SIR WILLIAM JARDINE, BART.
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Sir William Jardine HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1800
February 23, Sunday: William Jardine was born at Edinburgh, Scotland. He would be educated at home to the age of 15.
The active enforcement of the Rhode Island law against slavetrading by abolitionist customs collector William Ellery so infuriated new congressman John Brown, a slavetrader, that he had sponsored a federal bill to split off a customs district separate from Newport, to have its headquarters in Bristol. The Congress therefore on this day authorized a separate new customs house. The letter is predated by one month, and the obvious inferences that a historian can derive from this factoid are that this deal had gone down in secrecy, and that there were some concerned individuals who had not yet learned of it. This might not sound at all remarkable, but there is background information that makes it remarkable indeed, in connecting the establishment of this new federal customs house in Bristol with the continuation of the trans-Atlantic trade in new slaves. Here (within blue boxes, on following screens) is this background: TRIANGULAR TRADE HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1789 July 31, Friday: The federal Congress created the United States Custom Service, as a new branch of the Treasury Department. 1790 June 14, Monday: The federal Congress created the Rhode Island custom districts of Providence and Newport. These two districts handled all ship traffic connecting with nine Rhode Island ports, in the Providence district, Providence and Pawtuxet, and, in the Newport district, Newport, North Kingstown, East Greenwich, Westerly, Bristol, Warren, and Barrington. READ EDWARD FIELD TEXT 1794 Friend Moses Brown and Friend Samuel Rodman presented to President George Washington and Vice-President John Adams a memorial in opposition to the international slave trade. The federal Congress passed an act prohibiting the trans-Atlantic trade. (When officials of the Newport customs district would begin to enforce this law in the subsidiary port of Bristol, this would interfere with the nefarious activities of Rhode Island slavetraders James DeWolf and Shearjashub Bourne. The slavetraders would lobby the government for the establishment of Bristol as a separate customs district and no longer subject to these out-of-control officials of the Newport customs district — who were actually daring to enforce this new law.) W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many.
The DeWolf Crest HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1799 The Rhode Island brigantine Orange (or is this a typographic error in regard to a voyage in 1779?) brought a cargo of 120 new slaves from the coast of Africa.
William Ellery seized the DeWolf schooner Lucy (Captain Charles Collins) for engaging in the slave trade and put it up for auction in Bristol. Local surveyor Samuel Bosworth was appointed to bid on the vessel on behalf of the government. After John Brown of Providence and several other slavers had attempted unsuccessfully to intimidate Bosworth, the DeWolfs simply hired thugs who, costumed as native Americans, kidnapped him and took him several miles up the bay while with a trifling bid the DeWolfs recovered their vessel.
John Brown, as ever a strong defender of the absolute righteousness of the international slave trade, was elected to the US House of Representatives. He would sponsor legislation to create a separate Customs House in Bristol, in facilitation of the international slave trade that was still being conducted through that port by James DeWolf and Shearjashub Bourne.
The DeWolf Crest
Taking into account this history that lies hidden behind the Act of February 23, 1800, it is interesting what would happen next. Next, Jonathan Russell would be appointed as 1st US customs collector at the new Bristol, Rhode Island customs house, and Russell would continue to enforce the law against the international slave trade in the manner in which it had been being enforced while the Newport customs house was still running the show. Because of this, the DeWolf family would need to circulate a petition for his removal, and conduct a lobbying campaign in Washington DC. The result would be that in February 1804, President Thomas Jefferson would fire Jonathan Russell, replacing him with a more cooperative official, a brother-in-law of James DeWolf who had a major investment in the international slave trade. This man, Charles Collins, would serve as collector at the new Bristol customs house, and ignore the law at presidential behest and succor the international slave trade at presidential behest, until 1820: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1804 February: The first customs collector for Bristol, Rhode Island, Jonathan Russell, had been constantly interfering with the international slave trade in strict application and implementation of official US federal law and policy. The DeWolfs and the other slave trading families of Bristol therefore arranged with President Thomas Jefferson to have Russell replaced with a brother-in-law of theirs, Charles Collins, who was captain of one of that family’s negrero vessels — a man who could be counted on to not enforce the federal law against the importation of generations of fresh slaves from Africa into the United States of America.
The DeWolf Crest
W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: Of the twenty years from 1787 to 1807 it can only be said that they were, on the whole, a period of disappointment so far as the suppression of the slave-trade was concerned. Fear, interest, and philanthropy united for a time in an effort which bade fair to suppress the trade; then the real weakness of the constitutional compromise appeared, and the interests of the few overcame the fears and the humanity of the many. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
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1815
Walter Scott’s GUY MANNERING.
At the age of 15 William Jardine, who to this point had been educated at home in Edinburgh, was sent to York “to learn English.” He would be returning to Scotland and to the University of Edinburgh for his study of medicine and anatomy under Professor John Lizars, and would attend the geological lectures and excursions of Professor Jameson and the botanical lectures of Mr. James Scott.
NO-ONE’S LIFE IS EVER NOT DRIVEN PRIMARILY BY HAPPENSTANCE
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1820
William Jardine got married with a sister of his anatomy teacher at the University of Edinburgh, Professor John Lizars (he would be pursuing his anatomical studies not only in bed but also at medical school in Paris).
George Heriot depicted an unusually picturesque rock formation near Poitiers:
LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Sir William Jardine HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1821
The father of William Jardine, Sir Alexander Jardine, was dying, and the son returned from medical school at Paris to Scotland to attend to the details of being 7th Baronet of Applegirth, Dumfriesshire, a large landed proprietor.
During this year and the following one, Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s lectures on representative government would be appearing in two volumes as HISTOIRE DES ORIGINES DU GOUVERNERNENT REPRÉSENTATIF.
Augustin Jean Fresnel of France presented the laws which would for the 1st time enable the intensity and polarization of reflected and refracted light to be calculated. HISTORY OF OPTICS
Jean-Pierre Abel-Rèmusat’s “Sur la succession des 33 premiers patriarches de la religion de Bouddha” appeared in the Journal des Savantes. For the following decade, Professor Abel-Rèmusat and Humboldt would be producing LETTRES ÉDIFIANTES ET CURIEUSES SUR LA LANGUE CHINOISE.
In Edinburgh, Transactions of the Phrenological Society.
While on a visit to Paris, Dr. Charles Caldwell (1772-1853), a Philadelphia racist who had become a professor at a university in Kentucky, met the phrenologists Franz Joseph Gall (1758-1828) and Johann Gaspar Spurzheim (1776-1823) and decided to combine their doctrine of brain differences between individuals with his own doctrine of racial differences to form a much needed doctrine of brain differences between races. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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“Scientists have power by virtue of the respect commanded by the discipline. We may therefore be sorely tempted to misuse that power in furthering a personal prejudice or social goal — why not provide that extra oomph by extending the umbrella of science over a personal preference in ethics or politics?” — Stephen Jay Gould BULLY FOR BRONTOSAURUS NY: Norton, 1991, page 429 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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By the end of the 1820s, Dr. Caldwell had examined enough native American skulls found in mounds, and had felt the heads of enough native Americans visiting the cities, to be comfortable that hasn’t going to hurt anybody, in announcing that
when the wolf, the buffalo and the panther shall have been completely domesticated, like the dog, the cow, and the household cat, then, and not before, may we expect to see the full-blooded Indian civilized, like the white man.
In 1830, Dr. Caldwell would present his THOUGHTS ON THE ORIGINAL UNITY OF THE HUMAN RACE, (NY: E. Bliss), one of his thoughts on the original unity of the human race being that “To the Caucasian race is the world indebted for all the great and important discoveries, inventions and improvements, that have been made in science and the arts, [while the African has remained] Motionless; fixed to a spot, like the rocks and trees, in the midst of which they dwell; each generation pursuing the same time-beaten track.... Even century succeeds to century, and the last finds them the same degraded and unimproved beings with the former.” One medical historian has asserted that “phrenology ... was certainly at least as influential in the first half of the nineteenth century as psychoanalysis was in the first half of the twentieth.”1 Dr. Caldwell would become such an advocate of phrenology, the scientistic doctrine that was so amply supporting his racism, that he would even become a vigorous opponent of the teaching of the science of chemistry! By the end of the 1830s, Dr. Caldwell would become the most popular phrenologist in America, partly by pandering to the American need for a scientific legitimation of genocide at a time before the mainline American scientific establishment had –under the leadership of the American school of ethnology based in Philadelphia– taken up the cudgel on
1. Ackerknecht, Erwin H. MEDICINE AT THE PARIS HOSPITAL, 1794-1848. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1967, page 172. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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behalf of genocide beginning in about 1839.
