ROBERT BARTLETT
ROBERT BARTLETT HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1623
July: Hobomok witnessed Plymouth’s prayers for rain, prayers which apparently brought to an end a six-week drought, and became intrigued by the powers of this Christian religion.
Per John Camden Hotten’s EMIGRANT ANCESTORS (1874), after the vessels Anne and Little James had parted company at sea the Anne had arrived at Boston harbor during the latter part of June, with the Little James arriving some week or ten days later. At this point the Anne and the Little James came to anchor at the Plymouth beachhead, bringing new settlers along with many of the wives and children that had been left behind in Leyden when the Mayflower had departed in 1620.
Among that boatload of people was Robert Bartlett, who would get married in 1628 with Mary Warren, daughter of Richard Warren. They would produce Benjamin Bartlett, and then in 1638 would produce Joseph Bartlett, and in addition there would be 6 daughters: Rebecca Bartlett who would get married n December 20, 1649 with William Harlow; Mary Bartlett who would get married on September 19, 1651 with Richard Foster, and then on July 8, 1659 would remarry with Jonathan Morey; Sarah Bartlett who would get married on December 23, 1656 with Samuel Rider of Yarmouth; Elizabeth Bartlett who would get married on December 20, 1661 with Anthony Sprague of Hingham; Lydia Bartlett who would be born on June 8, 1647 and get married with James Barnaby and then get married with John Nelson of Middleborough; and Mercy Bartlett who would be born on March 10, 1651 and get married on December 25, 1668 with John Ivey of Boston. This passenger Robert Bartlett was of the first purchase of Dartmouth, and would die in 1676 at the age of 73. His widow Mary Warren Bartlett would remarry on October 24 either in the year 1692 or in the year 1699 with Thomas Delano.
The George Morton who was arriving was not the son of the infamous Thomas Morton of Merry Mount yet, no doubt, he was a relative of that numerous family and perhaps a brother of the 2nd Thomas Morton. He had been born at Austerfield in Yorkshire and had been baptized on February 12, 1599.
He arrived at Boston and then Plymouth in the Ann with a wife Juliana Carpenter Morton whom he had married at Leyden on July 23, 1612, a daughter of Alexander Carpenter, and four or five children counted with Experience Mitchell for 8 in the 1624 division of lands, including his eldest son Nathaniel Morton, son John Morton, son Ephraim Morton, daughter Patience Morton, daughter Sarah Morton, and Thomas Morton, Jr., the son of Thomas Morton of the Fortune. Edwin Morton of Plymouth would be one of his violinist descendants.
The ship’s list of passengers was: Annable, Anthony (settled in Scituate) Jane (Momford) Annable, wife Sarah Annable, daughter Hannah Annable, daughter Bangs, Edward (settled in Eastham) Bartlett, Robert Buckett, Mary Brewster, Patience (a daughter of Elder Brewster) Brewster, Fear (a daughter of Elder Brewster) Clarke, Thomas (his gravestone is the oldest on Plymouth Burial Hill) Conant, Christopher Cooke, Mrs. Hester (Mahieu) HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT Jane Cooke, daughter Jacob Cooke, son Hester Cooke, daughter Dix, Anthony Faunce, John Flavel, Goodwife (probably Mrs. Elizabeth Flavel, wife of Thomas Flavell of the Fortune) Flood, Edmond Fuller, Mrs. Bridget (Lee) (apparently the wife of Dr. Samuel Fuller) Godbertson, Godbert or Cuthbertson, Cuthbert (a Hollander rather than a Pilgrim) Sarah (Allerton) (Vincent) (Priest) Godbertson, wife Samuel Godbertson, son Sarah Priest, step-daughter Mary Priest, step-daughter Hatherly, Timothy Heard, William Hicks, Mrs. Margaret (with her children below; family of Robert Hickes of the Fortune) Samuel Hicks, son Lydia Hicks, daughter Hilton, Mrs. William (with her children below; William Hilton had sent for them before his death) William Hilton, son Mary Hilton, daughter Holman, Edward Jenny, John (Why wasn’t he on the list, was he a man of color? He had “liberty, in 1636, to erect a mill for grinding and beating of corn upon the brook of Plymouth”) Kempton, Manasseh Long, Robert Mitchell, Experience (would marry Jane Cooke, daughter of Francis Cooke of the Mayflower) Morton, George (paterfamilias; family below) Juliana Morton, wife Nathanial Morton, son (afterwards the 1st Secretary of Plymouth) John Morton, son Ephraim Morton, son Patience Morton, daughter Sarah Morton, daughter Morton, Thomas Jr. (son of Thomas Morton of the Fortune) Newton, Ellen Oldham, John Mrs. Oldham, wife Lucretia Oldham, sister Palmer, Mrs. Frances (wife of William Palmer of the Fortune) HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT Penn, Christian Pierce, Abraham Pratt, Joshua Rand, James Rattliff, Robert Mrs. Rattliff, wife Snow, Nicholas (settled in Eastham) Southworth, Alice (widow, formerly named Carpenter, would remarry as the 2nd wife of Governor William Bradford) Sprague, Francis (settled in Duxbury) Anna Sprague, wife Mercy Sprague, daughter Standish, Mrs. Barbara (would become the 2d wife of Captain Miles Standish) Tilden, Thomas (Ann?) Tilden, wife child Tilden Tracy, Stephen Wallen, Ralph Joyce Wallen, wife Warren, Mrs. Elizabeth Mary Warren, daughter Elizabeth Warren, daughter Ann Warren, daughter Sarah Warren, daughter Abigail Warren, daughter Mr. Perce’s two servants
THE PROBLEM IS THAT THE HISTORIAN TYPICALLY SUPPOSES NOW TO BE THE WHY OF THEN. THE REALITY IS VERY MUCH TO THE CONTRARY, FOR NOW IS NOT THE WHY OF THEN: INSTEAD, THEN WAS THE HOW OF NOW. ANOTHER WAY TO SAY THIS IS THAT HISTORIANS WHO ANTICIPATE OFFEND AGAINST REALITY. A HISTORY WRITTEN IN THE LIGHT OF SUBSEQUENT EVENTS AMOUNTS TO SPURIOUS MAKE- BELIEVE. TO DO A GOOD JOB OF RECORDING HISTORY, ONE MUST BECOME IGNORANT (OR FEIGN IGNORANCE) OF EVERYTHING THAT WE NOW KNOW TO HAVE FOLLOWED.
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1817
October 8, Wednesday: Since the very last thing anyone should ever have allowed a person like John C. Calhoun to be was the US Secretary of War, on this day John became the US Secretary of War. What on earth were we thinking? (Oh, come on, you know what we were thinking: we were thinking that if we told this man that we expected him to defend us from our enemies, it would be rather less likely that he would be attempting to kill us.)
Robert Bartlett was born, son of Captain Isaac Bartlett of the brig Hannah of Plymouth, Massachusetts with Rebecca Bartlett, both sides of the family being of Pilgrim descent and both this mother and this father, although not closely related, tracing their origins to the Robert Bartlett who had come over in the Anne in 1623.
TRALFAMADORIANS EXPERIENCE REALITY IN 4 DIMENSIONS RATHER THAN 3 AND HAVE SIMULTANEOUS ACCESS TO PAST, PRESENT, AND FUTURE. THEY ARE ABLE TO SEE ALONG THE TIMELINE OF THE UNIVERSE TO THE EXACT TIME AND PLACE AT WHICH AS THE RESULT OF A TRALFAMADORIAN EXPERIMENT, THE UNIVERSE IS ANNIHILATED. BILLY PILGRIM, WHILE CAGED IN A TRALFAMADORIAN ZOO, ACQUIRES THEIR ATTITUDE TOWARD TIME, AND SO WHEN HE RETURNS TO EARTH, HE BECOMES A HISTORIAN VERY LIKE ALL OUR OTHER HISTORIANS: ALTHOUGH HE CANNOT HIMSELF SEE INTO THE FUTURE THE WAY THE TRALFAMADORIANS DO, LIKE ALL OUR OTHER HUMAN HISTORIANS DO HE PRETENDS TO BE ABLE TO SEE ALL PERIODS OF OUR PAST TRAJECTORY NOT WITH THE EYES OF THE PEOPLE WHO WERE LIVING DURING THOSE PERIODS, BUT WITH THE OVERARCHING EYE OF GOD. THIS ENABLES HIM TO PRETEND TO BE VERY VERY WISE AND TO SOUND VERY VERY IMPRESSIVE!
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1819
June 18, Friday: Vincenzo Bellini arrived in Naples from Catania to matriculate at the Real College de musica di San Sebastiano.
Rebecca Bartlett was born in Plymouth, Massachusetts, daughter of Captain Isaac Bartlett of the brig Hannah of Plymouth, Massachusetts with Rebecca Bartlett, both sides of the family being of Pilgrim descent and both this mother and this father, although not closely related, tracing their origins to the Robert Bartlett who had come over in the Anne in 1623.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6th day This morning Elizabeth Walker & Margaret Judge & their companions came in & took breakfast with us, of which we were glad, their company being very pleasant. After breakfast being joined by Wm Rickman & D Quimby, we fell into silence. Wm Rickman & Ruth Hallock in addition to a few words SPoken in the life by E Walker, delivered short testimonies. — After which they began to separate. Ruth went to Connanicut on her way homeward & Wm Rickman & D Quimby to Portsmouth, but before dinner Richard Halstead returned from Connanicut with the Carriage Wheels Sadly broken. & Ruth & Sarah went immediately on to Narragansett accompanied by Isaac P Hazard & his Mother. — This Yearly meeting has been a season of favor, & particularly so to us, as we have all been well, our buisness in the House all gone on Successfully, our company agreeable, but as to my own particular state of religious sensibility, I have not enjoyed so high a condition, as at times past or as at seasons when less cumbered, however there has been seasons in the course of it, when Israels Sheperd has been near, for which renew’d evidence of divine help I desire to be thankful. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
THE AGE OF REASON WAS A PIPE DREAM, OR AT BEST A PROJECT. ACTUALLY, HUMANS HAVE ALMOST NO CLUE WHAT THEY ARE DOING, WHILE CREDITING THEIR OWN LIES ABOUT WHY THEY ARE DOING IT.
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1826
Pietro Bachi found work in the United States as a teacher of Italian and Spanish at Harvard College, at a salary of $500 per year.
Benjamin Peirce, Senior became Harvard’s librarian.
Doctor John White Webster compiled A MANUAL OF CHEMISTRY.
Richard Hildreth graduated from Harvard and would teach school for a year, at the Concord Academy in Concord, Massachusetts, before deciding to follow the example of Sir Walter Scott and pursue a career in law and literature.
George Washington Hosmer and Addison Brown also graduated with Harvard’s Class of 1826, and would become the teachers of Robert Bartlett in the public school at Plymouth, Massachusetts, preparing him well for his own entrance into that college in 1833.
In about this year John Buchanan Floyd graduated from South Carolina College.
In about this year Nathaniel Baker arrived at the age of 80 and sold his portion of the Baker farm to Amos Baker’s son James Baker.
Elizur Wright, Junior graduated at Yale College and went to teach in a school at Groton.
In upstate New York, Geneva College (Hobart and William Smith Colleges) held its initial Commencement exercise, graduating five.
John Brown’s father Owen Brown was a farmer and tanner for whom locution was always problematic due to a stutter (unless, of course, he was raising his voice in prayer). When Western Reserve College was established at Hudson, Ohio during this year (it has since become Western Reserve University in Cleveland), Owen was one of its founders and one of its initial trustees. An antislavery Christian he was one of the early Western Reserve abolitionists and for the 1st few years the conduct of the institution would accord with his own point of view. Faculty changes, however, and internal dissensions, would lead to a decline in the institution’s antislavery zeal and in 1835 Owen would sever his affiliation. The recently established Oberlin Collegiate Institute (now Oberlin College) in the neighboring town of Oberlin, Ohio would seem more nearly to meet his views, so he would transfer his allegiance to Oberlin and would serve as a trustee of that institution as well as its local agent at Hudson from 1835 to 1844 (his daughter Florilla Brown would be a graduate in the class of 1839 and at least one of his younger sons would be a student there; Florilla would get married with the Reverend Samuel L. Adair, another Oberlin graduate who would become an early missionary to Kansas, they would settle at Osawatomie, and it would be in front of the Adair home that Frederick Brown, son of John Brown, would be gunned down by Border Ruffians guided by a proslavery reverend in the Battle of Osawatomie on August 30th, 1856).
It would no doubt be through the father Owen that the son John would initially learn of the gift of Gerrit Smith of 20,000 acres of wild land to nearby Oberlin College, and it would perhaps be the father who would send him into negotiations with the institution, which would result in a journey down the Ohio and a full month of land-inspection in Tyler County during April and May 1840.
CONTINGENCY HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT ALTHOUGH VERY MANY OUTCOMES ARE OVERDETERMINED, WE TRUST THAT SOMETIMES WE ACTUALLY MAKE REAL CHOICES. “THIS IS THE ONLY WAY, WE SAY, BUT THERE ARE AS MANY WAYS AS THERE CAN BE DRAWN RADII FROM ONE CENTRE.”
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1833
September: Jones Very was accepted as a student at Harvard College, skipping the Freshman year due to his age and preparatory work. Within a couple of weeks of his matriculation, he had paid a $2.00 entrance fee and been recognized as a member of the “Institute of 1770.”
Robert Bartlett matriculated at Harvard. He would graduate in 1836 with 1st honors.
ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH.
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1836
In the Harvard Class Book of 1836, Robert Bartlett, who graduated with 1st Honors, told the story of his life as follows: Into what course of life I should have been led, had things taken their usual order with me, is doubtful. I might have been acquainted with the sea, which most of my ancestors had pursued before me. I, however, very early manifested such an aversion from all voluntary motion of my physical organization, such a stupidity in comprehending the uses and modes of all mechanical engines and operations, that it was considered a settled matter by those in authority over me that navigation or manufactures were not my forte. I was accordingly left in peace in the Plymouth high school and among my books, to both of which I had shown some attachment, until I gradually found myself fitting and fitted for college. This portion of my life was marked by no extraordinary events or accidents, but was by no means unimportant in its bearings upon the formation and development of my inner self. A rather peculiar train of (in themselves) trivial circumstances, during this time, seemed to add immense power to certain very unhappy propensities, which I had not then the sense to discern and which the earnest efforts of my later life have not yet corrected. In the high school at Plymouth grew within me, by a process which there is not the slightest difficulty in imagining, a mighty disposition not duly to appreciate (for every man’s right and solemn duty to thus much I still maintain) but altogether to overestimate myself and to communicate my false judgments to every carping fool I came across. A strong inclination I had somewhere acquired to sneer at my fellow creatures found here ample materials for its indulgence and growth. I had, moreover, from the beginning, been possessed with an all ruling passion for dispute, and the picking up of certain extraordinary and ultra notions in religion and politics helped beyond measure to add to my sins in this particular. I have spoken of these odious tendencies in my early character, not because they were by any means the all- prevailing ones, or from an affectation of sincerity in confessing my own faults, but simply because they are of use toward explaining what, though I trust they are not the most important, are yet the most striking in my Cambridge history. In fact, I am doubtful whether to any tolerably acute observer of my life anything more than a knowledge of the peculiarities, as well as the consummate ignorance of the whole human race and especially of students, in which I entered college is necessary, in order to attain a complete idea of the principal external events and mental phenomena which have attended my four years’ residence in the university. I at first met with difficulties enough to satisfy me of the existence of some pretty essential wrongs within, and considerably more than a year ago I set earnestly about a thorough religious reform, in which I have since been active. My life thenceforth has been more peaceful, happy and, I trust, better suited to the high use for which it was given me. In leaving college my subjects of regret and of self-complacency HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT are as follows: viz., I lament, first, the indulgence of a disposition fiercely to espouse and defend hastily formed opinions of men, and of religious and political subjects; second, in upholding in thought, word or deed a silly rebellion at the end of my sophomore year; third, the not beginning earlier to live for the fit object of life. I am happy to possess: first, diligent habits and a tolerable learning acquired in college; second, considerable benevolence and sympathy for and interest in my fellow men; third and chiefly, a deep reverence for and, I trust, an eternally inflexible faith in Jesus Christ as a Master and Saviour. To the defence of the primitive Christian faith from its open enemies and its more dangerous corrupters, and to the extension of its dominions in the hearts of men, I cheerfully devote myself as an object worthy a thousand lives like the present, and shall within a year or two commence those studies which will enable me to do more toward effecting it.
