FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
THE 3D CENSORSHIP OF THOREAU Not only was A YANKEE IN CANADA censored, not only was THE MAINE WOODS censored, but Thoreau’s JOURNAL was censored as well!
We are all familiar with the censorship in 1853 of A YANKEE IN CANADA by Thoreau’s friend George William Curtis, whose editorial correction of “very flagrant heresies” and “defiant Pantheism” led to withdrawal of the manuscript from Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. We are all familiar with the censorship in 1858 of THE MAINE W OODS by bigoted, timid, mean, cowardly James Russell Lowell (definitively no friend of anyone as “low rent” as Thoreau), whose suppression of the concluding observation “It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still” on behalf of The Atlantic Monthly led to Thoreau’s demanding from him an apology. There has been, however, a 3d instance of censorship, one that took place in 1887 of which we seem until now to have been unaware. Unlike these previous two censorships to which Thoreau had been able to react –and to which Thoreau did react– this is a censorship that occurred after his death against which he was therefore defenseless. When, in the Year of Our Lord 1887, Thoreau’s friend H.G.O. Blake went to publish extracts from Thoreau’s journal in the WINTER volume, he suppressed the final remark in Henry’s journal section about our worshipful reprocessing of DWM George Washington: “But we are not sorry he is dead.” This shattering final remark tied a knot in the tale. It is almost as if Thoreau was uttering more truth than his friend Blake considered that HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
the general American public could be able to bear! For what is it, to point out that in fact we are not sorry that General, then President, George Washington is dead? –It is to point out that our usage of these “founding father” figures has little to do with them as actual human beings, having instead to do with them in abstraction, as functioning cogs in a public process. While he was still alive this human being might begin to misbehave, and sadly embarrass us. Only when one of these actual human beings has been safely interred, do we dare thus to iconize him — reduce him to a functionality as a cultural artifact. Thus it comes about that –although of course we do not face this unsentimental fact– we’re not at all sorry he died.
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project M. Guizot HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1787
October 4, Thursday: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was born at Nîmes, France in a bourgeois Protestant family.
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
M. Guizot “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1794
April 8, Tuesday: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s father was executed at Nîmes, France during the Reign of Terror. Madame Guizot took her 7-year-old son to Geneva, where he would be educated. Although the mother was a Calvinist, she was sympathetic with the theories of Jean-Jacques Rousseau. She was a strong Liberal, and she even adopted the notion inculcated in EMILE that every man ought to learn a manual trade or craft. She had her son taught to be a carpenter, and he did in fact construct a table with his own hands, one which still exists. In the work which he would entitle MÉMOIRES POUR SERVIR À L’HISTOIRE DE MON TEMPS Guizot would omit the details of this early life.
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 M. Guizot HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1805
Nicolò Paganini was appointed by Napoléon’s sister Princess Elisa Bacciocchi as the court solo violinist at Lucca.
WALDEN: Near at hand, upon the topmost spray of a birch, sings PEOPLE OF the brown-thrasher –or red mavis, as some love to call him– all WALDEN the morning, glad of your society, that would find out another farmer’s field if yours were not here. While you are planting the seed, he cries, –“Drop it, drop it, –cover it up, cover it up, – pull it up, pull it up, pull it up.” But this was not corn, and so it was safe from such enemies as he. You may wonder what his rigmarole, his amateur Paganini performances on one string or on twenty, have to do with your planting, and yet prefer it to leached ashes or plaster. It was a cheap sort of top dressing in which I had entire faith.
NICOLÒ PAGANINI THE BEANFIELD HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
Between this year and 1814 a Kingdom of Italy would be created, embracing Lombardy, Venetia, South Tyrol, and Istria, with Milan as its capitol (Napoléon Bonaparte king, Eugene Beauharnais viceroy). Piedmont, Genoa, Parma, and Tuscany would be ceded to France.
Baron Joseph-Marie de Gérando accompanied Napoleon into Italy. At Paris, publication of the baron’s ELOGE DE DUMARSAIS, — DISCOURS QUI A REMPORTE LE PRIX PROPOSE PAR LA SECONDE CLASSE DE L’INSTITUT NATIONAL. He was selected to became a member of what later would become the Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-Lettres of the Institute of France, where there was an open position due to the death of the translator of RECHERCHES SUR LA NATURE ET LES CAUSES DE LA RICHESSE DES NATIONS D’ADAM SMITH, the marquis Germain Garnier.
At the age of 18, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot arrived in Paris and entered the family of M. Stapfer, formerly Swiss minister in France, to serve as tutor for his children. He soon began to write for a journal edited by Suard, the Publiciste, and was introduced to the literary society of Paris.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project M. Guizot HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1809
Sylvestre François Lacroix was elected professor at the École Polytechnique, filling the chair in mathematics vacated due to ill health by Professor Joseph-Louis Lagrange.
Coronation of Joseph Bonaparte in Madrid. In the war between France and Austria, Austria defeated Emperor Napoléon I. Arthur Wellesley, in command in Portugal, defeated the French at Oporto and Talavera and was created Duke of Wellington. His brother Marquis Wellesley was appointed Foreign Secretary. The Emperor of the French divorced his Empress Josephine.
During this First French Empire, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot prepared a collection of French synonyms.
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
October: At the age of 22, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot reviewed François-René de Chateaubriand’s MARTYRS, winning that author’s approbation and thanks. He continued to contribute extensively to the periodical press. At Suard’s he had made the acquaintance of Mlle. Pauline de Meulan, a contributor to Suard’s journal. When her contributions were interrupted by illness, they were immediately resumed and continued by an unknown hand, and it would be discovered that it was M. Guizot who was filling in for her.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project M. Guizot HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1811
Publication of François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand’s book about his 1806/1807 travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary, ITINÉRAIRE DE PARIS À JÉRUSALEM. Although the author was elected to the Académie française, because he was planning to use his acceptance speech as an opportunity to criticize the French Revolution, he would not be able to occupy a seat in the institution until the Bourbon Restoration.
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot published an essay on the fine arts.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
M. Guizot “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1812
Prussia agreed to allow French troops free passage in case of war with Russia. In June, Napoléon Bonaparte invaded Russia with a “Grand Armée of Twenty Nations” of 550,000, then returned in defeat in the winter with no more than 100,000 escaping Russia and only some 20,000 managing eventually to return to their homes in France.1
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot translated Edward Gibbon’s THE HISTORY OF THE DECLINE AND FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE, with additional notes. Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, grand-master of the university of France, selected him to take the chair of modern history at the Sorbonne. He got married with Mme. Pauline de Meulan.
