SENTIMENTAL REFORMER IN ARCHITECTURE? –NOT.
The issue in this thumbnail biography will be whether or not
Henry Thoreau can be said to have, in WALDEN; OR. LIFE IN THE WOODS,
implicitly derogated Horatio Greenough as a “sentimental
reformer in architecture.” My conclusion will be that although
Thoreau did indeed make implicit mention of an unnamed
architect, this was not at all a reference to the sculptor
Greenough as presumed by Professor Harding (Greenough never
constructed any building), but instead needs to be considered
to have been a mention of some much more likely and more proper
and more probable target — a target such as the very productive
but very conventional New England architect Asher Benjamin
(q.v.).
PEOPLE OF
WALDEN
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WALDEN: True, there are architects so called in this country, and I have
heard of one at least possessed with the idea of making architectural
ornaments have a core of truth, a necessity, and hence a beauty, as if
it were a revelation to him. All very well perhaps from his point of
view, but only a little better than the common dilettantism.
A sentimental reformer in architecture, he began at the cornice, not at
the foundation. It was only how to put a core of truth within the
ornaments, that every sugar plum in fact might have an almond or caraway
seed in it –though I hold that almonds are most wholesome without the
sugar,– and not how the inhabitant, the indweller, might build truly
within and without, and let the ornaments take care of themselves. What
reasonable man ever supposed that ornaments were something outward and
in the skin merely, –that the tortoise got his spotted shell, or the
shellfish its mother-o’-pearl tints, by such a contract as the
inhabitants of Broadway their Trinity Church? But a man has no more to
do with the style of architecture of his house than a tortoise with that
of its shell, nor need the soldier be so idle as to try to paint the
precise color of his virtue on his standard. The enemy will find it out.
He may turn pale when the trial comes. This man seemed to me to lean
over the cornice and timidly whisper his half truth to the rude occupants
who really knew it better than he. What of architectural beauty I now
see, I know has gradually grown from within outward, out of the
necessities and character of the indweller, who is the only builder, –
out of some unconscious truthfulness, and nobleness, without ever a
thought for the appearance; and whatever additional beauty of this kind
is destined to be produced will be preceded by a like unconscious beauty
of life. The most interesting dwellings in this country, as the painter
knows, are the most unpretending, humble log huts and cottages of the
poor commonly; it is the life of the inhabitants whose shells they are,
and not any peculiarity in their surfaces merely, which makes them
picturesque; and equally interesting will be the citizen’s suburban box,
when his life shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination,
and there is as little straining after effect in the style of his
dwelling. A great proportion of architectural ornaments are literally
hollow, and a September gale would strip them off, like borrowed plumes,
without injury to the substantials. They can do without architecture who
have no olives nor wines in the cellar. What if an equal ado were made
about the ornaments of style in literature, and the architects of our
bibles spent as much time about their cornices as the architects of our
churches do? So are made the belles-lettres and the beaux-arts and their
professors. Much it concerns a man, forsooth, how a few sticks are
slanted over him or under him, and what colors are daubed upon his box.
It would signify somewhat, if, in any earnest sense, he slanted them and
daubed it; but the spirit having departed out of the tenant, it is of a
piece with constructing his own coffin, –the architecture of the grave,
and “carpenter” is but another name for “coffin-maker.” One man says,
in his despair or indifference to life, take up a handful of the earth
at your feet, and paint your house that color. Is he thinking of his
last and narrow house? Toss up a copper for it as well. What an abundance
of leisure he must have! Why do you take up a handful of dirt? Better
paint your house your own complexion; let it turn pale or blush for you.
An enterprise to improve the style of cottage architecture! When you
have got my ornaments ready I will wear them.
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1805
September 6, Friday: Horatio Greenough was born in Boston in a wealthy family.
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1825
Horatio Greenough graduated from Harvard College and went to Italy for two years. Augustus Addison Gould
graduated and (after a period as a private tutor in Maryland) would study at that institution’s school of medicine
at the Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston.
NEW “HARVARD MEN”
Professor George Ticknor issued REMARKS ON CHANGES LATELY PROPOSED OR ADOPTED IN HARVARD
UNIVERSITY (Boston: Hilliard).
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“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
George Ticknor campaigned to turn Harvard College from a socialization school for
Boston’s elites to a quality European university. Although his own modern languages
department established an elective curriculum, he was largely unsuccessful.
His REMARKS ON CHANGES remains a readable thesis on why Harvard should adopt a more
professional curriculum and makes for some interesting comparisons with Emerson’s
ideas on education and Thoreau’s later experiences at the college. Essentially,
Ticknor argues that since Harvard has rapidly become a leading US institution, it
should now take responsibility for that role through the improvement of several
key areas of Harvard life. The first and most central —and this relates directly
to Emerson— is teaching. The most a typical Harvard instructor, Ticknor writes,
undertakes “is to ascertain from day to day, whether the young men who are assembled
in his presence, have probably studied the lesson prescribed to them” and there
“his duty stops.” The idea, Ticknor continues, “of a thorough commentary on the
lesson; the idea of making explanations and illustrations of the teacher, of as
much consequence as the recitation of the book, or even of more, is substantially
unknown in our school.” It is hard to imagine Emerson or Thoreau disagreeing with
Ticknor’s vision of a college instructor, but they would and Emerson does
explicitly disagree with Ticknor’s more controversial ideas about professional
scholarship, specialization and research.
[Shawn Gillen, February 1992]
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1827
William Cullen Bryant became an editor of the New-York Evening Post. While working at the Evening Post,
Parke Godwin would become associated with Bryant, and eventually he and Bryant’s daughter would marry.
The Andrew Jackson campaign for the Presidency was being advanced by the poets William Leggett and
William Cullen Bryant, the poet George Bancroft, the sculptor Horatio Greenough, the authors James
Fenimore Cooper and Nathaniel Hawthorne, and in general by every careerist man of genius, each careerist
humanitarian, and all the careerist underprivilegeds who were seeking privilege. And why not? There were
1,972 men in debtor’s prison, subsisting upon a daily ration of a quart of soup — and that was in the State of
New York alone.1
1. As reported in the National Gazette of November 15, 1827. The national estimate, for the population of debtors’ prisons in the
USA in the second half of the 1820s, is 75,000 souls. For a debt as low as $3.00 you could find your ass in jail, and you’d stay in
the slammer in debt too, maybe for the rest of your life unless you could provide someone with some money with some good reason
to buy you out of the place. What, did you suppose that having a society based upon human bondage would have no ramifications?
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1828
The wealthy sculptor Horatio Greenough went to Italy again, this time (almost) for good.
A 3rd volume of Walter Savage Landor’s IMAGINARY CONVERSATIONS OF LITERARY MEN AND STATESMEN,
ETC. (London: Colburn).
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1829
Thomas Cole would spend an extended period abroad, until 1832 and then again in 1841 and 1842, mainly in
Italy. He would live in Florence with Horatio Greenough, painting “The Subsiding of the Waters of the
Deluge,” an oil on canvas now at the National Museum of American Art.
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1830
At Villa Gherardesca in Fiesole, Walter Savage Landor was visited by John Robert Kenyon, establishing a
long friendship.
From the 1830s through the 1840s, the wealthy Massachusetts sculptor Horatio Greenough would be
becoming the “leader” of the American artists’ colony in Rome, Italy.
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1832
The US Congress commissioned Horatio Greenough to do a larger-than-life statue of George Washington,
prince of our national liberty, for its rotunda — of course, at that time nobody had the slightest inkling that the
sculptor, off there in Rome messing around with his 20 tons of Carrera marble, would be depicting the big
daddy of this country attired but in sandals and a short sheet, exposed from the waist up.2
It’s obviously
intended to
represent a
white guy.
