WILLIAM HAYLEY
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William Hayley HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1745
November 9, Saturday (Old Style): William Hayley was born at Chichester.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
William Hayley “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1757
At the age of 11 or 12, William Hayley was sent to Eton School.
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 William Hayley HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1762
At the age of 16 or 17, William Hayley matriculated at Trinity College of Cambridge University.
TRINITY COLLEGE
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
William Hayley “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1766
Thomas Paine relocated to London to teach at a private academy.
William Hayley was admitted at the Middle Temple, London (his connection there, however, was nominal).
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William Hayley HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1767
William Hayley left Cambridge and went to live in London.
David Henry’s AN HIſTORICAL DEſCRIPTION OF WESTMINSTER-ABBEY, ITS MONUMENTS AND CURIOSITIES. ... (London: J. Newbery, at the Bible and Sun in St. Paul’s Church-yard, 1767. Price One Shilling). WESTMINSTER-ABBEY
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William Hayley HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1769
William Hayley got married with Eliza Bell, daughter of Thomas Ball, dean of Chichester. His private means would enable the couple to reside at his patrimonial estate at Eartham in Sussex.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William Hayley HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1771
At the age of 14 William Blake was indentured as an apprentice to James Basire, engraver to the Royal Society of Antiquaries.
William Hayley’s tragedy THE AFFLICTED FATHER was rejected by David Garrick and his translation of Pierre Corneille’s RODOGUNE as THE SYRIAN QUEEN was declined by George Colman.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
William Hayley “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1774
William Hayley retired to his patrimonial estate at Eartham, Sussex. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1778
William Hayley’s ESSAYS AND EPISTLES; a POETICAL EPISTLE TO AN EMINENT PAINTER, addressed to his friend George Romney. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1780
William Hayley’s ESSAY ON HISTORY, in three epistles, addressed to Edward Gibbon. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1781
William Hayley’s TRIUMPHS OF TEMPER. His ESSAY ON EPIC POETRY, addressed to William Mason. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1785
William Hayley’s A PHILOSOPHICAL ESSAY ON OLD MAIDS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1789
William Hayley and Eliza Bell Hayley separated. There were no children. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1790
Ben Jonson, as Poet Laureate of England, had been granted by his monarch from 1790 forward the annual stipend of one “pipe,” or double-hogshead cast containing 126 gallons, of Canary wine. In this year Poet Laureate Thomas Warton died and William Hayley was offered the laureateship, but he declined. Henry James Pye was acclaimed as Poet Laureate and, although the holder of this office would still be considered a life member of the Royal Household and would still be charged with creating occasional verse upon occasion, there would be no more of this particular sort of reward. POETS LAUREATE
The Poets Laureate of England
1591-1599 Edmund Spenser 1599-1619 Samuel Daniel 1619-1637 Ben Jonson 1638-1668 William Davenant 1670-1689 John Dryden 1689-1692 Thomas Shadwell 1692-1715 Nahum Tate 1715-1718 Nicholas Rowe 1718-1730 Laurence Eusden 1730-1757 Colley Cibber 1758-1785 William Whitehead 1785-1790 Thomas Warton 1790-1813 Henry James Pye 1813-1843 Robert Southey 1843-1850 William Wordsworth 1850-1892 Alfred Lord Tennyson 1896-1913 Alfred Austin 1913-1930 Robert Bridges 1930-1967 John Masefield 1967-1972 Cecil Day-Lewis 1972-1984 Sir John Betjeman 1984-1998 Ted Hughes 1999- Andrew Motion
“WHAT SHALL IT PROFIT”: The ways by which you may get money almost without exception lead downward. To have done anything by which you earned money merely is to have been truly idle or worse. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
If the laborer gets no more than the wages which his employer pays him, he is cheated, he cheats himself. If you would get money as a writer or lecturer, you must be popular, which is to go down perpendicularly. Those services which the community will most readily pay for it is most disagreeable to render. You are paid for being something less than a man. The State does not commonly reward a genius any more wisely. Even the poet- laureate would rather not have to celebrate the accidents of royalty. He must be bribed with a pipe of wine; and perhaps another poet is called away from his muse to gauge that very pipe. As for my own business, even that kind of surveying which I could do with most satisfaction my employers do not want. They would prefer that I should do my work coarsely and not too well, ay, not well enough. When I observe that there are different ways of surveying, my employer commonly asks which will give him the most land, not which is the most correct
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
William Hayley “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1792
While writing his LIFE OF MILTON, William Hayley made the acquaintance of William Cowper. A warm friendship sprang up that would endure until Cowper’s death (it would be largely through the efforts of Hayley that Cowper would be granted a pension). HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1797
Eliza Bell Hayley had come to be of unsound mind, and she and her husband William Hayley had been separated for years. In this year she died.
