PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A YANKEE IN CANADA:

PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY

People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA:

“A YANKEE IN CANADA”: The early explorers saw many whales and other sea-monsters far up the St. Lawrence. Champlain, in his map, represents a whale spouting in the harbor of Quebec, three hundred and sixty miles from what is called the mouth of the river; and Charlevoix takes his reader to the summit of Cape Diamond to see the “porpoises, white as snow,” sporting on the surface of the harbor of Quebec. And Boucher says in 1661, “from there (Tadoussac) to Montreal is found a great quantity of Marsouins blancs.” Several whales have been taken pretty high up the river since I was there. P.H. Gosse, in his “Canadian Naturalist,” p. 171 (London, 1840), speaks of “the white dolphin of the St. Lawrence (Delphinum Canadensis),” as considered different from those of the sea. “The Society of Montreal offered a prize, a few years ago, for an essay on the Cetacea of the St. Lawrence, which was, I believe, handed in.” In Champlain’s day it was commonly called “the Great River of Canada.” More than one nation has claimed it.

PIERRE-FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE CHARLEVOIX PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1810

April 6, Friday: Supporters of Francis Burdett began rioting and attacking the residences of the Prime Minister and prominent Tories.

Philip Henry Gosse, who would develop the 1st institutional , was born on High Street in Worcester, as the 2d son of an itinerant painter of miniature portraits1 and a lady’s maid. His childhood would be spent mostly in , Dorset, where his aunt Susan Bell would teach him to draw and would introduce him to zoology (much as she had her own son, , two decades his senior, who would become his great friend).

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6day 6 of 4 M // Nothing but the usual rounds thro’ the day, & the usual dull sensations with respect to religious Sensations - —————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————

1. It is now interesting to compare the watercolors of English people, done by the father Thomas Gosse (1765-1844) who had trained at the Royal Academy, with the watercolors of butterflies and beetles done by the son. In both artists a microscopic inspection of the detail of this work will simply astound you. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1825

At the age of 15 Philip Henry Gosse became a clerk in a counting house of Poole, a port in County Dorset, that of George Garland and Sons — a counting house that was involved in the Newfoundland fishery, and dealt with commodities such as dried codfish. There he would “learn to do things the Poole way.”

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.

People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1827

The British government ordered that the crown lands in Nova Scotia be in future disposed of by sale rather than by grant. It was also ordered that all arrears of quit rent be remitted, and that in the future the quit rents of the province should be duly collected and applied to provincial purposes. Three blood horses and two mares were imported from England. The seal fishery was first commenced from Halifax. A steam engine was erected at the Albiou coal mines in Pictou, the first erected in Nova Scotia. The small pox and fever prevailed exceedingly at Halifax and there were a total of 811 deaths.

At the age of 17 Philip Henry Gosse sailed to Newfoundland to clerk in the Carbonear premises of Slade, Elson and Co., where he would make of himself a dedicated, self-taught student of Newfoundland , “the first person systematically to investigate and to record the entomology” of that island.

CANADA

THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1832

Philip Henry Gosse experienced a religious conversion — he, as he himself put it, “solemnly, deliberately and uprightly, took God for my God.”2

DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.

People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2. His son would come to mock him for this. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1835

Philip Henry Gosse abandoned Newfoundland for Compton, Lower Canada where he would farm, originally as an attempt to establish a commune with two of his religious friends, for three years. Despite this failure at farming, the experience would deepen his love for natural history, and the locals would begin to refer to him as “that crazy Englishman who goes about picking up bugs.”

During this period of self-teaching he would become a member of the Natural History Society of Montréal and submit specimens to its museum — the man without much by way of a formal education had placed himself on a track that would eventuate with him being welcomed as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and well accepted by those much more credentialed and well-positioned naturalists.

After being let go by Harvard College, Christopher Dunkin removed to Canada where his step-father was making a good living by giving public lectures in physical, moral and intellectual education and Phrenology (professing to be able to distinguish, by the bumps on the skull, between the bold and determined offender and the novice in crime; the ruffian and the man of gentle disposition; the abandoned wreck destitute of religious principles and he who maintains his belief in Christian revelation).

“I look upon Phrenology as the guide of Philosophy, and the handmaid of Christianity; whoever disseminates true Phrenology, is a public benefactor.” — Horace Mann, Sr. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE The population of the border city of Buffalo reached 15,573 with the arrival of escaped slave William Wells Brown, a steamboat crew member. He would begin to help other escapees onward and upward, to safety in Canada.