“The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlers will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians.” — Lyman Frank Baum, author of the OZ books
Mr. Trust Me, the White Man’s Ambassador HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Dr. Richard Harlan was elected as Professor (Lecturer) of Comparative Anatomy at Charles Willson Peale’s Philadelphia Museum. Here is his illustration of a hermaphrodite orangoutan that was found to have perfectly formed male and female genitalia:
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Sir William Jardine HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1825
Sir William Jardine and Mr. P. J. Selby of Twizel published the initial volume of their ILLUSTRATIONS OF ORNITHOLOGY (the 4th volume of which would not be completed until 1843). SCOTLAND
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
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1831
Sir William Jardine assisted with the 3d volume of the Edinburgh Journal of Natural and Geographical Science. SCOTLAND
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Sir William Jardine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1832
September 19, Wednesday: Sir William Jardine was elected to the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club.
The Sac and Fox tribes agreed to a cession of 6,000,000 acres, and to their removal to the Indian Territory to the west of the Mississippi River before June 1, 1833. “...The conflicts of Europeans with American-Indians, Maoris and other aborigines in temperate regions ... if we judge by the results we cannot regret that such wars have taken place ... the process by which the American continent has been acquired for European civilization [was entirely justified because] there is a very great and undeniable difference between the civilization of the colonizers and that of the dispossessed natives....” — Bertrand Russell, THE ETHICS OF WAR, January 1915
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 4th day My dear wife is better but very weak & feeble RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Sir William Jardine “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1833
March: Honoré de Balzac reported that “I go to bed at six of seven in the evening, like the chickens; I’m waked up at one o’clock in the morning, and I work until eight; at eight I sleep again for an hour and a half; then I take a little something, a cup of black coffee, and go back into my harness until four; I receive guests, I take a bath, and I go out, and after dinner I go to bed. I’ll have to lead this life for some months, not to let myself be snowed under by my debts.”2
At the prompting of a printer and engraver of Edinburgh, William Home Lizars, Sir William Jardine commenced his editorship of THE NATURALISTS’ LIBRARY, which would extend to 40 volumes and occupy his attention for the following decade. This illustration of The Ape was made in this year, by Sir William personally:
In this year would appear THE NATURAL HISTORY OF HUMMING-BIRDS. ORNITHOLOGY
2. By this point the use of coffee in the morning and tea at night was almost universal. In an estimate of the dietary needs of the family of a common laborer dating to this year in Philadelphia, larger expenditures were listed for sugar and tea than for meat. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1834
Sir William Jardine and his youngest brother, John Jardine, went with Mr. Selby, and Mr. James Wilson on a tour through Sutherlandshire, a region that had not yet been examined by naturalists. The expedition, in a boat on wheels drawn by Highland ponies, was fully equipped to accumulate specimens of plants, birds, and fish (they would for instance collect the great lake trout Salmo ferox). In inclement weather their boat/wagon could be inverted to furnish shelter. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1836
September 21, Wednesday: Margaret Fuller reported to Waldo Emerson that she was hearing “much conversation” about his NATURE “that amuses me.”
Sir William Jardine delivered his presidential address at the Berwickshire Naturalists’ Club. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1837
During this year and the following one Sir William Jardine would be joint editor, with Dr. Alexander Keith Johnston of Berwick and P.J. Selby, of the Magazine of Zoology and Botany, which after the publication of its 2d volume would merge into the Annals of Natural History. He was also joint editor, with Dr. Balfour and others, of the 3d series of Edinburgh’s New Philosophical Journal. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1841
Sir William Jardine was appointed a Deputy Lieutenant of Dumfriesshire. SCOTLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1843
December: The Ray Society was proposed almost simultaneously by Dr. Alexander Keith Johnston and Mr. Hugh E. Strickland, a son-in-law of Sir William Jardine. Sir William wrote to his son-in-law,— “In regard to the Ray Club, it is one of those things which if established with sufficient funds to publish 2 or 4 volumes annually, would do much good; and it is one of those things which may hang on for ten years by talking; meanwhile, if you approve of the general plan, get as many subscribers as possible.” HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1844
September 10, Tuesday: Father John Thoreau purchased, from David Loring for $25.00, three quarters of an acre on which to build his family a home of their own, to be known as the “Texas House” because at the time this Concord street was to be named Texas Street. Henry Thoreau would be digging the cellar hole for this, and lining it with stone. It was to be the family home and boardinghouse “to August 29th, 1850.” This structure would be damaged beyond repair by fire and the devastating hurricane of 1938. This structure, and the shanty Thoreau would build on Walden Pond in the spring, summer, and fall of 1845: were they traditionally framed or were they “balloon” framed? THOREAU RESIDENCES Brigham Young “got married with” Clarissa Ross.
Dr. Alexander Keith Johnston began a visit to Jardine Hall at Applegirth on the River Annan in Dumfriesshire: “And now we found ourselves in the avenue leading to Jardine Hall, where a most friendly and cordial reception awaited us, and we were soon at comfort and ease with the family.) SCOTLAND Tuesday, 10th September. I spent this day in a stroll through the gardens and grounds of Jardine Hall, and through part of the estate. The House, built of a dark red sandstone, reminded me of Twizel House, which it resembles in outward appearance, but the interior arrangements are entirely different. There were many things to interest us in the gardens, which are well kept; and the grounds contain many fine trees, especially beech and ash, and a very large hawthorn stands near the house, which Mr. Selby has engraved in his History of British Forest Trees. Sir William Jardine pointed out to me some beautiful and thriving specimens of the Firs that have been introduced of late years into this country, and which grow here very fast and freely. In my stroll adown the Annan —a sweet stream— I noticed some small shoals of Dace, called here “Skellies,” a fish I had not seen previously; and here too I gathered for the first time, Jasione montana, and was much taken with the beauty of its dark blue flowers. It grows in profusion in all this part of Dumfrieshire, some fields being as full of it nearly, as they are of the daisy with us. Several species of polygonums — Hydropiper, lapathifolium, and Persicaria — abounded to a most noisome degree in many of the fields; which, indeed, in general seemed almost choked with annual weeds. The contrast between the land here, and in Berwickshire, is greatly in favour of the latter. The only plant of rarity I gathered was Utricularia intermedia. It grew in abundance in a ditch cut through a swampy field, which not many years ago was a pond of resort for myriads of wild ducks. It is now firm enough to bear a coarse sort of grass, which is annually mown and makes good meadow hay; and this conversion from water to solid land, is solely the result of nature, and of the annual decay of the aquatic plants that grew in the lake — the pond — the morass —the bog— and which will ere long be the meadow. About Jardine Hall, Lepidium Smithii grows plentifully, and I observed it to be common in other parts of Dumfriesshire and Galloway. Polytrichum urnigerum was most profuse, on banks by the road sides, in our walk this day, and was really an interesting HDT WHAT? INDEX
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object.