1. Although it has been conventional to ascribe his defeat to an unexpectedly severe Russian winter, actually that winter was unexpectedly mild one. Some of the French fell of heat prostration and sunstroke during a persistent summer heat wave, some drowned during an attempt to ford a thawed river, and then many were carried away by a lice-borne infection. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
December 11, Friday: Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot delivered his initial lecture as Professor of Modern History at the Sorbonne (reprinted in his MEMOIRS). His patron Louis-Marcelin de Fontanes, grand- master of the university of France, had clued him in to all the conventions, and nevertheless the newly minted professor omitted in this lecture to make any of the usual obsequious remarks about the all-powerful Emperor Napoléon I of France.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
M. Guizot “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1814
Frederick Shoberl offered an English translation of François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand’s book about his 1806/1807 travels in Greece, Palestine, Egypt, and Barbary, ITINÉRAIRE DE PARIS À JÉRUSALEM. CHATEAUBRIAND TRAVELS
Hugues Felicité Robert de Lamennais denounced interference by secular (Bonapartist) authorities in the affairs of the Catholic Church, advocating protection of church authority in France by a firm separation of church and state.
Absent from Paris at the moment of the fall of Napoléon Bonaparte, Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was at once selected, on the recommendation of Royer-Collard, to serve the government of King Louis XVIII, in the capacity of secretary-general of the French ministry of the interior, under Abbé François-Xavier- Marc-Antoine de Montesquiou-Fézensac.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
M. Guizot “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1815
March 25, Saturday: Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot resigned as secretary-general of the ministry of the interior.
In Vienna, a treaty of alliance was signed among Britain, Austria, Prussia, and Russia against the international outlaw Napoléon Bonaparte. His standing on the Island of Elba was voided.
June 22, Thursday: At the demand of the French legislature, Napoléon Bonaparte again abdicated, he asserting this to be in favor of his toddling son Napoléon-François-Charles-Joseph Bonaparte. A 5-man Commission of Government took over with Joseph, comte Fouché, duc d’Otrante as acting Prime Minister (the allies would see to it, however, that Louis XVIII, at Ghent, be restored to his throne). Upon this 2d restoration, Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was appointed secretary-general of the ministry of justice under de Barbé- Marbois (he would resign with his chief in 1816).
July: Early in the month, as King Louis XVIII re-entered Paris after the defeat of Napoléon Bonaparte, the count of Chambord bowed to him and went “A hundred days have elapsed, sire, since the fatal moment when your Majesty was forced to quit your capital in the midst of tears.” The political trope “the first 100 days” was born. Napoleon abdicated in a fruitless attempt to get his little son, who at that point held the title “King of Rome,” made the ruler of France. Finally realizing that his situation was hopeless, he made a dash for the coast in an attempt to take ship for the USA. However, when he arrived in the port of Rochefort, Napoleon found the entrance to the bay being blockaded by the HMS Bellerophon, a veteran of the Battle of Trafalgar nicknamed “Billy Ruffian” — and a ship past which he knew he was not going to be able to slip.
After the Hundred Days, Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot returned to Ghent, where saw Louis XVIII, and in the name of the liberal party pointed out that a frank adoption of a liberal policy could alone secure the duration of the restored monarchy — advice which was ill-received by the king’s confidential advisers. This visit to Ghent would be used against him in later years because it made him seem unpatriotic. He would be referred to scornfully as “The Man of Ghent.” During this month, the grand news of the abdication, that this French pest and pestilence had finally been contained, was going out all over the world as fast as the winds would carry it, in as full detail as was available: HDT WHAT? INDEX
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M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1816
In Paris, city of lights, François Derosne used phosphorus to devise a friction match.
FIRE
When Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s superior Barbé-Marbois resigned, he also resigned from his post as secretary-general of the ministry of justice. HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1819
Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot and Mme. Pauline de Meulan Guizot produced a son. He was appointed general director of communes and departments in the ministry of the interior (he would lose this office during February of the following year, due to the fall of the government of prime minister Élie Decazes).
Creation of the review Conservateur littéraire, of the brothers Hugo.
Claude Bernard Petitot’s COLLECTION COMPLÈTE DES MÉMOIRES RELATIFS À L’HISTOIRE DE FRANCE, DEPUIS LE RÈGNE DE PHILIPPE-AUGUSTE, JUSQU’AU COMMENCEMENT DU DIX-SEPTIÈME SIÈCLE: AVEC DES NOTICES SUR CHAQUE AUTEUR, ET DES OBSERVATIONS SUR CHAQUE OUVRAGE (52 volumes, Foucault, 1819-1827).
Jean-Antoine Claude, comte Chaptal de Chanteloup’s DE L’INDUSTRIE FRANÇAISE.
Jean Charles Léonard de Sismondi’s NOUVEAUX PRINCIPES D’ÉCONOMIE POLITIQUE, OU DE LA RICHESSE DANS SES RAPPORTS AVEC LA POPULATION.
Jean-Pierre Abel-Rèmusat’s “Note sur quelques épithétes descriptives du Bouddha” appeared in the Journal des Savantes. His DESCRIPTION DU ROYAUME DE CAMBODGE PAR UN VOYAGEUR CHINOIS QUI A VISITÉ CETTE CONTRÉE À LA FIN DU XIII SIÈCLE, PRÉCÉDÉE D’UNE NOTICE CHRONOLOGIQUE SUR CE MÊME PAYS, EXTRAITE DES ANNALES DE LA CHINE (Imprimerie de J. Smith). HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1820
February 13, Sunday, night: On the street outside the Paris Opéra, in an attempt to extinguish the Bourbon line, Louis Pierre Louvel, a saddler, an admirer of Napoléon, stabbed Charles Ferdinand d’Artois, Duc de Berry, nephew of King Louis XVIII, as he was departing with his wife at about 11PM, leaving his dagger in his right chest. The duc, who anyway had never been in the line of succession, breathed his last the following morning (subsequent to this incident, the Paris Opéra would relocate from the Salle Montansier, its home since 1794, to the Salle Favart). HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
While the reaction was at its height after this murder and the failure of the government of prime minister Élie, Comte de Decazes, Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was deprived of his post as general director of communes and departments in the French ministry of the interior.
The assassin would be sentenced to death on June 6th and beheaded on June 7th, and the dagger has been deposited in the National Archives. François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand would soon publish MÉMOIRES, LETTRES ET PIÈCES AUTHENTIQUES TOUCHANT LA VIE ET LA MORT DE S.A.R. MONSEIGNEUR CHARLES- FERDINAND D’ARTOIS, FILS DE FRANCE, DUC DE BERRY; PAR M. LE VICOMTE DE CHATEAUBRIAND.
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 1st day 13th of 2 M 1820 / Meetings silent walking very bad & but few women gathered - The Men however attended & I thought some zeal was mannifested by some who were not Members — as low as things are, yet there is certainly something among us which attracts Some & induces them to attend our meetings - May Our conduct be such as to evince that we live conformable to our profession — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
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
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
“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
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
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.”2 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
2. Ackerknecht, Erwin H. MEDICINE AT THE PARIS HOSPITAL, 1794-1848. Baltimore MD: Johns Hopkins UP, 1967, page 172. HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
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
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
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: HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1822
Jean-Pierre Abel-Rèmusat founded and became the first secretary of the Société asiatique. His ÉLÉMENS DE LA GRAMMAIRE CHINOISE, OU, PRINCIPES GÉNÉRAUX DU KOU-WEN OU STYLE ANTIQUE: ET DU KOUAN-HOA C’EST- À-DIRE, DE LA LANGUE COMMUNE GÉNÉRALEMENT USITÉE DANS L’EMPIRE CHINOIS (Imprimerie Royale).