The 1,000-acre Section system of township surveys commenced in Upper Canada. It would be continued to 1906. CARTOGRAPHY

THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT

People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1838

Having been forced to sell his Newfoundland farm at a loss, and hard up for cash, Philip Henry Gosse taught for a bit less than eight months for Reuben Saffold, the owner of Belvoir, a slave plantation near Pleasant Hill, Alabama.

Gosse studied and drew the local flora and fauna (he sighted nor only turtledoves Zenaida macroura but also the ivory-billed woodpecker Campephilus principalis, now extinct) and recorded negative impressions of race . This would be published in 1859 as LETTERS FROM ALABAMA, (U.S.) CHIEFLY RELATING TO NATURAL HISTORY (a book that would be accessed by Henry Thoreau). LETTERS FROM ALABAMA ALABAMA/GOSSE (YOU-TUBE)

CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT

People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1839

Returning from America to England, Philip Henry Gosse was reduced to subsisting on eightpence a day, or as he would put it “one herring eaten as slowly as possible, and a little bread.” His fortunes began to improve when a leading publisher of naturalist writing, John Van Voorst, agreed, on the recommendation of Thomas Bell, to publish THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. A SERIES OF CONVERSATIONS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LOWER CANADA, a book that despite the fact that he did not have a son, he had constructed as a conversation between father and son. The book, which would be printed in the following year and which would in 1860 be accessed by Henry Thoreau, indicates to us that well before his contemporaries, Gosse acquired a practical grasp of the value of conservation.

THE CANADIAN NATURALIST

WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF

People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1840

Following the report by Lord Durham on a Canadian Constitution, the British Parliament passed the Act of Union uniting Upper and Lower Canada in a self-governing union.

John Charlton Fisher gave up the post of publisher of the Québec Gazette.

During this decade there would be a craze for ferns as a Victorian rustic parlor adornment, in sealed glass cases. (This craze would be supplanted, in the 1850s, by a craze for salt-water — and this craze would be being led and fomented by Philip Henry Gosse.)

“The only lesson of history is that there are no lessons of history.” — A.J.P. Taylor

Philip Henry Gosse’s THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. A SERIES OF CONVERSATIONS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LOWER CANADA (London: John Jan Voorst).

THE CANADIAN NATURALIST HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1842

Philip Henry Gosse had begun a “Classical and Commercial School for Young Gentlemen” and was keeping detailed records of his microscopic investigations of pond life, especially cyclopidae and rotifera. He also had begun to preach for the Wesleyan Methodists and lead one of their Bible classes. Nevertheless, in this year he became so captivated with the doctrine of the 2d Coming as to sever all connection with Methodism and enlist himself among the (dissenters who were expectantly awaiting the 2d Coming while rejecting all church liturgy and refusing all hireling ministry).

THE RAPTURE

“I would not run round a corner to see the world blow up.” — Henry Thoreau, “LIFE WITHOUT PRINCIPLE” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1843

Philip Henry Gosse gave up the Classical and Commercial School for Young Gentlemen that he had started, to accept a commission offered by the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge for the creation of AN INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY, and to himself draw some of its illustrations. This project would inspire him to further investigate (within the framework offered by Holy Scripture) the flora and fauna of the seashore.

AN INTRO. TO ZOOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1844

Philip Henry Gosse’s AN INTRODUCTION TO ZOOLOGY, and THE OCEAN.

AN INTRO. TO ZOOLOGY THE OCEAN HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE October: Philip Henry Gosse sailed to , where he would serve as a collector for the dealer (he would come to refer to his 18 months there as his “holiday in Jamaica”). He found Christian companionship among Moravian missionaries and their black converts, and would preach regularly to the Moravian congregation. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1846

In London, Endell Street was constructed. Twopenny omnibuses began to circulate between Paddington and Hungerford Market.

John Andrew engraved “The Wandering Jew,” a reproduction after Henri Valentin.

William Chapman Hewitson began to publish the volumes of THE GENERA OF DIURNAL LEPIDOPTERA in conjunction with the entomologist Edward Doubleday (completed in 1852). He became a member of the Entomological Society of London.