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1840
Horatio Greenough’s larger-than-life statue of George Washington, prince of our national liberty, clad in
sandals and toga, with bare upper torso, which had been intended for the rotunda of the US capital building,
found itself housed instead at the Smithsonian Institution. Nobody had had the slightest inkling that the
sculptor, off there in Rome messing around with his 20 tons of Carrera marble, had been depicting the big
2. Don’t you agree that it would have been ever so much more appropriate to our national condition, had this sculptor the artistic
imagination to have displayed the father of our country naked instead from the waist down? This exposure of a slavemaster
would have served to remind us constantly of what in 1841 John Quincy Adams needed to point out to the several justices of the
United States Supreme Court in the case of the mutiny aboard the good ship La Amistad:
The words slave and slavery are studiously
excluded from the Constitution. Circumlocutions
are the fig-leaves under which these parts of the
body politic are decently concealed.
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daddy of this country attired but in sandals and a short sheet, exposed from the waist up.3
It’s obviously
intended to
represent a
white guy.
3. Don’t you agree that it would have been ever so much more appropriate to our national condition, had this sculptor the artistic
imagination to have displayed the father of our country naked instead from the waist down? This exposure of a slavemaster would
have served to remind us constantly of what in 1841 John Quincy Adams needed to point out to the several justices of the United
States Supreme Court in the case of the mutiny aboard the good ship La Amistad:
The words slave and slavery are studiously
excluded from the Constitution. Circumlocutions
are the fig-leaves under which these parts of the
body politic are decently concealed.
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1841
December 1, Wednesday: Manlius Stimson Clarke got married with Frances Cordis Lemist of Roxbury (the couple
would produce a son and two daughters prior to the husband’s untimely demise).
Horatio Greenough’s larger-than-life statue of George Washington, prince of our national liberty, attired but in
sandals and a short sheet, with bare upper torso, was wrestled into place, all 20 Carrera marble tons of it, on
the shored-up floor of the Capitol’s rotunda. –But nobody had told the sculptor that where they were going to
put it, it was dark like a bat cave even in the middle of the day –so his half-naked excellency would barely be
seen!4
It’s obviously
intended to
represent a
white guy.
In Afghanistan, an effort was made to take possession of the Bala Hissar, but Major Ewart’s command
repulsed the swarms of locals with considerable slaughter.
February: Horatio Greenough had his statue of George Washington pulled a few yards off-center in the Capital rotunda
and got it up on a temporary wooden pedestal in order to obtain for it a slightly better lighting.
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4. Don’t you agree that it would have been ever so much more appropriate to our national condition, had this sculptor the artistic
imagination to have displayed the father of our country naked instead from the waist down? This exposure of a slavemaster
would have served to remind us constantly of what in this year John Quincy Adams had needed to point out to the several justices
of the United States Supreme Court in the case of the mutiny aboard the good ship La Amistad:
The words slave and slavery are studiously
excluded from the Constitution. Circumlocutions
are the fig-leaves under which these parts of the
body politic are decently concealed.
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October 26, Wednesday: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:
Boston is not quite a mean place since in walking yesterday in
the street I met George Bancroft, Horatio Greenough, Samson
Reed, Theodore Parker Sam Ward, George Bradford, & had a little
talk with each of them.
The Spirit of the Times (page 2, column 1) reported that Francis Joseph Grund had been appointed
“weigh master” at the Philadelphia Custom House. Yet another political plum, courtesy of the Whig party!5
Oct 26th, 1842: The maples stripped of their leaves so early, stand like a wreathe of smoke along the
edge of the meadow.
Kindness which has so good a reputation elsewhere, can least of all consist with friendship– No such affront
can be offered as a conscious good will — a friendliness which is not a necessity of the friends’ character. Its
foundations must be surer than those of the globe itself — secure from whim or passion, and the laws of truth
and magnanimity have their root and abiding place in our friend. He seeking a friend walks on and on through
the crowds of men as if in a straight line without stopping.
5. Since Edgar Allan Poe and Grund knew one another, it seems plausible that when Poe sought an appointment in the Philadelphia
Custom House, he would of course have solicited a recommendation by Grund.
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1843
Early in the year, Horatio Greenough and Waldo Emerson spent several hours of an evening at the Rotunda in
Washington DC as the sculptor fussed with various illumination schemes for his occluded half-naked statue of
George Washington. In the process they accidentally set a wooden crate on fire to the considerable danger of
the entire Capital.
The royal commission on the employment of children in mines and manufactures, of which Richard Henry
Horne had been a part, completed its work and issued its report. During this year his epic poem ORION would
go on sale at the price of one farthing,6 and would be widely consumed (Horne attempting to require that no
more than one copy might be vended at such a price to any one person). A total of four printings would be
offered at that price and then three printings would be offered at increased prices, before the end of the year.7
6. The farthing coin of that era was copper and weighed between 4.5 and 4.9 grams. It was 22 mm. in diameter and would purchase
then what a copper/nickel ten-pence coin will today (18¢ in USA).
7. The author also attempted to insist that his poem not be vended to anyone who mispronounced the title, “uh-rahy-uhn.”
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(On the rare book market, this paperback now draws about $600.)
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January 10, Tuesday: On this day and the following one, Horatio Greenough and Waldo Emerson, in Washington DC,
were lobbying members of the US Congress to kindly get the sculptor’s half-naked statue of George
Washington repositioned to the West front of the Capital building, where although it would be exposed to the
elements, at least it would be visible to the public. Waldo spent several hours of an evening at the Rotunda
while they fussed with various illumination schemes for the occluded masterwork — in the process
accidentally setting a wooden crate on fire to the considerable danger of the entire Capital building.
“I make-a
da rules!”
February: The Congress ordered that Horatio Greenough’s statue of a semi-nude President General George
Washington be moved to the East front of the Capital building. Representative John Quincy Adams of
Massachusetts attempted to present to the US House of Representatives a Great Petition in the shape of a
waterwheel, demanding that the people of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts be forever separated from any
connection with human enslavement. When permission to present this petition was not obtained, he left the
petition on display on his desk on the floor. It would remain there, on display, for the remainder of the session.
Winter: A “Carpenter Gothic” shack was constructed over Horatio Greenough’s semi-naked statue of George
Washington to protect its Carrera marble from the District of Columbia winter weather — or maybe it was
because our founding daddy appeared to be shivering (although this shack would be reinstalled every winter,
by 1854 the stone belt would weather to the point of dropping off the stone sword).
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1845
Horatio Greenough’s statue of George Washington in the District of Columbia was moved to a little floral
island in the middle of East Capitol Street.
This being two years subsequent to the death of James Madison (he being the last surviving delegate to the
Constitutional Convention of 1787), the notes that he had kept in regard to the secret deliberations of the
Convention, that he had turned over to George Washington for safekeeping at Mount Vernon, were finally
published.
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1846
A railing and four lamp-posts had been added to the little floral island on which Horatio Greenough’s naked
statue of the slavemaster George Washington sat, in the middle of East Capitol Street in Washington DC. Over
the sculptor’s strenuous objection, “impertinent” dwarf cypresses and rosebushes were positioned so as to
“obstruct the view of the inscription.”
Friend John Greenleaf Whittier’s VOICES OF FREEDOM. During this year, also, he wrote his short poem “New
Hampshire” in honor of the Granite State’s bold unique stand against slavery. The final couplet, often quoted,
is a stirring call to arms against human bondage with New Hampshire of course leading the way:
God bless New Hampshire! for her granite peaks
Once more the voice of Stark and Langdon speaks.