The lectures of Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot were interdicted. From this year into 1830, however, the former professor of modern history of the Sorbonne would be preparing and issuing two important collections of historical sources, to wit, his memoirs of the history of England in 26 volumes, and his memoirs of the history of France in 31 volumes. In addition, busy as a bee, he would be providing a revised translation into French of the plays of Shakespeare, and a volume of his own essays on the history of France. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
Nicholas Marcellus Hentz’s A MANUAL OF FRENCH PHRASES, AND FRENCH CONVERSATIONS: ADAPTED TO WANOSTROCHT’S GRAMMAR ... (Boston: Richardson and Lord, J.H.A. Frost, Printer).
Louis Choris’s VOYAGE PITTORESQUE AUTOUR DU MONDE, AVEC DES PORTRAITS DE SAUVAGES D’AMERIQUE, D’ASIE, D’AFRIQUE, ET DES ILES DU GRAND OCEAN; DES PAYSAGES, DES VUES MARITIMES, ET PLUSIEURS OBJETS D’HISTOIRE NATURELLE (Paris: Impr. de Firmin Didot). HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1826
During this year and the following one François Pierre Guillaume Guizot prepared the initial part of his HISTOIRE DE LA RÉVOLUTION D’ANGLETERRE DEPUIS CHARLES I À CHARLES II, in two volumes (he would add two more volumes after the revolution of 1848 during an exile in England).
Louis-Antoine Desmoulins’s HISTOIRE NATURELLE DES RACES HUMAINES DU NORD-EST DE L’EUROPE, DE L’ASIE BORÉALE ET ORIENTALE ET DE L’AFRIQUE AUSTRALE ...: APPLIQUÉE A LA RECHERCHE DES ORIGINES DES ANCIENS PEUPLES, Á LA SCIENCE ÉTYMOLOGIQUE, A LA CRITIQUE DE L’HISTOIRE, ... SUIVIE D’UN MÉMOIRE [entitled “MÉMOIRE SUR LA PATRIE DU CHAMEAU À UNE BOSSE, ET SUR L'ÉPOQUE DE SON INTRODUCTION EN AFRIQUE”] LU, EN 1823, À L’ACADÉMIE DES INSCRIPTIONS ET BELLES-LETTRES DE L'’NSTITUT. [WITH A FOLDING TABLE.] MS. NOTES [BY SAMUEL T. COLERIDGE ... argued for 16 distinct, unchanging human species. THE SCIENCE OF 1826
James Cooper formally inserted Fenimore into his name. Awarded the position of U.S. Consul at Lyons in France, New-York’s Bread and Cheese Club threw him a going-away party. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1827
François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand’s VOYAGE EN AMÉRIQUE.
Baron Joseph-Marie de Gérando’s DE L’EDUCATION DES SOURDS-MUETS (Paris).
Pauline de Meulan Guizot died. HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1828
The Martignac administration restored François Pierre Guillaume Guizot to his professor’s chair and to the council of state. Publication of his HISTOIRE DE LA CIVILISATION EN EUROPE (this would be translated into English in three volumes by William Hazlitt in 1846).
Professor Guizot remarried, with Elisa Dillon, niece of his first wife Pauline de Meulan Guizot, also an author.
Joseph-Héliodore-Sagesse-Vertu Garcin de Tassy became Professeur de Hindoustani at the École spéciale des langues orientales vivantes (School for Living Oriental Languages) in Paris, France. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1830
Election of Victor Cousin to the Académie française.
Stendhal (Marie-Henri Beyle)’s LE ROUGE ET LE NOIR.
Algeria had been ruled for 313 years by Turkey. In this year French troops disembarked near Algiers and a new piracy-free regime began. (Suppression of piracy did not mean the elimination of cruelty: the French colonizers for instance faced a problem of removing silver bracelets from the wrists of native women, but because the bracelets had been placed on their wrists as little girls, the French could not readily remove them — in some cases therefore they would in their humanism cut through the silver, but depending on circumstances and attitudes, sometimes instead they would simply chop off the hand and on occasion they would kill a resistant woman.)
Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s HISTOIRE DE LA CIVILISATION EN FRANCE DEPUIS LA CHUTE DE L’EMPIRE ROMAIN (4 volumes).
HISTOIRE EN FRANCE
January: The wife of Jean-Baptiste Say died. He would be subject to more and more frequent attacks of nervous apoplexy.
Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was elected by the town of Lisieux to the Chamber of Deputies (he would retain this seat for the remainder of his public career). HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
March: A reviewer “D.G.” offered a negative evaluation of the book on the sources of the Mississippi River in the pages of the REVUE ENCYCLOPEDIQUE, in “Le Mexique par J.C. Beltrami, auteur de la decouverte des sources du Mississippi, etc. (Paris. 1830; Crevot, Delaunay, 2 vol. in 8vo.)”
Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot delivered an address calling for greater political freedom in the Chamber of Deputies. The motion passed 221 against 181. The reactionary King Charles X responded by dissolving the Chamber and calling for new elections — but this would only strengthen opposition to the throne.
July: The “Swing Riots” spread from England to the continent of Europe. In what would be known as the July Revolution, King Charles X, the last Bourbon monarch of France, was replaced by the constitutional monarch Louis-Philippe of the House of Orléans — who would oblige all civil servants to swear an oath of loyalty. The “Doctrinaires,” the political grouping to which Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot belonged, fell from influence.
The Marquis de Lafayette was in command of the national guard that helped effect this replacement.
François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand found it impossible to mouth the necessary oath of loyalty to the new “bourgeois” monarch. Because of a plan he formed to write about the arrest of the duchesse de Berry, he would be prosecuted by the new administration, although its prosecution would prove unsuccessful. Henceforward, Chateaubriand would be concentrating on his autobiographical MÉMOIRES D’OUTRE-TOMBE and his ÉTUDES HISTORIQUES, planned as an introduction to a grand history of France. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
July 27, Tuesday: Osborn Perry Anderson, “O.P. Anderson, or as we used to call him Chatham Anderson” – the only participant of color to survive the raid on Harpers Ferry and elude capture and hanging– was born free in West Fallowfield, Pennsylvania.
To get ahead of our story: He would learn the printing trade in Canada, where obviously he would pick up his nickname “Chatham,” and where he would meet John Brown in 1858. He would write of the fight at Harpers Ferry and his escape alive from it in AVOICE FROM HARPER’S FERRY IN 1860: “We were together eight days before [John E. Cook and Albert Hazlett were] captured, which was near Chambersburg, and the next night Meriam [Francis Jackson Meriam] left us and went to Shippensburg, and there took cars for Philadelphia. After that there were but three of us left [Brown’s son Owen Brown, Barclay Coppoc, and Charles Plummer Tidd], and we kept together, until we got to Centre County, Pa., where we bought a box and packed up all heavy luggage, such as rifles, blankets, etc., and after being together three or four weeks we separated….” Anderson, Coppoc, and Meriam would journey separately to safe exile in the area of St. Catharines, Canada. Anderson would enlist in the US Army in 1864, becoming a noncommissioned officer, and would muster out in Washington DC at the close of the war — to die a pauper of TB and lack of care in Washington on December 13, 1872.