September 11, Wednesday: Dr. Alexander Keith Johnston’s visit to Jardine Hall continued: SCOTLAND Wednesday, Sept. 11th. Soon after breakfast Sir William’s carriage was at the door to take a willing party to Lochmaben and its Castle. The drive was pretty enough, but chiefly interesting from its novelty. It took us through the royal burgh of Lochmaben, an insignificant town with some antiquarian interest; and a pillar of granite, erected by his nephews to Mr. Jardine, who went from this, his native town, to China, where he prospered and grew rich, and succeeded in making some relatives grateful by his death. One of them, Mr. Johnstone, has his residence close at hand, where he has built a handsome range of stables, and prides himself on being the owner of Charles the 12th. This gentleman who now enacts the squire and the sportsman, had been educated for the profession of a surgeon, and was for some time an assistant in the navy. He dined with us at Jardine Hall yesterday, and was pleasing both in his appearance and manners. Lochmaben is a large sheet of water, for nothing so remarkable, as for containing an abundance of the Vendace; and for being the locality of Bruce’s Castle, which stands on a peninsula that juts out on one side of the lake. This Castle has been a place of great strength and noble architecture; to judge from its crumbling remains, which are now surrounded by many noble ash trees. I brought away with me a memorial or two from the walls of a place which is said to have been the favorite residence of Robert the Bruce.— (Chambers’ “Picture of Scotland,” p. 97.) Chambers here confounds Lochmaben Castle with Bruce’s Castle; the latter is the fortress erected by Bruce, the former the old castle which supplied the materials. We botanized an hour or so by the lake, and here I gathered for the first time, in a growing state, Typha angustifolia, Bidens tripartita. et cernua, Sison verticillatum. We also gathered here Cicuta virosa, Radiola millegrana, and Scutellaria galericulata. We walked afterwards to Lochmaben Castle, which is nigh at hand; and the slight remains of which are covered up with a green sward, on which sheep were quietly grazing. We must come to this at last, as well as baronial castles. The view from the Castle’s mound was extensive and fine, but the details of it have already faded from my memory, probably because it was too extensive and indistinct. All I can remember is the lake at its base, and above, the Burgh of Lochmaben, a lake not half the size of the former, but plenished like it with the celebrated Vendace. We were now again joined by the party in the carriage, and drove some miles on a road that carried us homewards; when Sir William, Mr. Macdonald of Rammerscales, and myself alighted for a walk across some extensive muirs that form part of Sir William’s property. It was in this walk that I gathered Ornithopus perpusillus for the first time; and my pleasure was increased manifold, when shortly afterwards I saw growing in its sphagnous bog, the Andromeda polifolia: less heightened certainly by the intrinsic beauty and delicacy of its drooping blossoms, fair though these be, than by the memory of the poetical and beautiful description Linnaeus has given of this daughter of Cepheus, and which now came strong upon me. Oh! when shall we have a flora of Britain embued with the spirit — the love of that master mind! A flora, not on the model of the “FLORA JAPPONICA,” but, conceived in its spirit, and executed with its taste and talent, would spread the study of botany far and wide amongst us, and would in itself be a society for the diffusion of entertaining knowledge. And so musing we left our fair flower, and hastened onwards to inspect the Spedlings, the ancient fasthold of the Jardines of Applegirth. This is a very interesting Tower, and entire so far as the outward walls are concerned; for the roof has fallen in, and many of the interior walls are now decayed. The dining room has been a fine room, with a noble fireplace, ornamented with a large marble chimney piece; the room is arched like an oven, and in the recesses through which the light comes, are stone seats for guests. There has been no lack of accommodation for small and retired parties to consult together, even in the common hall., We were shown the entrance to the dungeon, and had again the story of the ghost and the bible. Ascending to the top I plucked a few leaves of ivy, that was doing its best to ornament this deserted residence; and deeply did I sympathise with the owner of it, that it should have been left thus vacant, and exposed to destruction; when it might have been repaired and restored and made habitable, for the sum that was expended in building the modern house, that stands on an inferior site on the opposite side of the Annan. There must have been some great defect of heart — some sad lack of love of ancestral deeds, a no-love of fatherland; that he who first left this place of family pride, should have seen no virtue in its restoration and preservation. I deem him to have wronged the present talented baronet and his descendants for ever. And now we waded the Annan, and so home to dinner; all mourning over the Spedlings. In the evening, we were shown the famous ghost-laying bible, and a very beautiful volume it is, kept in a box formed of a rafter of the Tower. It is in its original binding repaired; and is printed in a beautiful old English letter. Looked over also some proofs of a volume preparing for the Ray Society, and am not pleased with the same. Mr. Macdonald, who translates a considerable portion of the volume, is a country gentleman of property, who lives about six miles from Jardine Hall, in a house famous for the difficulty of access to it; so that HDT WHAT? INDEX
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visitors often leave their carriages at the base of the hill and ascend on foot. It is not less dangerous to descend this avenue, as witnesses this true story. Mr. Macdonald is the nephew of the late proprietor, and driving his uncle down the road in question, the gig was overturned, the uncle was killed; and Mr. Macdonald found himself the Laird of Rammerscales several years anterior to the laws and ordinations of Nature!
September 12, Thursday: John Thoreau borrowed $500.oo from Augustus Tuttle to purchase materials for the construction of the “Texas” House, a mortgage on the home being offered as security. John Thoreau, Cynthia Dunbar Thoreau, Helen Louisa Thoreau and Henry Thoreau were present as the mortgage was signed, sealed, and delivered. Tuttle would be repaid in September 1855.3
Henry himself dug and stoned the cellar of this new family home. The Thoreaus would live in this “Texas House, to August 29th, 1850.”
“Is a house but a gall on the face of the earth, a nidus which some insect has provided for its young?” –JOURNAL May 1, 1857
Henry’s experience, helping his father build the new family home, the house they referred to as the “Texas” house because it was so far out on the grassy plains beyond the new railroad tracks south-west of the Milldam, would help him in his solitary carpentry at Walden Pond. And, something Thoreau scholars seem never to have considered, although they well know that Henry and Edward Hoar had recently, negligently burned down nearly 300 acres of the woods north of Concord at great cost to some of the town’s citizens: Thoreau may have had a supplemental reason for getting out of the family home. The loss he had helped cause was on the order of $2,000.00, which at that time was approximately the value of two really fine new houses facing Concord common. And the Hoar family seems to have made a cash 3. This mortgage was placed on record on September 14, 1844 and recorded as discharged on February 11, 1856. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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payment to the financially injured parties –the brothers Cyrus Hubbard and Darius Hubbard, and A.H. Wheeler– while we know that the Thoreaus instead elected to conspicuously, promptly, and locally spend their surplus money by embarking on the construction of this new home. The Texas house cost the family $25.00 (or $100??) for the lot, $475.00 for construction materials, and $600.00 for labor. This was being thrown in Henry’s face in the streets! We know there were arson fires, we know there were grudge fires, we know that everything was not sweetness and light in Concord in the first half of the 19th Century. Could one supplemental reason for Henry’s stay on Walden Pond have been, that he needed to reduce his family’s fears that their new house might go up in flames, that if something had to go up in a grudge fire, it would be something that they could do without such as a shanty on a lake? Anybody who knows anything about living in small towns knows that the Thoreau family’s action must have been like touching a recent skin burn, and that so long as Thoreau was under the roof of the newly built, reasonably isolated Thoreau family home on the outskirts of Concord, that new house was in danger of going up in flames any snowy winter or wet spring when the townspeople could be sure the fire would not spread. We can imagine that, if such a situation occurred in our own lives, today, we would be greatly concerned at the attitude of the people we had injured – who considered that we were living high instead of meeting our obligations. And at our present level of historical research into life in Concord in the early 19th Century, we haven’t been able to clear this up. Perhaps the Concord newspapers and other dated public records have preserved some clue, that will help us clear this up. For instance, what sort of people were these woods owners, the Hubbard brothers and A.H. Wheeler? THOREAU RESIDENCES Dr. Alexander Keith Johnston’s visit to Jardine Hall continued: SCOTLAND Thursday, Sept. 12th. A long drive to-day. Starting immediately after breakfast, we took the road to Dumfries; which for some miles was very uninteresting, and would have been more so, had I not had Sir William to tell me the names and history of the more prominent objects and hills in our view. These I have now almost forgotten. The first and better half of our road was very much of a continued ascent, until we reached a poor village, with a name so foreign to my ears, that I could not retain it in my memory. There is a considerable seminary, or “Classical and Commercial Academy” in it, but we saw none of the scholars or boarders. From the hill above this village, there opened upon us a fine view, which reminded me of Milfield Plain; but the latter had a decided superiority in all respects. The plain below was a large basin encircled with hills, traversed by the little river Lochar on the nearest side, and occupied by the town of Dumfries to the south-west. Lochar Moss lies in the centre, an enormous peat bog of about 10 miles in length, and 3 in breadth; and our road cuts it into two unequal halves. This road is remarkable for its origin: a stranger, a great number of years ago, sold some goods to certain merchants at Dumfries on credit; he disappeared, and neither he nor his heirs ever claimed the money; the merchants in expectation of the demand, very honestly put out the sum to interest; and after a lapse of more than 40 years, the town of Dumfries obtained a gift of it, and applied the same towards making this useful road. We presume the good folks of Dumfries had concluded that the stranger had laired himself in this bog, and sunk in one of its pits, which served him for an untombstoned grave, a thing they of Dumfries seem to have in fear. Lochar Moss supplies the good people of Dumfries with an abundance of peat, which is the fuel with the commonality all over this district, and there were workers of it scattered throughout the moss. There is a certain interest about these men, who appeared to be of the lowest class in general. No noise attends their monotonous labour, the spade cuts without grating, the clod is thrown aside without evoking a sound, there is no converse, each toils by himself, without giving or receiving another’s orders or directions; silence reigns around, and imparts to the labour a peculiar, but rather disagreeable, interest; for this outward solemnity of nature tells not favorably on the minds of men of the low degree of cultivation these have. Solitude is not for them. Dumfries is a very fine town. We walked through its broad, clean, busy street with pleasure, admired its shops, its bridges, and its magnificent asylum for the insane, at a little distance on a. wooded bank above the Nith; drove through the pretty suburb of Maxwelltown, and following the course of the Nith, took a seaward direction. The road was greatly improved in interest; the land and the style of farming good. We were not long in arriving at New Abbey, where we rested an hour, in order to examine its beautiful remains. Within its walls there lie the bodies of many Maxwells, the prevalent families in this neighborhood; and as the head of them is a Roman Catholic, there appear to be many of that religion hereabouts. Near the Abbey there is a Chapel and manse for the priest and his charge. Leaving the Abbey, we had a pleasant walk through the churchyard; around HDT WHAT? INDEX