The long-bound vassal of the exulting South
For very shame her self-forged chain has broken;
Torn the black seal of slavery from her mouth
And in the clear tones of her old time spoken!
Oh, all undreamed of, all unhoped for changes!
The tyrant’s ally proves his sternest foe;
To all his biddings, from her mountain ranges,
New Hampshire thunders an indignant No!
Who is it now despairs? Oh, faint of heart,
Look upward to those Northern mountains cold,
Flouted by freedom’s victor-flag unrolled,
And gather strength to bear a manlier part!
All is not lost. The angel of God’s blessing
Encamps with Freedom on the field of fight;
Still to her banner, day by day, are pressing
Unlooked for allies, striking for the right!
Courage, then, Northern hearts! Be firm, be true;
What one brave State hath done, can ye not also do?
We need to pay attention to the fact that the Granite State reality was considerably less glorious than as he
depicted. New Hampshire’s early track record in opposing discrimination, if it deserved a poem, deserved no
gold metal. Why would Whittier have gone so overboard? The answer is politics: he was backing Senator John
P. Hale of Dover NH. Hale eventually even would be running for President as the candidate of the Free Soil
Party, which would advocate the creation of no new slave states. Well, but Hale and his “Hale men” would not
oppose slavery as such, but only its spread by way of the annexation of Texas. Hale first made headlines as a
NH legislator when he defied the “Gag Rule” created by another New Hampshire legislator and openly
discussed the topic of slavery. Hale debated against soon-to-be-President Franklin Pierce, another New
Hampshire man. By talking about slavery Hale made himself not only a magnet for Whittier’s praise but also
a target — one of his southern colleagues on the floor of the US Senate would issue a death threat.
After the election of 1856, in which the Free Soil Party would make enormous gains, and presaging its ultimate
victory in the election of 1860, Whittier would write:
A SONG, INSCRIBED TO THE FRÉMONT CLUBS.
BENEATH thy skies, November!
Thy skies of cloud and rain,
Around our blazing camp-fires
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We close our ranks again.
Then sound again the bugles,
Call the muster-roll anew; ...
Some verses by Friend John were published during this year in the Boston Chronotype, in reference to a letter
that supposedly had been written by the chairman of the “Central Clique” at Concord NH to the Honorable
M.N., Jr. of Pittsfield in the District of Columbia, telling that the abolitionist, John P. Hale, had been elected
to the US Senate:
A LETTER.
’TIS over, Moses! All is lost!
I hear the bells a-ringing;
Of Pharaoh and his Red Sea host
I hear the Free-Wills8 singing.
We’re routed, Moses, horse and foot,
If there be truth in figures,
With Federal Whigs in hot pursuit,
And Hale, and all the “niggers.”
Alack! alas! this month or more
We’ve felt a sad foreboding;
Our very dreams the burden bore
Of central cliques exploding;
Before our eyes a furnace shone,
Where heads of dough were roasting,
And one we took to be your own
The traitor Hale was toasting!
Our Belknap brother9 heard with awe
The Congo minstrels playing;
At Pittsfield Reuben Leavitt saw
The ghost of Storrs a-praying;10
And Carroll’s woods were sad to see,
With black-winged crows a-darting;
And Black Snout looked on Ossipee,
New-glossed with Day and Martin.
We thought the “Old Man of the Notch”
His face seemed changing wholly —
His lips seemed thick; his nose seemed flat;
His misty hair looked woolly;
And Coˆs teamsters, shrieking, fled
From the metamorphosed figure.
“Look there!” they said, “the Old Stone Head
Himself is turning nigger!”
The schoolhouse11 out of Canaan hauled
Seemed turning on its track again,
And like a great swamp-turtle crawled
To Canaan village back again,
Shook off the mud and settled flat
Upon its underpinning;
gone but not forgotten
A nigger on its ridge-pole sat,
From ear to ear a-grinning.
Gray H—d heard o’ nights the sound
Of rail-cars onward faring;
Right over Democratic ground
8. The New Hampshire Legislature had refused to grant incorporation papers to the Free-Will Baptists in Dover NH, because their
newspaper and their leading preachers were abolitionist in sentiment.
9. The senator who edited the Belknap Gazette was offended at what he termed “niggers” and “nigger parties.”
10. Reuben Leavitt was the justice before whom Elder Storrs was brought for preaching abolition on a writ drawn by the Honorable
M.N. Jr., of Pittsfield. The sheriff had served the writ on Storrs while the elder was praying.
11. When the academy at Canaan NH had accepted one or two pupils of color, some racist Democrats had played a little joke by
hooking up teams of horses or oxen and dragging the building into an adjoining swamp.
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The iron horse came tearing.
A flag waved o’er that spectral train,
As high as Pittsfield steeple;
Its emblem was a broken chain;
Its motto: “To the people!”
I dreamed that Charley took his bed,
With Hale for his physician;
His daily dose an old “unread
And unreferred” petition.12
There Hayes and Tuck as nurses sat,
As near as near could be, man;
They leeched him with the “Democrat;”
They blistered with the “Freeman.”
Ah! grisly portents! What avail
Your terrors of forewarning?
We wake to find the nightmare Hale
Astride our breasts at morning!
From Portsmouth lights to Indian stream
Our foes their throats are trying;
The very factory-spindles seem
To mock us while they’re flying.
The hills have bonfires; in our streets
Flags flout us in our faces;
The newsboys, peddling off their sheets,
Are hoarse with our disgraces.
In vain we turn, for gibing wit
And shoutings follow after,
As if old Kearsarge had split
His granite sides with laughter!
What boots it that we pelted out
The anti-slavery women,13
And bravely strewed their hall about
With tattered lace and trimming?
Was it for such a sad reverse
Our mobs became peacemakers,
And kept their tar and wooden horse
For Englishmen and Quakers?
For this did shifty Atherton
Make gag rules for the Great House?
Wiped we for this our feet upon
Petitions in our State House?
Plied we for this our axe of doom,
No stubborn traitor sparing,
Who scoffed at our opinion loom,
And took to homespun wearing?
Ah, Moses! hard it is to scan
These crooked providences,
Deducing from the wisest plan
The saddest consequences!
Strange that, in trampling as was meet
The nigger-men’s petition,
We sprung a mine beneath our feet
Which opened up perdition.
How goodly, Moses, was the game
In which we’ve long been actors,
Supplying freedom with the name
And slavery with the practice!
12. The gag-law introduced in the House by Mr. Atherton ordered that “Papers and memorials touching the subject of slavery shall
be laid on the table without reading, debate or reference.”
13. At the first meeting of the Female Anti-Slavery Society of Concord NH, the building was pelted with stones and brickbats.
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Our smooth words fed the people’s mouth,
Their ears our party rattle;
We kept them headed to the South,
As drovers do their cattle.
But now our game of politics
The world at large is learning;
And men grown gray in all our tricks
State’s evidence are turning.
Votes and preambles subtly spun
They cram with meanings louder,
And load the Democratic gun
With abolition powder.
The ides of June! Woe worth the day
When, turning all things over,
The traitor Hale shall make his hay
From Democratic clover!
Who then shall take him in the law,
Who punish crime so flagrant?
Whose hand shall serve, whose pen shall draw,
A writ against that “vagrant”?
Alas! no hope is left us here,
And one can only pine for
The envied place of overseer
Of slaves in Carolina!
Pray, Moses, give Calhoun the wink,
And see what pay he’s giving!
We’re practised long enough, we think,
To know the art of driving.
And for the faithful rank and file,
Who know their proper stations,
Perhaps it may be worth their while
To try the rice plantations.