Returning to London, Philip Henry Gosse plotted a trilogy on the natural history of Jamaica made up of: HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

•THE BIRDS OF JAMAICA (would appear in 1847)

THE BIRDS OF JAMAICA •POPULAR BRITISH ; CONTAINING A FAMILIAR AND TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BIRDS OF THE BRITISH ISLES, ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BIRDS OF JAMAICA (would appear in 1849) BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY •A NATURALIST’S SOJOURN IN JAMAICA (would appear in 1851). A SOJOURN IN JAMAICA HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1847

The portion of Edward William Lane’s manuscript DESCRIPTION OF EGYPT that had to do with Cairo’s early history and topography, based on the work of Taqi al-Din Ahmad ibn ’Ali ibn ’Abd al-Qadir ibn Muhammad al-Maqrizi (1364-1442) as well as on Lane’s own observations, was revised by Reginald Stuart Poole. This would not be published, however, until 1896, when it would appear under the title CAIRO FIFTY YEARS AGO.

Philip Henry Gosse’s THE BIRDS OF JAMAICA, and, for the Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge, THE MONUMENTS OF ANCIENT EGYPT, AND THEIR RELATION TO THE WORD OF GOD.

THE BIRDS OF JAMAICA MONUMENTS OF EGYPT HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1848

Philip Henry Gosse’s NATURAL HISTORY. MAMMALIA. NAT. HIST. MAMMALIA

November: Philip Henry Gosse got married with Emily Bowes, a 41-year-old member of the Plymouth Brethren. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1849

Philip Henry Gosse’s POPULAR BRITISH ORNITHOLOGY; CONTAINING A FAMILIAR AND TECHNICAL DESCRIPTION OF THE BIRDS OF THE BRITISH ISLES, ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE BIRDS OF JAMAICA, and NATURAL HISTORY. BIRDS. POP. BRIT. ORNITHOLOGY

September 21, Friday: The only child of Philip Henry Gosse and Emily Bowes Gosse was born. The father recorded for this day: “E. delivered of a son. Received green swallow from Jamaica.” In a later timeframe would explain his father’s diary entry as indicating that he must have arrived earlier, and afterward the packet with the green swallow specimen from Jamaica had arrived at their door. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1850

Philip Henry Gosse’s SACRED STREAMS OR RIVERS OF THE BIBLE (London: C. Cox, 12, King William Street, Strand), and NATURAL HISTORY. (London: Printed for The Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge; Sold at the Depository, Great Queen-Street, Lincoln’s Inn-Fields, and 4, Royal Exchange; and by all booksellers). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1851

Philip Henry Gosse’s A NATURALIST’S SOJOURN IN JAMAICA,

NAT. SOJOURN — JAMAICA

his NATURAL HISTORY. FISHES, NAT. HISTORY — FISHES HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

his THE HISTORY OF THE JEWS, FROM THE CHRISTIAN ERA TO THE DAWN OF THE REFORMATION,

HISTORY OF THE JEWS

and his A TEXT-BOOK OF ZOOLOGY FOR SCHOOLS. TEXT-BOOK OF ZOOLOGY HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1852

Philip Henry Gosse’s ASSYRIA: HER MANNERS AND CUSTOMS, ARTS AND AIMS. RESTORED FROM THE MONUMENTS.

ASSYRIA RESTORED HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1853

Philip Henry Gosse’s A NATURALIST’S RAMBLES ON THE DEVONSHIRE COAST (London).

ON DEVONSHIRE COAST HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1854

Philip Henry Gosse’s NATURAL HISTORY. MOLLUSCA.

NAT. HIST. — MOLLUSCA HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1855

Philip Henry Gosse’s A HANDBOOK TO THE : CONTAINING INSTRUCTIONS FOR CONSTRUCTING, STOCKING, AND MAINTAINING A TANK, AND FOR COLLECTING AND ANIMALS. In this year and the following one, his MANUAL OF MARINE ZOOLOGY FOR THE BRITISH ISLES and TENBY: A SEASIDE HOLIDAY. AQUARIA/GOSSE (YOU-TUBE) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1856

Philip Henry Gosse’s THE AQUARIUM: AN UNVEILING OF THE WONDERS OF THE DEEP SEA. Housewives who were merely ordinary might keep mere ordinary freshwater aquaria filled with frogs and pond lilies, but housewives who were really in the vogue would take action on a couple of articles that would appear in this year in the magazine Household Words, and venture some sort of “marine menagerie.” You could mailorder for everything you needed and it would be shopped to you from the coast: the tank, rocks, salt water, sand, plants, animals, the whole nine yards. AQUARIA/GOSSE (YOU-TUBE)