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the old garden, with its fern-clad wall; and up the road a little, where it is lined with a double row of limes, that meet overhead and form an avenue, where monks may have mused, or conned their sermons, in days of yore. There is a monument in the Abbey, erected to the memory of two young gentlemen — brothers,— who were drowned together hard by; and I now feel sorry that I did not take a copy of the inscription on their tombstone. I gathered some memorials of the place from its damp walls, which the ivy strives in vain to decorate. It is trite to make contrasts, for, in this world everything must suffer change and decay; nor doth it seem of use to revive a picture of the Celebration of High Mass, with all the gorgeous pageantry, in an Abbey that now shelters a herd of cows from the inclemency of the weather. What may be the thoughts of the spirit of the Lady Foundress, I know not! How vain it is to attempt to immortalize our affections, which are, and must be, part of our perishable organization! The Abbey was founded by Devorgilla, daughter of Alan, Lord of Galloway, and wife of John Baliol, Lord of Castle Bernard, who died and was buried here; his lady embalmed his heart and placed it in a case of ivory bound with silver, near the high altar; on which account the Abbey is often called Sweet Heart, and Suavi-cordium.4 Again we are on the road, and attention is kept awake by the novelty of every scene and object we pass. But the first place we note is the neat and pretty hamlet of Kirkbean; whose ornate character tells as plainly as a guide could, that a rich proprietor’s residence is at hand; and a triumphal arch erected across the road proclaimed to us that this proprietor, Mr. Oswald, MP., for Ayrshire, had brought to the favorite residence his lady, the widow of the late Sir James Johnstone of Westerhall, to whom he had been married about three weeks ago. And next we admire a small and humble cottage, covered in front with the vine and fig tree, which appeared to be in a flourishing condition; and I observe that all hereabouts, and afterwards on our route, the brambles abound to a degree greatly beyond what they do on the Eastern Borders, and are loaded with fruit. The species too are not the same as they are with us. The prospect improves as we drive on, and we often stop to admire it; the Solway and its broad sands, the Westmoreland and Cumberland hills, the opposite coast with its indistinctly seen villages, the hills and woods of Galloway. Many interesting localities were pointed out by Sir William which served the purpose of raising and satisfying a curiosity that died away on the spot. We nighed the shore of the Solway; the road sides rough with brambles, and rich in many other plants that interest an eastern botanist. Sedum telephium, almost unknown on the eastern side of the island, was not uncommon here, truly wild and luxuriant. But it was as interesting to notice the different habit which some plants, common to the two districts, here assumed; in general they were more luxuriant. The banks too, where steep and elevated, were clothed to the very base with a very rash vegetation of numerous plants, and with trees and shrubs. A rock called “Lot’s Wife,” at the foot of a rocky deep ravine, was a tempting object, but time could not be spared for a descent upon it; it was rich in many a flower, and at an earlier season must have been gay and joyful with their various blossoms. We halt at Douglas Hall, a hamlet of poor cottages, where it was difficult to find accommodation for the horses. And then we had a nice stroll, first over some links, where I gathered Thalictrum flavum, which is a rare plant in Scotland, and Erythraea linarifolia. Ruppia maritima was plentiful in some pools of brackish water. We then entered on the Solway sands, which spread far and wide, around and before; my head was full of Sir Walter Scott and his vivid descriptions of them. This extent of sands has a grandeur and solemn influence, which is greater than one could imagine mere extent of a fiat surface could give; but you feel the scene, and that feeling would be even oppressive — fearful perhaps — were one alone to traverse their weary and watery level. After walking a short way over this fiat surface, we reached a coast bounded by a rocky precipitous bank of great height and rugged beauty. The rocks were hard and sharp as flint, of a reddish color, broken into acute angles and masses, and caverned with many caves that lead sometimes far inwards. Often an enormous mass of rock had fallen down and concealed the front of these dark recesses; and more than one might have been the type of the cave that sheltered Dick Hatterig and his ruffian smugglers. As this fine and bold piece of coast was wooded too to the very ledge, there were other places whence Kennedy might have been precipitated;— indeed the scenery seemed to be exact to that described by Sir Walter Scott, in his “Guy Mannering” It is of these very rocks that Chambers says:— “It has been supposed, with no inconsiderable degree of probability, that they furnished materials for the scenery of Ellangowan.”— I enjoyed this scenery greatly, and it was rich also in a botanical view. First in interest, there was the Samphire, growing in places whence to have gathered it would be indeed a “dreadful trade.” — “Half-way down hangs one that gathers Samphire,— dreadful trade!” Sir William told me, that within his memory a man living at Douglas Hall, was wont thus annually to collect Samphire from these rocks. I succeeded in reaching one tuft, which supplied me 4.[“She feundit intil Galoway Of Cistertians order an Abby, Dulce Cor she gart thame all That is Sweet Heart the Abby call, But now the men of Galloway Call that Steid New-Abby.” WYNTOWN. It is named by Lesly “Monasterium novum, seu Sauvi-cordium.” —DE ORIGINE, &c., SCOTORUM, p. 9.] HDT WHAT? INDEX
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with specimens as memorials of the Colvend rocks; which, I ween, are somewhat grander than those of Dover, and not less immortal in man’s memory were they; in fact, the objects the great Northern Novelist had in his eye, when he drew the coast scenery of “Guy Mannering.” The Pyrethrum maritimum grew here abundantly, also in inaccessible spots; but it was truly ornamental, as its large white flowers showed bravely with the dark rock behind, The rock was studded everywhere with these and other sweet flowers. The Arenaria marina, Silene maritima, Statice armeria, Sedum telephium, Cochlearia officinalis, Asplenium marinum, commingled themselves on the rugged front, with wiry grasses, the Ivy, the Holly, the Whin, and several fine arching briars and roses; while on more exposed abutments, several yellow and green lichens found space to spread their circular patches. Sir William pointed out one or two specimens of the Yew, which would seem to be indigenous here. Left this scene with reluctance, and ascending the bank, we returned to Douglas Hall by a high road, that afforded extensive views of the Solway and the coast. I know not in what direction we were now driven; but the road was tortuous and interesting, and fringed on each side with numberless briars, the species different from those of Berwickshire, and more productive of fruit. The hills around us were granite, and the country was very unequal and rocky; so that Galloway must be as ticklish a place as Galway, for the gentlemen who love to follow the hounds fair; indeed we were told that fox hunting was here an unknown sport, and the proprietors give 10s 6d. for every fox that any countryman may destroy, by fair means or foul. There were many valleys stretching up and between these rough hills, that, as a botanist, I yearned to explore; but, it was onwards we must go, contented with the glances of fields which it seemed very certain I would never again re-visit. Oats and barley appeared to be the only corns cultivated, and the fields were redolent of annual weeds. Peat mosses were numerous, and in each of them a solitary individual worked away in cheerless silence. After a long stage in which we had passed very few houses, and not even an onstead, we came to Dalbeattie, a nice looking village that looks as if it had been set down in this thinly peopled district by some mistake, and one wonders what the inhabitants of it can find to do. Yet it has every symptom of comfort about it, and the stone houses are all covered with blue slates, and white washed. There is a good Inn in the village, and a mail coach passes daily through it. A few minutes drive now brought us to Munches, and to the end of our day’s travels.
September 13, Friday: Waldo Emerson’s biographers have uniformly concluded that early in August of this year, he had committed himself to the cause of the abolition of human slavery. An interesting test of such a nice hypothesis occurred on this day. Friend John Greenleaf Whittier had read Waldo’s “EMANCIPATION IN THE BRITISH WEST INDIES” address and, supposing the author to have become like himself committed to the cause of abolition (“That thou canst sympathize with us in the great idea which underlies our machinery of conventions & organizations, I have little doubt after reading thy Address”), suggested that Emerson dash off a letter in support of Charles Torrey. Emerson’s reply was that he was simply too busy to get that involved: “Since you are disposed to give so friendly a hearing to opinions of mine, I am almost ready to promise you as soon as I am free of this present coil of writing, my thought on the best way of befriending the slave & ending slavery. We will see.” This, from someone who supposedly had committed himself to the cause of the abolition of human slavery? — let’s get serious! Emerson would not even include his address about HDT WHAT? INDEX
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emancipation in the new volume ESSAYS: SECOND SERIES, which he would be publishing on October 19th! –It wasn’t that he was too busy to blow his own horn; this man was not convinced.