Let Hale exult, let Wilson scoff,
To see us southward scamper;
The slaves, we know, are “better off
Than laborers in New Hampshire!”
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Friend John Greenleaf Whittier’s “The Branded Hand”:
WELCOME home again, brave seaman! with thy thoughtful brow and gray,
And the old heroic spirit of our earlier, better day;
With that front of calm endurance, on whose steady nerve in vain
Pressed the iron of the prison, smote the fiery shafts of pain!
Is the tyrant’s brand upon thee? Did the brutal cravens aim
To make God’s truth thy falsehood, His holiest work thy shame?
When, all blood-quenched, from the torture the iron was withdrawn,
How laughed their evil angel the baffled fools to scorn!
They change to wrong the duty which God hath written out
On the great heart of humanity, too legible for doubt!
They, the loathsome moral lepers, blotched from footsole up to crown,
Give to shame what God hath given unto honor and renown!
Why, that brand is highest honor! than its traces never yet
Upon old armorial hatchments was a prouder blazon set;
And thy unborn generations, as they tread our rocky strand,
Shall tell with pride the story of their father’s branded hand!
As the Templar home was welcome, bearing back from Syrian wars
The scars of Arab lances and of Paynim scimitars,
The pallor of the prison, and the shackle’s crimson span,
So we meet thee, so we greet thee, truest friend of God and man.
He suffered for the ransom of the dear Redeemer’s grave,
Thou for His living presence in the bound and bleeding slave;
He for a soil no longer by the feet of angels trod,
Thou for the true Shechinah, the present home of God!
For, while the jurist, sitting with the slave-whip o’er him swung,
From the tortured truths of freedom the lie of slavery wrung,
And the solemn priest to Moloch, on each God-deserted shrine,
Broke the bondman’s heart for bread, poured the bondman’s blood for wine;
While the multitude in blindness to a far-off Saviour knelt
And spurned, the while, the temple where a present Saviour dwelt;
Thou beheld’st Him in the task-field, in the prison shadows dim,
And thy mercy to the bondman, it was mercy unto Him!
In thy lone and long night-watches, sky above and wave below,
Thou didst learn a higher wisdom than the babbling schoolmen know;
God’s stars and silence taught thee, as His angels only can,
That the one sole sacred thing beneath the cope of heaven is Man!
That he who treads profanely on the scrolls of law and creed,
In the depth of God’s great goodness may find mercy in his need;
But woe to him who crushes the soul with chain and rod,
And herds with lower natures the awful form of God!.
Then lift that manly right-hand, bold ploughman of the wave!
Its branded palm shall prophesy, “Salvation to the Slave!”
Hold up its fire-wrought language, that who so reads may feel
His heart swell strong within him, his sinews change to steel.
Hold it up before our sunshine, up against our Northern air;
Ho! men of Massachusetts, for the love of God, look there!
Take it henceforth for your standard, like the Bruce’s heart of yore,
In the dark strife closing round ye, let that hand be seen before!
And the masters of the slave-land shall tremble at that sign,
When it points its finger Southward along the Puritan line
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Can the craft of State avail them? Can a Christless church withstand,
In the van of Freedom’s onset, the coming of that hand?
The Pine Tree, by John Greenleaf Whittier. (1846)
Written on hearing that the Anti-Slavery Resolves of Stephen C. Phillips had been rejected by the Whig
Convention in Faneuil Hall, in 1846.
LIFT again the stately emblem on the Bay State’s rusted shield,
Give to Northern winds the Pine-Tree on our banner’s tattered field.
Sons of men who sat in council with their Bibles round the board,
Answering England’s royal missive with a firm, “Thus saith the Lord!”
Rise again for home and freedom! set the battle in array!
What the fathers did of old time we their sons must do to-day.
Tell us not of banks and tariffs, cease your paltry pedler cries;
Shall the good State sink her honor that your gambling stocks may rise?
Would ye barter man for cotton? That your gains may sum up higher,
Must we kiss the feet of Moloch, pass our children through the fire?
Is the dollar only real? God and truth and right a dream?
Weighed against your lying ledgers must our manhood kick the beam?
O my God! for that free spirit, which of old in Boston town
Smote the Province House with terror, struck the crest of Andros down!
For another strong-voiced Adams in the city’s streets to cry,
“Up for God and Massachusetts! Set your feet on Mammon’s lie!
Perish banks and perish traffic, spin your cotton’s latest pound,
But in Heaven’s name keep your honor, keep the heart o’ the Bay State sound!”
Where’s the man for Massachusetts! Where’s the voice to speak her free?
Where’s the hand to light up bonfires from her mountains to the sea?
Beats her Pilgrim pulse no longer? Sits she dumb in her despair?
Has she none to break the silence? Has she none to do and dare?
O my God! for one right worthy to lift up her rushed shield,
And to plant again the Pine-Tree in her banner’s tattered field!
To a Southern Statesman, by John Greenleaf Whittier. (1846)
John C. Calhoun, who had strongly urged the extension of slave territory by the annexation of Texas, even if it
should involve a war with England, was unwilling to promote the acquisition of Oregon, which would enlarge
the Northern domain of freedom, and pleaded as an excuse the peril of foreign complications which he had defied
when the interests of slavery were involved.
IS this thy voice whose treble notes of fear
Wail in the wind? And dost thou shake to hear,
Actæon-like, the bay of thine own hounds,
Spurning the leash, and leaping o’er their bounds?
Sore-baffled statesman! when thy eager hand,
With game afoot, unslipped the hungry pack,
To hunt down Freedom in her chosen land,
Hadst thou no fear, that, erelong, doubling back,
These dogs of thine might snuff on Slavery’s track?
Where’s now the boast, which even thy guarded tongue,
Cold, calm, and proud, in the teeth o’ the Senate flung,
O’er the fulfilment of thy baleful plan,
Like Satan’s triumph at the fall of man?
How stood’st thou then, thy feet on Freedom planting,
And pointing to the lurid heaven afar,
Whence all could see, through the south windows slanting,
Crimson as blood, the beams of that Lone Star!
The Fates are just; they give us but our own;
Nemesis ripens what our hands have sown.
There is an Eastern story, not unknown,
Doubtless, to thee, of one whose magic skill
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Called demons up his water-jars to fill;
Defty and silently, they did his will,
But, when the task was done, kept pouring still.
In vain with spell and charm the wizard wrought,
Faster and faster were the buckets brought,
Higher and higher rose the flood around,
Till the fiends clapped their hands above their master drowned!
So, Carolinian, it may prove with thee,
For God still overrules man’s schemes, and takes
Craftiness in its self-set snare, and makes
The wrath of man to praise Him. It may be,
That the roused spirits of Democracy
May leave to freer States the same wide door
Through which thy slave-cursed Texas entered in,
From out the blood and fire, the wrong and sin,
Of the stormed city and the ghastly plain,
Beat by hot hail, and wet with bloody rain,
The myriad-handed pioneer may pour,
And the wild West with the roused North combine
And heave the engineer of evil with his mine.
At Washington, by John Greenleaf Whittier.
Suggested by a visit to the city of Washington, in the 12th month of 1845.
WITH a cold and wintry noon-light.
On its roofs and steeples shed,
Shadows weaving with the sunlight
From the gray sky overhead,
Broadly, vaguely, all around me, lies the half-built town outspread.
Through this broad street, restless ever,
Ebbs and flows a human tide,
Wave on wave a living river;
Wealth and fashion side by side;
Toiler, idler, slave and master, in the same quick current glide.
Underneath yon dome, whose coping
Springs above them, vast and tall,
Grave men in the dust are groping.
