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1 “CRAZY PRODUCTS OF A CRAZY MIND”: JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND In my opinion, there is a reason why Josiah Gilbert Holland became so very rich and so very famous by writing under the pen name “Timothy Titcomb.” It is due to what I suppose to be the ultimate dark nasty secret about the reading habits of the American public: we don’t like to need to read something more than once. Holland was successful, it seems, because incapable of writing anything that anybody would be willing to glance at a 2d time. Now in the 21st Century we have passed well beyond that point — none of us now read anything by “Timothy Titcomb” even a 1st time. 1. Holland’s declared attitude toward Thoreau’s oeuvre –and Poe’s –and Whitman’s. HDT WHAT? INDEX “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND 1819 July 24, Saturday: At Concord, Samuel Whiting of Concord got married with Mary Ormsby of Concord. Josiah Gilbert Holland was born in Belchertown, Massachusetts. The family was poor, although of American pedigree (the claimed ancestors John Holland and Judith Stevens Holland were supposedly members of a church that was organized before sailing from Plymouth in Devonshire, that had emigrated into the wilderness at Dorchester), and at an early age he would work in a factory. He would write the lyrics to the Methodist hymn “There’s a Song in the Air,” and many others. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 24th of 7 M / It seems to be a Solemn time among us at present - Sally Reed wife of John, died this eveng which makes with Sally Cornell, two in one house in four days. which with the general state of things is depressing, but may we place our dependance on the Lord. Oh Saith my soul may I lean on him, & rely on him in all things, for hither too he has been Kind, beyond my deserts, & I have cause to bless & magnify his holy name to the end of my days RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT “Timothy Titcomb” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” 1844 At an early age Josiah Gilbert Holland had needed to work in a factory in order to assist his family of origin, which was poor and moved around quite a bit (for instance from Belchertown to Health to Belchertown to South Hadley to Granby and Northampton and elsewhere). He had spent a short time studying at the Northampton, Massachusetts High School but had needed to withdraw on account of ill health. He had traveled from town to town teaching calligraphy and teaching in public schools. He had attempted to become a Daguerreotypist. He had, however, persevered, and at this point, at Berkshire Medical College in Pittsfield, Massachusetts, he received a degree in medicine, with honor. “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project “Timothy Titcomb” HDT WHAT? INDEX “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND 1845 Dr. Josiah Gilbert Holland got married with Elizabeth Luna Chapin. He and a classmate, Dr. Charles Bailey, would attempt to establish a medical partnership in Springfield but would be unsuccessful. He and Dr. Charles Robinson would attempt to start a women’s hospital. For six months he would attempt to start a gazette, the Bay State Weekly Courier: A New Family Newspaper. 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. “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project “Timothy Titcomb” HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” 1848 February: Walt Whitman, fired from his editing position at the Brooklyn Daily Eagle, left town with his brother Jeff (Thomas Jefferson Whitman) to travel to New Orleans to edit there a new paper to be named the Crescent. This newspaper attempt would last only a few months. BROOKLYN EAGLE In the period between February and April, a Daguerreotype of Emily Dickinson would be made. It is likely that this happened in that of the Springfield, Massachusetts gallery of Otis H. Cooley, and it is possible that, HDT WHAT? INDEX “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND subsequent to the failure of his medical practice there, the plate was exposed by Josiah Gilbert Holland. During this year Holland would depart for a teaching position in Richmond, Virginia (and then later in Vicksburg, Mississippi). HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” For the rest of her life, Emily would be writing long letters to Mr. and Mrs. Holland. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project “Timothy Titcomb” HDT WHAT? INDEX “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND 1850 Josiah Gilbert Holland returned from Vicksburg, Mississippi to western Massachusetts and became assistant editor of the Springfield Republican newspaper, working with the well-known Samuel Bowles. THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project “Timothy Titcomb” HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” 1853 September:In Boston, Ticknor, Reed, and Fields published Nathaniel Hawthorne’s TANGLEWOOD TALES, FOR GIRLS AND BOYS; BEING A SECOND WONDER-BOOK. Emily Dickinson and her sister Lavinia Dickinson visited Josiah Gilbert Holland and Elizabeth Luna Chapin Holland in Springfield, Massachusetts. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. “Timothy Titcomb” “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND 1854 September 19, Tuesday: On this day and the following one, Emily Dickinson and her sister Lavinia again visited Josiah Gilbert Holland and Elizabeth Holland in Springfield, Massachusetts. In the afternoon Henry Thoreau went to Conantum (Gleason J6). That day he mused on the writing of his new lecture “What Shall It Profit?”: Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter, I realized how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long (and may still perhaps enjoy). I thought with what more than princely, with what poetical, leisure I had spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free... Ah, how I have thriven on solitude and poverty! I cannot overstate this advantage. I do not see how I could have enjoyed it, if the public Thoreau completed his searching through the journal for passages about walking in the moonlight, and accepted Marston Watson’s invitation to deliver a lecture to “a small and private audience of friends” in Plymouth, Massachusetts on October 1st (scheduling difficulties caused postponement). The full title of the lecture he would deliver in Plymouth on October 8th would be “Moonlight (Introductory to an Intended Course of Lectures)” (this is part of a pencil jotting at the top of what is apparently the first leaf of Thoreau’s working draft of the lecture, preserved at Middlebury College in Vermont, evidently a part he did not read to his audience). Thoreau wrote to Benjamin Marston Watson, accepting his invitation from to deliver on October 1st a lecture to “a small and private audience of friends” in Plymouth. Concord Mass Sep 19th ’54 Dear Sir I am glad to hear from you HDT WHAT? INDEX JOSIAH GILBERT HOLLAND “TIMOTHY TITCOMB” & the Plymouth men again. The world still holds together between Concord and Plymouth, it seems. I should like to be with you while Mr Alcott is there, but I cannot come next Sunday. I will come Sunday after next, that is Oct 1st, if that will do, — and look out for you at the Depot. I do not like to promise now more than one dis- course. Is there a good precedent for 2? Yrs Concordially Henry D. Thoreau. That evening, in Plymouth, Bronson Alcott read from a criticism of A WEEK ON THE CONCORD AND MERRIMACK RIVERS that he had entered in his journal of 1847, and read other passages of his diary from the family’s “Hillside” period in Concord. Sept. 19. Tuesday. P.M. — To Conantum. Viburnum Lentago berries now perhaps in prime, though there are but few blue ones. Thinking this afternoon of the prospect of my writing lectures and going abroad to read them the next winter, I realized how incomparably great the advantages of obscurity and poverty which I have enjoyed so long (and may still perhaps enjoy). I thought with what more than princely, with what poetical, leisure I had spent my years hitherto, without care or engagement, fancy-free. I have given myself up to nature, I have lived so many springs and summers and autumns and winters as if I had nothing else to do but live them, and imbibe whatever nutriment they had for me; I have spent a couple of years, for instance, with the flowers chiefly, having none other so binding engagement as to observe when they opened; I could have afforded to spend a whole fall observing the changing tints of the foliage. Ah, how I have thriven on solitude and poverty! I cannot overstate this advantage. I (to not see how I could have enjoyed it, if the public had been expecting as much of me as there is danger now that they will. If I go abroad lecturing, how shall I ever recover the lost winter? It has been my vacation, my season of growth and expansion, a prolonged youth. An upland plover goes off from Conantum top (though with a white belly), uttering a sharp white, tu white. That drought was so severe that a few trees here and there –birch, maple, chestnut, apple, oak– have lost nearly all their leaves.
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