Why was Waldo in fact not committed to the abolition of human slavery? We find out in a letter he would send off to his buddy the stone racist Thomas Carlyle in Britain on December 31, 1844. In this letter Emerson would denounce his emancipation speech in no uncertain terms: “though I sometimes accept a popular call, & preach on Temperance or the Abolition of slavery, as lately on the First of August, I am sure to feel before I have done with it, what an intrusion it is into another sphere & so much loss of virtue in my own.” –In other words, Emerson would confirm to Carlyle that he had been merely pandering to an audience.
Dr. Alexander Keith Johnston’s visit to Jardine Hall continued: SCOTLAND Friday, Sept. 13th. Munches is the residence of Mr. Maxwell, a young gentleman married only a few months since, to the eldest daughter of Sir William Jardine. The house has nothing notable in it, but the grounds are beautiful, and in the neat flower garden we found a great display of fine flowers, groups of which were likewise tastefully planted about the house. I enjoyed a morning stroll in this pretty garden, and over the grounds very much; and the pleasure was heightened by the company of Mr. Maxwell, who hourly improved upon us. He is really a very excellent and amiable person, very fond of farming, and anxious to adopt modern improvements, which from a deficiency of chemical knowledge, he has a difficulty of explaining or comprehending. I never saw such capital specimens of the Scotch Fir as grow here, and the Beeches too are superlative; all Mr. Maxwell’s woods were indeed thriving. The hills which bound the grounds are clothed with young wood; and as they are granitic, very pretty, and much broken up into scaurs and ravines, they presented a very tempting field to a botanist, which we must leave others to investigate. From the hills about us large quantities of granite are quarried and exported to Liverpool and other places. We were told that some had been sent even to America. Yesterday we had to dinner, and this morning to breakfast, a dish of Spirlings or Smelts; the first occasion on which I had eaten this small but delicate fish. It is taken in abundance in the Urr, a small river, or rather muddy canal, which bounds the grounds of Munches, and up which the tide runs with considerable velocity. The water is turbid and drumlie with a fine mud, that makes a smooth bottom to the water. On its banks the Scirpus maritimus grows in profusion; but to remind me of Munches, I preferred gathering a specimen of the common Polypody from Craig-Turrock, a picturesque rocky mound in front of the house, and very prettily ornamented with various shrubs and flowers. About mid-day left Munches and again passed through Dalbeattie; when we diverged into a new road, which took us straight to Dumfries. The drive was at first not very interesting, and we had few brambles on the road side. After several miles we entered the pass of the Long-wood; a pass between the hills, which gives one a lively idea of the difficulties an army must encounter, in forcing a passage through such a road, defended by troops on the banks on each side, and on the turns in front and behind. The passage is fine and interesting, and the descent very steep on the Dumfries side. Well, we are once more in the beautiful town of Dumfries, and we take a stroll down its quay; and after satisfying our admiration of the views up and down the Nith, we visited the churchyard, remarkable for the great number of its expensive tombstones, engraved with epitaphs of all sorts and sizes. Some of the stones possess considerable interest; such as those which commemorate the deaths of the Scotch Martyrs, and the benefits which the town had derived from the services of a Provost of the time of King James the 6th. But the principal object of interest in the churchyard is the mausoleum of Burns, where his mortal remains lie; and generations yet unborn will visit the spot, led thither by the same feelings that led us,— admiration and gratitude, and love, and pride, and mournful sympathy. I resolve here to re-peruse his everlasting works, and I must some day fulfil my vow. Our curiosity satisfied, we next went to see the house where he lived the latter years of his life, and in which he died. I like the remarks of Chambers on visiting this mausoleum (“Picture of Scotland,” p. 104); and am well pleased to have seen it. Guide books now a days make a traveller’s Journal very short; and so without mention of what other things we saw there, we leave the town and return to Jardine Hall by the same road which we travelled yesterday. And our long journey made us enjoy with zest our dinner, to which we had the Vendace; and an epicure may esteem the HDT WHAT? INDEX
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man fortunate, who could thus have the good fortune to eat, two days in succession, fishes he had not tasted before. The Vendace is a very delicate fish.5
September 14, Saturday: The deed to the new Thoreau house lot, and the Augustus Tuttle mortgage, were filed with Concord Justice of the Peace Nathan Brooks. THOREAU RESIDENCES
Dr. Alexander Keith Johnston’s visit to Jardine Hall continued: SCOTLAND Saturday, Sept. 14th. The rain fell incessantly, and so heavily, that we were confined to the house; and found not an hour of the day in which it was possible to have a stroll. So we occupied ourselves in examining the library; which contains some fine and interesting works. Perhaps none of them interested me so much, as some original letters of Wilson, the American ornithologist, and copies of the only two engravings he ever executed. Sir William Jardine is a sincere and hearty admirer of this wonderful man and naturalist, and there is something in common between them. Sir William is a man of talent, of quick and original observation, and of considerable acquirements; but be wants decision, and has had a defective education. Still, there are few naturalists who are equal to him in mental character, and who study their science with the same high views; which his limited command of language does not allow him to do justice to, or develop in a manner that takes with the public. I like my friend much, and have every reason to be pleased with my visit to him. After the Library we examined the Museum, and his various collections. Perhaps the things that most took my fancy, were two glass beads of the size of marbles, which the common people everywhere call Adder’s Eggs; and which antiquarians seem puzzled to say what they were. That they are of Roman manufacture is undoubted; but for what purpose were they made? The specimens in Sir William’s cabinet were found in a peat moss on his estate; and in the same moss there were found a small brass kettle and pot, which are also in his possession. Pennant delineates a pot exactly similar to the one we were examining. Upon the whole, this was an interesting day; and a pleasing variety to those we had of wandering “here awa, there awa.”
September 15-30: Frederick Douglass lectured in New Hampshire and Maine.
Dr. Alexander Keith Johnston’s visit to Jardine Hall concluded. SCOTLAND THOMSON’S “THE SEASONS”
Since on this Sunday Henry Thoreau made a comment about the above seasons poem by James Thomson, we should preface his journal entry for this day with some material from his undated 1842-1844 journal, material that also had to do with his reading of this poem:
Undated extract from the 1842-1844 period: Thompson [sic] was a true lover of nature — and seems to have needed only a deeper human experience, to have taken a more vigorous and lofty flight. He is deservedly popular and has found a place on many shelves and in many cottages. There are great merits in the Seasons, — and the Almanack In Autumn “attemper’d suns arise” *** —; while broad, and brown, below, “extensive harvests hang the heavy head. Rich, silent, deep, they stand;—”
5. Sir William Jardine’s account of this fish may be found, along with a figure, in the Edinburgh Journal of Nat. and Geog. Science, vol. iii., pp 1-5. HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE
—— The moon in autumn , her spotted disk, Where mountains rise, umbrageous vales descend. —— , gives us his blaze again, void of its flame, and sheds a softer day. Now through the passing cloud she seems to stoop, Now up the pure cerulean rides sublime. —— The whole air whitens with a boundless tide Of silver radiance, trembling round the world.
Sunday, Sept. 15th. The rain continued to fall without interruption; and the Annan had risen higher than it had done for several years back. Lessening in severity however, we ventured to the Parish Church at Applegirth; which is distant rather more than two miles from Sir William’s residence. The Reverend Dr. Dunbar is a clergyman much above the average of parish ministers in appearance, manners, and talents; and his sermon was composed with care, and delivered with chaste propriety. It was chiefly doctrinal, after the fashion of Presbyterians; and this seemed to me an error, considering that the class to whom it was preached were principally agricultural labourers. From the Manse garden we had an extensive view of the Annan, which had now risen above its banks, and overflowed all the adjacent haughs. Corn fields were flooded, and here and there people were busy removing the crop from amongst the water; while in other places carts were standing axle- tree deep in the water, arrested while the work of removal had been going on. The scene reminded me strongly of a similar one described by Thomson in his “Autumn.” —
“And still The deluge deepens; till the fields around Lie sunk and flatted in the sordid wave; Sudden the ditches swell; the meadows swim. Red from the hills, innumerable streams Tumultuous roar; and high above its banks The river lift, before whose rushing tide, Herds, flocks, and harvests, cottages and swains Roll mingled down.”