For the largess, base and small,
Which the hand of Power is scattering, crumbs which from its table fall.
Base of heart! They vilely barter
Honor’s wealth for party’s place;
Step by step on Freedom’s charter
Leaving footprints of disgrace;
For to-day’s poor pittance turning from the great hope of their race.
Yet, where festal lamps are throwing
Glory round the dancer’s hair,
Gold-tressed, like an angel’s, flowing
Backward on the sunset air;
And the low quick pulse of music beats its measure sweet and rare:
There to-night shall woman’s glances,
Star-like, welcome give to them;
Fawning fools with shy advances
Seek to touch their garments’ hem,
With the tongue of flattery glozing deeds which God and Truth condemn.
From this glittering lie my vision
Takes a broader, sadder range,
Full before me have arisen
Other pictures dark and strange;
From the parlor to the prison must the scene and witness change.
Hark! the heavy gate is swinging
On its hinges, harsh and slow;
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One pale prison lamp is flinging
On a fearful group below
Such a light as leaves to terror whatsoe’er it does not show.
Pitying God! Is that a woman
On whose wrist the shackles clash?
Is that shriek she utters human,
Underneath the stinging lash?
Are they men whose eyes of madness from that sad procession flash?
Still the dance goes gayly onward!
What is it to Wealth and Pride
That without the stars are looking
On a scene which earth should hide?
That the slave-ship lies in waiting, rocking on Potomac’s tide!
Vainly to that mean Ambition
Which, upon a rival’s fall,
Winds above its old condition,
With a reptile’s slimy crawl,
Shall the pleading voice of sorrow, shall the slave in anguish call.
Vainly to the child of Fashion,
Giving to ideal woe
Graceful luxury of compassion,
Shall the stricken mourner go;
Hateful seems the earnest sorrow, beautiful the hollow show!
Nay, my words are all too sweeping:
In this crowded human mart,
Feeling is not dead, but sleeping;
Man’s strong will and woman’s heart,
In the coming strife for Freedom, yet shall bear their generous part.
And from yonder sunny valleys,
Southward in the distance lost,
Freedom yet shall summon allies
Worthier than the North can boast,
With the Evil by their hearth-stones grappling at severer cost.
Now, the soul alone is willing.
Faint the heart and weak the knee;
And as yet no lip is thrilling
With the mighty words, “Be Free!”
Tarrieth long the land’s Good Angel, but his advent is to be!
Meanwhile, turning from the revel
To the prison-cell my sight,
For intenser hate of evil,
For a keener sense of right,
Shaking off thy dust, I thank thee, City of the Slaves, to-night!
“To thy duty now and ever!
Dream no more of rest or stay:
Give to Freedom’s great endeavor
All thou art and hast to-day:”
Thus, above the city’s murmur, saith a Voice, or seems to say.
Ye with heart and vision gifted
To discern and love the right,
Whose worn faces have been lifted
To the slowly-growing light,
Where from Freedom’s sunrise drifted slowly back the murk of night!
Ye who through long years of trial
Still have held your purpose fast,
While a lengthening shade the dial
From the westering sunshine cast,
And of hope each hour’s denial seemed an echo of the last!
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O my brothers! O my sisters!
Would to God that ye were near,
Gazing with me down the vistas
Of a sorrow strange and drear;
Would to God that ye were listeners to the Voice I seem to hear!
With the storm above us driving,
With the false earth mined below,
Who shall marvel if thus striving
We have counted friend as foe;
Unto one another giving in the darkness blow for blow.
Well it may be that our natures
Have grown sterner and more hard,
And the freshness of their features
Somewhat harsh and battle-scarred,
And their harmonies of feeling overtasked and rudely jarred.
Be it so. It should not swerve us
From a purpose true and brave;
Dearer Freedom’s rugged service
Than the pastime of the slave;
Better is the storm above it than the quiet of the grave.
Let us then, uniting, bury
All our idle feuds in dust,
And to future conflicts carry
Mutual faith and common trust;
Always he who most forgiveth in his brother is most just.
From the eternal shadow rounding
All our sun and starlight here,
Voices of our lost ones sounding
Bid us be of heart and cheer,
Through the silence, down the spaces, falling on the inward ear.
Know we not our dead are looking
Downward with a sad surprise,
All our strife of words rebuking
With their mild and loving eyes?
Shall we grieve the holy angels? Shall we cloud their blessed skies?
Let us draw their mantles o’er us,
Which have fallen in our way;
Let us do the work before us,
Cheerly, bravely, while we may,
Ere the long night-silence cometh, and with us it is not day!
The Freed Islands, by John Greenleaf Whittier.
Written for the anniversary celebration of the first of August, at Milton, 1846.
A FEW brief years have passed away
Since Britain drove her million slaves
Beneath the tropic’s fiery ray:
God willed their freedom; and to-day
Life blooms above those island graves!
He spoke! across the Carib Sea,
We heard the clash of breaking chains,
And felt the heart-throb of the free,
The first, strong pulse of liberty
Which thrilled along the bondman’s veins.
Though long delayed, and far, and slow,
The Briton’s triumph shall be ours:
Wears slavery here a prouder brow
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Than that which twelve short years ago
Scowled darkly from her island bowers?
Mighty alike for good or ill
With mother-land, we fully share
The Saxon strength, the nerve of steel,
The tireless energy of will,
The power to do, the pride to dare.
What she has done can we not do?
Our hour and men are both at hand;
The blast which Freedom’s angel blew
O’er her green islands, echoes through
Each valley of our forest land.
Hear it, old Europe! we have sworn
The death of slavery. When it falls,
Look to your vassals in their turn,
Your poor dumb millions, crushed and worn,
Your prisons and your palace walls!
O kingly mockers! scoffing show
What deeds in Freedom’s name we do;
Yet know that every taunt ye throw
Across the waters, goads our slow
Progression towards the right and true.
Not always shall your outraged poor,
Appalled by democratic crime,
Grind as their fathers ground before;
The hour which sees our prison door
Swing wide shall be their triumph time.
On then, my brothers! every blow
Ye deal is felt the wide earth through;
Whatever here uplifts the low
Or humbles Freedom’s hateful foe,
Blesses the Old World through the New.
Take heart! The promised hour draws near;
I hear the downward beat of wings,
And Freedom’s trumpet sounding clear:
“Joy to the people! woe and fear
To new-world tyrants, old-world kings!”
Lines
From a Letter to a Young Clerical Friend, by John Greenleaf Whittier.
A STRENGTH Thy service cannot tire,
A faith which doubt can never dim,
A heart of love, a lip of fire,
O Freedom’s God! be Thou to him!
Speak through him words of power and fear,
As through Thy prophet bards of old,
And let a scornful people hear
Once more Thy Sinai-thunders rolled.
For lying lips Thy blessing seek,
And hands of blood are raised to Thee,
And on Thy children, crushed and weak,
The oppressor plants his kneeling knee.
Let then, O God! Thy servant dare
Thy truth in all its power to tell,
Unmask the priestly thieves, and tear
The Bible from the grasp of hell!
From hollow rite and narrow span
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Of law and sect by Thee released,
Oh, teach him that the Christian man
Is holier than the Jewish priest.
Chase back the shadows, gray and old,
Of the dead ages, from his way,
And let his hopeful eyes behold
The dawn of Thy millennial day;
That day when lettered limb and mind
Shall know the truth which maketh free,
And he alone who loves his kind
Shall, childlike, claim the love of Thee!
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1847
On one night during this year an “irreverent heathen” clambered into the lap of Horatio Greenough’s George
Washington statue sitting in the middle of its little floral island in the middle of East Capitol Street in the
District of Columbia, and positioned a large cigar between its thin pale marble lips.
