melts all ores in one, Both in the air, the water; and the ground. And so I walked beyond the last, gray house, And o’er the upland glanced, and down the mead, Then turning went into the oaken copse,— Heroic underwoods that take the air With freedom, nor respect their parent’s death. Yet a few steps, then welled a cryptic spring, Whose temperate nectar palls not on the taste, Dancing in yellow circles on the sand, And carving through the ooze a crystal bowl. Here sometime have I drank a bumper rare, Wetting parched lips, from a sleek, emerald leaf, Nursed at the fountain's breast, and neatly filled The forest-cup, filled by a woodland hand, That from familiar things draws sudden use, Strange to the civic eye, to Walden plain. And resting there after my thirst was quenched, Beneath the curtain of a civil oak, That muses near this water and the sky, I tried some names with which to grave this fount. And as I dreamed of these, I marked the roof, Then newly built above the placid spring, Resting upon some awkward masonry. In truth our village has become a butt For one of these fleet railroad shafts, and o'er Our peaceful plain, its soothing sound is — Concord, Four times and more each day a rumbling train Of painted cars rolls on the iron road, Prefigured in its advent by sharp screams That Pandemonium satisfied should hear. The steaming tug athirst, and lacking drink, The railroad eye direct with fatal stroke Smote the spring's covert, and by leaden drain Thieved its cold crystal for the engine's breast. Strange! that the playful current from the woods, Should drag the freighted train, chatting with fire, And point the tarnished rail with man and trade. 6 Copyright Austin Meredith HDT WHAT? INDEX JAMES T. F IELDS JAMES T. F IELDS OLD SUDBURY INN. Who set the oaks Along the road? Was it not nature's hand, Old Sudbury Inn! where I have stood And wondered at the sight, The oaks my delight? And the elms, All boldly branching to the sky, And the interminable forests, Old Sudbury Inn! that wash thee nigh On every side, With a green and rustling tide: The oaks and elms, And the surrounding woods, And Nobscot rude, Old Sudbury Inn! creature of moods, That I could find Well suited to the custom of my mind.