Gosse was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society, this providing him with “a standing he otherwise lacked” since he was without any university position or inherited wealth. Toward the end of April, a few months before the award ceremony, however, his wife noticed a hard lump in her left breast. Rather than undergo the usual cancer surgery (amputation of the breast, commonly with the post-operative complication of sepsis, and with an acknowledgement that there was but a remote likelihood that this brutal procedure would effect a permanent cure, the recurrence rate being approximately 80%), the Gosses decided to try their luck with a “secret medicament, by the external application of which to a cancer the diseased portion gradually became dead, spontaneously separated from the healthy flesh,” that was being touted by an American physician in London, Dr. Jesse Weldon Fell. DR. FELL AND HIS CURE

Dr. Fell was claiming a cure rate of seven patients out of every ten. He displayed photographs of some of the patients he had cured and of the lumps of material that had spontaneously separated from their bodies.3

3. We now know that the reason why the American doctor was in England was that his practice had fallen into some disrepute in the United States. Also, we have a letter in his own hand in which he mentions that his motive in the treatment of cancer in London, “the great metropolitan babel of the world,” was to “relieve” “John Bull” of “some of his surplus ‘brittish gold’.” The “secret medicament” he was using has turned out to be a root used for the treatment of rheumatism by tribes of the Mississippi basin, known by them as puccoon, and more generally termed bloodroot or Saguinaria canadensis. This Dr. Fell mixed with zinc chloride, a chemical more commonly in use by other cancer practitioners. A secondary ointment he applied contained lead iodide. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

Saguinaria canadensis (bloodroot or poccoon) HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1857

Dr. Augustus Addison Gould’s “Remarks on Geographical Distribution of Shells,” Proceedings of the Boston Society of Natural History (vi, pp. 123-124).

The Reverend Professor Edward Hitchcock’s RELIGIOUS TRUTH, ILLUSTRATED FROM SCIENCE, IN ADDRESSES AND SERMONS ON SPECIAL OCCASIONS (Boston: Phillips, Sampson and Company). THE RELIGIOUS TRUTH

Philip Henry Gosse’s : AN ATTEMPT TO UNTIE THE GEOLOGICAL KNOT argued that God created a young earth that merely looks really old because all life “moves in a circle,” and thus creating living organisms requires creating fossils inside mountains of rock (such an imaginative argument may or may not hold water, but the book, later titled CREATION in hopes of improving sales, would be a decided flop). THE GEOLOGICAL KNOT HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

Philip Henry Gosse’s LIFE IN ITS LOWER, INTERMEDIATE, AND HIGHER FORMS; OR, MANIFESTATIONS OF THE DIVINE WISDOM IN THE NATURAL (London: Paul Kegan, Trench, Trubner),

LIFE MANIFESTS THE DIVINE

and, in April, his A MEMORIAL OF THE LAST DAYS ON EARTH OF EMILY GOSSE (London: James Nisbet; only five copies of this are thought to exist). LAST DAYS OF EMILY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE This image of the Plymouth Brethren lay minister with his son Edmund was exposed during this year:

In this year, also, Gosse would lose his wife Emily Bowes Gosse to cancer, and would prepare the imaginative theory that would –as it would turn out– quite destroy his Victorian credibility, OMPHALOS: AN ATTEMPT TO UNTIE THE GEOLOGICAL KNOT.

February 9, Monday: By this point the Gosse family had moved permanently from London to St Marychurch, (Philip Henry Gosse refused to use the “St” and even gave his address as so as not to have anything to do with the “so-called ”). He soon became the pastor and overseer of the Plymouth Brethren there, at first meeting above a stable but shortly, under Gosse’s preaching and peacemaking, in finer quarters — which he perhaps himself financed.