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Brook Farm was officially disbanded:
When the Brook Farmers disbanded, in the autumn of 1847, a number of
the brightest spirits settled in New York, where The Tribune, Horace
Greeley’s paper, welcomed their ideas and gladly made room on its
staff for George Ripley, their founder. New York in the middle of the
nineteenth century, almost as much perhaps as Boston, bubbled with
movements of reform, with the notions of the spiritualists, the
phrenologists, the mesmerists and what not, and the Fourierists
especially had found a forum there for discussions of “attractional
harmony” and “passional hygiene.” It was the New Yorker Albert
Brisbane who had met the master himself in Paris, where Fourier was
working as a clerk with an American firm, and paid him for expounding
his system in regular lessons. Then Brisbane in turn converted Greeley
and the new ideas had reached Brook Farm, where the members
transformed the society into a Fourierist phalanx. The Tribune had
played a decisive part in this as in other intellectual matters, for
Greeley was unique among editors in his literary flair. Some years
before, Margaret Fuller had come to New York to write for him, and
among the Brook Farmers on his staff, along with “Archon” Ripley, were
George William Curtis and Dana, the founder of The Sun.... The
socialistic [William Henry] Channing was a nephew of the great Boston
divine who had also preached and lectured in New York, while Henry
James [Senior], a Swedenborgian, agreed with the Fourierists too and
regarded all passions and attractions as a species of duty. As for
the still youthful Brisbane, who had toured Europe with his tutor,
studying not only with Fourier but with Hegel in Berlin, he had
mastered animal magnetism to the point where he could strike a light
merely by rubbing his fingers over the gas-jet. The son of a magnate
of upper New York, he had gone abroad at nineteen, with the sense of
a certain injustice in his unearned wealth, and he had been everywhere
received like a bright young travelling prince in Paris, Berlin,
Vienna and Constantinople. He had studied philosophy, music and art
and learned to speak in Turkish, —the language of Fourier’s capital
of the future world,— driving over Italy with S.F.B. Morse and Horatio
Greenough and sitting at the feet of Victor Cousin also. He met and
talked with Goethe, Heine, Balzac, Lamennais and Victor Hugo, reading
Fourier for many weeks with Rahel Varnhagen von Ense, whom he had
inspired with a passion for the “wonderful plan.” He had a strong
feeling for craftsmanship, for he had watched the village blacksmith
along with the carpenter and the saddler when he was a boy, so that
he was prepared for these notions of attractive labor, while he had
been struck by the chief Red Jacket, who had visited the village,
surrounded by white admirers and remnants of his tribe. In this socalled barbarian he had witnessed aptitudes that impressed him with
the powers and capacities of the natural man, and he had long since
set out to preach the gospel of social reorganization that Fourier
had explained to him in Paris.
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At Robert Owen’s “World Convention,” held in New York in
1845, many of the reformers’ programmes had found
expression, and, since then, currents of affinity had
spread from the Unitary Home to the Oneida Community and
the Phalanx at Red Bank. The Unitary Home, a group of
houses on East 14th Street, with communal parlours and
kitchens, was an urban Brook Farm, where temperance reform
and woman’s rights were leading themes of conversation and
John Humphrey Noyes of Oneida was a frequent guest.
FOURIERISM
G.W.F. HEGEL
GEORGE RIPLEY
EAGLESWOOD
HORACE GREELEY
VICTOR COUSIN
HORATIO GREENOUGH
GEORGE WILLIAM CURTIS
JOHANN WOLFGANG VON GOETHE
ASSOCIATION OF INDUSTRY AND EDUCATION
The wealthy Massachusetts sculptor Horatio Greenough finally returned to his nation, to die, from his artists’
colony in Rome, Italy.
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1852
January 10, Saturday: Henry Thoreau made no entry in his journal. Waldo Emerson showed him a letter he had
received from Horatio Greenough, in which the sculptor had fulminated upon the topic of architectural
ornamentation. This would be the occasion for Thoreau to enter into his journal, on the following day, his own
thoughts on the different manner in which an architect would need to be inspired, in order for his building
ornamentation actually to fall within the category “form following function.”
During this year the sculptor, dying, would be issuing his THE TRAVELS, OBSERVATIONS, AND EXPERIENCE
OF A YANKEE STONECUTTER, a book of occasional essays on how the artist ought to be manipulating his
medium in such a manner as to make it appear almost as if form were following function. This sculptor is now
listed as perhaps the first writer to apply organic theories to architecture. In WALDEN, however, Thoreau would
condemn such a project as “sentimental,” as fundamentally wrong-headed. His simile would be that this was
beginning the construction of a building by erecting its cornice, rather than laying in its foundation. Thoreau
took such an attempt to amount to sticking an almond into a sugarplum, modifying existing architectural
ornamentation and appearance somewhat in the direction of some other appearance which could only be
another imitation of functionality. When Thoreau pointed out that architectural beauty is something which
must gradually grow “from within outward, out of the necessities and character of the indweller,” however, he
has been taken as agreeing with Greenough rather than, as he had supposed, correcting him. Such an evaluation
is false. Thoreau not only supposed he was correcting such architects as Asher Benjamin, but also, he was
indeed correcting them. The bone of contention was not in regard to the need for a new architecture –Thoreau
and Greenough would have agreed on that fundamental desideratum– but in regard to the process by which
this needed correction was to be brought about. Thoreau was trying to point out that architectural beauty is not
something which can be brought about by a conscious manipulation of the materials, or by a conscious
planning, in the manner contemplated by such theorists, but must instead be allowed to grow naturally out of
some unconscious truthfulness. Trying to make this as clear in architecture as he had made it in painting (by
his trick of folding over a paper on an ink blot and then defying artists to produce with a brush such an effect),
Henry stated that the conscious content of the human mentation has no more to do with real progress in
architectural style “than a tortoise with that of its shell.”14
January 11, Sunday: Henry Thoreau had some thoughts that he confided to his journal, specifically about his
conversation of the previous day with Waldo Emerson (from whom he was in the process of separating himself
in spirit). These thoughts would find their way into WALDEN, but as a generality about some unnamed architect
rather than specifically in regard to Horatio Greenough.
January 11, Sunday: What need to travel? There are no sierras equal to the clouds in the sun-set-sky.
And are not these substantial enough? In a low or level country perchance the forms of the clouds supply the
place of mts & precipices to the eye – the grosser atmosphere makes a mountainous country in the sky.
The glory of these afternoons though the sky may be mostly overcast is in the ineffably clear blue or else pale
greenish yellow patches of sky in the west just before sunset. The whole cope of heaven seen at once is never
so elysian. windows to heaven – the heaven-ward windows of the earth. The end of the day is truly Hesperian.
R.W.E. showed me yesterday a letter from H. Greenough the sculptor, on architecture which he liked very
much. Greenough’s idea was to make architectural ornaments have a core of truth –a necessity & hence
a beauty– All very well – as I told R.W.E. from Greenough’s point of view – but only a little better than the
common dilettantism–. I was afraid I should say hard things if I said more–
We sometimes find ourselves living fast –unprofitably & coarsely even– as we catch ourselves eating our meals
in unaccountable haste– But in one sense we cannot live too leisurely– Let me not live as if time was short.
Catch the pace of the seasons – have leisure to attend to every phenomenon of nature – and to entertain every
thought that comes to you. Let your life be a leisurely progress through the realms of nature – even in guest14. It would seem, unfortunately, that at that time no-one was prepared to pay attention to this. Henry had no standing, he was not
self-important enough, he was not impressive enough, no-one could bring themselves at the time to pay attention to such remarks.
