HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 14TH STANZA THOREAU’S 14TH YEAR EVENTS OF 13TH STANZA The 14th Stanza in the Life of Henry Thoreau FALL 1830 JULY 1830 AUGUST SEPTEMBER WINTER 1830/1831 OCTOBER NOVEMBER DECEMBER 1830 SPRING 1831 JANUARY 1831 FEBRUARY MARCH SUMMER 1831 APRIL MAY JUNE 1831 Following the death of Jesus Christ there was a period of readjustment that lasted for approximately one million years. –Kurt Vonnegut, THE SIRENS OF TITAN 1830 In this year David Henry Thoreau was 13-14 years of age, below the median age for the population of Americans (since, according to the US census for the year, median age was 16).1 The average household had close to six people in it, and even though this was without counting slaves, it was considerably higher than England. 1. By the 2010 census the average American had become, by way of extreme contrast, 37.2 years of age. EVENTS OF 15TH STANZA HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 14TH YEAR THOREAU’S 14TH STANZA James Rennie was made Professor of Natural History and Zoology at King’s College of Cambridge University (to 1834). Publication in London of Professor Rennie’s INSECT ARCHITECTURE (The Library of Entertaining Knowledge. Charles Knight, Pall Mall East) and INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS (Charles Knight). Henry Thoreau would own a copy of each of these, in addition to this author’s INSECT MISCELLANIES to be issued during the following year (Charles Knight). INSECT ARCHITECTURE INSECT TRANSFORMATIONS INSECT MISCELLANIES HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 14TH STANZA THOREAU’S 14TH YEAR Francis Joseph Grund’s FIRST LESSONS IN PLANE GEOMETRY. TOGETHER WITH AN APPLICATION OF THEM TO THE SOLUTION OF PROBLEMS. SIMPLIFIED FOR BOYS NOT VERSED IN ALGEBRA. BY FRANCIS J. GRUND, TEACHER OF MATHEMATICS, AT CHAUNCY HALL-SCHOOL (Boston: Published by Carter and Hendee). FIRST PLANE GEOMETRY HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 14TH YEAR THOREAU’S 14TH STANZA Henry Thoreau would be found to have in his personal library a volume published in this year by the Boston firm of Hilliard and Brown, THE ANALOGY OF RELIGION, NATURAL AND REVEALED, TO THE CONSTITUTION AND COURSE OF NATURE (evidently this had been required reading at Harvard College). What I can offer you, courtesy of Google Books, is an edition of Bishop Joseph Butler’s works as one volume, that would be published in England in 1850. BISHOP JOSEPH BUTLER A revised edition of the Rev. Archibald Alison’s 1790 ESSAYS ON THE NATURE AND PRINCIPLES OF TASTE, “with corrections and improvements by Abraham Mills, Teacher of Rhetoric and Belle Lettres.” REV. ARCHIBALD ALISON (At Harvard College, David Henry Thoreau would study this work on aesthetics.) John Aikin’s THE ARTS OF LIFE, DESCRIBED IN A SERIES OF LETTERS: 1. PROVIDING FOOD.—2. PROVIDING CLOTHING.—3. PROVIDING SHELTER. FOR THE INSTRUCTION OF YOUNG PERSONS. / BY THE AUTHOR OF EVENINGS AT HOME. / FIRST AMERICAN EDITION. (Boston: Carter & Hendee, and Waitt & Dow). THE ARTS OF LIFE This would be one of the books in the personal library of Henry Thoreau. Caroline Downes Brooks was away from Concord during the decade of the 1830s, being properly schooled. HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 14TH STANZA THOREAU’S 14TH YEAR The Rhode Island Historical Society’s impression of the Dighton Rock:2 (Not everybody who looks at a Rorschach inkblot sees a black-and-white butterfly.) 2. Per Garrick Mallery’s “Picture-Writing of the American Indians” in TENTH ANNUAL REPORT OF THE BUREAU OF ETHNOLOGY TO THE SECRETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION, 1888-1889. HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 14TH YEAR THOREAU’S 14TH STANZA “Dighton Rock is like the rocks you see along the highways, filled with graffiti,” says Jim Whitall. “It’s where everyone wanted to leave a message, and it’s the first stone in America that anyone paid any attention to. It was a bulletin-board for ancients, Native Americans, and colonials alike.” The rock with the mysterious hieroglyphs was moved to dry land a few years ago by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts and a building was built around it to preserve the inscriptions. Winter ice and constant submergence at high tide under the Taunton River began obliterating some of the older markings. Also, in case one of the great scholars who deciphered the stone over the past 300 plus years is right, it’s best to preserve what may be a most important piece of history. Even if the hodgepodge of scratches and scribblings can’t ever be deciphered, Dighton Rock is a unique rock of ages. Sam Morison said, “if the history of the Dighton Rock is nothing else, it is a remarkable demonstration of human credulity.” Right on, Sam! -Campbell Grant, ROCK ART OF THE AMERICAN INDIAN, 1967 HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 14TH STANZA THOREAU’S 14TH YEAR The Formation of Historical Societies 1791 Massachusetts Historical Society 1804 New-York