Treatment with ointments had done nothing to stop Emily Bowes Gosse’s breast cancer. On this day the suffering wife and mother breathed her last, entrusting her husband with their child Edmund Gosse’s salvation. In the months following Emily’s death, the grieving husband would struggle diligently with a manuscript that he obviously was considering to be a great intellectual breakthrough. Gosse considered that he alone was able neatly to resolve the seeming contradiction between the age of the earth as revealed in Holy Scripture and the age of the earth as discovered by such contemporary geologists as . The argument derived from HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

the inherent nature of any instantaneous creation ex nihilo. In any such instantaneous creation, there would of necessity be the relicts of a previous existence that had actually not transpired. If mature trees were created in an instant, for instance, rather than slowly growing from seeds into saplings and in the successive seasons into mature trees, then their trunks would contain instantaneously produced tree rings, one ring for each year — and these were year rings marking years which actually had never transpired. “Omphalos” being Greek for “navel,” and the navel being the scar left by the falling off of the umbilical cord, Gosse was arguing that the first man, Adam, and the first woman, Eve, had had no natural need for navels. They had not been born of a mother, but instead, had been created by God! Nevertheless Adam and Eve were complete human beings, and a navel is part of a complete human being, and therefore God must have brought them into existence complete with navels just as He must have created trees with growth rings marking seasons that had in fact never existed. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE Gosse pointed out that the fossil record we discover encased in the rocks –even such fossils as coprolites– might also seem to be evidence of years that had never actually existed. To create the rocks of this planet Earth, God must have created it with such fossils already in position within them. The theorist’s friend, the novelist , would comment that he had read “no other book which so staggered and puzzled” him — but that he was simply not prepared for the conceit that God had “written on the rocks one enormous and superfluous lie for all mankind.” God the Liar? –Give us a break, it is Satan rather than God who is the father of all lies! Journalists would snigger at the idea that God had hidden fossils in the rocks, and point out that He 4 must have been tempting geologists to infidelity. OMPHALOS: AN ATTEMPT TO UNTIE THE GEOLOGICAL KNOT would sell so poorly that its publisher would rebind it under the new title CREATION “in case the obscure one had had an effect on sales,” before in 1859 giving up and disposing of most of the edition by selling it to a dealer in waste paper. THE GEOLOGICAL KNOT

4. If I myself were to do any sniggering in regard to this controversy, I would not be sniggering at Gosse (for he was merely the messenger who came to us pointing out some factoids that should always have been just obvious). I would be sniggering at the unworldly ignorance of the folks who had originally ginned up this origins story, or perhaps sniggering at the unworldly ignorance of the folks who had come to parse this origins story as involving literally only seven days of earth time — the folks who had brought us into such an absurd flight of fancy as “instantaneous creation.” HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1858

Philip Henry Gosse’s ACTINOLOGIA BRITANNICA: A HISTORY OF THE BRITISH SEA-ANEMONES AND CORALS. ACTINOLOGIA BRITANNICA

By this point the author had separated himself from the Plymouth Brethren, although he would continue in their eschatological mindset and until the day of his death would be hoping to be one of those drawn up among the clouds to fellowship with Christ Jesus at the Second Coming. It would seem that the reason for his thus “unfellowshipping himself” was that he was continuing to be of the conviction, even after his wife’s painful death, that the benevolent deity must have provided, in his Creation, for every human ailment that He had permitted, some sort of secret herbal palliative, a secret which needed only to be decoded by the human creation (this was simply not part of the mindset of others among the Brethren). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1859

Philip Henry Gosse, F.R.S.’s LETTERS FROM ALABAMA, (U.S.) CHIEFLY RELATING TO NATURAL HISTORY (London: Morgan and Chase, Tichborne Court, 280, High Holborn).5

LETTERS FROM ALABAMA ALABAMA/GOSSE (YOU-TUBE)

5. Gosse shot and mounted this mating pair of ivory-bills (no published illustration has been found, that predates Gosse’s black-and- white drawing above). At an unknown time, Thoreau copies from this source into his Indian Notebook #12 (he makes a reference to the author in his journal for January 14, 1861). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

(Also, in this year, his EVENINGS AT THE MICROSCOPE: OR, RESEARCHES AMONG THE MINUTE ORGANS AND FORMS OF ANIMAL LIFE.)

UNDER THE MICROSCOPE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1860

May 3, Thursday: At Weymouth, the pregnant Betsy Frances Tirrell ingested ten grains of strychnine in preserved fruit, supplied to her by George C. Hersey under the pretense that this deadly poison would merely produce miscarriage. It took about half an hour for her heart to stop and for her to cease breathing.