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quarters–15
This reminds me that the old Northman kings did in fact board round – a good part of the time, as schoolmasters
sometime with us.
But as for Greenough – I felt as if it was dilettantism, & he was such a reformer in architecture as Channing –
in social matters– He began at the cornice– It was only how to put a core of truth within the ornaments– –
that every sugar plum might in fact have an almond or carraway seed in it– and not how the inhabitant the
indweller might be true & let the ornaments take care– of themselves–
He seemed to me to lean over the cornice & timidly whisper this half truth to the rude indwellers who really
knew it more interiorly than he.
What of architectural beauty I now see, I know has gradually grown from within outward –out of the character
& necessities of the indweller & builder without even a thought for mere ornament –but an unconscious
nobleness & truthfulness of character & life –& whatever additional beauty of this kind is destined to be
produced will be preceeded & accompanied, aye created by a like unconscious beauty of life. One of the most
beautiful buildings in this country is a loggers’ hut in the woods –& equally beautiful will be the citizen’s
suburban box– when the life of the indweller shall be as simple and as agreeable to the imagination – and there
is as little straining after effect in the style of his dwelling.
Much it concerns a man forsooth how a few sticks are slanted under him or over him! What colors are daubed
upon his box. One man says in his despair – take up a handful of the earth at your feet & paint your house that
color–! What an abundance of leisure he must have on his hands–! An enterprize to improve the style of cottage
architecture. Grow your own house I say. Build it after an Orphean fashion. When R.W.E & Greenough have
got a few blocks finished & advertised, I will look at them. When they have got my ornaments ready I will wear
them.
What do you take up a handful of dirt for– Why dont you paint your house with your blood? with your sweat?
Thin not the paint with spirits of turpentine. There’s a deal of nonesense abroad–
The question is not where did the traveller go? what places did he see? It would be difficult to choose between
places– But who was the traveller? How did he travel? how genuine an experience did he get? For travelling
is in the main like as if you staid at home, & then the question is how do you live & conduct yourself at home?
What I mean is that it might be hard to decide whether I would travel to Lake Superior or Labrador – or Florida
– perhaps none would be worth the while if I went by the usual mode– But if I travel in a simple primitive
original manner – standing in a truer relation to men and nature travel away from the old & common place – get
some honest experience of life if only out of my feet & homesickness – then it becomes less important whither
I go or how far. I so see the world from a new & more commanding point of view. Perhaps it is easier to live a
true & natural life while travelling– As one can move about less awkwardly than he can stand still.
August 18, Wednesday: On about this date, having apparently learned that the sculptor Horatio Greenough, who had
had the temerity to attack him, had been institutionalized and was dying of some sort of brain problem in
Somerville, Massachusetts (site of McLean’s Asylum), Waldo Emerson confided to his JOURNAL with evident
satisfaction that:
Greenough called my contemplations, &c. “the masturbation of the
brain.”
(Well, Waldo, he who laughs last, laughs best, right?)
MASTURBATION
15. Thoreau would combine this with another entry in his journal (Journal 3:182) and use it in his early lecture “WHAT SHALL
IT PROFIT” as:
[Paragraph 83] Let our life be a leisurely progress through the realms of
nature—ever in guest quarters, as the Old Northman kings boarded round—
as if the soul were on a royal progress through all the worlds.1
1.Thoreau had read about the royal progresses of the Norse kings in an unknown edition of Snorri
Sturluson’s HEIMSKRINGLA: SAGA OF THE NORSE KINGS, translated by Samuel Laing; see
the recent reprint of Laing’s translation (New York: Dutton, 1961), page 32n1.
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August 18: 3 Pm To Joe Clarks & Hibiscus bank.
I cannot conceive how a man can accomplish any thing worthy of him – unless his very breath is sweet to him.
He must be particularly alive. As if a man were himself & could work well only at a certain rare crisis. The river
is full of weeds The hypericum mutilum small flowered has in some places turned wholly red on the shore.
There is indeed some thing royal about the month of august. It is a more ingrained & perhaps more tropical
GOD IN CONCORD by Jane Langton © 1992
Viking Penguin
There is indeed something royal about the month
of August.
Journal, August 18, 1852
R
oger Bland’s campaign letter was ready, but Jo-Jo Field
knew better than to send it out. Too many Concord people
Penguin Books USA Inc.
50
ISBN 0-670-84260-5 — PS3562.A515G58
heat than that of July. Though hot it is not so suffocating & unveiled a blaze – the vapors in the air temper it
somewhat– But we have had some pretty cool weather with a week or two–& the evenings generally are cooler.
As I go over the hill behind Hunt’s The N river has a glassy stillness & smoothness – seen through the smoky
haze that fills the air – and has the effect of a film on the water– So that it looks stagnant. No mts can be seen.
The locust is heard –the fruits are ripening –ripe apples here & there scent the air. Huckleberries probably have
begun to spoil. I see those minute yellow coccoons on the grass. Hazel nuts methinks it is time to gather them
if you would anticipate the squirrels. The clematis & mikania belong to this month – filling the crevices and
rounding the outline of leafy banks & hedges.
Perceived today & some weeks since Aug 3d the strong invigorating aroma of green walnuts – astringent &
bracing to the spirits the fancy & imagination – suggesting a tree that has its roots well in amid the bowels of
nature. Their shells are in fact & from associating exhilirating to smell – suggesting a strong nutty native vigor.
A fruit which I am glad that our zone produces – looking like the nutmeg of the east. I acquire some of the
hardness & elasticity of the hickory when I smell them. They are among our spices.– High scented aromatic as
you bruise one against another in your hand almost like nutmegs – only more bracing – & northern – fragrant
stones which the trees bear. The hibiscus flowers are seen 1/4 of a mile off over the water –l ike large roses –
now that these high colors are rather rare. Some are exceedingly delicate & pale almost white, just rose tinted
– others a brighter pink or rose color – and all slightly plaited (the 5 large petals–) & turned toward the sun now
in the west trembling in the wind. so much color looks very rich in these localities The flowers are some 4
inches in diameter as large as water lilies – rising amid & above the button bushes & willows – with a large
light-green tree-like leaf – and a stem 1/2 inch in diameter, ap. dying down to a perennial ? root each year. A
superb –flower –where it occurs it is, certainly next to the white lily–, if not equally with it, the most splendid
ornament of the river. Looking up the gleaming river reflecting the august sun– The round topped silvery white
maples, the glossy leaved swamp white oaks, the etherial and buoyant salix purshiana – the first and last resting
on the water & giving the river a full appearance–& the hibiscus flowers adorning the shores – contrasting with
the green across the river – close to the water’s edge – the meadows being just shorne – all make a perfect august
scene. Here is the place where the hayers cross the river with their loads. as I made excursions on the river when
the white lilies were in bloom so now I should make a hibiscus excursion– Rudbeckia laciniata Sunflower like
Tall Cone-flower behind Joe Clark’s Symphytum officinale common comfrey by Dakin pumpmaker’s. The
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cerastium viscosum which I saw months ago still. And the ovate heads of the tall anemone gone to seed. Linum
usitatissimum common flax with a pretty large & pretty blue flower in the yard. Rumex obtusifolius – for weeks
ap.
Elizabeth Hoar shows me the following plants which she brought from the Wht Mts the 16th ult. Chiogenes
hispidula?
creeping snow-berry also called Gaultheria & also vaccinium hispidula – in fruit. –with a partridge berry scent
& taste. Taxus Canadensis Ground hemlock with red cup shaped berries very handsome & remarkably like wax
or red marble.
