PEOPLE MENTIONED IN A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE “A YANKEE IN CANADA”: The early explorers saw many whales and other sea-monsters far up the St. Lawrence. Champlain, in his map, represents a whale spouting in the harbor of Quebec, three hundred and sixty miles from what is called the mouth of the river; and Charlevoix takes his reader to the summit of Cape Diamond to see the “porpoises, white as snow,” sporting on the surface of the harbor of Quebec. And Boucher says in 1661, “from there (Tadoussac) to Montreal is found a great quantity of Marsouins blancs.” Several whales have been taken pretty high up the river since I was there. P.H. Gosse, in his “Canadian Naturalist,” p. 171 (London, 1840), speaks of “the white dolphin of the St. Lawrence (Delphinum Canadensis),” as considered different from those of the sea. “The Natural History Society of Montreal offered a prize, a few years ago, for an essay on the Cetacea of the St. Lawrence, which was, I believe, handed in.” In Champlain’s day it was commonly called “the Great River of Canada.” More than one nation has claimed it. PIERRE-FRANÇOIS-XAVIER DE CHARLEVOIX PHILIP HENRY GOSSE HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE 1810 April 6, Friday: Supporters of Francis Burdett began rioting and attacking the residences of the Prime Minister and prominent Tories. Philip Henry Gosse, who would develop the 1st institutional aquarium, was born on High Street in Worcester, England as the 2d son of an itinerant painter of miniature portraits1 and a lady’s maid. His childhood would be spent mostly in Poole, Dorset, where his aunt Susan Bell would teach him to draw and would introduce him to zoology (much as she had her own son, Thomas Bell, two decades his senior, who would become his great friend). Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 6day 6 of 4 M // Nothing but the usual rounds thro’ the day, & the usual dull sensations with respect to religious Sensations - ————————————————————————————————————————————————————————————— 1. It is now interesting to compare the watercolors of English people, done by the father Thomas Gosse (1765-1844) who had trained at the Royal Academy, with the watercolors of butterflies and beetles done by the son. In both artists a microscopic inspection of the detail of this work will simply astound you. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE 1825 At the age of 15 Philip Henry Gosse became a clerk in a counting house of Poole, a port in County Dorset, that of George Garland and Sons — a counting house that was involved in the Newfoundland fishery, and dealt with commodities such as dried codfish. There he would “learn to do things the Poole way.” LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? — NO, THAT’S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN’S STORIES. LIFE ISN’T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE 1827 The British government ordered that the crown lands in Nova Scotia be in future disposed of by sale rather than by grant. It was also ordered that all arrears of quit rent be remitted, and that in the future the quit rents of the province should be duly collected and applied to provincial purposes. Three blood horses and two mares were imported from England. The seal fishery was first commenced from Halifax. A steam engine was erected at the Albiou coal mines in Pictou, the first erected in Nova Scotia. The small pox and fever prevailed exceedingly at Halifax and there were a total of 811 deaths. At the age of 17 Philip Henry Gosse sailed to Newfoundland to clerk in the Carbonear premises of Slade, Elson and Co., where he would make of himself a dedicated, self-taught student of Newfoundland entomology, “the first person systematically to investigate and to record the entomology” of that island. CANADA THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE 1832 Philip Henry Gosse experienced a religious conversion — he, as he himself put it, “solemnly, deliberately and uprightly, took God for my God.”2 DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 2. His son would come to mock him for this. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE 1835 Philip Henry Gosse abandoned Newfoundland for Compton, Lower Canada where he would farm, originally as an attempt to establish a commune with two of his religious friends, for three years. Despite this failure at farming, the experience would deepen his love for natural history, and the locals would begin to refer to him as “that crazy Englishman who goes about picking up bugs.” During this period of self-teaching he would become a member of the Natural History Society of Montréal and submit specimens to its museum — the man without much by way of a formal education had placed himself on a track that would eventuate with him being welcomed as a Fellow of the Royal Society, and well accepted by those much more credentialed and well-positioned naturalists. After being let go by Harvard College, Christopher Dunkin removed to Canada where his step-father was making a good living by giving public lectures in physical, moral and intellectual education and Phrenology (professing to be able to distinguish, by the bumps on the skull, between the bold and determined offender and the novice in crime; the ruffian and the man of gentle disposition; the abandoned wreck destitute of religious principles and he who maintains his belief in Christian revelation). “I look upon Phrenology as the guide of Philosophy, and the handmaid of Christianity; whoever disseminates true Phrenology, is a public benefactor.” — Horace Mann, Sr. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE The population of the border city of Buffalo reached 15,573 with the arrival of escaped slave William Wells Brown, a steamboat crew member. He would begin to help other escapees onward and upward, to safety in Canada. The 1,000-acre Section system of township surveys commenced in Upper Canada. It would be continued to 1906. CARTOGRAPHY THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE 1838 Having been forced to sell his Newfoundland farm at a loss, and hard up for cash, Philip Henry Gosse taught for a bit less than eight months for Reuben Saffold, the owner of Belvoir, a slave plantation near Pleasant Hill, Alabama. Gosse studied and drew the local flora and fauna (he sighted nor only turtledoves Zenaida macroura but also the ivory-billed woodpecker Campephilus principalis, now extinct) and recorded negative impressions of race slavery. This would be published in 1859 as LETTERS FROM ALABAMA, (U.S.) CHIEFLY RELATING TO NATURAL HISTORY (a book that would be accessed by Henry Thoreau). LETTERS FROM ALABAMA ALABAMA/GOSSE (YOU-TUBE) CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE 1839 Returning from America to England, Philip Henry Gosse was reduced to subsisting on eightpence a day, or as he would put it “one herring eaten as slowly as possible, and a little bread.” His fortunes began to improve when a leading publisher of naturalist writing, John Van Voorst, agreed, on the recommendation of Thomas Bell, to publish THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. A SERIES OF CONVERSATIONS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LOWER CANADA, a book that despite the fact that he did not have a son, he had constructed as a conversation between father and son. The book, which would be printed in the following year and which would in 1860 be accessed by Henry Thoreau, indicates to us that well before his contemporaries, Gosse acquired a practical grasp of the value of conservation. THE CANADIAN NATURALIST WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF People Mentioned in A Yankee in Canada “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PEOPLE OF A YANKEE IN CANADA: PHILIP HENRY GOSSE 1840 Following the report by Lord Durham on a Canadian Constitution, the British Parliament passed the Act of Union uniting Upper and Lower Canada in a self-governing union. John Charlton Fisher gave up the post of publisher of the Québec Gazette. During this decade there would be a craze for ferns as a Victorian rustic parlor adornment, in sealed glass cases. (This craze would be supplanted, in the 1850s, by a craze for salt-water aquariums — and this craze would be being led and fomented by Philip Henry Gosse.) “The only lesson of history is that there are no lessons of history.” — A.J.P.