Even by the day of his returning to Paris from Nîmes, the fate of the French monarch Charles X had already been determined. A French court ruled that the monarch’s decree of July 25th was in direct contradiction to the 1814 Charter of Suffrage. Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was called upon by his friends Casimir Perier, Jacques Laffitte, Villemain, and Dupin to draw up the protest of the liberal deputies against the royal ordinances of July, while he applied himself with them to control the revolutionary character of the late contest. Royal troops and Swiss guards circled the city. Barricades were set up and shots were fired. Revolutionaries reached the Hotel de Ville. In Monmartre, Franz Liszt rushed out of his rooms to see the fighting in the streets. He began composing a “Revolutionary Symphony” (of which he would complete only one movement). He would scribble in the margin, “27, 28, 29 July-Paris.” “Indignation, vengeance, terror, liberty! disorder, confused cries (Wave, strangeness) fury...refusal, march of the royal guard, doubt, uncertainty, parties at cross-purposes...attack, battle...march of the national guard — enthusiasm, enthusiasm, enthusiasm...” HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
July 29, Wednesday: In what is sometimes termed the “July Revolution,” after several hours of heavy fighting, citizens captured the Louvre and the Tuileries. Royal troops begin to fraternize with revolutionaries. A provisional government was formed at the Hotel de Ville under Marie Jean Paul Roch Yves Gilbert Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. Hector Berlioz composed through the day as bullets hit the wall of the Institute, just across the Seine from the Louvre. At 5:00PM, he turned in his Prix de Rome cantata, Le mort de Sardanaple, and left the Institute to go to Mme Moke’s to see if his lover Camille was all right. He then searched for three hours for arms with which to join the uprising. He reported for duty at the Hotel de Ville with two hunting pistols, one bullet and a little powder. Among those looting the Tuileries was Alexandre Dumas, pere. He was so flattered to find a copy of his own book CHRISTINE in the royal apartments that he took it with him. King Charles X of France was deposed. He was succeeded by Bourbon duc d’Orléans, who would lead France, for 18 years, as King Louis Philippe.
August: Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot became the French minister of the interior.
After SIGNS OF THE TIMES had appeared in the Revue Britannique, Thomas Carlyle received in the post a packet of socialist books from Gustave d’Eichthal, representing the remaining Saint-Simonians of Paris. He responded warmly to the religious sincerity of these radicals, that “Religion is the only bond and life of societies, so the only real Government were a Hierarchy.” One explanation for Carlyle’s brief flirtation with such socialism was that because Saint-Simon had shunned democracy, extolled duty, and believed in a natural class of rulers, Carlyle had reacted to it as if it were an attempt to construct a new aristocracy, an aristocracy of merit and of service. However, when the Saint-Simonians would in 1831 send “missionaries” to England, and when then in 1832 these emissaries would be tried for such offenses as the advocacy of free love, Carlyle would be keeping his distance from the sect.
November: Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot resigned as French minister of the interior. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1831
François-Auguste-René, vicomte de Chateaubriand’s ÉTUDES HISTORIQUES, planned as an introduction to a grand history of la belle France.
Joseph-Héliodore-Sagesse-Vertu Garcin de Tassy’s MÉMOIRE SUR LES PARTICULARITÉS DE LA RELIGION MUSULMANE DANS L’INDE, D’APRÈS LES OUVRAGES HINDOUSTANIS.
Casimir Perier formed a more vigorous and compact French administration (this would be terminated by his death during May 1832). HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1832
Pierre Jean Édouard Desor was studying law at Giessen and Heidelberg, and became compromised in the republican movements of 1832/1833, escaping to France (he was, after all, despite the place of his birth and his linguistic fluency, a Frenchman rather than a German). At the College of France in Paris he studied natural history under Eifer and his attention became drawn to geology. He went on excursions with Élie de Beaumont.
Jean-Pierre Abel-Rèmusat’s OBSERVATIONS SUR HISTOIRE DES MONGOLS ORIENTAUX, DE SSANANG-SSETSEN (Paris).
In this year and the following one, the branch of the Institute of France known as the “Académie des Sciences Morales et Politiques,” which had been suppressed by Napoleon, was being revived by Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot through the intercession of King Louis Philippe. Some of the old members of this learned body –Talleyrand, Sieyès, Roederer and Lakanal– again took their seats there, and a host of more recent celebrities were added by election for the free discussion of the great problems of political and social science. The Société de l’histoire de France was founded for the publication of historical works; and a vast publication of medieval chronicles and diplomatic papers was undertaken at the expense of the state.
May: Gabriel Franchère, Père died.
When Casimir Perier died, his political group fell from power in France. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
October 11, Thursday: From the log of the lightkeeper on Matinicus Rock: “125 sail in sight.”
Die erste Walpurgisnacht, a cantata for chorus and orchestra by Felix Mendelssohn to words of Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, was performed for the initial time, privately, in his family’s home in Berlin.
Der Pole und sein Kind, oder Der Feldwebel vom IV Regiment, a liederspiel by Albert Lortzing to his own words, was performed for the initial time, in Osnabruck.
In France, a stable government was formed in which Marshal Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult, duc de Dalmatie was first minister (the position had been vacant since May 16th), Victor, 3rd duc de Broglie had the foreign office, Adolphe Thiers had the home department, and Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot had the department of public instruction (his influence would be felt in the radical expansion of public education, for instance in creation of a primary school in each and every French commune). HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1833
Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was elected by the French Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres as the successor to M Dacier. His wife Elisa Dillon Guizot died, leaving a newborn son, Maurice Guillaume Guizot.
Great Britain and France renewed the agreement they had entered into in 1831 giving one another a limited right to board and search one another’s commercial shipping along the East and West coasts of Africa, and on the coasts of the West Indies and Brazil, in suppression of the slave-trade (BRITISH AND FOREIGN STATE PAPERS, 1830-1, page 641 ff; 1832-3, page 286 ff). Date Right of Search Arrangements Treaty with for Joint Great Britain, Cruising with made by Great Britain, made by 1817 Portugal; Spain 1818 Netherlands 1824 Sweden 1831-33 France 1833-39 Denmark, Hanse Towns, etc. 1841 Quintuple Treaty (Austria, Russia, Prussia) 1842 United States 1844 Texas 1845 Belgium France 1862 United States
June 28, Friday: The French legislature ordained primary education for every community in France. Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot would, as head of the department of public instruction, implement this law with extraordinary vigor).
Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day [sic] 28th of 9 M 1833 / Much time has passed away since I have made an entry in my Diary. Since that time there has many events occur’d which have been greatly interesting to me some of them have been of a comfortable kind & many of an afflictive nature, which has caused me to Mourn & even tremble for my own state as well as the State of society both in Europe & America. — Altho’ in some places in some HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
instances, there is some encouragement to hope that the true seed of Quakerism is not extinct, but Yet retains a greenness which would induce the hope, & strengthen the desire that it may yet live, be known in Judah & great in Israel but what of Infidelity on the One hand, formality & outward profession on the other, together with on an intemperate Zeal, and in some instances a total want of zeal & in others a disposition to return to the beggarly elements, placing the letter above the spirit &c - I confess I do not see where our poor society will land at last. — This evening by the Newport Mercury I learn the decease of our Ancient & beloved Friend RICHARD MITCHELL of Middletown Aged 79 years died the 26 inst. I have known him from a child - he was one of those worthy Elders in society who was an ornament to the Station, & ever on the Alert for the good & prosperity of the Society at large, having been under all the appointments which is usual in Rhode Island Moy [Monthly] Meeting - he was for many years a zealous, judicious & well concerned Overseer - for many years a faithful Trustee of the Property of that Moy [Monthly] Meeting & labour’d carefully for its outward Interests as well as a more spiritual interest — I have been associated with him in many appointments & always prefered his judgement & experience to my own, but ever found in him a disposition to listen to & weigh well the feelings & views of those younger & of less experience — tho’ having attained to a good old Age & to a period of life when much more Service activity had ceased for a year or two, yet his place in the Church will be vacant & his former services remembered. — he had been mostly confined to his house for the last Year & from a complication of affliction which had awaited him, his natural powers of mind were much abated. — his bodily suffering for years had also been great having been afflicted with a gravelly complaint which at time occasioned much pain. — RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1836
Carsten Niebuhr had made, in 1778, copies of cuneiform inscriptions at Persepolis, and brought them to France, and at this point Professor Eugène Burnouf figured out the first of these inscriptions in Old Persian cuneiform. It amounted to a list of the satrapies of Darius I (Dariush the Great, 522-486 BCE, the most successful ruler of the Achaemenid dynasty and the most effective administrator of the Persian Empire). On the basis of this discovery he was able to construct, for the decipherment of the remainder of these inscriptions, an alphabet of thirty characters which has turned out to be almost entirely accurate.
The 2d volume of Joseph-Héliodore-Sagesse-Vertu Garcin de Tassy’s LES ŒUVRES DE WALÎ, PUBLIÉES EN HINDOUSTANI. His MANUEL DE L’AUDITEUR DU COURS D’HINDOUSTANI, OU THÈMES GRADUÉS, ACCOMPAGNÉS D’UN VOCABULAIRE FRANÇAIS-HINDOUSTANI.
Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot was a member of three of the five academies into which the Institute of France is divided. The Academy of Moral and Political Science owed its restoration to him, and in 1832 he had been one of its first associates. The Academy of Inscriptions and Belles Lettres had elected him in 1833 as the successor to M Dacier. In this year, therefore, he was chosen to be a member of the French Academy (Académie française). HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1837
Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot and Pauline de Meulan Guizot’s only son died of tuberculosis. The father resigned as French Minister of Education.
Sylvester Graham was scheduled to speak in Boston at Armory Hall (Amory Hall?), but the owners feared the place would be burned down by the butchers and bakers, who were indignant at his teachings. Graham’s TREATISE ON BREAD AND BREAD-MAKING was advocating what today would be referred to as a diet high in fiber. The lecture had to be delivered on the 3rd floor of the Marlborough Hotel, which was the first temperance hotel in America, with the building’s 1st floor barricaded. Proponents were seen to dump powdered lime from the windows onto protesters in the street outside.
Graham was a phenomenon. There was no hypothesis so inflammatory that he would forbear to advance it in his lectures. (Of course, by now it is clear that he was merely advancing his career as a lecturer by espousing whatever doctrine would attract the most scandalized attention. People like him are a dime a dozen.) For instance, he was proclaiming there to be a hidden link between tuberculosis and masturbation — people who contracted TB did so because in private they were contemptible people who were abusing their private parts, abusing themselves to the point of innervation and exhaustion:
THOREAU’S PSYCHOLOGY. Gozzi, Raymond D., ed. Lanham, Maryland: UP of America, 1983
West, Michael. “Scatology and Eschatology: The Heroic Dimensions of Thoreau’s Wordplay.” PMLA 89 (1977): 1043-64 “A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
West delves into the importance of Thoreau’s “dirty jokes” in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS and sees an understanding of them to be essential in the understanding of the book. In his using puns, Henry David Thoreau is following an American tradition that stretches from his own period to Puritans like the Reverends Jonathan Edwards and Cotton Mather. Thoreau’s puns often center around bodily functions, and West argues convincingly that this reveals Thoreau’s deep ambivalence about the body and its functions. He recognizes the body’s need to cleanse itself but is frightened because it will never totally to do so. This ambivalence expands to situations in nature and society that resemble the purging of the body as in WALDEN when he notes the mud flowing from the railroad cut and when he looks at people’s home as places of contamination. West acknowledges that other critics have attributed Thoreau’s obsession with the excremental to his misogyny or latent homosexuality, but he presents another reason. Thoreau, with good cause since his family had a history of tuberculosis, feared consumption, the disease that does eventually kill him, and the popular medicine of the time linked the bowels and proper excrementory functioning to the health of the lungs. Thoreau’s jokes about scatological subjects are serious business. He is laughing bravely at death. HDT WHAT? INDEX
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“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
West traces Thoreau’s interest in etymology and language to a deep interest in the subject in America in the early 1800s. He finds Thoreau’s attitude toward the body and toward excrement ambivalent: Henry David Thoreau found all excremental functions necessary and good in purifying the body but at the same time found the excrement and functions highly unclean. West says, Thoreau “was naturally bothered, like the Hindu, by the problem of contamination. How to preserve an immanent divinity from pollution is a recurring preoccupation in WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS and the journals.” West continues by analyzing Thoreau’s attitude toward sexuality. Not surprisingly he finds Thoreau’s near asexuality to be influenced by a feeling that all sexuality is dirty. “Largely because of some oddly sentimental verses to Ellen Devereux Sewall’s brother, Thoreau’s misogyny has often been interpreted as latent homosexuality. But it may stem more simply from the feeling that whereas all sexuality is dirty, female biology renders woman intrinsically more unclean than man, and apparently sicklier and less independent to boot.” In that statement lie as many clues about the author of this article as about Henry Thoreau. Here, West assumes Thoreau was misogynous, dismisses his fascination with Edmund Quincy Sewall, Jr., and make female biology dirtier than male. Such are the dangers of psychological analysis. West’s most valuable analysis is of Thoreau’s scatological wordplay. He relates Thoreau’s fascination with cleanliness to his fear of consumption and his asceticism to his attempt to ward off the illness that would eventually kill him. Thoreau enthusiastically supported the 19th-Century campaign for an American native style and national literature. The mid-19th Century was a time of much philosophic speculation about language, one result being a renewed interest in this country in the gentlemanly English cult of the pun as it had been revitalized by the English Romantics. This interest in puns and other types of wordplay “was also stimulated by the thriving native tradition of vernacular humor, with its stylistic habit of isolating and intensifying individual words.” Wordplay, at least for Thoreau, was also a way to free American language from its English roots. Thoreau indulges freely in his love of wordplay in WALDEN to the point that he questions if there isn’t something wrong with so much “playing with words, — getting the laugh.” At the same time, he feels that “most words in the English language do not mean for me what they do for my neighbors,” so that even as he uses humor to open up his text, to attract a popular audience, he also uses it to close his text, to create what at times amounts almost to a private language. West spends most of the article analyzing the scatological wordplay and dirty jokes in WALDEN, most of which reflect Thoreau’s powerful ambivalence toward the human body. West brings to the surface the underlying images of excrement, pollution, contamination, uncleanliness, and disease that lace Thoreau’s text. West argues that “Thoreau’s excremental wordplay is neither primarily evasive nor primarily subversive. It is in the radical sense elusive.”