After his graduation from Harvard College, Robert Bartlett would teach at the high school in Plymouth from which he had graduated, for a short time, but then in the following year he would register as a resident graduate at the university. In 1837 he would enter the theological school, and continue there until 1840. He would favor the thought of Emerson, and then of Swedenborg.
In this year a volume of Harvard College records was published. As you might imagine, they had to do it up in Latin: HARVARD RECORDS
A group of undergraduates had begun to publish a magazine of their own writings in September 1835 and would continue this practice until June 1838. The undergraduate David Greene Haskins would publish several articles anonymously during his Junior and Senior years, but David Henry Thoreau would take no part in such activity.1 At this point the group reissued the accumulating materials as a 2d book volume:2 HARVARDIANA, VOL. II
Harvard French and Spanish instructor Francis Sales in this year put out a revised, emended, improved, and enlarged 7th American edition of Augutin Louis Josse (1763-1841)’s A GRAMMAR OF THE SPANISH LANGUAGE, WITH PRACTICAL EXERCISES (1827; Boston: Munroe and Francis, 128 Washington-Street, corner of Water-Street. 1836, 7th American Edition; Boston: Munroe and Francis, etc. 1842, 10th American Edition:
1. In later life the Reverend Haskins, a relative of Waldo Emerson on his mother’s side, would denigrate his classmate Thoreau for having neglected to contribute to this undergraduate literary effort. He would aver that Thoreau had neither been a good scholar nor a convivial classmate — in addition, he would cast Thoreau as a mere imitator of his cousin the Sage of Concord. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT Boston: James Munroe and Company). This 1836 edition would be found in Henry Thoreau’s personal library and is now, with a front free endpaper bearing the notation “D H. Thoreau,” in the special collections of the Concord Free Public Library (having been donated by Sophia E. Thoreau in 1874). GRAMMAR OF SPANISH
Since William Whiting had graduated from Harvard College with the degree of Bachelor of Arts with the Class of 1833, in this year in the normal course of events he would receive in addition the customary degree of Master of Arts.
The publication of volumes V and VI of the Reverend Professor Jared Sparks of Harvard’s THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY. LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. V LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. VI
These volumes encompassed 4 contributions:
•LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT by the Reverend Convers Francis. LIFE OF JOHN ELIOT
2. There would be three such volumes, labeled Volume I, Volume II, and Volume IV. There does not seem to have been a Volume III published in this book form (apparently it was produced only in monthly magazine form) and no electronic text as yet exists, for the Volume I that had been published. The initial editorial group for his magazine consisted of Charles Hayward, Samuel Tenney Hildreth, Charles Stearns Wheeler, and perhaps for a time Horatio Hale, and their editorial office was a small room on what has become Holyoke Street. Thoreau had volumes II and IV in his personal library, and would give them to F.H. Bigelow. The illustration used on the cover of the magazine represented University Hall: HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT •LIFE OF WILLIAM PINKNEY by Henry Wheaton LIFE OF WILLIAM PINKNEY
•LIFE OF WILLIAM ELLERY by Edward T. Channing LIFE OF WILLIAM ELLERY
•LIFE OF COTTON MATHER by William B.O. Peabody LIFE OF COTTON MATHER
IT IS NO COINCIDENCE THAT IT IS MORTALS WHO CONSUME OUR HISTORICAL ACCOUNTS, FOR WHAT WE ARE ATTEMPTING TO DO IS EVADE THE RESTRICTIONS OF THE HUMAN LIFESPAN. (IMMORTALS, WITH NOTHING TO LIVE FOR, TAKE NO HEED OF OUR STORIES.)
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT September 8, Thursday: Some 1,100 to 1,300 alums attended Harvard College’s Bicentennial, and heard a professional choir offer the very original of “Fair Harvard.” Although the very oldest living alumnus, 96-year- old Judge Paine Wingate (Class of 1759, of New Hampshire) was, unfortunately, unable to be present, 86-year- old Samuel Emery (Class of 1774, of Philadelphia) was able to march in the parade. Word arrived that President Josiah Quincy, Sr. had, while researching for a “History of Harvard University” in the College Archives, located in filed-and-forgotten records of an Overseers meeting on January 6, 1644 the first rough sketch for the shield with the Latin motto “VE RI TAS” (“Verity” or “Truth”) and three open books, which was to become the College’s arms. This is how it looks today, as a refrigerator magnet:
During this Bicentennial, a white banner atop a large tent in the Yard for the 1st time publicly displayed this design, which in 1843 would become the basis of the seal officially adopted by the Harvard Corporation, and then in 1847 would be dropped in favor of another seal, and then in 1885 would be readopted. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
Some of the alums had an interestingly historic discussion:
(following screen)
In September 1836, on the day of the second centennial anniversary of Harvard College, Mr. Emerson, George Ripley, and myself [Frederic Henry Hedge], with one other [who was this fourth person: would it have been an unnamed woman, an unnamed wife, specifically Sophia Ripley??], chanced to confer together on the state of current opinion in theology and philosophy, which we agreed in thinking was very unsatisfactory. Could anything be done in the way of protest and introduction of deeper and broader views? What we strongly felt was dissatisfaction with the reigning sensuous philosophy, dating from John Locke, on which our Christian theology was based. The writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, recently edited by Marsh [Henry Nelson Coleridge had only at this point initiated publication of THE LITERARY REMAINS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE], and some of Thomas Carlyle’s earlier essays, especially the “Characteristics” and “SIGNS OF THE TIMES,” had created a ferment in the minds of some of the young clergy of that day. There was a promise in the air of a new era of intellectual life. We four concluded to call a few like-minded seekers together in the following week. Some dozen of us met in Boston, in the house, I believe, of Mr. Ripley. Among them I recall the name of Orestes Augustus Brownson (not yet turned Romanist), Cyrus Augustus Bartol, Theodore Parker, and Charles Stearns Wheeler and Robert Bartlett, tutors in Harvard College. There was some discussion, but no conclusion reached, on the question whether it were best to start a new journal as the organ of our views, or to work through those already existing. The next meeting, in the same month, was held by invitation of Emerson, at his house in Concord. A large number assembled; besides some of those who met at Boston, I remember Mr. Alcott, [Bronson Alcott] John Sullivan Dwight, Ephraim Peabody, Dr. Convers Francis, Mrs. Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley, Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Margaret Fuller, Caleb Stetson, James Freeman Clarke. These were the earliest of a series of meetings held from time to time, as occasion prompted, for seven or eight years. Jones Very was one of those who occasionally attended; H.D. Thoreau another. There was no club, properly speaking; no organization, no presiding officer, no vote ever taken. How the name “Transcendental,” given to these gatherings and the set of persons who took part in them, originated, I cannot say. It certainly was never assumed by the persons so called. I suppose I was the only one who had any first-hand acquaintance with German transcendental philosophy, at the start. THE DIAL was the product of the movement, and in some sort its organ.
CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
At the wrap-up of the day, guest speaker Josiah Quincy, Jr. (Class of 1821) made a motion “that this assembly of the Alumni be adjourned to meet at this place on the 8th of September, 1936” — and the motion was unanimously adopted.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT 5th day 8th of 9 M / Our meeting was small but very quietly solid — I missed father Rodman at my right hand being confined at home with a lame back — Thro’ the day my mind has been much at Providence where I have concluded to go tomorrow (if the Steam Boat get in in season) to attend the funeral of my ancient & much beloved friend Moses Brown RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
ONE COULD BE ELSEWHERE, AS ELSEWHERE DOES EXIST. ONE CANNOT BE ELSEWHEN SINCE ELSEWHEN DOES NOT. (TO THE WILLING MANY THINGS CAN BE EXPLAINED, THAT FOR THE UNWILLING WILL REMAIN FOREVER MYSTERIOUS.)
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT September 19, Monday: Formation at a meeting at the house of the Reverend George Ripley of “Hedge’s Club,” or the “Symposium,” centering around the visits of the Reverend Frederic Henry Hedge to Boston from Bangor, Maine. Robert Bartlett was, at about the age of 20, the youngest person in attendance.3 In September 1836, on the day of the second centennial anniversary of Harvard College, Mr. Emerson, George Ripley, and myself [Frederic Henry Hedge], with one other [who was this fourth person: would it have been an unnamed woman, an unnamed wife, specifically Sophia Ripley??], chanced to confer together on the state of current opinion in theology and philosophy, which we agreed in thinking was very unsatisfactory. Could anything be done in the way of protest and introduction of deeper and broader views? What we strongly felt was dissatisfaction with the reigning sensuous philosophy, dating from John Locke, on which our Christian theology was based. The writings of Samuel Taylor Coleridge, recently edited by Marsh [Henry Nelson Coleridge had only at this point initiated publication of THE LITERARY REMAINS OF SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE], and some of Thomas Carlyle’s earlier essays, especially the “Characteristics” and “SIGNS OF THE TIMES,” had created a ferment in the minds of some of the young clergy of that day. There was a promise in the air of a new era of intellectual life. We four concluded to call a few like-minded seekers together in the following week. Some dozen of us met in Boston, in the house, I believe, of Mr. Ripley. Among them I recall the name of Orestes Augustus Brownson (not yet turned Romanist), Cyrus Augustus Bartol, Theodore Parker, and Charles Stearns Wheeler and Robert Bartlett, tutors in Harvard College. There was some discussion, but no conclusion reached, on the question whether it were best to start a new journal as the organ of our views, or to work through those already existing. The next meeting, in the same month, was held by invitation of Emerson, at his house in Concord. A large number assembled; besides some of those who met at Boston, I remember Mr. Alcott, [Bronson Alcott] John Sullivan Dwight, Ephraim Peabody, Dr. Convers Francis, Mrs. Sarah Alden Bradford Ripley, Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Margaret Fuller, Caleb Stetson, James Freeman Clarke. These were the earliest of a series of meetings held from time to time, as occasion prompted, for seven or eight years. Jones Very was one of those who occasionally attended; H.D. Thoreau another. There was no club, properly speaking; no organization, no presiding officer, no vote ever taken. How the name “Transcendental,” given to these gatherings and the set of persons who took part in them, originated, I cannot say. It certainly was never assumed by the persons so called. I suppose I was the only one who had any first-hand acquaintance with German transcendental philosophy, at the start. THE DIAL was the product of the movement, and in some sort its organ.
CAMBRIDGE HISTORY OF ENGLISH AND AMERICAN LITERATURE
3. This would become the Transcendental Club. It was at this first regular meeting that the Reverend Convers Francis first met Bronson Alcott. Francis would also be present for the second meeting, in Alcott’s home in Boston. As the eldest member of the Club, it would become the lot of the Reverend Francis to announce the principal topic for conversation, and to preside. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT YOU HAVE TO ACCEPT EITHER THE REALITY OF TIME OVER THAT OF CHANGE, OR CHANGE OVER TIME — IT’S PARMENIDES, OR HERACLITUS. I HAVE GONE WITH HERACLITUS.
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1838
November 29, Thursday, Thanksgiving: Robert Bartlett felt unable to join the family in their Thanksgiving dinner, dining instead with the family of the Reverend Dr. Henry Ware, Jr. On December 1, 1838 his sister Rebecca Bartlett would write that “We expected you home even to the very last minute, notwithstanding what you wrote. Mother even kept the teakettle on until after the last stage got in.” He would respond: “You have come to see that there are resources in your own spirit for all things. If we look to these and obey always the spirit’s voice, we shall have enough to do and have enough life in every day. Many of your trials I know and have give way to too often. Often I am doing the weak and foolish thing and feel broken down and an outcast from God. We must take care against despairing, however low we fall or however weak we feel. You look out of the window at the awful and still firmament and the cold, bright stars. Think when you do it there is something in you which takes hold on the farthest of those stars. It is the Soul of your soul. It gives you life and being, and it makes the worlds. Listen to that. Do not hear what your own will says to you, but do what that inmost soul tells you. That is life, peace, heaven.”