Henry Thoreau checked out, from the Harvard Library, Philip Henry Gosse’s THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. A SERIES OF CONVERSATIONS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LOWER CANADA (London: John Van Voorst, 1840).6 THE CANADIAN NATURALIST

“A YANKEE IN CANADA”: The early explorers saw many whales and other sea-monsters far up the St. Lawrence. Champlain, in his map, represents a whale spouting in the harbor of Quebec, three hundred and sixty miles from what is called the mouth of the river; and Charlevoix takes his reader to the summit of Cape Diamond to see the “porpoises, white as snow,” sporting on the surface of the harbor of Quebec. And Boucher says in 1661, “from there (Tadoussac) to Montreal is found a great quantity of Marsouins blancs.” Several whales have been taken pretty high up the river since I was there. P.H. Gosse, in his “Canadian Naturalist,” p. 171 (London, 1840), speaks of “the white dolphin of the St. Lawrence (Delphinum Canadensis),” as considered different from those of the sea. “The Natural History Society of Montreal offered a prize, a few years ago, for an essay on the Cetacea of the St. Lawrence, which was, I believe, handed in.” In Champlain’s day it was commonly called “the Great River of Canada.” More than one nation has claimed it.

PIERRE-FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE CHARLEVOIX PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

6. The fact that Thoreau checked out a naturalist work by Gosse, the expert on aquariums, on the same day that he visited the Boston Aquarium, convinces me that Thoreau must have been well aware of Gosse’s general corpus –over and above the particular book that he was checking out– as the general public was — and the work of Gosse was in that period very well publicized, as well publicized as, today, . HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

He also checked out Dr. Jacques Philippe Cornut’s IAC. CORNUTI ... CANADENSIVM PLANTARVM, ALIARÚMQUE NONDUM EDITARUM HISTORIA; CUI AD IS ADJECTUM CALCEM ENCHIRIDION BOTANICUM PARISIENSE, CONTINENS INDICEM PLANTARUM QUAE IN PAGIS, SILVIS, PRATIS & MONTOSIS IUXTA PARISIOS LOCIS NASCUNTUR, published in 1635 at “Parisiis” by “Venundantur apud Simonem Le Moyne,” from the Harvard Library. Despite the fact that its author had never visited North America, this had been the 1st work to deal specially with our plants. Cornut, or “Cornutus,” had described a number of Canadian he had seen in various Parisian gardens, such as the Jardin des Plantes which Vespasian Robin had then been beginning under the name “Jardin Royal des Plantes Medicinales.”7 JACQUES PHILIPPE CORNUT

May 3. To Cambridge and Boston. I see at the Aquarium many of my little striped or barred breams, now labelled Bryttus obesus.

Compared with the common, they have rounded tails, larger dorsal and anal fins, and are fuller or heavier forward. I observe that they incline to stand on their heads more. The proprietor said that some little fishes one and a half to two inches long, with a very distinct black line along the sides, which I should have called brook minnows, Agassiz was confident were young suckers, but Mr. Putnam thought that they were the Leuciscus atronarus, i.e. my brook minnow. I observe that a leuciscus (probably pulchellus, if not argenteus), five inches long, also has a broad line along the side, but not nearly so dark. He shows me the eudora (water-), which he has not seen east of the Connecticut.

December 18: By this time Philip Henry Gosse was financially secure due to earnings from his books, and dividends from investments. He met Friend Eliza Brightwen (1813-1900), who shared his interest in natural history and was affectionate toward his son Edmund Gosse, and on this day they married at the Zion Chapel of Frome.8

7. Since Dr. Cornuti had never been to Canada, presumably the plants he was describing were those in the Jardin des Plants in Paris. 8. DISAMBIGUATION: This is not the Mrs. Eliza Elder Brightwen who would be the subject of Edmond Gosse’s THE LIFE AND THOUGHTS OF A NATURALIST. This Eliza was his adoptive mother, while Mrs. Eliza Elder Brightwen was his adoptive aunt. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1861 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

Philip Henry Gosse’s THE ROMANCE OF NATURAL HISTORY.

THE ROMANCE OF NAT. HIST.

Jan. 14. Coldest morning yet; 20° (?). Pliny says, “In minimis Natura praestat” (Nature excels in the least things). The Wellingtonia gigantea, the PLINY famous California tree, is a great thing; the seed from which it sprang, a little thing; and so are all seeds or origins of things. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