William Blake’s THE PRICE OF EXPERIENCE: What is the price of experience? do men buy it for a song? Or wisdom for a dance in the street? No, it is bought with the price Of all a man hath, his house, his wife, his children. Wisdom is sold in the desolate market where none come to buy, And in the wither’d field where the farmer plows for bread in vain. It is an easy thing to triumph in the summer’s sun And in the vintage and to sing on the waggon loaded with corn. It is an easy thing to talk of prudence to the afflicted, To speak the laws of prudence to the houseless wanderer, To listen to the hungry raven’s cry in wintry season When the red blood is fill’d with wine and with the marrow of lambs.
It is an easy thing to laugh at wrathful elements, To hear the dog howl at the wintry door, the ox in the slaughterhouse moan; To see a god on every wind and a blessing on every blast; To hear sounds of love in the thunder-storm that destroys our enemies’ house; To rejoice in the blight that covers his field, and the sickness that cuts off his children, While our olive and vine sing and laugh round our door, and our children bring fruits and flowers. Then the groan and the dolour are quite forgotten, and the slave grinding at the mill, And the captive in chains, and the poor in the prison, and the soldier in the field When the shatter’d bone hath laid him groaning among the happier dead. It is an easy thing to rejoice in the tents of prosperity: Thus could I sing and thus rejoice: but it is not so with me. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1800
In London, the Royal College of Surgeons was founded. Charles and Mary Anne Lamb set up housekeeping at Mitre Court Buildings in the Temple district (they would remain together there until 1809). In spite of Charles’s bouts of melancholia and alcohol abuse, their home would become a sort of weekly hangout place for theatrical and literary personages of the times.
William Hayley lost his natural son, Thomas Alphonso Hayley, and grieved. The boy had been a pupil of John Flaxman’s, to whom Hayley’s ESSAY ON SCULPTURE is addressed. Flaxman introduced William Blake to Hayley, and after the latter had moved in this year to his marine hermitage at Felpham in Sussex, Blake would settle near him for three years to engrave the illustrations for LIFE OF COWPER. This, Hayley’s best known work, would appear in 1803/1804.
Blake was commissioned by Hayley to decorate his library with eighteen heads of poets. While at Felpham Blake would begin work on his epic poems MILTON and JERUSALEM. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1802
William Hayley’s A SERIES OF BALLADS, with engravings by William Blake. WILLIAM BLAKE HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1803
Publication of two volumes that would end up in the library of Henry Thoreau (bearing the autograph of John Thoreau), THE LIFE AND POSTHUMOUS WRITINGS OF WILLIAM COWPER, ESQ. WITH AN INTRODUCTORY LETTER TO THE RIGHT HONORABLE EARL COWPER. BY WILLIAM HAYLEY, ESQ. (Boston: W. Pelham, Manning & Loring, and E. Lincoln).
WILLIAM COWPER, I WILLIAM COWPER, II HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1804
William Hayley’s TRIUMPHS OF MUSIC (Chichester). HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1805
William Hayley’s BALLADS FOUNDED ON ANECDOTES OF ANIMALS (Chichester), with illustrations by William Blake. WILLIAM BLAKE HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1809
The founding of the Quarterly Review, the chief Tory establishment journal, with William Gifford as its editor. It would be published by John Murray, Byron’s future publisher. In its pages in this first year Richard Southey would make us of a rather new term: instead of “self-biography,” he spoke of “autobiography.”
William Hayley’s THE LIFE OF GEORGE ROMNEY, ESQ. He remarried, with Mary Welford. For the last twelve years of his life Hayley would live on an allowance while writing his MEMOIRS.
March 9, Thursday: In ENGLISH BARDS AND SCOTCH REVIEWERS, George Gordon, Lord Byron ridiculed William Hayley’s TRIUMPHS OF TEMPER and TRIUMPHS OF MUSIC.
French troops crossed from Spain into Portugal, but somewhat behind schedule.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 5 day 9th of 3rd M 1809 / Silent meeting & a dull time, towards the close my mind became aroused a little but no great food was dispenced — The mind this eveng in a thoughtful mood — Father & Mother R took tea with us — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1812
After three years of marriage William Hayley and his 2d wife Mary Welford Hayley separated. There would be no children. HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
1820
November 12, Sunday: William Hayley died at Felpham. He left no children.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 12th of 11th M 1820 / Our Meeting was very small being a severe Storm of Snow & Rain & the walking nearly over shoes in snow & water A few words were spoken by J Dennis - Three Women were all that gathered & one of them not a Member. —- In the Afternoon eight men were all that met & two of them not members, we were silent but I trust the promose was in degree fulfilled, “Where two or three are met in my name there am I” — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project William Hayley HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
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 2015. 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: February 21, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
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
WILLIAM HAYLEY WILLIAM HAYLEY
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