The Reverend Samuel Hopkins preached a sermon “The Curse upon the Ground, a Blessing” on this day of public thanksgiving at his church in Saco, Maine, that would in the following year be printed as a pamphlet by S.L. Goodale: Genesis 3: 17-19 AND UNTO ADAM HE SAID, BECAUSE THOU HAST HEARKENED UNTO THE VOICE OF THY WIFE, AND HAST EATEN OF THE TREE OF WHICH I COMMANDED THEE, SAYING, THOU SHALT NOT EAT OF IT: CURSED IS THE GROUND FOR THY SAKE; IN SORROW SHALT THOU EAT OF IT ALL DAYS OF THY LIFE; THORNS AND THISTLES SHALL IT BRING FORTH TO THEE; AND THOU SHALT EAT THE HERB OF THE FIELD; IN THE SWEAT OF THY FACE SHALT THOU EAT BREAD, TILL THOU RETURN UNTO THE GROUND; FOR OUT OF IT WAST THOU TAKEN: FOR DUST THOU ARE, AND UNTO DUST SHALT THOU RETURN. Before the fall the world was a paradise. Its roses had no thorns; its fountains, no bitterness; its charms, no disease. The sunbeam was pure life; the flow of the waters was like the flow of Love; the notes of the wind, of beast, of bird, of man, of woman – were music. The beauty of God was penciled upon everything which had life; it was mirrored in everything which had brightness. His name was spoken, his goodness, declared, his power, confessed – everywhere. The hum of the insect – the shaking of the leaf – the ripple of waters – the voice of man chimed together in the song of gladness. The chorus of praise to God was universal; for all things felt welcome inspiration of his indwelling presence. The world was an infant heaven. It had, within itself, the living principles, the entire furniture, the budding promise of angelic bliss. All things here were such, that, had they gone on, untouched by the Spoiler, they would have developed, in the day of their maturity, as bright a display of the Godhead, as ripe and as rich a harvest of enjoyments, as heaven itself affords. Our first parents walked in Eden – as newborn spirits do in the upper courts of God-children in their conceptions, children in their enjoyments; reaching forth, and growing up, to the mark of spiritual manhood. But their infancy was without defect. Their happiness was pure and constant. Every bodily sense was a channel for some incoming enjoyment. Nature was their minister HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT and their teacher. She brought them pleasures from throughout her storehouse. She showed them God in every pleasure;–in the moonlight, in the twilight, in the shade of their arbor, in the fruits they ate, in the waters they drank. They lay down and slept, they woke and arose, they communed and thought – with rejoicing and thanksgiving. But the world is changed. The song of universal gladness has ceased. The bodily senses yield not only pleasure, but pain. The heat of the sun is not only genial but oppressive. And the earth itself, instead of ministering unmixed pleasure, teems with a thousand evils. Her soil – her products – are changed. She is under the curse of God. Now – it is ordained, that even the best of her productions should have somewhat of ill. Her beauties bloom to perish. Her flowers are armed with thorns and poisons. Her elements minister abounding discomfort. The whole system of nature has undergone means of subsistence. By the sweat of our face we must eat our bread, until we return unto the ground. This is the general condition of human life. Every man’s daily sustenance is the hard earning of toil and sorrow. Discomfort, and weariness, and pain, are the price of life. The few who are exempt from personal toil rely upon the toil of others. This state of things was ordained when God uttered the words which I have chosen for my text. But for this decree, Nature would still have been as Nature was before the fall. We, like our first parents, should have been exempt from thorns and thistles and the sweat of the brow. To sustain life, we should have needed only to eat and to drink and to sleep. To partake of the bounties of nature we should have needed only to open the eye. But the decree was uttered. The ground was cursed. The result has been – want and toil, from generation to generation; a result which shall continue until the consummation of all things. How many men have read the sacred record of this curse without understanding? How many have mourned and lamented over the change this curse has wrought. How few have discerned the loving-kindness of God herein, although that loving-kindness is woven with the very letter of the curse. Do chief magistrates call upon the people to thank God for ordaining that they must eat their bread in the sweat of the brow? Do devout men, when enumerating the mercies of the Lord, mention this? Do the children of poverty – do the hoarders of wealth – when they rise to their toils, or flee to their beds, think of this? And yet, here the blessing is – avowed in the very tenor and framework of the curse – taking effect from the very day of its utterance – only the second in the order of tie, only the second in point of value, concerning man – perpetuated, too, from generation to generation – and diffusing its precious influences throughout the world today! But what! Is a curse a blessing! Is a curse reason for devout thanksgiving! Is not this a paradox — or rather an absurdity? I answer – neither absurdity – nor paradox. It is a simple and obvious truth that, next to our praises for Redemption by the blood of Christ, we owe God our praises for the curse recorded in the text. That we may gain a clear view of this truth, let us examine – the reasons – and the influences – of this curse. I. Its reasons. Under the government of God, “the curse causeless shall not HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT come.” He never dispenses an evil, great or small, spiritual or physical, temporary or eternal, without a reason; never, without a sufficient reason; never without a compelling reason. This is a fundamental doctrine; qualifying all the acts, the purposes, the laws, the words of God; a doctrine which he has abundantly revealed – which bears essentially upon his government, and character; upon our condition and duties. There was a reason, then, for the curse we are considering. There is a reason for its entailment present day. God declares it. “Because thou hast eaten of the tree of which I commanded thee, saying, thou shalt not eat of it.” Disobedience of God was the grand reason of the curse originally; and our disobedience of God is the grand reason of its perpetuity. The curse was ordained because of Sin; it has continued because of Sin. It was established for a perpetual decree in full view, and because, of Sin which was, and Sin which was to be. It was established because – Sin being present – it was a curse necessary to the perfect adjustment of God’s purposes; necessary to the full play of his benevolence and grace; necessary to the grand experiment of human probation; necessary in a system of things where punitive justice was kept at bay; in short – necessary to the best good of man. Sin, then, is its primitive reason; and the good of man, its secondary reason. It is a weight — thrown into the scale of contending influences — to keep God’s grace and man’s sin at equipoise; to give grace sway upon Sin; to keep Sin from defeating grace. Its origin was in the secret counsels of God’s benevolence; its nativity, a brilliant era in the history of God’s wisdom; its introduction to the world, a wondrous display of God’s loving-kindness. A system of things which would do well for a holy being, would not do for a sinful being. A mode of life which would consist with the best good of the one, would not consist at all with that of the other. A Garden of Eden, with its spotless, changeless, universal beauties, and luxuriant abundance, would answer the purposes of man without sin; but if so – it would answer the purposes of man with sin – not at all. And the moment the character of man became changed by sin, there must needs be, to secure his good, a corresponding change in his mode of life. Hence the necessity of ordaining some change in nature; a change compelling man to sustain life at the cost of toil and weariness. This change was wrought in the curse we are considering. And surely00if there was benevolence in profusion and glory of Nature before the fall — there is benevolence in her comparative barrenness and noxiousness since. Thorns and thistles sprang up to elicit labor. Labor was ordained to abate, for the time, the plague of Sin. To show you that I do not speak at random, I refer you again to the very edict by which the curse was established. You find there no malediction uttered — no bolt of damnation hurled — upon the transgressor. No curse is recorded there concerning mankind. The curse was upon the ground. And the curse upon the ground was, and was declared to be, a blessing upon man. “Cursed is the ground; “cursed, that it may “bring forth to thee thorns and thistles;” cursed, that thou mayest “eat bread in the sweat of thy face;” cursed “for thy sakes.” But observe — II. The influences of this curse. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT See how it is a blessing to men. See — how it so9ls, essentially, the influence of Sin! See — how aptly it adjusts itself in the system of Grace! See — how it accords with the arrangements of Divine Mercy! See — how it has priceless value as a co-worker in the plan of Redemption! 1. Observe its obvious influence upon salvation. Many a saint is now in heaven whose first lesson in the school of Christ was learned through the chastening influence of the burdens of life. And many are the heirs of God here, who could tell you that unceasing toil first awakened the desire for heavenly rest -; that cares and burdens taught them to expect no quietude in this world; that this conviction led them to seek a better country; that thus, they first began a preparation for heaven by contending with inbred sin. Men labor for the meat that perisheth. It perishes with the using. They get a good thing and it passes away. They crave again, and again they labor. They go from labor to labor — from care to care — from weariness to weariness. And if, per chance, they are so schooled by the bitterness of their travail as to confess the trouble and vanity of life — if perchance, they come to cry out for brokenness of spirit — how fitly does the voice of Christ chime in with their necessities and their convictions — “come unto me — come unto me — All ye that labor and are heavy laden and I will give you — rest!” How like hope to the despairing — like the breath of heaven to the fainting — like the balm of life to the dying! And how many — first dispirited by the burdens of a weary life — have caught these words in faith, found rest to their souls, and blessed God for the bitter discipline of a hard and painful lot. And is there no one, a joint heir with Christ, who could testify that his hope of heaven is quickened, and brightened, by the exhaustion of his worldly toil? Is there no one who could tell you, that he goes to the secret feast of his closet fellowship with a better appetite because of the burdens of life? — no one who could tell you, that they make him pant the more after God, and long the more for the crown of glory — the harp of perfect praise — the fruition of sinless rest? Is there no one who is nerved for his warfare, pushing upward toward the stature of perfection, sloughing off his deformities, and growing in very meetness for heaven, under the tuition of worldly toil — under the influence of this very curse of the earth? Are there none of Christ’s beloved who are thus getting meat out of the eater — and honey out of the rock? Yes — thousands. But take another view. Suppose the garden of Eden were still blooming and bounteous as in the days of man’s integrity. Suppose the habitation of all men were beside its fountains — and beneath its fruitful branches. Suppose no toil were requisite to gain subsistence and comfort. How many — think ye — would have availed themselves of the offer of salvation? To how many — think ye — would the blood of Christ have proved a blessing? How many — think ye — would have sought, through that blood, an entrance into a better country, an heavenly? How many, under the influence of faith which is Life, would have fled to Christ for comfort? Were the world a good and easy home — were we fed and clothed and warmed and sheltered, without care or effort — were all our wants supplied as fully and as freely as our first parents’ — who would set himself to the task of earning a better inheritance? Who would sigh for a better country? HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT Had the earth interposed no obstacles to our enjoyment — borne neither thorn nor thistle — imposed upon us no price of hard labor for her bounties — it is to be doubted whether the scheme of Redemption would not have passed away without a single trophy; whether the grace of God in salvation would not have been published without a single proof — whether the verity of that grace would not have been an everlasting problem — and the rising glory of that grace, remanded to everlasting night. So far, then, as Sin is contrary to eternal life; and so far as universal luxury and ease would have been impediments to salvation — so far the sorrowful labor which God has apportioned to men fitteth, like a key-stone, into the stupendous arch of Redemption — holdeth us, like a spell, within the reach of Grace — and overshadoweth, like a Mercy-cloud, the whole span of our probation. And, so far, the curse upon the ground was a priceless blessing upon man. 2. Observe the influence of this curse upon the remnant of human enjoyments. A creature of perfect holiness would pluck with pure delight, and taste with a perfect relish, every bounty of God. He could walk in an earthly paradise and appreciate every circumstance of comfort. He could gather blessings — copious as the dews, and successive as the moments — without satiety. He would find a zest in every blessing — though all should cost him nothing. But who does not know the influence of sin upon our relish of God’s blessings? Being sinners — that which costs us nothing we esteem lightly. The light of the sun costs us nothing — how little we rejoice in it. The air of heaven costs us nothing — with what thoughtlessness we breathe it. The outspread provisions of Grace cost us nothing — with what tameness we regard them. The great work of Redemption cost us nothing — how little we prize it. And so it would be of all the comforts which have survived the wreck and ruin of the fall — where they free as the light, the air, the grace of heaven, we should prize, we should enjoy them, as little. Food, and raiment, and warmth, and shelter, and home, — and whatever we relish now — would be insipid. God has seen fit to throw in a corrective for this baneful influence of Sin. He has seen fit to establish an order of things which has redeemed human life from utter insipidity. He has seen fit to set a price upon our most essential blessings. He has seen fit that they should come to us by cost — by the sweat of the brow — by labor and toil and weariness. And — to secure the payment of this price — for man’s sake — to give relish and vitality to his blessings — he has uttered and confirmed the decree — “cursed be the ground.” And now — the bounties of the world yield us enjoyment in true and undeviating proportion to the price at which we secure them. The rich man enjoys his abundance because of the toil and anxiety it has cost him. The man of hard bodily labor — enjoys his homely meal and his rough bed — because of the weariness which has earned them. The man of hard mental labor (for there is sweat of the brow in the study) enjoys his food and his bed because of the weariness and pains by which he has secured them. The parent enjoys his family circle, he comes home with gladness and appreciates the life and quiet of his fireside — be he poor, or be he rich — according to the toils and weariness of the day. A HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT mother’s joy in the probity and promise of her child is proportioned to the care, the anxiety, the pains he has cost her. A Christian minister’s joy over the recovery of a backslider, or the dawning hope of a new born soul, is measured by the unseen solicitude, by the wearing and midnight labors, by the unpublished wrestling with God, through which he has won them. All this relish of blessings, of whatever name, is linked in with, and evolved from, the toil and hardships by which they are preceded. It is the fruit of that wise economy which God established in the curse of the ground. It is the result of that connection, then fixed, between labor and the acquisition of good. The bearings of this connection are incalculable. It is operating all over the world. It is showering its benediction upon many a natural relation; upon many a bounty of nature; upon many a luxury of art. It is as the Wisdom of God brooding over chaos. It is as the enchantment of God circumventing and baffling the Spoiler. It is as the Life of God imbreathed upon the dying. It is as the Power of God — transmuting the stone to silver — bringing back again form and luster to the shattered tarnished diamond. 3. Observe the influence of this curse in the prevention of evils in the world. Suppose, the world over, men were exempt from hard labor. Suppose sustenance and warmth came spontaneously. Suppose the eye was delighted and the body comforted with all that the lust of the flesh and the pride of life could crave. Suppose all men could live and have their heart’s content — without exertion. What would be the result? Who would venture to meet the result? “Pride, and fullness of bread and abundance of idleness,” partial as they were — were the damnation of Sodom. They would be, if entire, the utter damnation of the world. Were they universal, the world would be like Sodom; one vast theatre of abominations — one vast charnel-house of irrecoverable death. Depravity would have one unbroken holiday of reveling. It would sweep over the earth like a whirlwind. It would tear up the slender remnant of human enjoyments — like a tornado. It would stamp upon the relics of natural affection — upon the residue of inward hope and life — till they were ground to powder. It would wake up every passion to frenzy. Vice and crime, lust and cruelty — in then thousand shapes — would reign from morning till night, from night till morning. The smoke and the cry of torment would ascend without cessation. Every fountain of domestic enjoyment would be broken up; every note of love, silenced — as in the grave; every bond of sympathetic fellowship, severed; every feature of moral beauty and promise effaced separate interests would clash in strife and grate in discord. The knell of death would boom upon every gale — and the dirge of departed joys be screamed in every ear. This is no visionary fancy. The restless faculties of the mind will have action. They will — they must have — pursuits. Withdraw from the sphere of their existence pursuits and employments which involve no sin — still they will have action; they will go out, under the guidance of domineering sin, to countless deeds of iniquity. And — in the practice of unchecked and undiverted sin — they must grow up to a giant strength; under the iron tyranny of accursing habits; erasing every form and every foot-print of enjoyment form off the face of the earth. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT But look at the omens which imperfect experiment affords. The press of worldly toil is not distributed to men alike. The compulsion to labor differs in degree. Where, now, has depravity reached its tallest stature, and expanded to its most frightful strength? Where there has been “abundance of idleness.” Where the necessity for labor, as a means of subsistence — or as a means to meet artificial wants — has been abated. Where wealth has abated it. Where barbarism has abated it. The most vicious, the most wretched, the most loathsome, portions of the earth, at this very hour, are those where men are the least compelled to hard, and unremitting toil. The most vicious classes of our own community are those who discard patient, industrious labor. The pests of society — the tenants of our prisons — the victims of our gibbets — the inmates of our dens of infamy — are idlers; men and women and children who have been suffered to evade the restraining law of honest and productive industry. On the other hand the communities — the classes — among whom probity and happiness and virtue have most prevailed, are those who have been impelled, by natural or artificial wants, to the highest exertions. And what do these facts import? Why! Plainly this; that labor and toil and the sweat of the brow are powerful checks upon human depravity. Plainly this; that if all demand for toil should cease, if all the wants of men were met without their exertion — the surges of misery and abomination would roll over the world in unbroken and cursed succession. So then, toil – busy occupation – is the safety-valve through which the perilous excess of depravity is diverted. Men wish to evade it; and, if they might, they would. Hence the mercy of enweaving it, strong and stern as necessity could make it, with the very condition of human existence. Hence – as a universal law – it is the very secret of temporal salvation – the bridle upon the jaw of the devourer. Behold, then, the deep wisdom — the careful kindness — the timely forecast of God, in the enactment of the decree — “Cursed is the ground for thy sake.” See here — a counterpoise against impetuous and deadly depravity. See here — a befitting provision for the emergencies of erring human life. But for this — what would our world have been? A Golgotha — an Aceldama — a muster- field of moral and bestial defilements — a very counterpart of Hell! Look now, my hearers, at the curse of the ground. Behold how obviously it suits with the higher antidotes to Sin; how its harmonizes with, and helps on, the great work of salvation; how it is of vital importance to the efficacy of Redemption; how it vivifies the fountains of our earthly comforts; how it comes in as a temporary alterative to our depravity, putting check upon its growth, and woe; giving to our day of probation — and vantage ground to the means of grace. Look at all this — and say if men have reason to deplore the decree “that they should earn their bread by the sweat of the brow.” Say if they should curse the thorns and the thistles — the impediments to their enterprises — the taskmasters of their toil — which God has ordained. I might point out the bearings of this doctrine upon several subjects of high practical interest; its bearings upon domestic education and parental duty; its bearings upon legislative policy and responsibility; its bearings upon the countless artificial luxuries of life, at which green-eyed sanctity is HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT wont to point with abhorrence. But I must stop. With one appeal I commend the truth to your consciences. — The sweat of the brow-the pressure of care and toil — are not among you calamities. They are not things to be thought of on fast days and forgotten on feast days. They are not things to be prayed against and denounced. They are blessings. You ought to bear them with cheerfulness. You ought to grapple with the thorns and thistles of life without murmuring. You ought to give God thanks for their multiplied profusion. You are getting many a choice treasure — you are culling many a delight — you are shielded from many a curse — by means of this curse upon the ground. Where would you be — what would you be — what would your world be, were this curse recalled? Could your suffrage avail, would you dare lift up your hand for its repeal? To repeal it would be death to all your joys; your hopes; your restraints; your probation. Nay — to recall it would baffle, irrecoverably, the brilliant schemes of God’s saving grace — it would consign you and me to abandoned depravity, and despair!