The poet has very probably drawn his picture from scenes which he must have seen when a youth in his native district, exaggerating the details a little after his own way. In the churchyard at Applegirth, there grows a very fine and very large ash tree; from which in the good old times, the Branks were suspended, ready to be used to restore the quietness of the household; when the good wife’s tongue had wagged too freely, and railed too loudly, in the judgment of the Kirk Session. Now wives speak in a softer key, or Kirk Sessions are more tolerant; for the Branks have, from long disuse, become barked over and buried in the tree. The storm having ceased, and the mist cleared away, we left Jardine Hall at 5 o’clock in the afternoon; not without a feeling of regret; and very grateful for the kind attentions we had received from Sir William and Lady Jardine, and their dear family. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1845
Publication of the initial volume of Sir William Jardine’s THE NATURALISTS’ LIBRARY, that would by 1860 extend to 40 volumes. HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE
1848
Sir William Jardine commenced CONTRIBUTIONS TO ORNITHOLOGY, which he would continue until 1853. SCOTLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE
1851
Numerous footsteps of extinct reptilian animals had been observed in Permian sandstone at the Corncockle Muir Quarry of Annandale, which was quite near to Jardine Hall. During this year, publication of Sir William Jardine’s ICHTHYOLOGY OF ANNANDALE. SCOTLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE
1853
Hugh E. Strickland, Sir William Jardine’s son-in-law, died. At this point Sir William discontinued his work on CONTRIBUTIONS TO ORNITHOLOGY. SCOTLAND HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE
1854
April 3, Monday: John Brown wrote from Akron, Ohio to John Brown, Jr. Dear Son John, We received your letter of the 24th March two or three days since, and one from Henry, dated 25th March, about the same time. They had got on well so far, but had to go by stage the balance of the way. Father got home well, and was with us over night Friday last. We have all been middling well of late, but very busy, having had the care of the whole concern at Mr. Perkins’s place until Friday night. I had a most comfortable time settling last year’s business, and dividing with Mr. Perkins, and have to say of his dealing with me that he has shown himself to be every inch a gentleman. I bring to my new home five of the red cows and ten calves; he to have $100 out of my share of the last year’s wool, to make us even on last year’s business; after dividing all crops, he paying me in hand $28.55, balance due me on all except four of the five cows. I am going now to work with a cheap team of two yoke oxen, on which I am indebted, till I can sell my wool, $89; $46 I have paid towards them. I would like to have all my children settle within a few miles of each other and of me, but I cannot take the responsibility of advising you to make any forced move to change your location. Thousands have to regret that they did not let middling “well alone.” I should think you ought to get for your place another $125; and I think you may, if you are not too anxious. That would buy you considerable of a farm in Essex or elsewhere, and we may get the Homestead Law passed yet. It has been a question with me whether you would not do better to hire all your team work done than to have your little place overstocked possibly, after some trouble about buying them, paying taxes, insurance, and some expense for implements to use them with. If you get a little overstocked, everything will seem to do poorly. Frederick is very much better, but both he and Owen have been having the ague lately. They leave the Hill farm soon. I do not at this moment know of a good opening for you this way. One thing I do not fear to advise and even urge; and that is the habitual “fear of the Lord, which is the beginning of wisdom.” Commending you all to his mercy, I remain Your affectionate father, John Brown.
In the afternoon, Henry Thoreau went to the Cliffs by boat.
April 3. Saw from window with glass seven ducks on meadow-water, — only one or two conspicuously white, — these, black heads, white throats and breasts and along sides, — the rest of the ducks, brownish, probably young males and females. Probably the golden-eye. Jardine says it is rare to see more than HDT WHAT? INDEX
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one full-plumaged male in a flock. P.M. — To Cliffs by boat. Did I see crow blackbirds with the red-wings [Red-winged Blackbird Agelaius phoeniceus] and hear their harsher chattering? The water has gone down so much that I have to steer carefully to avoid the thick hummocks loft here and there on the meadow by the ice. I see the deep holes they were taken out of. A muskrat has just built a small cabin, — apparently a bushel of mouthfuls on one. No clams up yet. I see a very little snow ice still, at a distance on the north sides of hills and walls. The wind is southeasterly. This is methinks the first hazy day, though not so warm as the 17th of Mardi. The aspect of the woods reminds me of landscapes, and the sough of the wind in the pines sounds warmer, whispering of summer. I think I may say that Flint’s broke up entirely on the first wet (lay after the cold spell, — i.e. the 31st of March, — though I have not been there lately. Fair Haven will last some days yet. HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE
1855
The initial volume of Sir William Jardine’s ORNITHOLOGICAL SYNONYMS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE
September 29, Saturday: Henry Thoreau was sent, by Ticknor & Co. in Boston, a royalty payment for the sale of 344 copies of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS in the amount of $51.60 along with an expression of corporate condolences:
Boston, Sept. 29, 1855 H. D. Thoreau In a/c with W.D. Ticknor & Co Walden— On hand last settlement 600 Cops. Sold Since last a/c 344 remaining on hand—256 Cops Sales 344 Cops @ 15¢ is $51.60
Dear Sir, We regret, for your sake as well as ours, that a larger number of Walden has not been sold. 60 We enclose our check for Fifty One /100 Dollars for sales to date.
Ever Respy W. D. Ticknor & Co. Henry D. Thoreau Esq Concord Mass.
Men who regretted for Thoreau’s sake as well as their own that a larger quantity of WALDENs has not been sold.
On this day Thoreau was studying James Ellsworth De Kay’s MOLLUSCA OF NEW YORK. MOLLUSCA, VOLUME V HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Soon he would be reading in George Bancroft’s A HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES, FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE AMERICAN CONTINENT,
BANCROFT’S US, I BANCROFT’S US, II BANCROFT’S US, III
in Richard Hildreth’s THE HISTORY OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, FROM THE DISCOVERY OF THE CONTINENT TO THE ORGANIZATION OF GOVERNMENT UNDER THE FEDERAL CONSTITUTION (New York: Harper & Brothers, Publishers, 82, Cliff Street, 1848-1852), HILDRETH’S US, I HILDRETH’S US, II HILDRETH’S US, III HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE
in the 4th volume of the Reverend Samuel Purchas’s HAKLUYTUS POSTHUMUS OR PURCHAS HIS PILGRIMES, CONTAYNING A HISTORY OF THE WORLD, IN SEA VOYAGES, & LANDE TRAVELS, BY ENGLISHMEN AND OTHERS, or perhaps A RELATION OR IOURNALL OF THE BEGINNING AND PROCEEDINGS OF THE ENGLIſH PLANTATION ſETTLED AT PLIMOTH, IN NEW-ENGLAND, BY CERTAINE ... (Imprinted at London for Henry Fetherstone at ye Signe of the Rose in Pauls Churchyard, 1625), or perhaps THE PRINCIPAL NAVIGATIONS, VOYAGES, TRAFFIQUES & DISCOVERIES OF THE ENGLISH NATION: MADE BY SEA OR OVERLAND TO THE REMOTE & FARTHEST DISTANT QUARTERS OF THE EARTH AT ANY TIME WITHIN THE COMPASSE OF THESE 1600 YEARS BY RICHARD HAKLUYT VOLUME FOUR (London: J.M. Dent & Co.; New York: E.P. Dutton & Co.) PURCHAS’S VOLUME IV
and in the 26th volume of Sir William Jardine’s edition THE NATURALIST’S LIBRARY, a volume originated in 1839 on whales and other mammals, AMPHIBIOUS CARNIVORA; INCLUDING THE WALRUS AND SEALS, AND THE HERBIVOROUS CETACEA, MERMAIDS, &C., VOL.VII BY ROBERT HAMILTON, WITH PORTRAIT AND 6 MEMOIR OF FRANÇOIS PÉRON (Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars; London: Henry G. Bohn, 1852 [that edition being electronically unavailable, I am forced to render for you the previous edition, of 1843]).
MAMMALIA. WHALES, ETC.
6. Some of this material on whales would find its way into CAPE COD. HDT WHAT? INDEX
SIR WILLIAM JARDINE SIR WILLIAM JARDINE
Additional cemetery land was consecrated in “Sleepy Hollow” adjoining Concord’s New Burial Ground, the Middlesex County Courthouse, the Concord Townhouse, and the grounds of the Agricultural Society.
Waldo Emerson dedicated the new garden cemetery as “the palm of Nature’s hand.” “Address at the Consecration of Sleepy Hollow Cemetery” ... They have thought that the taking possession of this field ought to be marked by a public meeting and religious rites: and they have requested me to say a few words which the serious and tender occasion inspires.... The life of a tree is a hundred and a thousand years; its decays ornamental; its repairs self-made: they grow when we sleep, they grew when we were unborn. Man is a moth among these longevities...... when these acorns, that are falling at our feet, are oaks HDT WHAT? INDEX
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overshadowing our children in a remote century, this mute green bank will be full of history.... Our use will not displace the old tenants. The well-beloved birds will not sing one song less, the high-holding woodpecker, the meadow-lark, the oriole, the robin, purple finch, bluebird, thrush and red-eyed warbler, the heron, the bittern will find out the hospitality and protection from the gun of this asylum, and will seek the waters of the meadow.... We shall bring hither the body of the dead, but how shall we catch the escaped soul?
