WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON Here’s a person who was intrigued by birds and insects, who had been a surveyor, who built his own house overlooking water in a small community near a metropolis, lived alone there for many years, and had neck whiskers and no offspring. Nobody has ever described him as being like Henry Thoreau, because he wasn’t. “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY William Chapman Hewitson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON 1806 January 9, Thursday: The body of Horatio Nelson, after having been conveyed on a black-canopied funeral barge on the River Thames from Greenwich to the Admiralty in Whitehall, was interred at St Paul’s Cathedral. It was inside a coffin fashioned of wood from the mainmast of the French flagship L’Orient destroyed at the Battle of the Nile in 1798, which had then been cased in lead inside an outer wooden coffin, with all this inside a gilt outer casket that had been specially designed by the Ackermann brothers. In this painting by Daniel HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON Turner we can see that there had been more than 60 barges in this funeral procession: The first newspaper illustration which accurately depicted a news event while it was still topical was prepared by an artist who had witnessed that event, in that The Times of London published a woodcut. William Chapman Hewitson was born in Percy Street, Newcastle-upon-Tyne, in a house opposite the Haymarket, as the 2d son of Middleton Hewitson, Esquire, a gentleman in independent circumstances. His early education would begin at Kirkby Stephen, Westmorland and would be completed at York, where he would be articled to a land surveyor, Mr. John Tuke. At a very early point in his life he would begin to form collections of British coleoptera and lepidoptera, and devote his attention to the study of birds’ eggs. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT William Chapman Hewitson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON 1829 August 19, Wednesday: By this point the young William Chapman Hewitson had returned to Newcastle to pursue a career as a surveyor. On this date he and fellow students there held the initial meeting for a Natural History Society of Northumberland, Durham and Newcastle upon Tyne (he would be a member of this society’s committee, and honorary curator of its entomological department). Fryderyk Franciszek Chopin left Vienna for Warsaw. John Stewart and Catherine Wright –who had been traveling around seeking employment, meanwhile sustaining themselves by doping successive travelers with laudanum, robbing them and killing them– were executed in Edinburgh. The husband and wife were allowed a last embrace, the wife was hooded, and then the husband, after which there were a few minutes for prayer. At the drop “the female struggled a good deal, but the man appeared to die easily.” An assembled multitude offered “hissing and other marks of disapprobation.” When the bodies had been suspended for the required amount of time, they were cut down and given to Dr. Alexander Munro “tertius,” Professor of Anatomy1 at Edinburgh University, for dissection. Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day 19th of 8 M / Enoch & Lydia being gone to Lynn to attend the Qtly Meeting there we sat the Meeting with our family alone. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE 1. When Charles Darwin had been a student in 1825, he had been so disgusted by Professor Munro’s appearance in arriving in the classroom after dissections that he had written home “I dislike him & his lectures so much that I cannot speak with decency about them. He is so dirty in person & actions” (in 1828 Darwin dropped medicine in favor of theology). HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON 1831 Professor James Rennie’s THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS (The Library of Entertaining Knowledge. London: Charles Knight, Pall Mall East). This author’s INSECT ARCHITECTURE and his INSECT TRANSFORMATION had been printed in London in the previous year. Henry Thoreau would own a copy of each of these, in addition to this author’s INSECT MISCELLANIES, issued in two volumes during this year — but although he did make use of the volume on THE ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS, we do not now have evidence that he owned a personal copy HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON of it. INSECT MISCELLANIES ARCHITECTURE OF BIRDS HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON The initial of the two volumes, plus supplement, of William Chapman Hewitson’s2 BRITISH OÖLOGY: BEING ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE EGGS OF BRITISH BIRDS, WITH FIGURES OF EACH SPECIES, AS FAR AS PRACTICABLE, DRAWN AND COLOURED FROM NATURE: ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE MATERIALS AND SITUATION OF THEIR NESTS, NUMBER OF EGGS, &C (Published for the author, by Charles Empson, Newcastle upon Tyne). Thoreau would consult these volumes in the library of the Boston Society of Natural History. DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. 2. Hewitson was intrigued by birds and insects, had been a surveyor, built his own house overlooking water in a small community near a metropolis, lived alone there for many years, and had neck whiskers and no offspring. He wasn’t in any way like Thoreau. HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON 1832 William Chapman Hewitson undertook an egg-collecting journey to the Shetland Islands. 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. William Chapman Hewitson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON 1833 To discover the breeding places of some migratory species of birds, William Chapman Hewitson undertook an expedition to Norway. He was accompanied by his friends John Hancock and Benjamin Johnson, with the aim of gathering plants, birds, and insects. During their visit within the Arctic circle where the sun was visible at midnight, they were forced by the harshness of their circumstances to subsist on birds they shot. Hewitson’s diary of this expedition would be used for pieces on ornithology which would appear in Sir William Jardine’s Magazine of Zoology. The 4th volume of Charles-Lucien Jules Laurent Bonaparte’s AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY, OR, THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BIRDS INHABITING THE UNITED STATES NOT GIVEN BY WILSON (Philadelphia). AMERICAN ORNITHOLOGY THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT William Chapman Hewitson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON 1838 June 1, Friday: The final portion of William Chapman Hewitson’s BRITISH OÖLOGY: BEING ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE EGGS OF BRITISH BIRDS, WITH FIGURES OF EACH SPECIES, AS FAR AS PRACTICABLE, DRAWN AND COLOURED FROM NATURE: ACCOMPANIED BY DESCRIPTIONS OF THE MATERIALS AND SITUATION OF THEIR NESTS, NUMBER OF EGGS, &C went through the presses of Charles Empson at Newcastle. The Boston Transcript announced, somewhat prematurely it would seem, that their intrepid master goldbeater and aeronaut Louis Lauriat was intending to cross over the Atlantic Ocean in his balloon. CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT William Chapman Hewitson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON 1840 Major James Duncan Graham of the US Army’s Corps of Topographical Engineers was appointed commissioner for the survey and exploration of the northeast boundary of the United States, to serve along the Maine and New York frontiers (this would occupy him until 1843). Salma Hale would serve as the secretary to the commission appointed under the Treaty of Ghent for determining the northeastern boundary line of the United States. William Chapman Hewitson moved from Newcastle to Bristol, where he would be employed as a surveyor3 under George Stephenson on the railway between Bristol and Exeter (he would soon relocate to Haaverstock Hill in Hampstead, and finally he would come to reside at Oatlands in Surrey). The first public schools opened in North Carolina, based on a plan that had been drafted in 1817. The new State Capitol was completed. This was a railroad train, in Wilmington: THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT 3. This railway surveying was precarious since, due to extreme opposition by local landed proprietors, much of it needed to be done at night by torchlight. Stevenson employed men to frequent the local taverns and report when the local land guards were off duty, and much of the levelling work for the railroad right of way would be being performed surreptitiously while these guards were in their cups. HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON 1841 October 6, Wednesday: The President of the Boston Society of Natural History reported that a copy of Wm. C. Hewitson’s BRITISH OÖLOGY had been donated to the society’s library. Frederick Douglass addressed the Worcester County North Division Anti-Slavery Society at the Town Hall in Holden, Massachusetts. WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF William Chapman Hewitson “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON WILLIAM CHAPMAN HEWITSON November 3, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson lectured at the Concord Lyceum in Concord on “Nature and Powers of the Poet.” Dr. Abbot reported to the Boston Society of Natural History on the set of volumes that had recently been added to their library, Hewitson’s OÖLOGY.