THE FALLACY OF MOMENTISM: THIS STARRY UNIVERSE DOES NOT CONSIST OF A SEQUENCE OF MOMENTS. THAT IS A FIGMENT, ONE WE HAVE RECOURSE TO IN ORDER TO PRIVILEGE TIME OVER CHANGE, APRIVILEGING THAT MAKES CHANGE SEEM UNREAL, DERIVATIVE, A MERE APPEARANCE. IN FACT IT IS CHANGE AND ONLY CHANGE WHICH WE EXPERIENCE AS REALITY, TIME BEING BY WAY OF RADICAL CONTRAST UNEXPERIENCED — A MERE INTELLECTUAL CONSTRUCT. THERE EXISTS NO SUCH THING AS A MOMENT. NO “INSTANT” HAS EVER FOR AN INSTANT EXISTED.
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1839
June 29, Saturday or 30, Sunday: Aboard La Amistad, still in his slave collar, Joseph Cinqué found a nail and hid it in his armpit.
THE MIDDLE PASSAGE RACE SLAVERY
Robert Bartlett wrote his sister Rebecca Bartlett, just prior to his being elected as a tutor at Harvard College at a salary of $700: You must tell father and mother that I have an English oration to deliver next Commencement, at the end of the vacation, and it is important that I should do the best I possibly can. I have been working on it, but I cannot finish it here this term. I must have time for stillness and study in the vacation. They must consent to my stopping here for a fortnight or so. It is a hard sacrifice for me, as hard as it is for all of you, but I know it is for the best. I must be here among my books and books not mine, which it is impossible for me to obtain in Plymouth. Here, too, I can occasionally in vacation go into the college library. If father and mother feel how important it is that I should do well, I am sure they will be willing. They must write me about it. The term ends July 19, which is Friday. I shall want to stay her until about Monday, August 5, perhaps a little time after that. If you can leave to go to Westbrook about that time, I shall be exceedingly glad to go with you. I think it will be better for me on several accounts not to be in Plymouth any considerable time next vacation. I do not want my mind disturbed and bothered by being there with E.W.C. [Elizabeth Crowell White] until after my oration is over.
NEVER READ AHEAD! TO APPRECIATE THE NIGHT OF JUNE 29TH/ 30TH, 1839 AT ALL ONE MUST APPRECIATE IT AS A TODAY (THE FOLLOWING DAY, TOMORROW, IS BUT A PORTION OF THE UNREALIZED FUTURE AND IFFY AT BEST). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT Fall: Sam Houston was elected a member of the Texas Congress from Nacogdoches.
In his Master of Arts oration at Harvard College, “The Hope of Literature,” Robert Bartlett took as his theme the phrase “No good possible but shall one day be real” coined by Thomas Carlyle in his essay “Characteristics” in the Edinburgh Review of 1831. The Reverend Thomas Wentworth Higginson would comment that “These words were like a trumpet call to myself and others, half a dozen years later; and nothing of Emerson’s ever touched us more deeply.” The reason refuses all help from the memory. Reason brings her monitions fresh each hour to the individual, each age to the race. Her truth is severe, shapeless and uncontained. We convert truth into fact, high principles and duties we enfold in myths, laws of the soul and ministries of nature we harden into enactments and personal agencies of gods. The reason affirms that the present and actual life of man is unnatural, is disease. All is jarring without and unrest within. It says man’s natural state, wherein is health and peace, is the death of desire for happiness, the death of self, and a life all unto justice and love and worship. Our earthly faculties see this and instantly enshrine it in a history of the remote time. We have learned and shall tell in our turn of paradise, of the golden age, and the preëxistence of the soul in heaven; of those times when man knew not racking tortures, nor war, nor hate.... So we envelop our truth in tradition and impersonate in the earliest of men the energies of our own prospective being. In the light of this truth I would consider some of the hopes and laws of literature. The hopes of literature discard experience, they ride over history. The heralds of truth and beauty and freedom to a savage and servile race draw from the chronicles of the past an assurance of victory. They look to the infinite soul within the human soul. They know that the truth, however buried, blackened and blurred over, yet lies somewhere in the heart of every man to whom they speak, of every iron-crowned tyrant and shaggy soldier and boor. These very fagot-bearers, these serried hosts that come out against truth, every man of them carries within his mailed vest the weapon which shall slay him. And therefore they must pass, unsubstantial as the faces and terrors of a dream. As the hopes of all philanthropy, so the hopes of all literature rest on the nature of man.... His essence is aspiration and tendency. He is “partaker of the Divine Nature.” Therefore everything evil is vapor and appearance. All that is good shall be attained. Whatever ought to be is to be. The true philanthropist and scholar has hope in the unprivileged and unlearned mass of men, and this the more as his perception of spiritual laws is deeper. New beauty and truth, higher philosophy, better ethics, always appeal to the multitude. Shallow reasonings, superficial principles, calculations of interest and utilities have power over the leisurely, the educated, the purse-proud and aristocratic, the noble, the traffickers, the priest. In every age abstract and universal truth makes her protest against establishments and systems and unions and utilities, to the toiling masses of humanity, and in their great brave heart she finds a home. It is said when there is tumult and revolution, when the people are most impulsive, then of all times the most abstract doctrines have affinity for their feelings. It is with nations as with individuals. In tranquil moods and peaceable times we are quite practical. Facts only and cool common sense are then in fashion. But let the winds HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT of passion swell, and straightway men begin to generalize, to connect by remotest analogies, to express the most universal positions of reason in the most glowing figures of fancy. At the commencement of the French revolution, in the remotest villages every tongue was employed in echoing and enforcing the almost geometrical abstractions of the physiocratic politicians and economists.... Left to themselves, the masses may see something higher than the institutions and forms reared by the understanding; unphilosophic souls lie near to the spontaneous and universal reason. The many seek truth. The nobilities, the aristocracies, the schools, the church, seek exposition and defense of the established error. The scholar therefore will have a right reverence for this hard-handed many. The hopes of literature, then, rest on the nature of man. — and they are infinite. Her first law is that a man seek wisdom as ultimate, as the end of life.... Now a shallow philosophy goes about to look after the uses of religion and poetry. The woods wave and the waters roll for our traffic and carpentry. What Shakspeare or Milton may say of the meaning of hills and skies and stars to his soul is a conceit, delightful, useful if you will, but after all a conceit. Nay, and a slender and starveling theology too now tells that the use of holiness is unending pleasure.... The eye of the scholar opens on another heaven and another earth. The wide waters sparkle and roll that they overmaster his soul with awe and grandeur. He listens to the winds moving through the trees, and his own being upheaves and plays in unison with the breathings of the forest. And for this the woods and waters are made from age to age.... Thus to the true student of wisdom does nature become instinct with spirit, suffused with light.... There can never be a literature where genius and eloquence and piety give their energies to the petty utilities of the day and neighborhood. Learning among us must be honored, must dispose of litigation, must adjudicate or administer human governments. Eloquence frets its hour upon the superficial interests and brawls that make up the politics of the masses; enthusiasm spills itself out in noisy frivolities.... Of necessity the pulpit is somewhat aloof from this whirl and frenzy; yet who is not complaining that the pulpit too is overborne, that to a measureless degree the pulpit expresses only the local, the accidental? Therefore we have no literature, because we desire none; because men of all professions will make wisdom an ornament, an appendage, a servant, a means. In Athens the doctrine of use was unknown. Here greatness, genius, grace were their own law and end. Song and art kindled into religion. Tragedies were performed in the temples and to the worship of the gods, Here truly was an Έλλάς Έλλάδος, a Greece of Greece; here was a people fired with ideas. And so the rugged majesty, the richness and stress of their poetry, their oratory, their art and their deeds stand in a pyramidal loneness; and Miltiades, Æschylus, Sophocles, Socrates, their names are generalized into an immortal dialect of freedom and power and lofty wisdom. In mighty Rome, on the contrary, a sacerdotal caste severed religion from poetry and harmony. Her intense nationality, her pride of power, made greatness and genius subserve. Rome cherished no studies that would not serve policy, move factions HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT and promote the peace. Her sons sought wisdom and philosophy as the ablest servants of patriotism. Her unelivened populace crowded and shouted, “that the Tiber trembled underneath its banks” around the gross splendors of the military triumph, and their drama was the fight of man with beast or the slaughter of gladiators. And so the grieved muses never would rest on that proud city; and she had not a native poetry or philosophy or art. Rome is but a unit in a mass of testimony to a truth, which reason sees before and above testimony, that philosophy will never live where it must expound the established.... The wildest storms graze only over the bosom of the ocean; go down a few rods, and throughout the depths is eternal sabbath. Let us have hope in those “turbulent and pestilent agitators,” who, in unbolted language and bold deeds, unfold Truth, Justice, Love, who fight against the mercenary rage, the trade, the calculation that is scorching up the wisdom, no less than the righteousness of the land. Such men, oftentimes indeed unconsciously, are yet working into the heart of the people a living philosophy and faith, and so are the heralds of a new and enduring literature.... It is held a test of sobriety and modest reverence, that one be content to write books about books and to think about other men’s thoughts. Hence our writings are efflorescent. We have no literature, but only a thousand and a thousand glossaries and indexes and rehearsals of literature.... When Horace was affecting to make himself a Greek poet, the genius of his country, the shade of immortal Romulus, stood over him and forbade the perversion. Who shall persuade us to import no more philosophy from abroad, from countries where belief is not in the soul, but in the traditional, the authoritative, the extraneous? Is everything so sterile and pigmy here in New England that we must all, writers and readers, be forever replenishing ourselves with the mighty wonders of the old world? Is not the history of this people transcendent in the chronicles of the world for pure homogeneous sublimity and beauty and richness? Go down some ages of ages from this day, compress the years from the landing of the Pilgrims to the death of Washington into the same span as the first two centuries of Athens now fill in our memories. Will men then come hither from all regions of the globe, will the tomb of Washington, the rock of the Puritans, then become classic in the world? Will the living spirits of that remote time think with earnest interest and wonder of us, who have lived, as it will then seem, in the twilight of the same day with Puritanism and the leaders of Independence and the founders of an empire whose basis is a universal truth?... With their great names upon our lips, and their doctrines for our axioms, we bereave ourselves of a heritage in their spirit every day. Careless except to sound their names and continue their sins, we move amid, we handle, the rights and institutions which are the solemn monuments of their high thought, as sore-eyed Arabs now creep among the catacombs and obelisks and eternal pyramids of Egypt.... We do not express the men and the miracles of our history in our social action,... and by consequence we do not outwrite them in poetry and art. We are looking abroad and back after a literature. Let us come and live, and know in living a high philosophy and faith; so shall we find now, here, the elements and in our own good souls the fire. Of every storied bay and cliff and plain we will make something infinitely nobler than Salamis or Marathon.... Unlike the world before us, our own HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT age and land shall be classic to ourselves.
BETWEEN ANY TWO MOMENTS ARE AN INFINITE NUMBER OF MOMENTS, AND BETWEEN THESE OTHER MOMENTS LIKEWISE AN INFINITE NUMBER, THERE BEING NO ATOMIC MOMENT JUST AS THERE IS NO ATOMIC POINT ALONG A LINE. MOMENTS ARE THEREFORE FIGMENTS. THE PRESENT MOMENT IS A MOMENT AND AS SUCH IS A FIGMENT, A FLIGHT OF THE IMAGINATION TO WHICH NOTHING REAL CORRESPONDS. SINCE PAST MOMENTS HAVE PASSED OUT OF EXISTENCE AND FUTURE MOMENTS HAVE YET TO ARRIVE, WE NOTE THAT THE PRESENT MOMENT IS ALL THAT EVER EXISTS — AND YET THE PRESENT MOMENT BEING A MOMENT IS A FIGMENT TO WHICH NOTHING IN REALITY CORRESPONDS.
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1840
After teaching for awhile at the public school in Plymouth from which he himself had graduated, Robert Bartlett had accepted employment at Harvard College as a tutor and proctor. He would be known among the undergraduates as “Bobbie Bartlett” (they would be able to annoy him by staring at his feet, which were large). He became engaged to Elizabeth Crowell White of Plymouth, but for only a short period (she also would die of pulmonary tuberculosis). He wrote: I got back from Concord yesterday evening. I have had a very delightful time. I stopped with Mr. Alcott. You can hardly conceive of a more paradisiacal spot than he has. He is working too like a true hero; he has refused all the predictions his friends made, who were afraid that he would not thrive in the details of business. Mr. Alcott inquired about you and spoke of having read a letter of your to Mrs. Emerson, with which he seemed pleased. It was that in which you wrote to her of my experiences in connection with Elizabeth White; and the mention of it led to some conversation about the matter. I talked with him just as freely as I would to anybody on earth. You always feel like talking so to him after you know him. His home is about a mile from Mr. Emerson’s. We had a meeting for conversation there Sunday evening, and Mr. Alcott talked, but not very well for him. We had a talk at Mr. Emerson’s on Saturday evening. Mr. Bradford and Mr. Briggs were there.
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
While vacationing at a “tranquil retreat” near Boston called “Brook Farm” Mrs. Sophia Dana Ripley and the Reverend George Ripley concluded that the place had possibilities.4
In the winter of 1840, the Reverend Ripley would purchase Brook Farm. A few months later the Articles of Association would be drawn up, the stock would have subscribers, and Institute officers would be elected. BROOK FARM VS. FRUITLANDS
4.The farm had 208 acres of land and was not greatly isolated as it was only three miles from the Dedham Branch Railroad. Edwin Morton of Plymouth would be able to see Brook Farm from the inside because both his father and his uncle invested in the venture (they would lose their money, as did most of the kind souls who thus contributed). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
May 13, Wednesday: The Transcendental Club met at the Emerson home. Among the attenders were Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, the Reverend Cyrus Augustus Bartol, Robert Bartlett, Margaret Fuller, the Reverends Frederic Henry Hedge and Caleb Stetson, and Jones Very. They discussed the topic “The Inspiration of the Prophet and Bard, the Nature of Poetry, and the Causes of the Sterility of Poetic Inspiration in Our Age and Country.” (Strangely, with such a topic, Very did not seem to have anything insightful to offer. He was still issuing his declarative pronouncements but his sources for his inspiration did not seem to be helping him come up with interesting things to say.)