(Lane Stiles, Winter 1992) HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1838
In France in this year the feat was being accomplished, of measuring the distance to a star. ASTRONOMY
The 1st “steamer” was venturing onto the streets. The first photographs were being taken. And, Joseph- Héliodore-Sagesse-Vertu Garcin de Tassy was elected to take the seat at the Institut de France (Académie des Inscriptions et Belles-lettres) vacated upon the death of Charles Maurice de Talleyrand-Périgord, becoming a Chevalier de la Legion de honnoeur.
An English edition of Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s HISTOIRE DE LA RÉVOLUTION D’ANGLETERRE DEPUIS CHARLES I À CHARLES II, in two volumes (Oxford). HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1839
The July Monarchy was threatened by Mathieu Molé, who had formed an intermediate government in France. Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot and the leaders of the left centre and the left, Thiers and Odilon Barrot, worked together to stop Molé, Victory was secured at the expense of principle and Professor Guizot’s attack on the government gave rise to a crisis and a republican insurrection. None of the three leaders of that alliance were able to secure the ministerial office.
The Reverend Professor Jared Sparks of Harvard College’s LIFE OF GEORGE WASHINGTON (this would be translated into French and would receive an introduction in French in that edition by Professor Guizot — which introduction would then be backtranslated and published in English, and this backtranslation would find a place in the personal library of Henry Thoreau). SPARKS ON G. WASHINGTON GUIZOT ON G. WASHINGTON
Volume X of the Reverend Professor Sparks’s THE LIBRARY OF AMERICAN BIOGRAPHY. LIBRARY OF AM. BIOG. X
He was appointed McLean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, the first professor of secular history, in which post he would author not merely the above hagiography of Washington, but a hagiography of Franklin as well, not to mention one of Gouverneur Morris — assiduously omitting any events which might be the occasion of “international ill will.”
This tenth volume encompassed four contributions:
•LIFE OF ROBERT FULTON by James Renwick, LL.D. LIFE OF ROBERT FULTON
•LIFE OF JOSEPH WARREN by Alexander H. Everett, LL.D. LIFE OF JOSEPH WARREN
•LIFE OF HENRY HUDSON by Henry R. Cleveland LIFE OF HENRY HUDSON HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
•LIFE OF FATHER MARQUETTE by Jared Sparks LIFE OF FATHER MARQUETTE HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1840
Victor Cousin became minister of public instruction in the new French government formed by prime minister François Pierre Guillaume Guizot.
Election of Alexis de Tocqueville to the Académie française.
Professor Guizot offered an introduction, in French, to an edition of the Reverend Jared Sparks’s LIFE OF WASHINGTON, and of selected portions of President Washington’s writings, which appeared in this year in Paris. HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
Spring: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot accepted the post of French ambassador to London, and shortly afterward Thiers succeeded to the ministry of foreign affairs. The professor would be received with distinction by Queen Victoria, and by British society. He would be able to persuade the British to return Napoleon’s corpse to France.3
Charles Wilkes began a survey of the coastline of the North American continent that would occupy his ship until Summer 1842. Upon his return he would find that his discoveries had been challenged (because the English explorer James Clark Ross had sailed directly across some of the locales that because of mirage Wilkes had identified as land) and his conduct as commander of his expedition called into question (to the extent that there would need to be a court martial). Learning that the French explorer Jules Sébastien César Dumont d’Urville had first viewed the mainland of Antarctica on January 19th, 1840, Wilkes went back into his journals and altered his own date of initial observation from January 19th to January 16th.
July 15, Wednesday: Without the knowledge of the French ambassador, François Pierre Guillaume Guizot, and definitely against his better judgment, France signed a treaty that led it to begin preparations for war. The French king would need to bring this crisis to an end by refusing his assent to these military preparations. He would summon Guizot from London to form a new French government and assist him in what His Majesty termed “ma lutte tenace contre l’anarchie.”
Great Britain, Russia, Austria, and Prussia signed an alliance which imposed terms on the Egyptian Mohammed Ali and supported the Ottoman Sultan against him. The terms stated that if he would withdraw his troops from Syria and return the Turkish fleet, he would be recognized as Pasha of Egypt and Syria.
3. Napoleon had died of stomach cancer after five years on St. Helena and his corpse, minus the penis, had been underground there, at this point, for some two decades. When dug up, the corpse would be discovered to be still in pretty fair condition. The frigate that would bring it back toward France, La Belle Poule, would be specially painted black to mark the solemnity of the occasion. That severed penis, it seems, now belongs to an American urologist, Dr. John Kingsley Lattimer, who bid $38,000 for it at an auction. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
October 29, Thursday: Great Britain managed to bring the French blockade of Buenos Aires to an end, by mediating an agreement whereby Argentina agreed to periodically pay French claims.
Nicolas Jean de Dieu Soult, duc de Dalmatie replaced Marie Joseph Louis Adolphe Thiers as Prime Minister of France when Thiers resigned after attempting to get more aid for Egyptian Viceroy Mohammed Ali. François Pierre Guillaume Guizot took over as the king’s main man in France. Initially he would serve as minister for foreign affairs, but upon the retirement of Marshal Soult, he would take the post of prime minister. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
December 25, Christmas: The newlywed Clara Schumann created, as a Christmas present for her husband Robert Schumann, the compositions Am Strande on a translation of a Burns poem, and Volkslied and Ihr Bildnis on two texts by Heinrich Heine.
Henry Thoreau incorporated some thoughts on George Washington that obviously derive from a perusal of François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF WASHINGTON IN THE REVOLUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, which had been published in this year by J. Munroe and Company in Boston, a volume which we have found in his personal library:
GUIZOT ON G. WASHINGTON
Dec 25th 1840. The character of Washington has, after all, been undervalued, because not valued correctly. He was a proper Puritan hero. It is his erectness and persistency which attract me. A few simple deeds with a dignified silence for background, and that is all. He never fluctuated, nor lingered, nor stooped, nor swerved, but was nobly silent and assured. He was not the darling of the people, as no man of integrity can ever be, but was as much respected as loved. His instructions to his steward, his refusal of a crown, his interview with his officers at the termination of the war, his thoughts after his retirement, as expressed in a letter to La Fayette, his remarks to another correspondent on his being HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
chosen president, his last words to Congress, and the unparalleled respect which his most distinguished contemporaries, as Fox and Erskine, expressed for him, are refreshing to read in these unheroic days. His behavior in the field and in council and his dignified and contented withdrawal to private life were great. He could advance and he could withdraw. But we are not sorry he is dead. The thought there is in a sentence is its solid part, which will wear to the latest times. When the above would be published by H.G.O. Blake in his “Winter” volume of extracts from Thoreau’s journal in 1887, H.G.O. BLAKE’S “WINTER”
it would be redacted by the suppression of the final two sentences! The general remark about thoughts and sentences would be elided and one can understand the appropriateness of such an elision, since that sentence is a standalone entity that has nothing whatever to do with the topic of the day’s entry. However, the shattering remark about the memory of DWM George Washington, “But we are not sorry he is dead,” which concluded Thoreau’s story about the memory of Washington and tied a knot in its tale, was very much on topic — and it also was elided by Blake. It is almost as if Thoreau was uttering more truth than Blake considered that the general American public could be able to bear!
For what is it, to point out that in fact we are not sorry that General, then President, George Washington is dead? –It is to point out that our usage of these “founding father” figures has little to do with them as actual human beings, having instead to do with them in abstraction, as functioning cogs in a public process. While he was still alive this human being might begin to misbehave, and sadly embarrass us. Only when one of these actual human beings has been safely interred, do we dare thus to iconize him — reduce him to a functionality as a cultural artifact. Thus it comes about that –although of course we do not face this unsentimental fact– we’re not at all sorry he died.
We may well note that Professor Guizot was the exact person to assist Thoreau in this manner, for as prime minister of France during the most intense revolutionary period of Europe in 1848, the Year of Anarchy, political opposition groups had been masking their meetings by a pretense of the celebration of the birthday of George Washington. These continental oppositionists in fact had no interest whatever in our DWM (they probably didn’t even know when his birthday was) but this was their conceit, this was their pretense — they were assembling “to celebrate Washington’s birthday.” They were not sorry he had died –they were not glad he had lived –they were merely using him as their convenient cover story. Thoreau picked up on this and attempted to tell us about it (but then his friend H.G.O. Blake wouldn’t let that happen). HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1846
William Hazlitt prepared an English translation of Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s HISTOIRE DE LA CIVILISATION EN EUROPE, under the title THE HISTORY OF CIVILIZATION: FROM THE FALL OF THE ROMAN EMPIRE TO THE FRENCH REVOLUTION. HAZLITT’S TRANSLATION, I HAZLITT’S TRANSLATION, II HAZLITT’S TRANSLATION, III HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1847
September 19, Sunday: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot became Prime Minister of France (until February 23, 1848).4
4. It was Professor Guizot who remarked “Not to be a republican at 20 is proof of want of heart; to be one at 30 is proof of want of head” (this remark has since been variously reworked and inserted into the mouths of such notable quotables as, in alphabetical order, Otto von Bismarck, Aristide Briand, William J. Casey, Winston Churchill, Georges Clemenceau, Benjamin Disraeli, David Lloyd George, George Bernard Shaw, Wendell Willkie, and Woodrow Wilson). HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1848
January: Friedrich Engels visited Heinrich Heine and wrote “... Heine ist am Kaputtgehen. Vor vierzehn Tagen war ich bei ihm, da lag er im Bett und hatte einen Nervenanfall gehabt. Gestern war er auf, aber höchst elend. Er kann keine drei Schritte mehr gehen, er schleicht an den Mauern sich stützend von Fauteuil bis ans Bett und vice versa. Dazu Lärm in seinem Hause, der ihn verrückt macht.” Since 1844, the poet had suffered not only financial reversals and but also a general physical deterioration. According to some suppositions this may have been either congenital neuropathy or amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (Lou Gehrig’s disease). From this year until his death he would lie paralyzed, partly blind, and heavily sedated on what he termed his “mattress grave” — but in this condition he would author one of his finest collection of verse, ROMANZERO.
The French Prime Minister François Pierre Guillaume Guizot refused permission for opposition political groups to stage political meetings in celebration of the birthday of George Washington (these had been being termed the “Paris Banquets”). HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
Martin Johnson Heade was in Rome. (Probably, he then went on to Paris.) Thomas Hicks, his former associate under Edward Hicks, was also in Rome at this point. It was presumably in this year that Heade painted his surviving genre picture, “The Roman Newsboys,” as the torn posters on the wall behind the two newsboys reflect the political unrest of this year (one poster has to do with Vincenzo Gioberti of the Risorgimento movement, and the name of Pope Pius IX is scrawled in several locations), while the leaflets being handed out are antigovernmental in nature. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
February 23, Wednesday: The Cingalese, 276 tons, out of Darien (Connecticut? Panama?) bearing a group of 15 men, 12 women, 3 boys, and 2 girls, arrived at Port of Spain in Trinidad, where this group of free black Americans planned to settle.
That afternoon the king of France summoned his minister François Pierre Guillaume Guizot from the chamber, which was then sitting, to advise him that given the situation in Paris and elsewhere in the country, and given the alarm and division of opinion within the royal family, his role as prime minister was in jeopardy. Opposition political groups, forbidden to stage political meetings in celebration of the birthday of George Washington (termed “Paris Banquets”), had instigated a revolution. Professor Guizot instantly resigned as Prime Minister, returning to the chamber only to announce that the administration was at an end and that the king had sent for Louis, comte Molé. Molé would fail, however, in his attempt to form a new government, and between midnight and one in the morning the prime minister who had according to his custom retired early, was again summoned to the Tuileries. The king asked for his advice, and his advice was that the monarch needed to grant Marshal Bugeaud full authority to do whatever in his judgment was necessary to stop the rioting and pull apart the street barricades. This was done, while Guizot hid out for several days in the Paris lodging of a humble miniature painter whom he had befriended, until he could make his way secretly across the Belgian frontier and thence to London.
March 3, Friday: Waldo Emerson traveled to London.
In Bratislava, Lajos Kossuth demanded that the royals in Wien hold still for a radical Magyar Hungarian reform program.
Documentation of the international slave trade, per W.E. Burghardt Du Bois: “Message from the President ... communicating a report from the Secretary of State, with the correspondence of Mr. Wise, late United States minister to Brazil, in relation to the slave trade.” –SENATE EXECUTIVE DOCUMENT, 30 Cong. 1 sess. IV. No. 28. (Full of facts.)
Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot joined up in London with his mother Madame Guizot and his daughters, who had already arrived. The family would move into a modest habitation in Pelham Crescent, Brompton (the aged mother would never be able to return to France and is buried at Kensal Green).
There would be a move to grant to him a professorship at Oxford University, until it became clear that he wasn’t interested in that sort of thing. He would reside in England for about a year while devoting himself to the study of history (he would be preparing two additional volumes on the English revolution, and in 1854 would appear his 2-volume HISTOIRE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE D’ANGLETERRE ET DE CROMWELL, then in 1856 his 2- volume HISTOIRE DU PROTECTORAT DE CROMWELL ET DU RÉTABLISSEMENT DES STUARTS). HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1852
Alfred de Musset was elected to the Académie française.
Publication of an English translation of Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s lectures on representative government, which had in 1821/1822 appeared in two volumes as HISTOIRE DES ORIGINES DU GOUVERNERNENT REPRÉSENTATIF. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1854
Sylvestre de Sacy and Cardinal Dupanloup were elected to the Académie française.
Sand’s HISTOIRE DE MA VIE.
Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s 2-volume HISTOIRE DE LA RÉPUBLIQUE D’ANGLETERRE ET DE CROMWELL. HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1856
The period 1852-1870 was the period of France’s Second Empire, which utilized as its front-man a nephew of Napoleon who was consenting to know himself as Napoleon III. In 1853 this ugly little important person had married Eugénie de Montijo, and in this year France’s First family figured out what it took to produce an infant: Napoleon Louis, their only child.
The Palais Royale is a heavenly place, — so full of bijouterie and lovely things that I’m nearly distracted because I can’t buy them. Fred wanted to get me some, but of course I didn’t allow it. Then the Bois and Champs Elysées are trés magnifique. I’ve seen the imperial family several times, — the Emperor an ugly, hard-looking man, the Empress pale and pretty, but dressed in horrible taste, I thought, — purple dress, green hat, and yellow gloves. Little Nap. is a handsome boy, who sits chatting to his tutor, and kissed his hand to the people as he passes in his four-horse barouche, with postilions in red satin jackets and a mounted guard before and behind.
Gustave Flaubert’s MADAME BOVARY.
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s 2-volume HISTOIRE DU PROTECTORAT DE CROMWELL ET DU RÉTABLISSEMENT DES STUARTS. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1858
Over the following decade François Pierre Guillaume Guizot would be preparing his MÉMOIRES POUR SERVIR À L’HISTOIRE DE MON TEMPS, in nine full volumes despite a pronounced reticence in regard to the earliest details of his existence. MÉMOIRES POUR SERVIR ... HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1863
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s parliamentary speeches were included in his 5-volume HISTOIRE PARLEMENTAIRE DE LA FRANCE. RECUEIL COMPLET DES DISCOURS PRONONCÉS DANS LES CHAMBRES DE 1819 À 1848. HISTOIRE PARLEMENTAIRE
Ernst Renan’s VIE DE JÉSUS was published to the greatest orchestration of outraged cries. JESUS HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1864
Professor Pierre Jean Édouard Desor returned from journey of exploration into North Africa, with the news that the Sahara was the elevated bed of a former sea.
A volume of MÉDITATIONS SUR L’ESSENCE DE LA RELIGION CHRISTIENNE was one of the French Protestant François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s final works. HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
1874
September 12, Saturday: François Pierre Guillaume Guizot died peacefully, and is said even on his death-bed to have recited verses of Corneille and texts from Scripture. NEW YORK TIMES OBIT. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1875
François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s final publication, HISTOIRE DE FRANCE RACONTÉE À MES PETITS ENFANTS, which he had been able to complete only through the year 1789, was at this point brought up to the year 1870 in a 5th and final volume by his daughter Madame Guizot de Witt, on the basis of her father’s notes.
Construction began on a gift which the nation of France was intending to present to the United States of America, “Liberty Enlightening the World.” The sculptor on this project was Frederic Auguste Bartholdi and the architect was Gustave Eiffel.
STATUE OF LIBERTY The initial design for this gift “Statue of Liberty” had had her holding slave manacles that she had just broken. The final design, relying less heavily on this offensive reference to the outcome of the US Civil War, was placing these slave manacles under her toes. HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
Meanwhile, in this year, a book was published about the state of affairs in the American south, that included the following illustration:
One immediately notices that this illustration of “The Guardian Angel,” done by J. Wells Champney in Edward King’s THE GREAT SOUTH; A RECORD OF JOURNEYS IN LOUISIANA, TEXAS, THE INDIAN TERRITORY, MISSOURI, ARKANSAS, MISSISSIPPI, ALABAMA, GEORGIA, FLORIDA, SOUTH CAROLINA, NORTH CAROLINA, KENTUCKY, TENNESSEE, VIRGINIA, WEST VIRGINIA, AND MARYLAND (Hartford CT; American Publishing Co., 1875), is not an illustration of a southern black slave tending his southern white mistress before the civil war. This illustration was intended to depict faithfully the real-life situation in the American South under Reconstruction, a decade after the victory of the Union armies had transformed the black Americans of the southern slave-states into free citizens. HDT WHAT? INDEX
M. GUIZOT FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT
1887
Publication in Cambridge by Houghton, Mifflin & Co. of more of H.G.O. Blake’s excerpts from Henry Thoreau’s journal, as WINTER. H.G.O. BLAKE’S “WINTER”
In this edition Blake suppressed something that Thoreau had learned in 1840 from Professor François Pierre Guillaume Guizot’s ESSAY ON THE CHARACTER AND INFLUENCE OF WASHINGTON IN THE REVOLUTION OF THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA:
We are all familiar with the censorship of A YANKEE IN CANADA by George William Curtis, whose editorial correction of “very flagrant heresies” and “defiant Pantheism” led to Thoreau’s withdrawal of the manuscript from Putnam’s Monthly Magazine. We are all familiar with the censorship of THE MAINE WOODS by bigoted, timid, mean, cowardly James Russell Lowell, whose suppression of the concluding observation “It is as immortal as I am, and perchance will go to as high a heaven, there to tower above me still” on behalf of The Atlantic Monthly led to Thoreau’s demanding from him an apology. Here, however, is a 3d instance of censorship, one of which we seem until now to have been unaware. Unlike these previous two censorships to which Thoreau had been able to react –and to which Thoreau did react– this is a censorship that occurred after his death against which he was therefore defenseless. When, in this year, H.G.O. Blake went to publish extracts from Thoreau’s journal in the WINTER volume, he suppressed the final remark in Henry’s journal section about our worshipful reprocessing of DWM George Washington: “But we are not sorry he is dead.” This shattering final remark tied a knot in the tale. It is almost as if Thoreau was uttering more truth than his friend Blake considered that the general American public could be able to bear! For what is it, to point out that in fact we are not sorry that General, then President, George Washington is dead? –It is to point out that our usage of these “founding father” figures has little to do with them as actual human beings, having instead to do with them in abstraction, as functioning cogs in a public process. While he was still alive this human being might begin to misbehave, and sadly embarrass us. Only when one of these actual human beings has been safely interred, do we dare thus to iconize him — reduce him to a functionality as a cultural artifact. Thus it comes about that –although of course we do not face this unsentimental fact– we’re not at all sorry he died. HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
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 2014. 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: January 4, 2015
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project M. Guizot HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
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
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT
Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology — but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary “writerly” process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world.
First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT HDT WHAT? INDEX
FRANÇOIS PIERRE GUILLAUME GUIZOT M. GUIZOT