Historical Society 1812 American Antiquarian Society 1820s Maine and Rhode Island Historical Societies 1830s Virginia, Vermont, Connecticut, and Georgia Historical Societies 1840s Maryland Historical Society 1845 New Jersey Historical Society 1849 Minnesota Historical Society 1850s South Carolina Historical Society 1859 Historical Society of the Territory of New Mexico “The chief practical use of history is to deliver us from plausible historical analogies.” — James Bryce, 1888 Here is what Henry Thoreau would make of this historical-society phenomenon: A WEEK : Strictly speaking, the historical societies have not PEOPLE OF recovered one fact from oblivion, but are themselves, instead of the fact, that is lost. The researcher is more memorable than the A WEEK researched. The crowd stood admiring the mist and the dim outlines of the trees seen through it, when one of their number advanced to explore the phenomenon, and with fresh admiration all eyes were turned on his dimly retreating figure. It is astonishing with how little co-operation of the societies the past is remembered. Its story has indeed had another muse than has been assigned it. There is a good instance of the manner in which all history began, in Alwákidis’ Arabian Chronicle: “I was informed by Ahmed Almatin Aljorhami, who had it from Rephâa Ebn Kais Alámiri, who had it from Saiph Ebn Fabalah Alchâtquarmi, who had it from Thabet Ebn Alkamah, who said he was present at the action.” These fathers of history were not anxious to preserve, but to learn the fact; and hence it was not forgotten. Critical acumen is exerted in vain to uncover the past; the past cannot be presented; we cannot know what we are not. But one veil hangs over past, present, and future, and it is the province of the historian to find out, not what was, but what is. SIMON OCKLEY HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 14TH YEAR THOREAU’S 14TH STANZA John Lindley proposed a non-Linnaean “natural” arrangement of the orders of plants in AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NATURAL SYSTEM OF BOTANY: OR, A SYSTEMATIC VIEW OF THE ORGANISATION, NATURAL AFFINITIES, AND GEOGRAPHICAL DISTRIBUTION, OF THE WHOLE VEGETABLE KINGDOM; TOGETHER WITH THE USES OF THE MOST IMPORTANT SPECIES IN MEDICINE, THE ARTS, AND RURAL OR DOMESTIC ECONOMY (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, and Green, Paternoster-Row), which provided keys to the families similar to those which he would propose in 1835 in his A KEY TO STRUCTURAL, PHYSIOLOGICAL AND SYSTEMATIC BOTANY, FOR THE USE OF CLASSES (London: Longman, Rees, Orme, Brown, Green, & Longman, Paternoster-Row): “HUCKLEBERRIES”: The Englishman Lindley, in his NATURAL SYSTEM OF BOTANY, says that the Vaccinieae are “Natives of North America, where they are found in great abundance as far as high northern latitudes; sparingly in Europe; and not uncommonly on high land in the Sandwich Islands.” (Henry Thoreau would twice access the 1836 2d edition of this AN INTRODUCTION TO THE NATURAL SYSTEM OF BOTANY at the Society of Natural History during January 1852, taking notes in his Indian Notebook #8 and Fact Book.) In an “Address to Parents” at the beginning of THE CHILDREN’S ROBINSON CRUSOE, Mrs. Eliza Ware Rotch Farrar noted that Daniel Defoe’s work had been “exactly what it purports to be, the narrative of a profane, ill- educated, runaway apprentice of the 17th century,” and therefore had been in need of being expurgated before it could conceivably be offered as part of a properly guarded education for our tender innocent children: “Can such a tale, though perfect in itself, be suited to children who have been carefully guarded from all profaneness, vulgarity, and superstition?” She not only elided Crusoe’s “disobedience to his parents, and his inordinate love of adventure,” replacing such negatives with such positive traits as: “industry, perseverance, resignation to the will of God.” Friday she altered to make him be your perfect colored servant: “of a mild, affectionate, and tractable nature.” Deliberately, she wove into the narrative “as much information about domestic arts as could well be interwoven with the story.” Walter Wilson, Esq.’s MEMOIRS OF THE LIFE AND TIMES OF DANIEL DE FOE: CONTAINING A REVIEW OF HIS WRITINGS, AND HIS OPINIONS UPON A VARIETY OF IMPORTANT MATTERS, CIVIL AND ECCLESIASTICAL (London: Hurst, Chance, and Co.).3 DANIEL DE FOE 3. Of the three volumes of this Henry Thoreau would check out only the 1st. HDT WHAT? INDEX THOREAU’S 14TH STANZA THOREAU’S 14TH YEAR THE MAINE WOODS: Setting out on our return to the river, still at an early hour in the day, we decided to follow the course of the torrent, which we supposed to be Murch Brook, as long as it would not lead us too far out of our way. We thus travelled about four miles in the very torrent itself, continually crossing and recrossing it, leaping from rock to rock, and jumping with the stream down falls of seven or eight feet, or sometimes sliding down on our backs in a thin sheet of water.