[Also (Baker, Charles, EMERSON AMONG THE ECCENTRICS, Penguin Books, New York, 1996, pp. 397-398): “I have heard that when we pronounce the name of man, we pronounce the belief in Immortality.” “The real evidence is too subtle, or is higher than we can write down in propositions… All sound minds rest on a certain preliminary conviction, namely, that if it be best that conscious personal life shall continue, it will continue; if not best, then it will not.” “In this quiet valley, as in the palm of Nature’s hand, we shall sleep well when we have finished our day.”]
Thoreau had measured for the new artificial pond in the cemetery, termed “Cat Pond.”
John Shepard Keyes had been active in the creation of this cemetery. During this summer and fall almost alone and unaided I laid out the cemetery according to Clevelands plan, so far as was feasible, and with my own hands drove the stakes for the lots and saved as many trees as possible from cutting. Made all the arrangements for dedication and had a memorable address from Emerson a poem from Sanborn, an ode by Channing all delivered on a lovely September day in the glen by the lot I afterwards selected. This was followed by a sale of lots the choice for the first bringing $50. from Wm Monroe and realizing more than I expected some fifty lots sold, and the undertaking successful Thanks to me we have a ‘Sleepy Hollow’ cemetery I am quite content to take my long sleep in— and for my only epitaph “The Founder of This Cemetery” J.S. KEYES AUTOBIOGRAPHY HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Friend Daniel Ricketson had been scheduled to visit Concord again and spend time with Henry, but had canceled the visit when he learned that Ellery Channing had moved to Dorchester and would not be available in Concord. So Henry, not standing on dignity, went off to New Bedford:
Clear fine day, growing gradually cooler. Henry D. 1 Thoreau of Concord arrived about 1 /2 o’clock.
September 29: Go to Daniel Ricketson’s, New Bedford. At Natural History Library saw Dr. Cabot, who says that he has heard either the hermit, or else the olivaceous, thrush sing, — very like a wood thrush, but softer. Is sure that the hermit thrush sometimes breeds hereabouts. De Kay, in the New York Reports, thus describes the blackfish— [The quotation is somewhat abridged.]
“FAMILY DELPHINIDÆ. Genus Globicephalus. Lesson. The Social Whale. Globicephalus melas. Delphinus melas. Trail, Nicholson’s Journal. D. globiceps. Cuvier, Mem. Mus. Vol. 19. D. deductor. Scoresby, Arct. Regions. D. intermedius. Harlan. Phocena globiceps. Sampson, Am. Journal.”
“Length 15 to 20 feet;” “shining, bluish black above;” a narrow light-gray stripe beneath; “remarkable for its loud cries when excited.” “Black Whale-fish,” “Howling Whale,” “Social Whale,” and “Bottle-head.” Often confounded with the grampus. Not known why they are stranded. In 1822 one hundred stranded in one herd at Wellfleet. First described in a History of Greenland. In the Naturalists’ Library, Jardine, I find Globicephalus deductor or melas, “The Deductor or Ca’ing Whale.” First accurately described by Trail in 1809. Sixteen to twenty-four feet long. In 1799 two hundred ran ashore on one of the Shetland Isles. In the winter of 1809-10, one thousand one hundred and ten “approached the shore of Hvalfiord, Iceland, and were captured.” In 1812 were used as food by the poor of Bretagne. They visit the neighborhood of Nice in May and June. Got out at Tarkiln Hill or Head of the River Station, three miles this side of New Bedford. Recognized an old Dutch barn. R.’s sons, Arthur and Walton, were just returning from tautog fishing in Buzzard’s Bay, and I tasted one at supper, — singularly curved from snout to tail.7 THE SLEEPY HOLLOW CEMETERY — OLD GRAVES (Franklin Benjamin Sanborn) My arrival to reside in Concord was at the time when old customs were changing for new ones. The settlement of Waldo Emerson here in 1834, after his return from Europe, and his first acquaintance with Thomas Carlyle, had something to do with these changes, especially after his friends began to gather round him here — the Thoreaus, John and Henry, in 1836; Alcott in 1840; Hawthorne in 1842; Ellery Channing in 1843; Margaret Fuller from 1836 to 1845 (though she never resided but only visited in 7. [Refer to DANIEL RICKETSON AND HIS FRIENDS, page 337.] WALTON RICKETSON HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Concord); and the Ripley family in 1845, inheriting the Old Manse, and receiving there Mrs. Ripley’s brother, George Bradford, who had been with Hawthorne at Brook Farm, and at Plymouth with Marston Watson at his garden and nursery of “Hillside,” which Thoreau surveyed and mapped for the Watsons in 1854. Mrs. Marston Watson (Mary Russell, a sister of William and Thomas Russell, Boston lawyers) had also lived in the Emerson family before her marriage, and was “The Maiden in the East” to whom Thoreau inscribed an early poem. These friends and among the Concord residents, the Hoar, Whiting and Bartlett families, and Edmund Hosmer, a sturdy farmer, with his daughters and kindred, all made up a circle especially intimate with Emerson, Alcott and Thoreau, though by no means all agreeing with the social, religious and political reformers, to which class belonged Garrison, Phillips, Theodore Parker, the Brook Farm and Fruitlands residents, and many visitors from America and Europe. Among these soon appeared Henry James, Charles Newcomb, the May family, Frederick Douglass, and other fugitive slaves, whom Mrs. Brooks, the Thoreaus, and other anti-slavery households received and cherished — helping them on their way to freedom, when pursued, as they sometimes were. My school grew in numbers during its first term, and much more in its first full year, 1855-56, near the beginning of which, in September, 1855, I was called on to make my first public appearance as a citizen — not as a voter; for I still had a voting residence in New Hampshire, where my brother and I had aided in voting down the pro-slavery Democratic party, whose leader at the time was Hawthorne’s college friend, Gen. Pierce, then President of the United States. One evening, early in September, I was sitting in our Channing apartment with my sister, when Mr. Emerson called for an errand surprising to me. The Sleepy Hollow Cemetery had been purchased and was to be dedicated, and Emerson was to give the address. He was also on the Town Committee to arrange for the exercises at the grove, where the prayers, hymns and poems were read and sung; and it was in that capacity he called on me. He said, “I asked Mr. Channing for a poem on this occasion, and he has sent me a good poem, but they tell me it cannot be sung. Now will you not write for us verses that will go to some familiar tune?” He had seen some of my college verses, and others which were made to be sung, and had been sung, and he inferred from that, a capacity to do the same for Concord. I assented, and presently showed him these lines: Ode. Shine kindly forth, September sun, From heavens calm and clear, That no untimely cloud may run Before thy golden sphere, To vex our simple rites today With one prophetic tear. With steady voices let us raise The fitting psalm and prayer;— Remembered grief of other days Breathes softening in the air: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Who knows not Death — who mourns no loss,— He has with us no share. To holy sorrow, solemn joy, We consecrate the place Where soon shall sleep the maid and boy, The father and his race, The mother with her tender babe, The venerable face. These waving woods, these valleys low, Between the tufted knolls, Year after year shall dearer grow To many loving souls; And flowers be sweeter here than blow Elsewhere between the poles. For deathless Love and blessed Grief Shall guard these wooded aisles, When either Autumn casts the leaf, Or blushing Summer smiles, Or Winter whitens o’er the land, Or Spring the buds uncoils. The day proved to be that prayed for; these lines were sweetly sung to the tune of St. Martin’s; and in the choir I recognized the voices of some of my new friends. Mr. Emerson liked them, and printed them afterward in his “Parnassus,” as he did Channing’s poem, which as poetry was much better, and which also appears in “Parnassus,” and in the XIth volume of the Centenary edition of Emerson, as here: Sleepy Hollow. (W.E. Channing) No abbeys gloom, no dark cathedral stoops, No winding torches paint the midnight air; Here the green pine delights, the aspen droops Along the modest pathways, and those fair Pale asters of the season spread their plumes Around this field, fit garden for our tombs. And thou shalt pause to hear some funeral bell Slow stealing o’er thy heart in this calm place; Not with a throb of pain, a feverish knell, But in its kind and supplicating grace It says, “Go, Pilgrim, on thy march! be more Friend to the friendless than thou wast before:” Learn from the loved one’s rest, serenity! Tomorrow that soft bell for thee shall sound, And thou repose beneath the whispering tree, One tribute more to this submissive ground:— Prison thy soul from malice, bar out pride! Nor these pale flowers, nor this still field deride. Rather to those accents of Being turn, Where a ne’er-setting sun illumes the year Eternal: and the incessant watch-fires burn Of unspent holiness and goodness clear,— Forget man’s littleness, — deserve the best,— God’s mercy in thy thought and life confest! Seldom has a finer poem been read on such an occasion. My own verses were favorably received, and the late Judge Keyes, whose daughter Annie had become one of my pupils, said that I was now a citizen of Concord, and, like some French poet whom he named, HDT WHAT? INDEX