May 14: War is the sympathy of concussion– We would fain rub one against another — its rub may be friction merely but it would rather be titillation.… Let not the faithful sorrow that he has no ear for the more fickle and subtle harmonies of creation, if he be awake to the slower measure of virtue and truth. If his pulse does not beat in unison with the musician’s quips and turns, it accords with the pulse beat of the ages.
THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. THE UNIVERSITY OF COLORADO’S CENTER OF THE AMERICAN WEST HAS AS ITS OFFICIAL MOTTO “TURNING HINDSIGHT INTO FORESIGHT” — WHICH INDICATES THAT ONLY PANDERERS ARE WELCOME THERE. IN A BOOK THAT IS SUPPOSED TO BE ABOUT HISTORY, ISSUED BY HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT RANDOM HOUSE IN 2016, I FIND THE PHRASE “LOOKED UPON FROM THE BIRD’S-EYE VIEW OF HISTORY, ....” ONLY A MERE STORYTELLER, NEVER A HISTORIAN, COULD HAVE PENNED SUCH A PHRASE — BECAUSE NO BIRD HAS EVER FLOWN OVER HISTORY.
Robert Bartlett “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1841
June: Joseph Smith, Jr., husband of Emma Hale Smith, possibly “married” also with Clarissa Reed Hancock and Louisa Beaman, became “married” with Mary Elizabeth Rollins (according to her claim).
On some Thursday afternoon in this month Henry Thoreau received a note from Waldo Emerson:
My dear Henry We have here G. P. Bradford, R. Bartlett, Lippitt C S Wheeler & Mr Alcott. Will you not come down & spend an hour? Yours, R.W.E. Thursday. P.
Stearns Wheeler Bronson Alcott
ROBERT BARTLETT CHARLES STEARNS WHEELER BRONSON ALCOTT HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1842
Robert Bartlett’s fiancée Elizabeth Crowell White, a daughter of Captain Gideon Consider White of Plymouth, while on a visit to relatives in Nova Scotia, wrote to him a letter of dismissal, breaking off her engagement with him, and soon after contracted a new engagement with an English gentleman there (this unfortunate new engagement would not work out). When the suitor received this, he was heartbroken.
February 25, Friday: The Liberator.
Rebecca Bartlett died of pulmonary tuberculosis in Plymouth, Massachusetts.
Friend Lucretia Mott wrote to Richard and Hannah Webb, whom she had met in London in 1840: Philada. 2 Mo. 25th. 1842. My dear Richard & Hannah Webb And our other dear friends in Dublin, For when writing to any one of our precious circle, I feel as if I were addressing all — C Corkran inclusive, in the yearnings of undiminished affection. As the result of our travel abroad, nothing affords more unmingled pleasure, than the reception of some 3 or 4 sheets of Richards “illegible scribblings.” The very difficulty we have in deciphering seems to heighten the gratification for we know that when we have puzzled it out, we shall be paid for the effort. The last, to Sarah Pugh was the more interesting, from the fact of Sarah’s hastening hither with it unopened, and letting us share the pleasure of the first reading with her. We often wish for Abby Kimber to enjoy with us the first impressions — but some of her notes to Sarah help to supply her absence. I wish Sarah would copy for you what she wrote at the close of the last year. It was so expressive of my feelings that the rapid flight of Time was placing our delightful visit in the more distant view; and so on, a heap of pretty sentiments just what I felt, but had not the ability to write out. It happened soon after the reception of Richds. letter, that J. M. [her husband James] & self were meeting with the Indian Committee of the several Yearly Mgs. of our Frds. (of course). Philip E. Thomas was present — the author of the Balte. reply to J. J. Gurney.5 After our business was concluded —, I read to them the ^Richds.^ comments, on the language used — “itinerant foreigner”. I did not know that P.E. Thomas had written the book, till I perceived all eyes directed to him, with a smile — & he commenced a defence of the expressions used. He said, he could not call [him?][Joseph John Gurney] — a “travelling Friend”, for he did not consider him one — that there was nothing contemptuous 5. In his pamphlet, Review of Gurney’s Attack on Friends of Baltimore, and of Their Defence (Baltimore: Wm. Wooddy, 1841) Thomas criticized a lengthy letter Gurney had written to the Hicksite Friends in Baltimore declining to visit their Lombard Street Meeting. Thomas quoted passages from the Hicksites’ answer to Gurney (their “Defence”) in which they professed their belief “in the Scriptures concerning Christ, both as to his outward manifestation in the flesh, and in relation to that Divine Principle of Light and Truth in man, which in Scripture is called ‘the Christ.’” Thomas concluded that a reading of Gurney’s attack and the Defence showed “that the Spirit of Orthodoxy is every where the same, that of insolence, assumption, and denunciation, that it is impossible for the meekest to keep any terms with it, except those of base, unmanly submission.” He criticized Gurney as possessing the “assumption and narrow-mindedness of a foreigner” (10-14, 17-19, 22). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT in the term “itinerant” nor in that of “foreigner”. He considered the man very much out of his place, in attempting to address them, without having mingled with them at all, or knowing their sentiments, save by ex-parte statements. His conduct he regarded as impudent, & if that term — would answer as a substitute, he would think it quite as expressive. He then offered to supply our Dublin friends, with some copies of the review of the work, with his additional remarks. We have since received a parcel of that & another production of his pen; which at his request we herewith send. I fear — you will not get it without having to pay more postage on it, than it will be worth to you. If Richard & Anne Allen6 are not too orthodox to read what may be said by our side, please hand them one. I always feel rather more as if they belonged to English Friends, than I feel when writing to you. I cannot remember whether my husband wrote to Richard, after receiving his acceptable letter in 9 Mo last — or of that date; with a small addition from Anne. I shall take great pleasure in enclosing in this, for her, Whittier’s autograph, at her request. Since I find she could bear our Anna’s playful lines for her friend Sarah M’Kim, I should like to send her some others by the same author. We can hear with evident satisfaction, a little raillery at the expense of other sects, but few can bear to have [their?] own, made the subject of satire, or even pleasantry. Our veneration is trained to pay homage to ancient usage, rather than to truth, which is older than all. Else, why Church censure on marriages that are not of us? — on Parents conniving? on our members being present at such [&c? Oh] how our Discipline needs revising — & stripping of its objectionable features. I know not how fa[r yours] may differ from ours, but I know we have far too many disownable offences. Still with all our faults, I know of no religious association I would prefer to it. And I would rather hear of R. D. Webb laboring very faithfully, & with all Christian daring, in his society, than withdrawing from it. I felt so with regard to Wm. Bassett & hoped that his influence within the pale, might ‘turn many to righteousness’[.]7 I have frequently noticed that persons who were once useful in our society, withdrawg from it, became rather contracted & selfish — shut themselves out from society at large, and grew censorious. Their children also havg no rallying point, as they grew older, like following their natural inclination for Association, connected themselves with sects far behind the intelligence & light of their parents. This has been remarkably the case with the families of those who were cruelly severed from our society some 20 years ago in New England — called New lights[.] A case has lately occurred in this region. A daughr. of enlightened Parents, who withdrew from us 15 years ago, has lately joined the Catholics, & has in view to become a ‘sister of charity.’ Job Scott’s childn. are Swedenborgians. These remarks may not apply to all. Wm. L. Garrison never was attached to any sect. Sarah Pugh, from the time of the separation among us, never felt her interests enlisted with either side; I have no fear of her talents rusting for want of use. N. P. Rogers, bound as he was, with a set of bigots & superstitious devotees, may increase his usefulness by his severance from such 6. Richard Allen (1803-1886), abolitionist, an orthodox Quaker, and a cotton merchant, and his wife, Anne Webb Allen, cousin of Richard Webb (Mott to the Webbs, 28 May 1850, Boston Public Library). The Motts had first met the Allens in London. Frederick B. Tolles, ed., Slavery and the “Woman Question”: Lucretia Mott’s Diary (Haverford: Friends Historical Association, 1952), 34. 7. Bassett (1803-71), originally an orthodox Quaker from Lynn, Mass., became a Unitarian and was ardently pro-Garrison. The quotation is from Daniel 12:3. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT a denomination. J. A. Collins, ditto. What a Radical, and ultra reformer he is! I did not know him, nor much of his sentiments till since his return from England. I told him, consistency required of him to wear coarser clothing. He would not admit this, as his efforts were not so much to level the rich, as to raise the poor — & furnish them with all the comforts & enjoyments of their wealthy neighbors. What has become of those queer separatists. — Jacobites, to whom we essayed to speak, but they would not? When you write, we should be glad to be informed how our aged friends, Dr. Hutton & wife are. Do they yet live? If from them our dear James Haughton could learn anything of their son Dr. Hutton & family of London, and impart it to us, it would be very acceptable. Dr. Drummond too.8 Is he yet alive? And have you prevailed with him, to unite his talents & labors with those, engaged in works of reform. It has been gratifying to see Jas. Haughton’s name so frequently in public Meetgs. for the good of the people, & the spread of sound principles. His letter recd. last summer is valued by us even tho’ we have made no adequate return. I want to send him a heretical sermon, preached by Theodore Parker in Boston last year — The “Transient & Permanent in Christianity.” It created a great stir in New-England & led some of the old Unitarians to tremble for their reputation as Christians. The Orthodox were out upon them in all quarters; which led some of them to issue their disclaimers; whereupon, the Evangelicals, catching at a straw, foresaw a strong counter-movement, and were cheered with the belief that “doctrines which of old were held, would begin to re-assert their former claims; and Truth, hallowed by time & reverend by Apostolic teaching, & holy, from its conformity to the blessed lessons of the Son of God would become & remain the only standard of the Christian Life”. Thus wrote my nephew Thos. C. Yarnall, who is studying in College for the ministry in the Episcopal Church. But to my understanding & reading Parker is equally full of faith in the real ground-work of religion in all ages, on which the truths of Scripture are based: not on miracles, or inexplicable creeds. We shall not make much progress as Christians, until we dare to read & examine the Jewish Scriptures, as we would any other of the ancient records. By what authority do we set so high a value on every text that may be drawn from this volume? Certainly not by any command therein found. On the contrary, again & again is there an appeal to the inner sense, — “why even of yourselves, judge ye not what is right?[”]9 Parker’s remarks on the BIBLE, in the Discourse above mentioned, I like very much — that its real & proper estimate will not be lessened by breaking through the Idolatry which is now paid to it. I read its pages ^I mean the scriptures^ over & over again with a keen relish and encourage our childn. to do the same, but I cannot do, as we saw Friends in England & Ireland do — make the reading of that book a religious rite in the family — and adopt a peculiar tone & solemn style of pronunciation — all the old terminations full &.c. Let us venerate the Good & the True, while we respect not prejudice & Superstition! 8. The Jacobites were led in part by Joshua Jacob of Dublin, who publicly criticized those Quakers who did not adhere to their custom of extreme simplicity in dress and living habits; they wore nothing but white clothing and were often referred to as “White Quakers.” See Isabel Grubb, Quakers in Ireland, 1654-1900 (London: Swarthmore Press, 1927), 126-29. Dr. Joseph Hutton (1790- 1860), Unitarian minister in London. The Motts had met his father and mother in Dublin 23 July. William Hamilton Drummond (1778-1865), Presbyterian preacher in Dublin. See Tolles, Diary, 27, 31, 62, 64. 9. LUKE 12:57. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT R. D. Webb thinks I am a Humanitarian. I have never given my faith a name. The distinctions among Christian professors are found on an analysis, to be but hair-breadth, and it is puzzling to bear in mind the distinctive points in their creeds. We give a more Orthodox hue to ours, by retaining some expressions which do not convey our real sentiments. I do not wonder that Richard asks, what we mean by our professions. If he should hear some of our preachers, he would understand us better. The hearers are often told that they are not called to rest their hopes of salvation on the “Sacrifice without the gates of Jerusalem”. The Divinity of Christ is held — not by miraculous power — so much as his spiritual creation — “the son of God with power according to the spirit of holiness.” We never attempt to draw or define the precise relation to the Father — nor is a trinity acknowledged in our galleries. We rather, urge obedience to manifested duty, as the means of acceptance with the Searches of hearts. This is the old-fashioned Quaker doctrine — “neither is there salvation as in any other.”10 I have no doubt of the kindness & sincerity of the friend who warned you of the danger of association with some of us. Should she hear Richard say, how loosely society attachments rest upon him, she would feel as if there was a cause for her concern. He must be careful how he gives utterance to such sentiments. I have often felt the restraints & seen the [evils] of which he speaks; but after much consideration, I have come to the conclusion that the advantages preponderate — I mean of religious Associations. It requires constant watching and care that we yield no principle; but only concede minor points, for the sake of unity. If the bearing of a faithful testimony to the world subjects us to excommunication, why then let us seek another rallying point for our childns. sake — as well as for the preservation of ourselves. You will see by the Standard how the New York pseudo-Quakers are conducting towards I.T. Hopper, J.S. Gibbons, & C. Marriott. I bear my testimony against their intolerance in every circle. In our Indian Committee of the Yearly Meetgs united — C Marriott has been a faithful & active member. In a meeting of that Com. last week, I expressed the regret I felt that he should be so unjustly deprived of his right to labor with us in that cause — Some present thot. we should be careful how we judged another Mo. Mg. I told them we did not hesitate 15 years ago, to judge of the persecuting spirit of our Orthodox opposers, and I viewed the treatment of these frds. in N. York in the same light. We were then struggling for freedom of opinion. We are now claimg the right of practice in accordance with our convictions. I wish you could see a correspondence growing out of my going to Boston last Autumn, to attend the Non-Resistance Anniversary and attendg New York Mg. on my way home.11 The Elders & others there have been quite desirous to make me an offender for joining with those not in membership with us & accepting offices in these Societies. But our Friends here, know full well that such a position is neither contrary to our Discipline, to Scripture, to reason nor common sense. I was permitted to answer for myself & I found proof enough in the practice of Friends from the days 10. “The son of God with power according to spirit of holiness, “Romans 1:4; “neither is there salvation in any other,” Acts 4:12. 11. At the New England Non-Resistance Meeting held in Boston 21 and 22 September 1841, Mott said that “the feeling among us seemed truer and deeper” than at the meeting she had attended in 1839, and “I would ever have it more felt than expressed. Whatever we do express, I hope will be in fewer words and to the point” (Liberator, 19 November 1841:188). An editorial in the Practical Christian (reprinted in the Liberator, 12 November 1841:184) criticized the organization for not recognizing the prominence of the Christian religion in its proceedings. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT of Wm. Penn to the present — of such “mixtures.” They failed of bringing action against me. Richard says truly, — that “oil & water would unite as readily as G. F. White & L. M.”12 I can only account for some things in his course, on the ground of insanity. Some months ago he sent in a kind of resignation of his right of Membership. The Mo. Mg. had the paper examined, by a few frds., who reported unfavorably to its being read. It was all hushed & not more than a dozen individuals knew what the paper contained The next month he obtained a minute to attend Indiana Yearly Mg. On his return, when appearances indicated the restoration of I.T. Hopper & J.S. Gibbons to their rights, G.F. White announced to his Mg. what he had done & that he then repeated it — calling at the same time on the young people present to be prepared to act in the approachg hour of trial in the Society. Since the Quarterly Mg. confirmed the judgment, they appear satisfied — but as the Yearly Meeting draws near, another threat will doubtless be held out — as is the practice with the politicians in our Southern States; — unless indeed we should do as the Mass[.] petitioners have done — ask, ourselves, for a dissolution of the Union. But I don’t wish to fill my whole sheet with these matters. Have you taken an interest in our Congressional proceedings this winter? or rather will you — when you hear or read how bravely our veteran J.Q. Adams is acquitting himself in Washington.13 Before quite leaving the former subject, which Richard says fills his head from morning till night, I meant to tell you how Anne Knight in a letter to Margaretta Forten, & to M.W. Chapman, that to me I find was wholly on Woman’s Rights, deplores my heresy. She says “Her forbearance of the wrongs encountered in Father-land would merit the term Christian, had [she] not so utterly disowned & insulted her Lord and Savior. The dreadful mistakes of her Theology have, I am sorry to say, excluded her from the hearts of many of our A. S. women; & their hospitality on that account was less warm. For my own part dearly as I love my savior — as the Lamb slain from the foundation of the world” &.c — a half a page just as Orthodox writers express themselves, — she goes on to say “and knowing from Lucretia that she rejects her Lord, & turns with disgust from ‘his hanging on a tree’ his being slain, his blood shed, — that she recoils from what she calls so gross an idea, and desires not, what the angels desire to look into — the scheme of Redemption”. — [“]Awfully as I regard this state of deep & hardened revolt, yet do I love L. M for her work’s sake. — It was a joy to have the opporty of offering those attentions which others neglected” &c. &c. — She then goes on to speak of the narrow-minded bigotry of those at the Convention, who excluded women — not seeing herself on another subject, equally a bigot. “Oh, wad some Power”14 &c. I can truly say “Father forgive her,” &c[.] I loved her for her courage in paying us so much attention & identifying herself with us. I shall write to her as soon as I finish this sheet, & try to convince her that altho’ I do not interpret the “sacred text” precisely as she does, I am not on that count entitled to all the hard names, branded by a self- stiled orthodoxy. She expresses a wish to have some of J. M.’s 12. In a letter to her husband, Maria Davis described White’s criticism of those persons “disturbing religious Congregations — that they had no more right to do so from a sense duty, than to go the wharf, load a dray with sugar & rice & send it to some benevolent society, under a sense of duty” (10 December 1843, Mott Collection, Friends Historical Library, Swarthmore College). 13. In the House of Representatives, former president John Quincy Adams (1767-1848) continued to protest Congress’s refusal to allow him to submit anti-slavery petitions. 14. “Oh wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us/ To see oursels as others see us!” (Robert Burns, “To a Louse”). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT Books, wh. I shall take great pleasure in sending her — We have not sent one to England for we did not know but they would regard it an insult. I intend also to write & send one to Elizh. Pease. She wrote a kind letter to us last summer, which we have not yet acknowledged. I have little time to write — save a constant correspondence with my absent sister & a few friends in this land. I am travelling from home so much that, I have to be the more devoted to my family & domestic avocations when with them. And until I do [as?] Richard approves in Sarah Pugh — break off my attachment to our religious Society, I shall have frequent demand on my time & services in its behalf. An application has been made to our & Balte. Yearly Mg. for the establishment of a new Yearly-Mg. west of the Alleghany Mountains in this State. I visited the meetings to compose this Mg. this winter in co. with several of the Com. furnished also with a minute to appoint Meetings. We were absent 5 weeks, — travelled near 700 miles, and averaged nearly a Meeting a day during our absence. In some places where Orthodoxy pro-slavery had hitherto closed the door against us, access was now readily found. Elizh. Robson & companions preceded us & were not slow to represent the “Hicksites” as denyers of all that was sacred. We met with a gentleman in Mifflin County an entire stranger to Friends of either division. He told us what ‘Mrs.’ Robson & Co. had said & remarked this difference, that while they had much to say against us, we seemed to have nothing to say against them. He exerted himself to procure a house for a Mg. for us, & induced several who were opposed to Womens preaching to go & hear for themselves. He has since been in this City & took pains to come & see us & assure us, we should ever have a ready hearing at Lewistown. You wish to hear all we can tell you of J. G. Whittier. Truly he is almost lost to us. Months & months pass without our hearing from him. New-Organizn. claims him and not without far too much reason. Maria Chapman wrote me, that he was in, a few moments, at the Boston Fair; adding, “he sins against the clearest light, & I may say — when I recall what our love for him was, before he destroyed it — — the truest love. He was in the Office a few months since, bemoaning to Garrison, that there should have been any divisions. ‘Why could we not all go on together?’ ‘Why not indeed’ said Garrison, ‘we stand just where we did. I see no reason, why you cannot co-operate with the American Socy.’ ‘Oh,’ replied Whittier, ‘but the Am. Soc is not what it once was. It has the hat, & the coat & the waistcoat of the old Socy. but the life has passed out of it’. ‘Are you not ashamed then,’ said Garrison ‘to come here, wondering why we cant go on together. No wonder you cant co-operate with a suit of old clothes’.” Now I would far prefer to write something pleasant about him. He seemed to enjoy going from place to place with Joseph Sturge, and we were glad of their little calls on us.15 I cant help loving Whittier & J. Sturge too, even tho’ they have wronged us, in the course they have pursued. So long as they retain any sympathy for the suffering bondsman, I shall feel a tender regard for them, even tho’ in other respects they go halting. This is especially my feeling toward each component part of that London Convention — with the very slight exception of N. Colver & one or two others. Even Jesus — “the son of the Blessed”, treated 15. Sturge visited the U.S. in the spring of 1841 and traveled with Whittier meeting abolitionists. See Whittier to Moses Cartland, 12 May 1841, in John B. Pickard, ed., Letters of John Greenleaf Whittier (Cambridge: Belknap Press, 1975), 3 vols., 1:500. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT hypocrites with severity. You will see in the Liberator that Colver was ready to make excuse for the Mg. houses being refused. “A work of Grace was going on,” &c.16 What an interesting account of the Mass. Meetg. & of J. C. Fuller N. P. Rogers gives in the Herald of Freedom and how characteristic of the man, are his leading editorials! You will be pleased, as we have been, to hear how well Remond has been received since his return from your land; laden with the praises of Ireland — and with the Irish Address.17 Miller M’Kim says, there has been quite a run on the A. S. Office here by the Repealers since that Address has been re-printed for gratuitous distribution. The seed sown seems to be taking root in Irish hearts. We are cheered on by some late manifestations in that quarter. You will see H. B. Stanton’s name among the 3rd. party speakers in Boston. How sorry I am that he has thus sold himself! They might have had Colver, if we could have kept him — and Whittier — & T. D. Weld. You will see in the Standard ^Feb.[3]^ or Liberator, the Washington correspondence of the N. York American, signed R.M.T.H. — giving an account of Adams’s defence. It is supposed & with some reason, tho’ yet a secret, that Theodore D. Weld is the writer of that & sundry other letters from Washn.18 He has been there several months. Our New- Organ. Abolitionists are not idle. Let us give them credit for all the good they do. Elizabeth C. Stanton — noble soul! is at Johnstown N. Y. at her Father’s; where they will remain while Henry is but a student at Law. The latest accot. of her is in a letter I lately recd. from C. C. Burleigh. I have half a mind to enclose it to Anne Allen, as another specimen of his familiar style; — only I fear it will give the impression, of a want of becoming reverence for institutions, regarded sacred. I will [send?] what Jas. says to it. E. Stanton writes to her frd. E. J. Neall, that she has lately made her debut in public, — in a Temperance speech, & was so eloquent in her appeals, as to affect not only her audience, but herself to tears — About 100 women were present. She infused into her speech a homoepathic [sic] dose of Womans Rights, & does the same in many private conversations. She wishes as many copies of S. Grimkes Letter on the Equality of the Sexes, we can send her — for that little book does execution. In a letter to me some time ago she says — “The more I think on the present condition of woman, the more am I oppressed with the reality of her degradation. The laws of our Country, how unjust are they! — our customs how vicious! 16. In a letter signed “W.,” the writer described the Liberty Party convention taking place in Boston on February 16th, where Rev. Nathaniel Colver declared that Boston churches were already occupied “in the work of grace going on in the city” and therefore unavailable for the next day’s session (Liberator, 25 February 1842:31). 17. Two articles reprinted from the Herald of Freedom described an antislavery meeting at the Massachusetts State House where Wendell Phillips, Abby Kelley and Frederick Douglass spoke. About Irish Quaker James C. Fuller (1793?-1847), who had emigrated to New York in the 1830s, Rogers wrote, “we have never known him speak so well.” See Liberator, 18 February 1842:26. Charles Lenox Remond (1810-73), black abolitionist from Salem, Mass. and a founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society, had stayed with the Webbs when visiting Ireland in December 1841. He returned to the U.S. with an address to the Irish-Americans written by Webb and Haughton, urging them to work to abolish slavery. See Liberator, 11 March 1842: 39; Richard S. Harrison, Richard Davis Webb: Quaker Printer, 1805-1872 (Dublin: Red Barn, 1993), 26. 18. In his letter of 25 January, “R. M. T. H.” described in vivid language Adams’s confrontation with the congressional Southern caucus: “in a tone of insulted majesty and reinvigorated spirit, [Adams] said, in reply to the audacious and atrocious charge of ‘high treason,’ — ‘I call for the reading of the first paragraph of the DECLARATION OF INDEPENDENCE! Read it! READ IT! And see what THAT says of the right of a people to reform, to change, to dissolve their government’” National Anti-Slavery Standard., 3 February 1842:139. Weld had agreed to go to Washington to perform research on subjects such as colonization and the slave trade for a group of anti-slavery congressmen, including Adams. See Weld to Lewis Tappan, 14 December 1841, in Gilbert H. Barnes and Dwight Dumond, eds., Weld-Grimké Letters, (New York: D. Appleton-Century Co., 1934), 2: 879-80, 905. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT What God has made sinful, both in man & woman, — custom has made sinful in woman alone. In talking with many people I have been much struck with this fact.” After saying much more wh. my limits forbid my copying — she adds, “I have commenced the study of medicine. Having a great horror of both medical & theological quacks, I have come to the conclusion to take care of my own soul & body. I am examining Homoepathy [sic].” &c — She will probably become a Mother in a few weeks.19 I can readily imagine your brother James a fond Father; from the little evidence I had of his affection in the conjugal relations. I was pleased with his nice wife — and the addition since made to their family, is all that seems necessary in their beautiful abode, to render their bliss complete. We are glad that he & Thomas, do not leave their br. Richd. ‘to serve alone’. We notice their honorable names occasionally, in the proceedings of your meetings. Oh; that delightful day at the sea-side with Thos. & Mary & the 3 little ones! how is the little lame daughter? The walk up Killiney hills — the prospect from the top — the addition to our company — all, all are remembered with dear delight. When, think you will come here? I cannot convey by expression how much I want to see you again. Why, we are far better acquainted now, than when we were with you. These dear, familiar letters to S. Pugh & A. Kimber & to ourselves — some of wh. are lying before me, bind you to our hearts, as bosom friends. Richd. takes pains to make us well acquainted with your valued friend R.R.R. Moore.20 He forgets that we knew him so well in the ‘Convention.’ We were glad however of all he wrote about him. Among the scenes wh. made an indelible impression, was his very earnest speech & rapid utterance standing I think not far from the excluded women. Deleg[at]es. then — when we made a visit to you, at your lodgings — he was quite as earnest in protesting against some measure under discussion. I often smile when recurring to that visit. For I had scarcely learned where we were going — or to distinguish you from the numerous English Frds. who had been introduced. Hannah walked with me — took me thro’ part of Covent Garden Market, which I had so oft read of when a child. Reaching your house, there were so many couples of the same name; beside Richd. & Anne Allen, that it was long before I could learn “who was who”. Then your venerable Father sat there looking so grave as if he had some misgivings as to the propriety of his juxtaposition with heretics of the Hicksites order — his prudential silence when I ventured a little ultraism. — and withal the “Irish hospitality” with which we were entertained — each one doing so much to minister to our hungry appetites — and then crowning the eveg by R.D. Webb & R. Allen taking that long walk home with us — If I forget these things my memory will forget its office. Again, when in your social circle in Dublin, I presumed to read what I had written home, of your non-committal course in matters of Theology — 19. No record of Stanton’s speech has been recovered. Mott quotes from Stanton’s letter of 26 November 1841. A son, Daniel, was born 2 March. Elisabeth Griffith, In Her Own Right: The Life of Elizabeth Cady Stanton (NY: Oxford UP, 1984), 41; Ann D. Gordon, Ed., In the School of Anti-Slavery: Selected papers of Elizabeth Cady Stanton and Susan B. Anthony (New Brunswick, N.J.: Rutgers University Press, 1997), 34. Sarah Moore Grimké published Letters on the Equality of the Sexes and the Condition of Woman in 1838. For more on the impact of the Grimkés on moral reform in this period, see, “What Was the Appeal of Moral Reform to Antebellum Northern Women?” also on this website. 20. In addition to Richard and Hannah Webb, members of the Webb family were James Webb Sr. (1776-1854), his sons Thomas Webb (1806-1884) and James H. Webb Jr. (1810-1868), his wife Ann, all of whom attended the 1840 London convention. Mott described her visits with the Webb family in Dublin on 24-25 July in her diary. Robert Ross Rowan Moore (1811-1864) was active in antislavery and peace reform. See Tolles, Diary, 34, 63-64; Harrison, Richard Davis Webb, 23, 28. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT suggesting as one reason, the fear of your Orthodox leaders — the earnestness & openness of countenance with which your brother Thomas ejaculated, “I’m not afraid,” gave me a sensation of delight. It needs some to be “not afraid”, in order to withstand the high-handed measures of the Quaker Hierarchy. I doubt whether the domination of any sect is more arbitrary. A handful of the distinct order in Rhode Island Yearly Mg placed their veto on the opening of Mg. houses for the lectures of the Abolitionists, and lo! they are nearly all closed. Hereaway the young people are kept from the benevolent efforts of the day — as if there would be defilement in the touch. I dont wonder that Richd. Webb feels the evils of these Sectarian organizations. Altho’ I have written as I have on another page — I agree with him, (in the abstract,) that for those who are accustomed to reflect & come to conclusions for themselves, they are unnecessary. When you have read the controversy between Paul & Amicus,21 we should like to have your opinion of the work. It was first published in the ‘Berean,’22 a periodical, edited, in Wilmington Del. by Dr. Gibbons, Benjn. Ferris & a number more Friends of talent & worth — as well as of liberal views. ‘Amicus’ was Benjn. Ferris. He told us that every answer to Paul was written after his family had retired for the night — that frequently when he went to put his effusions into the Office, it was daylight. He never submitted one of them to the criticism of his friends, & never had any objection made to them. After the controversy was ended, the “Mg. for Sufferings” issued a kind of disclaimer of it — or protest against it — at the suggestion of Jonan. Evans — the Pope of that day, because it had not been submitted to their Orthodox tribunal, previously to its publication [‘]according to the ‘good’ order’, prescribed in the Discipline. This occurred about a year or two before the ‘Separation’. ^say 1823 or 4^ Our friends did not relish a reproof from that quarter — All the Editors of that paper, were on our side when the division took place. Not long after this Fanny Wright — R. D. Owen & some others of that school were at Wilmington, & some of these liberal writers & their childn. went to hear them lecture on ‘knowledge’ — ‘education’ &.c. This alarmed Dr. G. B. Ferris, &.c — & they came out with an “Expose of Modern Skepticism”. Immediately another Paper was issued by B. Webb &.c — called the “Delaware Free Press”. Whereupon Dr. G. & co. entered a complaint to the Mg. of their Ultraism, & about 5 or 6 were disowned.23 They appealed in vain to our Yearly Mg. many thinking it were better these should suffer, than that our august body should be in any manner identified with the ‘Infidel Owenites’. The childn. of these persecuted brethren withdrew & Wilmington Mg. has had ‘Ichabod’ on its walls from that time to the present. 