Richard Porson said: “We all speak in metaphors. Those who appear not to do it, only use those which are worn out, and are overlooked as metaphors. The original fellow is therefore regarded as only witty; and the dull are consulted as the wise.” He might have said that the former spoke a dead language. John Horne Tooke is reported in “Recollections” by Samuel Rogers as having said: “Read few books well. We forget names and dates; and reproach our memory. They are of little consequence. We feel our limbs enlarge and strengthen; yet cannot tell the dinner or dish that caused the alteration. Our minds improve though we cannot name the author, and have forgotten the particulars.” I think that the opposite would be the truer statement, books differ so immensely in their nutritive qualities, and good ones are so rare. Gosse, in his “Letters from Alabama,” says that he thinks he saw a large dragon-fly (Æslona), which was hawking over a brook, catch and devour some minnows about one inch long, and says it is known that “the larvæ of the greater water-beetles (Dyticidœ) devour fish.” It is the discovery of science that stupendous changes in the earth’s surface, such as are referred to the Deluge, for instance, are the result of causes still in operation, which have been at work for an incalculable period. There has not been a sudden re-formation, or, as it were, new creation of the world, but a steady progress according to existing laws. The same is true in detail also. It is a vulgar prejudice that some plants are “spontaneously generated,” but science knows that they come from seeds, i.e. are the result of causes still in operation, however slow and unobserved. It is a common saying that “little strokes fall great oaks,” and it does not imply much wisdom in him who originated it. The sound of the axe invites our attention to such a catastrophe; we can easily count each stroke as it is given, and all the neighborhood is informed by a loud crash when the deed is consummated. But such, too, is the rise of the oak; little strokes of a different kind and often repeated raise great oaks, but scarcely a traveller hears these or turns aside to converse with Nature, who is dealing them the while. Nature is slow but sure; she works no faster than need be; she is the tortoise that wins the race by her perseverance; she knows that seeds have many other uses than to reproduce their kind. In raising oaks and pines, she works with a leisureliness and security answering to the age and strength of the trees. If every acorn of this year’s crop is destroyed, never fear! she has more years to come. It is not necessary that a pine or an oak should bear fruit every year, as it is that a pea-vine should. So, botanically, the greatest changes in the landscape are produced more gradually than we expected. If Nature has a pine or an oak wood to produce, she manifests no haste about it. Thus we should say that oak forests are produced by a kind of accident, i.e. by the failure of animals to reap the fruit of their labors. Yet who shall say that they have not a fair knowledge of the value of their labors — that the squirrel when it plants an acorn, or the jay when it lets one slip from under its foot, has not a transient thought for its posterity? Possibly here, a thousand years hence, every oak will know the human hand that planted it. How many of the botanist’s arts and inventions are thus but the rediscovery of a lost art, i.e. lost to him here or elsewhere! Horace Mann told me some days ago that he found, near the shore in that muddy bay by the willows in the rear of Mrs. Ripley’s, a great many of the Sternothœrus odoratus, assembled, he supposed, at their breeding-time, or, rather, about to come out to lay their eggs. He waded in [and] collected –I think he said– about a hundred AGASSIZ and fifty of them for Agassiz! I see in the Boston Journal an account of robins in numbers on the savin trees in that neighborhood, feeding on their berries. This suggests that they may plant its berries as well as the crows. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1864

Friend Eliza Brightwell Gosse received a substantial legacy which allowed her husband Philip Henry Gosse to retire from his labors as a professional writer and illustrator to live with her a simple life in “congenial obscurity.” To occupy his time he would take up the study of orchids and, although he would not publish on this topic, it would generate a correspondence with . Eventually Gosse would find himself publishing in the Transactions of the Linnean Society on the titillating but rather arcane topic of the genitalia of butterflies. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE He would return to his study of the rotifera and this would eventuate, in conjunction with Charles Thomas Hudson in 1886, in a scholarly two-volume study.

THE WHEEL-ANIMALCULES The Gosses would invest their surplus in charity, especially in regard to foreign missionaries such as one they would send to labor among the “Popish, priest-ridden Irish” (to the father’s dismay, however, his son Edmund Gosse was going to repudiate his Christian heritage). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1865

Philip Henry Gosse’s A YEAR AT THE SHORE,

A YEAR AT THE SHORE

and his SEA AND LAND.