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as rewarded with a grave at Pere la Chaise, ought to have a burial lot granted me wherever I chose. Long afterward I bought my present lot, in which my poet-son is buried with a slab of marble from Athens above him, inscribed with a Greek line from a Roman tomb in Boetia, of the early Christian period. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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CAPE COD: In the summer and fall sometimes, hundreds of blackfish (the PEOPLE OF Social Whale, Globicephalus melas of De Kay; called also Black Whale- fish, Howling Whale, Bottle-head, &c.), fifteen feet or more in CAPE COD length, are driven ashore in a single school here. I witnessed such a scene in July, 1855. A carpenter who was working at the light-house arriving early in the morning remarked that he did not know but he had lost fifty dollars by coming to his work; for as he came along the Bay side he heard them driving a school of blackfish ashore, and he had debated with himself whether he should not go and join them and take his share, but had concluded to come to his work. After breakfast I came over to this place, about two miles distant, and near the beach met some of the fishermen returning from their chase. Looking up and down the shore, I could see about a mile south some large black masses on the sand, which I knew must be blackfish, and a man or two about them. As I walked along towards them I soon came to a huge carcass whose head was gone and whose blubber had been stripped off some weeks before; the tide was just beginning to move it, and the stench compelled me to go a long way round. When I came to Great Hollow I found a fisherman and some boys on the watch, and counted about thirty blackfish, just killed, with many lance wounds, and the water was more or less bloody around. They were partly on shore and partly in the water, held by a rope round their tails till the tide should leave them. A boat had been somewhat stove by the tail of one. They were a smooth shining black, like India-rubber, and had remarkably simple and lumpish forms for animated creatures, with a blunt round snout or head, whale-like, and simple stiff-looking flippers. The largest were about fifteen feet long, but one or two were only five feet long, and still without teeth. The fisherman slashed one with his jackknife, to show me how thick the blubber was, –about three inches; and as I passed my finger through the cut it was covered thick with oil. The blubber looked like pork, and this man said that when they were trying it the boys would sometimes come round with a piece of bread in one hand, and take a piece of blubber in the other to eat with it, preferring it to pork scraps. He also cut into the flesh beneath, which was firm and red like beef, and he said that for his part he preferred it when fresh to beef. It is stated that in 1812 blackfish were used as food by the poor of Bretagne. They were waiting for the tide to leave these fishes high and dry, that they might strip off the blubber and carry it to their try-works in their boats, where they try it on the beach. They get commonly a barrel of oil, worth fifteen or twenty dollars, to a fish. There were many lances and harpoons in the boats, — much slenderer instruments than I had expected. An old man came along the beach with a horse and wagon distributing the dinners of the fishermen, which their wives had put up in little pails and jugs, and which he had collected in the Pond Village, and for this service, I suppose, he received a share of the oil. If one could not tell his own pail, he took the first he came to.
ROBERT HAMILTON JAMES ELLSWORTH DE KAY HDT WHAT? INDEX
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As I stood there they raised the cry of “another school,” and we could see their black backs and their blowing about a mile northward, as they went leaping over the sea like horses. Some boats were already in pursuit there, driving them toward the beach. Other fishermen and boys running up began to jump into the boats and push them off from where I stood, and I might have gone too had I chosen. Soon there were twenty-five or thirty boats in pursuit, some large ones under sail, and others rowing with might and main, keeping outside of the school, those nearest to the fishes striking on the sides of their boats and blowing horns to drive them on to the beach. It was an exciting race. If they succeed in driving them ashore each boat takes one share, and then each man, but if they are compelled to strike them off shore each boat’s company take what they strike. I walked rapidly along the shore toward the north, while the fishermen were rowing still more swiftly to join their companions, and a little boy who walked by my side was congratulating himself that his father’s boat was beating another one. An old blind fisherman whom we met, inquired, “Where are they, I can’t see. Have they got them?” In the mean while the fishes had turned and were escaping northward toward Provincetown, only occasionally the back of one being seen. So the nearest crews were compelled to strike them, and we saw several boats soon made fast, each to its fish, which, four or five rods ahead was drawing it like a race-horse straight toward the beach, leaping half out of water blowing blood and water from its hole, and leaving a streak of foam behind. But they went ashore too far north for us, though we could see the fishermen leap out and lance them on the sand. It was just like pictures of whaling which I have seen, and a fisherman told me that it was nearly as dangerous. In his first trial he had been much excited, and in his haste had used a lance with its scabbard on, but nevertheless had thrust it quite through his fish. I learned that a few days before this one hundred and eighty blackfish had been driven ashore in one school at Eastham, a little farther south, and that the keeper of Billingsgate Point light went out one morning about the same time and cut his initials on the backs of a large school which had run ashore in the night, and sold his right to them to Provincetown for one thousand dollars, and probably Provincetown made as much more. Another fisherman told me that nineteen years ago three hundred and eighty were driven ashore in one school at Great Hollow. In the Naturalist’s Library, it is said that, in the winter of 1809-10, one thousand one hundred and ten “approached the shore of Hvalfiord, Iceland, and were captured.” De Kay says it is not known why they are stranded. But one fisherman declared to me that they ran ashore in pursuit of squid, and that they generally came on the coast about the last of July. About a week afterward, when I came to this shore, it was strewn as far as I could see with a glass, with the carcasses of blackfish stripped of their blubber and their heads cut off; the latter lying higher up. Walking on the beach was out of the question on account of the stench. Between Provincetown and Truro they lay in the very path of the stage. Yet no steps were taken to abate the nuisance, and men were catching lobsters as usual just off the shore. I was told that they did sometimes tow them out and sink them; yet I wondered where they got the stones to sink them with. Of course they might be made into guano, and Cape Cod is not so fertile that her inhabitants can afford to do without this manure, –to say nothing of the diseases they may produce. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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After my return home, wishing to learn what was known about the Blackfish, I had recourse to the reports of the zoölogical surveys of the State, and I found that Storer had rightfully omitted it in his Report on the Fishes, since it is not a fish; so I turned to Emmons’s Report of the Mammalia, but was surprised to find that the seals and whales were omitted by him, because he had had no opportunity to observe them. Considering how this State has risen and thriven by its fisheries, –that the legislature which authorized the Zoölogical Survey sat under the emblem of a codfish,– that Nantucket and New Bedford are within our limits, –that an early riser may find a thousand or fifteen hundred dollars’ worth of blackfish on the shore in a morning, –that the Pilgrims saw the Indians cutting up a blackfish on the shore at Eastham, and called a part of that shore “Grampus Bay,” from the number of blackfish they found there, before they got to Plymouth, –and that from that time to this these fishes have continued to enrich one or two counties almost annually, and that their decaying carcasses were now poisoning the air of one county for more than thirty miles, –I thought it remarkable that neither the popular nor scientific name was to be found in a report on our mammalia, – a catalogue of the productions of our land and water. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1858
Sir William Jardine’s The MEMOIRS OF HUGH EDWIN STRICKLAND, M.A. (except for a few contributions to the New Edinburgh Philosophical Journal, this would be his final publication). HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1860
Sir William Jardine was appointed “Principal Commissioner to Investigate the Salmon Fisheries of Great Britain, and the Causes of their Decay.”
Publication of the 40th and final volume of Sir William’s THE NATURALISTS’ LIBRARY, the initial volume of which had appeared in 1845, Robert Hamilton, Esq., M.D., F.R.S.E., M.W.S.’s THE NATURAL HISTORY OF BRITISH FISHES: VOL. 1 WITH MEMOIR OF RONDELET, VOL. 2 WITH MEMOIR OF BARON VON HUMBOLDT (Edinburgh: W.H. Lizars, 3, St. James’ Square; London: Henry G. Bohn, York Street, Covent Garden). EMINENT NATURALISTS HDT WHAT? INDEX
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1874
November 21, Saturday: Sir William Jardine died at the resort town of Sandown on the southeast coast of the Isle of Wight.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project Sir William Jardine HDT WHAT? INDEX
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COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others, such as extensive quotations and reproductions of images, this “read-only” computer file contains a great deal of special work product of Austin Meredith, copyright 2015. Access to these interim materials will eventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup some of the costs of preparation. My hypercontext button invention which, instead of creating a hypertext leap through hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems— allows for an utter alteration of the context within which one is experiencing a specific content already being viewed, is claimed as proprietary to Austin Meredith — and therefore freely available for use by all. Limited permission to copy such files, or any material from such files, must be obtained in advance in writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Please contact the project at
“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.” – Remark by character “Garin Stevens” in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST
Prepared: March 1, 2015 HDT WHAT? INDEX
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a request for information we merely push a button. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
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