21. In a long series of exchanges from May 1821 until November 1822 in the Christian Repository, Presbyterian clergyman Eliphalet Gilbert (1793-1853), writing as “Paul” attacked Friends for “the characteristic notions and conduct of your society,” describing Quakers as “Deists” and “Infidels.” Writing under the name of “Amicus,” the pro-Hicksite Quakers, including William Gibbons (1781-1845), a Wilmington, Delaware, doctor, denounced “Paul” and repudiated the doctrine of the Trinity. Jonathan Evans (c. 1759-1839), was clerk of the Philadelphia Meeting for Sufferings, the body which received reports and grievances from local meetings. Larry Ingle, Quakers in Conflict: The Hicksite Reformation (Wallingford: Pendle Hill, 1998), 17-18, 98-102. 22. James tells me I am mistaken — It was not published in the Berean — but in another Wilmington Paper — Paul is a Presbyterian Minister by the name of Gilbert. 23. According to Ingle, the Hicksite Wilmington meeting disowned Benjamin Webb for supporting the views of women’s rights advocate and liberal reformer Fanny Wright (1795-1852) and the socialist and newspaper editor Robert Dale Owen (1801-1877). See Quakers in Conflict, pp. 61, 131. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT These disowned members were among their most active, benevolent citizens and have continued respected & beloved. Now such arbitrary measures I detest My husband & self came near “losing our place”, by uttering our indignant protest against their intolerance. These are the evils of religious — or sectarian organizns. We cry out against assumption of power & oppression — But no sooner do we successfully resist their influence, than the same weapons are wielded by us against those who take one step in advance of ourselves. We can be mighty charitable to the poor weaklings we consider behind us — but let some go on before, — we are as ready to cry stop & to condemn, as were those at whose hands we suffered such abuse. Where is our confidence in the Truth, that we are so fearful to meet error without denunciation. I never felt any special interest in Owen or his followers, but desired to meet them in a Christian spirit — knowing they would not ultimately prevail, only as they were in the right. Our dear Elizh. Pease & some others quaked with fear when Owen called on Wm. L.G. & the other American frds. at Mark Moore’s, lest it might give us a bad name, but I regarded not such fears. How could a common observer of heads & countenance tremble for the influence of such a man[?] The most successful refutation of his visionary scheme is to suffer him to be his own expositor.24 I forgot to tell you when speaking of E. Robson, that she has lately met with a little ‘damper’, by the Mo. Mg. of the Southern district of this City, refusing to receive family visits from her. She had been thro’ the two or (I believe) three other Meetgs. — What the obstruction was, we have not heard. Josh. J. Gurney knew better than to try to his strength at that Mg. They have the name of being opposed to him — but we had thot. E. Robson was Anti-Gurney too. Perhaps her frds. thot. she was staying here too long. Your frd. Elizh. [Cosins?] I have not seen since I took her Richard’s letter last summer. She was highly gratified to receive it — & may have acknowledged it before now. Neither have we seen for a year past, the Irish Friend or stranger against whom Richd. kindly warned us, with a graphic description of his appearance — “as if butter would not melt in his mouth” &c. We gave his partner a hint of his character — of wh. he appeared to be somewhat apprised; but hoped he would retrieve his good name[.] The few lines from Hannah in your last letter to S. Pugh were much to my liking. The liberal Spirit breathed thro’ it — and her remarks on Elisha Bates just suited me. It is truly astonishing that one who once occupied the place he did in the Society of Friends, should be a ranting, — ‘Hellfire,’ Methodist preacher — or indeed a preacher of any other Society — (unless it be Unitarian & not then for hire.)25 Several young Frds. of the Orthodox order have joined the church. This is not surprising, educated as they have been, these 10 years past, seeking “to be made perfect by the flesh”.26 Not having the inspection of the Boston Bazaar boxes we had not the oppy. to see the Articles or Letters on Slavery — & find out which was written by Hannah. Wasn’t that description of the Fair, by M[aria]. W[eston]. C[hapman]. good? When anything of interest 24. When Mott met the Scottish socialist and textile manufacturer Robert Owen (1771-1858) in London on 30 June 1840, she described him as “altogether visionary — great benevolence.” Tolles, Diary, 51.nT. 25. Elisha Bates (c.1779-1861), printer and orthodox Ohio Quaker, was disowned in 1837. 26. GALATIANS 3:3. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT appears in the Libr, Standard, or Herald of Freedom, I read it with the more zest, knowg. you will enjoy it too. I have not told you what a nice visit we had from Lord Morpeth. It will do to place with yours from Father Mathew — the accot. of wh., & your remarks of him pleased us well. We felt some hesitancy about calling on “his Lordship,” thinking he would not remember us — but in a letter from Dr. Channing to his son who is passing the winter here, he expressed a hope that we would see him.27 So we went to his lodgings, card in hand reducing him to a common man, on our Republican principles. He was not at home. He soon returned the call, made himself very agreeable, accepted an invitn. the day following to breakfast with us & came each time unattended, walking as any of our Citizens would. We were pleased with the ease with which he accommodated himself to our American & Quaker simplicity. We invited an intelligent few Abolitionists to meet him here and had a delightful time. He gives general satisfaction in passing thro’ the country. His amiable disposition & manner are pleasing, ‘tho’ rather awkward at the graces. Elizh. J. Neall has since met him in Washington. I wish she had a correspondent in Dublin — so that she might give you a description of their meeting. I began this letter as dated. It is now 3 Mo. 7th. I can only write a little each day — having many interruptions. Another Lion has just arrived in the City — Charles Dickens. Our childn. have a strong desire to see him. I too have admired the benevolent character of his writings — tho’ I have read very little in them. I did not expect to seek an interview, nor to invite him here, as he was not quite one of our sort — but just now there was left at the door, his & his wife’s card, with a kind & sweet letter from our dear friend E. J. Reid — London — introducing them & expressing a strong desire that we would make their acquaintance.28 There is not a woman in London whose draft I would more gladly honor. So now I have a grand excuse to call on them, and our girls are in high glee. I regret that in Boston & New York, they have been so extravagant in their reception of the man. I wonder if I could not keep on to the end of the year & find something to write you from day to day. I must stop so as to leave somewhat for Sarah Pugh & Abby Kimber to tell you. There may be much in this that they have already written — for Sarah filled & sent Abby’s last to you, without my seeing it. Abby has lately made a short, but pleasant visit to the City. Her enjoyment in retrospect is fresh as ever — & when she comes, Sarah accompanies her hither, so that we may all talk over past scenes. E. Neall too comes in for her share. Elizh. Reid asks me in her letter recd today, if the report is true that E. J. N[eall]. & J. G. Whittier are married. How wide of the truth it is! Mary Grew has lived too far from us quite in the lower part of the City, to meet with us often, when our Friends are with us — but there is a strong binding tie of affection with the band of rejected Delegates. Isaac Winslow is now in France, attendg to his br. Jereh’s. business, while he is in this country. He was in the City last week with two of his sisters — but we had only a little share of their compy. E Neall was more favored, having been at his house at Havre. Emily will probably 27. George William Frederick Howard (1802-64), then Lord Morpeth, later the 7th Earl of Carlisle, was on an extended tour of the U.S. Father Theobold Mathew (1790-1856) was a Franciscan priest and an Irish temperance leader. William Francis Channing (1820-1901) was then a medical student at the University of Pennsylvania. 28. Elizabeth Jesser Reid (1795?-1866), Unitarian and close friend of Harriet Martineau’s. Ruchames and Merrill, Letters, 2:663. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT return with her Father.29 We yesterday attended the funeral of Jas. Forten.30 You will see an accot. of his death in the Standard — an obituary written probably by Mary Grew.31 It was a real amalgamation funeral — hundreds of white people & thousands of colored — Kindest remembrances to all thy loved circle. Will your Father come to America this season? — Remember us with much affection to C. Corkran when you write —
Yours truly Lucretia Mott
12th [March]. I have opened my envelope to say how rejoiced we are at the news of the safety of the Caledonia. Great anxiety has been felt. We have recd. several Dublin papers and the Irish Friend — all of which interested us & we are obliged by these continued marks of your attention. The article on Free Produce I rejoiced to see, for consistency calls loudly on us for this stand to be made — ask R. Allen to write on. His sympathy & appeals for the poor murderer Delahunt were grateful to my feelings.32 How I felt that they were in vain! But the appeal will not be lost. Neither will Jas. Haughton’s to his poor brethren on Peace — Slavery — &c — I liked his proposal to tax waste land. We called on Dickens — but he was [so? ??] that we could have but a few minutes interview We tried to engage a visit from him, but his stay in this City was only 3 or 4 days & was engaged all the time. 5 or 600 gentlemen called on him the morng. we were there. Jas. Mott talked to him about his travels in the South and hoped he would not be deceived by the outside appearance — but try to get a peep behind the scenes — I too said a word or two on the same subject. — 33
How gratifying is the decision of your Parliament on the Creole case — that & the Amistad are doing well for our cause — 34
17th J.M. M’Kim’s letter giving an account of Jas. Forten’s funeral in todays Standard is good — & true — so was H.C. Wrights announcing his death35
I have written my letter to Anne Knight[.] M.W. Chapman says “Poor, dear Anne Knight! how sorry she will be to see my name to the call for the Bible Convention actually thinking me as 29. Both Isaac (1787-1867) and Jeremiah Winslow lived in France for some years while engaged in whaling. Isaac Winslow’s daughter Emily Annette (later Taylor) accompanied her father on his trip to the 1840 London convention. See Ruchames and Merrill, Letters, 2:209; Tolles, Diary, 13. 30. The obituary of James Forten, who died 4 March, was published in the Standard, 10 March 1842:159. 31. No — that written by Mary Grew did not reach New York in time — the notice published was quite inferior to that written by Mary. 32. John Delahunt, who pleaded not guilty, was being tried in Dublin for the murder of a child. See The Times (London), 17 January 1842:6. 33. The visit of Charles Dickens (1812-70) to Philadelphia is briefly described in his American Notes, chapter 7. Theodore Cuyler reports that, on a visit to Dickens in London later in 1842, the latter told him, “If you see Mrs. Lucretia Mott tell her that I have not forgotten the slave.” Letters of Charles Dickens, ed. Madeline House, Graham Storey, Kathleen Tillotson (Oxford: Clarendon P, 1974), 3:357. 34. On a voyage from the U.S. in November 1841, slaves on the American ship the Creole mutinied and forced the vessel to dock at the British port of Nassau. When British officials there freed all the slaves except the mutineering crew, the U.S. demanded that all the crew be returned to the U.S. for criminal proceedings. The British, however, refused. In another slave mutiny off Long Island in June 1839 on the Amistad, the slaves were also freed, thanks to John Quincy Adams’s defense before the U.S. Supreme Court in 1841. For more on this famous case, see the website, “Exploring Amistad.” 35. James Miller McKim’s obituary on James Forten appeared in the Standard on 17 March 1842:162. H.C. Wright’s tribute and description of the funeral on 6 March was published in The Liberator, 11 March 1842:89. McKim, a noted abolitionist, went on to found The Nation in 1865. See Document 6 of “How Did White Women Aid Former Slaves during and after the Civil War and What Obstacles Did They Face,” also on the website, “Exploring Amistad.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT good as Orthodox!36 I grieve to grieve her or any one else; but it would never do to be obliged to despise myself for a whole life-time, for neglecting an opport[unit]y. to do good, lest I should give offence”. I was glad that C. Corkran withdrew from those Temperance bigots in London[.]
I have filled my sheets with out a word on Non-Resistance, Capital punishment, & other subjects, wh., tho’ they do not “fill my head from morng till night,” yet occupy much of my thought. Thanks for the “Rhymes for the people” —, “[Hints?] about the Army” &c[.] Such appeals cannot fail to do good. I saw a lecture on Education I think, by the same author when in Lond[on] & have it somewhere among my papers. A parcel was just left at the door, containg 50 copies of “Four Letters to the Rev Jas. Caughy” — I turned to that from R. Allen wh. is all I have had time to read. I am glad he dealt so faithfully with the Priest.37 We shall circulate them[.] Jas. Motts love he cant add
Jas. thinks it not best to send more than one of each of P. E. Thomas’s books — If you would like to have more you can send for them.
36. Chapman was one of four signers to a call for a Bible Convention for a “public discussion of the credibility and authority of the Scriptures” to be held in Boston 29 March (Liberator, 21 January 1842:11). 37. Rhymes for the people about battle, glory, and murder (Dublin: Webb and Chapman, n.d.); Four Letters to the Reverend James Caughey, Methodist Episcopal minister; on the participation of the American Methodist Episcopal Church in the sin of American slavery — three from Robert Johnston and one from Richard Allen (Dublin: S. J. Machen, 1841). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT November 10, Thursday: Waldo Emerson sponsored an evening meeting in regard to Bronson Alcott’s scheme for an utopian community, “Fruitlands.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, Robert Bartlett, the Reverend George Ripley, and “all Brook Farm” came to hear Alcott and his English friends lay out their plans. Charles Lane began to form the impression that they should purchase a farm at some distance from Concord, in order to protect Alcott from the influence of Emerson.38
Reverend George Ripley of Brook Farm
ABSTINENCE: We are learning to hold our peace and to keep our hands from each other’s bodies.
THE ALCOTT FAMILY
38. Waldo Emerson, finding himself being pestered by Bronson Alcott to be established and endowed and protected by being granted what amounted to a freebie estate, pleading for nothing less worthy of him “a farm of a hundred acres in excellent condition with good buildings, a good orchard, and grounds which admitted of being laid out with great beauty” to be “purchased and given them in the first place” and offering that since he already had a wife and kiddies to support he simply could not be expected to so provide for himself, finally commented to Alcott that he would feel strengthened and instructed by someone who “there where he is, unaided, in the midst of poverty, toil, and traffic, extricates himself from the corruptions of the same and builds on his land a house of peace and benefit, good customs and free thoughts.” When Alcott took exception to this on grounds of impossibility, Emerson gave him short shrift. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
THE SCARLET LETTER: Such were some of the people with whom I now found myself connected. I took it in good part, at the hands of Providence, that I was thrown into a position so little akin to my past habits; and set myself seriously to gather from it whatever profit was to be had. After my fellowship of toil and impracticable schemes with the dreamy brethren of Brook Farm; BROOK FARM after living for three years within the subtle influence of an intellect like Emerson’s; after those wild, free days on the WALDO EMERSON Assabeth, indulging fantastic speculations, beside our fire of fallen boughs, with Ellery Channing; after talking with Thoreau ELLERY CHANNING about pine-trees and Indian relics in his hermitage at Walden; after growing fastidious by sympathy with the classic refinement of Hillard’s culture; after becoming imbued with poetic sentiment at Longfellow’s hearthstone – it was time, at length, that LONGFELLOW I should exercise other faculties of my nature, and nourish myself with food for which I had hitherto had little appetite. BRONSON ALCOTT Even the old Inspector was desirable, as a change of diet, to a man who had known Alcott. I looked upon it as an evidence, in some HENRY THOREAU measure, of a system naturally well balanced, and lacking no essential part of a thorough organization, that, with such associates to remember, I could mingle at once with men of altogether different qualities, and never murmur at the change.