SEA AND LAND HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1866

Philip Henry Gosse’s THE REVELATION. HOW IS IT TO BE INTERPRETED? INTERPRETING REVELATIONS MILLENNIALISM

and his THE IMPERIAL BIBLE-DICTIONARY, HISTORICAL, BIOGRAPHICAL, GEOGRAPHICAL, AND DOCTRINAL: INCLUDING THE NATURAL HISTORY, ANTIQUITIES, MANNERS CUSTOMS, AND RELIGIOUS RITES AND CEREMONIES MENTIONED IN THE SCRIPTURES, AND AN ACCOUNT OF THE SEVERAL BOOKS OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS, EDITED BY THE REV. PATRICK FAIRBAIRN, D.D., AUTHOR OF “TYPOLOGY OF SCRIPTURE,” “COMMENTARY ON EZEKIEL,” ETC. ILLUSTRATED BY NUMEROUS ENGRAVINGS. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1869

Philip Henry Gosse’s OMPHALOS: AN ATTEMPT TO UNTIE THE GEOLOGICAL KNOT had sold so poorly that eventually the publisher had even rebound and re-issued it under a new cover and title, CREATION, “in case the obscure one had had an effect on sales.” The problem with this product had of course been not with its title but with the strange theory it propounded, so at this point the publisher disposed of most of the edition to a dealer in waste paper. According to the judgment of the son Edmund Gosse, his father had by the strangeness of this offering wilfully “closed the doors upon himself forever” — in fact, however, in the succeeding three years his father had been able to negotiate publication for four more of his books (in addition to presenting more than 30 scientific papers). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1872

Summer: Thomas Wentworth Higginson’s sister Anna visited Newport, Rhode Island and took care of the ailing Mary Channing Higginson, enabling her brother to travel in Europe and meet Robert Browning, Thomas Carlyle, Charles Darwin, James Anthony Froude, Philip Henry Gosse, Du Maurier, the Rossettis, Tennyson, Trollope, and others. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1884

Philip Henry Gosse’s THE MYSTERIES OF GOD: A SERIES OF EXPOSITIONS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE.

The Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge’s ATHEISM IN PHILOSOPHY, AND OTHER ESSAYS (Boston: Roberts Brothers; University Press: John Wilson and Son, Cambridge 390 pages). ATHEISM IN PHILOSOPHY

He and Professor L. Noa edited and revised the Reverend Alexander James William Morrison, M.A.’s translations into English of GOETHE’S LETTERS FROM SWITZERLAND, AND TRAVELS IN ITALY (Boston: S.E. Cassino and Company). SWITZERLAND, ITALY HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1886

In conjunction with Charles Thomas Hudson, Philip Henry Gosse prepared a scholarly two-volume study of the rotifera.

THE WHEEL-ANIMALCULES HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1888

August 23, Thursday: Philip Henry Gosse died at the age of 78 at Sandhurst, St. Marychurch, Torquay after chilling himself on a winter night by toying with his telescope at an open window. He was bitterly disappointed when he thus fell seriously ill, for his fantasy had long been that he might not taste death but instead meet Christ in the air at his Second Coming.

His son Edmund Gosse would shortly, in 1898, issue a rather ordinary retrospective, THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE F.R.S. Upon perusing this, however, the writer would suggest to Edmund that the slight biography seemed to contain “the germ of a great book,” and the result would be 1907’s FATHER AND SON, which at first would need to appear anonymously because in it the dead father is so relentlessly savaged (research by the biographer would uncover fully a dozen instances in which the son’s lingering resentments had betrayed his memory — or he had fudged to make his attitude more credible). HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1890

Edmund Gosse’s THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE, F.R.S. (London: Kegan Paul, Trench, Trübner & Co., Ltd.). THE LIFE OF MY FATHER HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1907

Edmund Gosse, in FATHER AND SON, A STUDY OF TWO TEMPERAMENTS depicted his father Philip Henry Gosse as having been fanatically religious and a familial despot.

FATHER AND SON HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

1976

Dennis Potter dramatized FATHER AND SON in the television play , broadcast on BBC One. Philip Henry Gosse was played by Alan Badel and was portrayed with greater sympathy than is to be found in his son Edmund Gosse’s book. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

2002

Ann Thwaite’s GLIMPSES OF THE WONDERFUL: THE LIFE OF PHILIP HENRY GOSSE, 1810-1888 (London: Faber & Faber). In her research the author had been able to uncover fully a dozen instances in which either the son Edmund Gosse’s lingering resentments toward deceased father Philip Henry Gosse had betrayed his memory, or he had deliberately altered the record to make a better story. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

2005

Nick Warburton adapted FATHER AND SON for BBC Radio 4. Philip Henry Gosse was portrayed by and portrayed the son Edmund Gosse.

“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY

People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

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 2010. 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: November 7, 2014 HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE 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.

Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE

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 . Arrgh. HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX

THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE