“CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID This self-publicizing invalid wrote lots and lots of “easy reading” crowd-pleasers, none of which have been found in Thoreau’s personal library. Out of “Captain” Mayne Reid’s shelflist of something like half a hundred to a hundred bestselling editions, Thoreau’s INDIAN NOTEBOOKS and FACT BOOK reveal that he copied from perhaps six — copying only supposedly factual material such as how to prepare rock moss as starvation fare. Looking at Thoreau’s extracts they seem of the sort that might easily be obtained by means of 15-minute perusals scribbling on some scrap with the stub of a pencil while standing in the aisle at Stacy’s bookstore in Concord. Nevertheless a supposed Thoreau scholar, not to be daunted, has recently inferred on the basis of such evidence that “Dissatisfied with the present, Thoreau looked back in time for happiness.... In an attempt to recapture that sense of well-being he had begun reading Mayne Reid’s BOOKS OF ADVENTURES FOR BOYS, immersing himself in each volume of the series as it appeared in the 1850s”! Perusing the material reminds one of Poe’s evaluation that the man was “a colossal but most picturesque liar.” It is marvelous how an invalid who had had in his youth one great remembered war adventure could, by an ability to write interestingly about adventures and locales he had not himself ever experienced, make himself into such a sustained hot item of public interest. The purpose of this PDF file is to reassure myself that there is no shred of evidence in Thoreau’s accessing of Mayne Reid’s “easy reiding” that any portion of such an interpretation as above, about dissatisfaction with the present, is plausible. It is a mark of the general low condition of Thoreau scholarship, that a hypothetical that is so sweeping, gratuitous, and unsubstantiated might be offered in 1999 in a book published by the University of Massachusetts Press, supposedly an academic press that adheres to standards of peer review! HDT WHAT? INDEX “CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID THOMAS MAYNE REID 1818 April 4, Saturday: Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. was born in the hamlet Ballyroney near Katesbridge in County Down, a son of the Irish Presbyterian Reverend Thomas Mayne Reid. In our federal House of Representatives, Mr. Livermore proposed amending the US Constitution to do away forever with the peculiar institution of human enslavement. The House of course voted to entertain no such notion. “No person shall be held to service or labour as a slave, nor shall slavery be tolerated in any state hereafter admitted into the Union, or made one of the United States of America.” Read, and on the question, “Will the House consider the same?” it was determined in the negative. HOUSE JOURNAL, 15th Congress, 1st session, pages 420-1; ANNALS OF CONGRESS, 15th Congress, 1st session, pages 1675-6. INTERNATIONAL SLAVE TRADE SLAVERY Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft Shelley reached Milan, where they would visit the Italian lakes. ESSENCE IS BLUR. SPECIFICITY, THE OPPOSITE OF ESSENCE, IS OF THE NATURE OF TRUTH. Thomas Mayne Reid “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX “CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID THOMAS MAYNE REID 1834 September: Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. was enrolled at the Royal Belfast Academical Institution. He would be there for four years preparing for the Irish dissenting ministry in order to follow in the paternal footsteps of the Reverend Thomas Mayne Reid, Sr., but would depart without a degree to teach school in his home town Ballyroney, leaving the role of shepherd of the flock to a younger brother John. What a disappointment to the family this was: “My mother would rather have had me settle down as a minister, on a stipend of one hundred a year, than know me to be the most famous man in history.” ESSENCES ARE FUZZY, GENERIC, CONCEPTUAL; ARISTOTLE WAS RIGHT WHEN HE INSISTED THAT ALL TRUTH IS SPECIFIC AND PARTICULAR (AND WRONG WHEN HE CHARACTERIZED TRUTH AS A GENERALIZATION). Thomas Mayne Reid “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX “CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID THOMAS MAYNE REID 1839 December: Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. sailed from Ireland for New Orleans aboard the Dumfriesshire: “Like other striplings escaped from college, I was no longer happy at home. The yearning for travel was upon me, and without a sigh I beheld the hills of my native land sink behind the black waves, not much caring whether I should ever see them again.” “HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE” BEING A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN TIME (JUST AS THE PERSPECTIVE IN A PAINTING IS A VIEW FROM A PARTICULAR POINT IN SPACE), TO “LOOK AT THE COURSE OF HISTORY MORE GENERALLY” WOULD BE TO SACRIFICE PERSPECTIVE ALTOGETHER. THIS IS FANTASY-LAND, YOU’RE FOOLING YOURSELF. THERE CANNOT BE ANY SUCH THINGIE, AS SUCH A PERSPECTIVE. Thomas Mayne Reid “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX “CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID THOMAS MAYNE REID 1840 January: The Dumfriesshire, conveying Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. from Ireland, arrived at the port of New Orleans. YOUR GARDEN-VARIETY ACADEMIC HISTORIAN INVITES YOU TO CLIMB ABOARD A HOVERING TIME MACHINE TO SKIM IN METATIME BACK ACROSS THE GEOLOGY OF OUR PAST TIMESLICES, WHILE OFFERING UP A GARDEN VARIETY OF COGENT ASSESSMENTS OF OUR PROGRESSION. WHAT A LOAD OF CRAP! YOU SHOULD REFUSE THIS HELICOPTERISH OVERVIEW OF THE HISTORICAL PAST, FOR IN THE REAL WORLD THINGS HAPPEN ONLY AS THEY HAPPEN. WHAT THIS SORT WRITES AMOUNTS, LIKE MERE “SCIENCE FICTION,” MERELY TO “HISTORY FICTION”: IT’SNOT WORTH YOUR ATTENTION. July: Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. left New Orleans after having worked for some half year as a clerk for a corn factor (trader in the corn market), a “storekeeper,” and a “nigger driver.” It has been alleged that he quit rather than whip slaves. He would take a position as tutor of the children of Dr. Peyton Robertson on a plantation near Nashville, Tennessee, and then begin a private “New English, Mathematical, and Classical School” in Nashville. Thomas Mayne Reid “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX “CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID THOMAS MAYNE REID 1841 Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. became a clerk for a provision dealer somewhere in Mississippi or Louisiana. THE TASK OF THE HISTORIAN IS TO CREATE HINDSIGHT WHILE INTERCEPTING ANY ILLUSION OF FORESIGHT. NOTHING A HUMAN CAN SEE CAN EVER BE SEEN AS IF THROUGH THE EYE OF GOD. Thomas Mayne Reid “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX “CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID THOMAS MAYNE REID 1842 Fall: Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. began literary production for the Morning Chronicle under the pen name “The Poor Scholar” (it would seem he not only composed fill material for this gazette but also helped to distribute it throughout Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania). “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Thomas Mayne Reid “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX “CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID THOMAS MAYNE REID 1843 Spring: Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. relocated from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia to work as a journalist and from time to time publish his “The Poor Scholar” poetry in such venues as Godey’s Lady’s Book, Graham’s Magazine, and the Ladies National Magazine. While in Philadelphia he would be for several years a drinking buddy of Edgar Allan Poe, who would remember him as “a colossal but most picturesque liar. He fibs on a surprising scale but with the finish of an artist, and that is why I listen to him attentively.” Not to be outdone, he would remember Poe in the following manner: “Nearly a quarter of a century ago, I knew a man named Edgar Allan Poe. I knew him as well as one man may know another, after an intimate and almost daily association extending over a period of two years. He was then a reputed poet; I only an humble admirer of the Muses. But it is not of his poetic talent I here intend to speak. I never myself had a very exalted opinion of it — more especially as I knew that the poem upon which rests the head corner-stone of his fame is not the creation of Edgar Allan Poe, but of Elizabeth Barrett Browning. In ‘Lady Geraldine’s Courtship,’ you will find the original of ‘The Raven.’ I mean the tune, the softly flowing measure, the imagery and a good many of the words—even to the ‘rustling of the soft and silken curtain.’” NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Thomas Mayne Reid “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX “CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID THOMAS MAYNE REID 1846 Spring: As the War on Mexico broke out, Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. was in Newport, Rhode Island as a correspondent for the New-York Herald and was using the pen name “Ecolier” in addition to “The Poor Scholar.” “MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY Thomas Mayne Reid “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project HDT WHAT? INDEX “CAPTAIN” THOMAS MAYNE REID THOMAS MAYNE REID November 23, Monday: Thomas Mayne Reid, Jr. obtained a commission as a 2d Lieutenant in the 1st New York Volunteer Infantry Regiment, Colonel Ward B. Burnett commanding (his widow would report “Young Mayne Reid early evinced a taste for war. When a small boy he was often found running barefooted along the road after a drum and fife band, greatly to his mother’s dismay. She chided him, saying, ‘What will the folks think to see Mr Reid’s son going about like this?’ To which young Mayne replied, ‘I don’t care.