Baron Joseph-Marie de Gérando died in Paris. Joseph-Marie de Gérando (1772-1842), blessé lors du siège de Lyon, condamné à mort, réussit à s’échapper en Suisse, puis en Italie. Rentré en France après l’amnistie du 4 brumaire an IV, il doit de nouveau s’exiler avec Camille Jordan après le coup d’Etat anti-royaliste du 18 fructidor. Il s’engage ensuite dans un régiment de chasseurs, et envoie à l’Institut un mémoire en réponse au sujet mis au concours par la classe des Sciences Morales et Politiques sur «l’influence des signes sur le langage». Il remporte le prix, et exempté de son service, est nommé secrétaire du Bureau consultatif des arts et du commerce. Introduit dans la société d’Auteuil par les juges du concours, il est nommé en 1804 secrétaire général du ministre de l’Intérieur de Champagny. Après une mission en Italie avec Napoléon, celui-ci le nomme en 1808 au Conseil d’Etat, poste dans lequel Louis XVIII le confirmera à la Restauration. De Gérando, auteur d’une «Histoire des systèmes philosophiques» a été sévèrement jugé plus tard par Sainte-Beuve: «Il y a des esprits essentiellement mous comme Degérando...: ils traversent des époques diverses en se modifiant avec facilité et même avec talent; mais ne demandez ni à leurs œuvres, ni à leurs souvenirs aucune originalité.... L’image n’est pas belle, mais ces sortes d’esprit ne sont pas seulement mous, ils sont filants comme du macaroni, et ont la faculté de s’allonger indéfiniment sans rompre». Mignet, dans sa Notice historique sur Gérando est comme il faut s’y attendre bien plus élogieux: «Avec une méthode qu’il porta des études philosophiques dans les matières administratives, et une sagesse qui lui inspirait la bienveillance dans la justice, M. de Gérando, dressant des projets, rédigeant des rapports, instruisant les affaires à HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT fond, les décidant bien, les expédiant vite, évitant de son mieux l’arbitraire, tempérant, autant qu’il était en lui, l’autorité, sut tout à la fois bien mériter de l’Etat et des particuliers, surtout des employés du gouvernement, au profit desquels il fonda les premières caisses de retraites pour les vieux employés qui ne pouvaient plus rendre à l’administration de services actifs. C’était un homme comme il en fallait sous l’Empire, où tout était à faire. Il donnait ses jours et quelquefois ses nuits au travail». HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1843
February 15, Wednesday: In Concord, Henry Thoreau wrote to Waldo Emerson in New-York, about the John Adolphus Etzler review intended for April’s issue of The Dial, mentioning how they had heard thunder in the distance the previous summer during a walk and had presumed incorrectly that it was either falling rocks or the drumming of a Ruffed Grouse Bonasa umbellus (Partridge):
As for Etzler – I dont remember any rude and snappish speech that you made – and if you did it must have been longer than anything I had written – However here is the book still and I will try. Perhaps I have some few scraps in my Journal which you may choose to print. The translation of AEschylus I should like very well to continue anon – if it should be worth the while. – As for poetry I have not remembered to write any for sometime – it has quite slipped my mind – but sometimes I think I hear the muttering of the thunder. Dont you remember that last summer we heard a low tremulous sound in the woods and over the hills – and thought it was partridges or rocks – and it proved to be thunder gone down the river – But sometimes it was over Wayland way and at last burst over our heads – So we’ll not despair by reason of the drought.
DEMOCRATIC REVIEW
Concord Feb. 15th 1843 My dear Friend, I got your letters – one yesterday and the other to-day – and they have made me quite happy. As A packet is to go in the morning I will give you a hasty account of the Dial. I called on Mr Lane this afternoon – and brought a way – together with an abundance of good-will – 1st a bulky catalogue of books without commentary – some 800 I think he told me – with an introduction filling one sheet – Ten or a dozen pages say – though I have only glanced at them. 2nd A Review – 25 or 30 printed pages – of Conversations on the Gospels – Record of a School – and Spiritual Culture. with rather copious extracts – However it is a good subject and Lane says it gives him satisfaction. I will give it a faithful reading directly. And now I come to the little end of the horn – for myself I have brought along the Minor Greek Poets and will mine there for a scrap or two – at least. As for Etzler – I dont remember any rude and snappish speech that you made – and if you did it must have been longer than anything I had written – However here is the book still and I will try. Perhaps I have some few scraps in my Journal which you may choose to print. The translation of AEschylus I should like very well to continue anon – if it should be worth the while. – As for poetry I have not remembered to write any for sometime – it has quite slipped my mind – but sometimes I think I hear the muttering of the thunder. Dont you remember that last summer we heard a low tremulous sound in the woods and over the hills – and thought it was partridges or rocks – and it proved to be thunder gone down HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT the river – But sometimes it was over Wayland way and at last burst over our heads – So we’ll not despair by reason of the drought. You see it takes a good many words to supply the place of one deed. – a hundred lines to a cobweb – and but one cable to a man-of war. The Dial cover needs to be reformed in many particulars – There is no news from Wheeler – none from Bartlett. They all look well and happy in this house – where it gives me much pleasure to dwell – yrs in haste Henry
Emerson lectured in New-York. This was the 2d lecture of his series, “Trade.” THE LIST OF LECTURES
Lydia Maria Child stated that nonresistance to evil was “the idea which distinguishes the gospel of Christ from all other wise and philosophic utterance.”
(I agree with her.)
April 30, Sunday: Ewald Flügel would publish and annotate the following Waldo Emerson letter in 1889. It is a letter that Charles Stearns Wheeler had received while seeking in Europe relief from the tuberculosis that would take his life at Leipzig on June 13th. At Leipzig he had become intimate with the American consul, Dr. Johann Gottfried Flügel (grandfather of Ewald Flügel), and had given the manuscript letter to him in token of this relation. The letter included information about Robert Bartlett, who had taken an ocean cruise to Havana on account of his health, and about Emerson’s Latin School chum Samuel Bradford, Junior, and about Ellery Channing, Elizabeth Sherman Hoar, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Henry Thoreau, Bronson Alcott, Charles Lane, Henry G. Wright (1814?-1846) the mystic teacher of the Ham Common School near Richmond in Surrey who in 1842 came with Alcott and Lane and joined Brook Farm and then the Fourierists, George Partridge Bradford of Brook Farm, Giles Waldo, Henry James, Sr., William Aspinwall Tappan, Miss Elizabeth Palmer Peabody, Margaret Fuller, and Horace Mann, Sr., as well as THE DIAL. My dear Wheeler, It is very late for me to begin to thank you by letter for your abundant care & supply of my wants, and, to point the reproach, here has come this day as I am putting pen HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT to paper to send by Mr. Mann tomorrow, a pair of books from Mr. Weiss, brought from your own hands. Two full letters I have received, & printed the substance of the same, & had the reading of a part of two more addressed to Robert Bartlett, since I wrote you. But, all winter, from 1 January to 10 March, I was absent from home, at Washington, Baltimore, Phila & N Y, & would not write letters to Germany, on the road. — What shall I tell you. Our Dial, enriched by your manifold Intelligence, yet languishes somewhat in the scantiness of purchasing patrons, so that Miss Peabody wrote me at N.Y. that its subscription list did not now pay its expenses. I hoped that was a hint not to be mistaken, that I might drop it. But many persons expressed so much regret at the thought of its dying, that it is to live one year more. Ellery Channing has written lately some good poems for it, one, especially, called “Death” & a copy of verses addressed by him to Elizabeth Hoar. Channing has just rented the little red house next below mine, on the Turnpike, and is coming to live here next week. His friend, S.G. Ward, is editing a volume (about the size of one of your Tennyson’s) of Channing’s poetry, which will appear in a week or two. Thoreau goes next week to New York: My brother William at Staten Island has invited him to take charge of the education of his son, for a year or more, & the neighborhood of the city offers many advantages to H T. — Hawthorne remains in his seat, & writes very actively for all the magazines. Alcott & Lane remain also in their cottage. [Henry G.] Wright has withdrawn from them, & joins the Fourierists, who are beginning to buy & settle land. These are all our village news of any import: only, next week, they begin to build a railroad, which may unseat us all, & drive us into new solitudes. I do not notice any very valuable signs about us in the literary & spiritual realm. Yet I found at Washington, & at NY some friends whom I greatly cherish [these had been Giles Waldo, Henry James, Sr., and William Aspinwall Tappan]. I think our wide community with its abundant reading, & a culture not dependant on one city, but taking place everywhere in detached nervous centres, promises to yield, & already yields a great deal of private original unviolated thought & character. Nature is resolved to make a stand against the Market, which has grown so usurping & omnipotent. Everything shall not go to Market; so she makes shy men, cloistered maids, & angels in lone places. Brook Farm is an experiment of another kind, where a hot-bed culture is applied, and everything private is published, & carried to its extreme. I learn from all quarters that a great deal of action & courage has been shown there, & my friend Hawthorn almost regrets that he had not remained there, to see the unfolding & issue of so much bold life. He would have staid to be its historian. My friend Mr Bradford writes me from B.F. [Brook Farm] that he has formed several new friendships with old friends, such new grounds of character have been disclosed. They number in all about 85 souls. — You will have heard of Carlyle’s new work “Past & Present.” I am just now printing it in Boston (from Ms. partly) braving the chances of piracy from New York. It is certain to be popular from the fear of one class & the hope of another: and is preliminary, Carlyle seems to think, to Cromwell. It is full of brilliant points & is excellent history, true history of England in 1843. — You will have heard of Robert Bartlett’s illness, & the great anxiety of his friends respecting him. He went away, I heard, in good spirits, & HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT somewhat amended: but his health is in a most critical condition. It is a great grief to me, who was every year learning to value him more, thought there has been something curious, as well as valuable in his unfolding.... Margaret Fuller thanks you for your account of [August von] Platen[-Hallermünd]; and wishes further to ask you to send her a copy of the Vol. III of Eckermann’s “Conversations with Goethe,” which you announced. I will pay your brother for it.
[written sideways: German address of Charles Stearns Wheeler]
You have kindly offered to buy for me books or drawings, but I shall not give you that trouble. I read little & not adventurously, but mostly in old & proven books. You shall see & hear for me, and tell me what is the hope of the new mines. Meantime I shall make an experiment on the two new books you have sent me, or at least in person on Theodor Mundt [author of GESCHICHTE DER LITERATUR DES GEGENWART, 1842]. Mr. Mann was to go to Berlin directly, & take on Dials to you; I am sorry, he has changed his plan, & goes slower. In all good hope & assurance, your friend R.W. Emerson HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT September 25, Monday: Having resigned from his vicarage of St. Mary’s, Oxford after finding that he had begun to question the true catholicity of the Church of England, the Reverend John Henry Newman preached his last Anglican sermon at Littlemore.
Robert Bartlett died of pulmonary consumption in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The body would be placed in Oak Grove Cemetery. That fall his former fiancée Elizabeth Crowell White had also been suffering under the final stages of tuberculosis, and it would appear that at this stage their previous interest in one another, which had led to a temporary engagement to be married, had been somewhat rekindled (or so some have pleasantly imagined).
Henry Thoreau was written to by Margaret Fuller. Dear Henry, You are not, I know, deeply interested in the chapter of little etiquettes, yet I think out of kindness you will be willing to read a text therein & act conform- HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT ably in my behalf— As I read the text on the subject of [v]isits or [v]isitations, our hosts martyr themselves every way for us, their guests, while we are with them, in time, temper, & purse, but we are expected to get to them and get away from them as we can. Then I ought to have paid for the carriage which came to take me away[,] though I went in another. But I did not see the man when I got down to the landing[, — I] do not know what is the due, but [E.] Hoar told me the enclosed was enough[,] will you pay it for me wherever it belongs & pardon the care- lessness that gives you this trouble? Immediately after my return I passed two days at Concord, a visit all too short, yet pleasant. The cottages of the Irish laborers look pretty just now but their railroad looks foreign to Concord. Mr Emerson has written a fine poem, you will see it in the Dial. Ellery will not go to the West, at least not this year[.] He regrets your absence, you, he says, are the man to be with in the Woods. I remember my visit to Staten Island
Page 2 with great pleasure[,] & find your hist[o]ries and the grand pictures you showed me are very full in my mind[.] I have not yet [dreamt] of the fort, but I intend to some leisure night. With best regards to Mr & Mrs Emerson, whose hospitality I hold in grateful remembrance, yours S.M. Fuller. 25th[.] Septr/43
Address: Mr Henry Thoreau Care W. Emerson Esq 61 Wall St N. York.
October 7, Saturday: Elizabeth Crowell White died of tuberculosis in Plymouth, Massachusetts. The body would be placed in Oak Grove Cemetery (same cemetery in which Robert Bartlett, to whom she had once been engaged to be married, had been placed during the previous month). HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1846
William Thaddeus Harris graduated from Harvard College. He would study for the law, but would never practice.
The Harvard Class of 1846 funded a monument in the cemetery of Plymouth, Massachusetts, in memory of their tutor and proctor Robert Bartlett: To Robert Bartlett, an alumnus of Harvard College, who obtained the highest place among his companions, by genius, by study and learning, always distinguished by every form of virtue, most devoted to religion, to truth and liberty, who sacredly discharged all the offices of life, the most excellent and dutiful son, the most deserving brother, the most faithful friend, for almost four years the learned, kind and careful instructor, hurried away by a hasty death; in consequence of distinguished kindness to themselves, the members of the class of 1846, the last who listened to his instruction, have erected this monument. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
The rules of “rugby” football, which dated to William Webb Ellis’s famous act of 1823, were formalized. SPORTS
Professor John White Webster had gotten enthused about a mastodon skeleton Mammut americanum that had been found in a New Jersey bog in 1844 and was available on the market for only $3,000, and jumped at the chance to acquire it for the Harvard Museum supposing that the officials of the college would be as enthusiastic as he was about these magnificently preserved bones and supposing that he could easily raise the funds to reimburse him for his grand procurement (but in this year he discovered that he had been quite mistaken, because some of the local folks whose names had been inscribed on the presentation plaques had failed to make good on their promises and had left him holding the bag for the balance of the debt).
Professor Webster would be undaunted by this residual obligation. He knew he would be able to turn to his richie-rich Boston acquaintance Doctor George Parkman, who although he was personally rather unpleasant was the sole owner of a whole potfull of downtown real estate, for a personal loan to cover the balance.
A new building for the Harvard Medical College was erected upon land belonging to Doctor Parkman down on the flats of the Charles River at the foot of North Grove Street near the Massachusetts Hospital on Allen Street (now Massachusetts General) and near the New Gaol at Foundry Wharf, all of this in the neighborhood of the tollhouse at the Boston approaches to the Cambridge Bridge:
(Don’t go looking for this two-story brick building set on piers at the waterfront near Massachusetts General Hospital. It was long ago torn down.) HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT
1901
Charles S. Fobes’s ROBERT BARTLETT, A FORGOTTEN TRANSCENDENTALIST.... in New England Magazine. HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT 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 2017. 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: May 29, 2017 HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT 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 deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in HDT WHAT? INDEX
ROBERT BARTLETT ROBERT BARTLETT 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