Platanthera orbiculata remarkable for its watery shining leaves flat on the ground while its spike of flowers rises
perpendicular – suggesting as she said repose & steadiness amid the prostrate trunks–& you could not avoid
seeing it any more than a child in blossom. Oxalis acetosella in blossom Arenaria Groenlandica also in bloom
in tufts like houstonia. Lonicera ciliata probably with a double red fruit. She also brought Lichens & mosses &
convallaria berries which she gathered at the flume in Franconia – the latter red ripe hanging from the axils of
the leaves – affected me – reminding me of the progress of autumn in the north – & the other two were a very
fit importation still dripping with the moisture the water of the flume. It carries you indeed into the primitive
wood. To think how in those wild woods now hang these wild berries in grim solitude as of yore – already
scenting their autumn– A thousand years ago this convallaria growing there – its berries turning red as now &
its leaves acquiring an autumnal tint. Lichens & mosses enough to cover a waiter still dripping with the watter
of the flume – is not that a true specimen of it? J Stacy says that 50 years ago his father used to blow his fire
with onion stems– Thinks there have been great improvements. But then as I hear there was a bellows maker
in the town. Is not that the aster umbellatus which I found by the lygodium?
ELIZABETH SHERMAN HOAR
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December 18, Saturday: Horatio Greenough died in asylum of some sort of brain problem.
Louisa May Alcott’s third publication of which we presently have any knowledge, titled “The Masked
Marriage,” appeared in Dodge’s Literary Museum, Volume VI, #2. Below, how it would be represented as part
of the March girls’ publication “The Pickwick Portfolio” enfolded into Chapter 10 of Volume I of LITTLE
WOMEN, OR, MEG, JO, BETH AND AMY in 1869:
THE MASKED MARRIAGE
(A Tale Of Venice)
Gondola after gondola swept up to the marble steps, and left its lovely load
to swell the brilliant throng that filled the stately halls of Count Adelon. Knights
and ladies, elves and pages, monks and flower girls, all mingled gaily in the
dance. Sweet voices and rich melody filled the air, and so with mirth and music
the masquerade went on. “Has your Highness seen the Lady Viola to-night?”
asked a gallant troubadour of the fairy queen who floated down the hall upon his
arm.
“Yes, is she not lovely, though so sad! Her dress is well chosen, too, for in a
week she weds Count Antonio, whom she passionately hates.”
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1853
Horatio Greenough’s “The Pioneers” sculpture, AKA “The Rescue Group,” was set in place near the Congress
building on Capital Hill. Harper’s New Monthly Magazine reported that:
The action of the group symbolizes the one unvarying story of
the contest between civilized and uncivilized man. The pioneer,
standing almost erect, in the pride of conscious superiority,
has dashed upon one knee the Indian, whose relaxed form, and
cowering face upturned despairingly, express premonitions of
the inevitable doom awaiting him, against which all his efforts
would be unavailing. The heavy brow, compressed lip, and firm
chin of the white man announce him one of a race born to conquer
and rule, not so much by mere strength as by undaunted courage
and indomitable will.
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1854
Although every winter a “Carpenter Gothic” shack was being placed over Horatio Greenough’s statue of naked
daddy George Washington to protect its Carrara marble from the District of Columbia weather, at this point
the exposed statue had weathered enough that the stone belt fell off the stone sword.16
16. Nowadays what we do is, since such statue stone is largely composed of calcium carbonates we apply a thin wash of
aminoethlaminopropylsilane (AEAPS), to seep into the microscopic cracks in the statue and bind to the calcium carbonate, and then
we apply a “sol-gel” chemical that is similar to glass and, although it will not bond to calcium carbonate, will bond to this AEAPS
layer. This doesn’t stop all deterioration but it does extend the shelflife of figures such as Washington by an order of magnitude.
(It is of course one heck of a lot easier to take negative local steps such as this than it is to clean the pollution and the greenhouse
gasses out of the atmosphere of the planet!)
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1858
May/June: Waldo Emerson to his JOURNAL:
We are all better in attack than in defense. It is very easy to
make acute objections to any style of life, but the objector is
quite as vulnerable. Greenough wittily called my speculations
masturbation; but the artist life seems to me intolerably thin
& superficial. I feel the reasonableness of what the lawyer or
merchant or laborer has to allege against readers & thinkers,
until I look at each of their wretched industries, and find them
without end or aim.
MASTURBATION
HORATIO GREENOUGH
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1941
At this point Professor F.O. Matthiessen, in his AMERICAN RENAISSANCE: ART AND EXPRESSION IN THE AGE
OF EMERSON AND WHITMAN, uncritically bought into the category “American Renaissance” formed
in 1876 by Samuel Osgood. He chose to focus on the first half of the decade of the 1850s during which were
being presented to the American public Melville’s MOBY-DICK, multiple editions of Whitman’s LEAVES OF
GRASS, Hawthorne’s THE SCARLET LETTER and THE HOUSE OF THE SEVEN GABLES, and Thoreau’s WALDEN;
OR. LIFE IN THE WOODS. He arbitrarily included Waldo Emerson with said group of productive authors despite
the fact that Emerson had not been producing anything of significance during the timeframe in question —
Waldo, he averred, had been “the cow from which the rest drew their milk.”
Oh, OK.
Taking Thoreau’s derogation, in WALDEN, of an unnamed architect, as having been derogations of the dying
Horatio Greenough (despite the fact that Greenough had not ever constructed a building), Professor
Matthiessen deemed Henry’s remarks unfortunate and inappropriate. (Thoreau’s remarks about this unnamed
architect would have been quite appropriate, however, had the unnamed architect been someone who actually
was an architect at the time, such as Asher Benjamin. –I fail to see, therefore, any reason why we cannot
consider Thoreau’s remarks to have been about the actual architect Benjamin who actually was an appropriate
target, rather than about the sculptor Greenough who not being an architect at all, was not an appropriate target
for Thoreau’s ire.)
Matthiessen discovered that, in WALDEN, seasonal change was, duh, a trope for spiritual metamorphosis.
He opinioned of Thoreau that
One strain of his thought that has not yet been given due
attention was summed up by him thus:
To act collectively is according to the spirit
of our institutions.
The context of that remark in WALDEN is where he is maintaining
that the community is responsible for providing a more adequate
cultural life, good libraries, distinguished lecturers at the
lyceums, encouragement for the practice of all the arts. He was
as opposed to the hoarding of our spiritual resources as he was
to the lust for ownership in our rapacious economy. He believed
that all great values should be as public as light.
Despite his credulity, this does qualify Matthiessen as one of the significant seven scholars who have been
able to swim against the stream of calumny leveled against Thoreau by the Emerson-worshipers.17
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Professor F.O. Matthiessen. AMERICAN RENAISSANCE: ART AND EXPRESSION IN THE AGE OF EMERSON AND
WHITMAN. NY: Oxford UP, 1941
17. The other six: John C. Broderick in 1955, Leo Stoller in 1957, Sherman Paul in 1958, Wilson Carey McWilliams in 1973
Stanley Cavell in 1981, Bob Pepperman Taylor in 1996
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“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
Matthiessen’s work is very complete, not to say ponderous. As I read it I looked
for evidence of Romanticism within his treatment of Emerson and Thoreau.
Matthiessen recognizes transcendentalism as a prime force in this period. According
to Matthiessen, it was Coleridge who was the immediate influence behind American
transcendentalism. Coleridge gained a following after “the edition of AIDS TO
REFLECTION that was brought out in 1829 by President Marsh of the University of
Vermont. The far-reaching effects of his contribution to general critical
vocabulary and thus to modes of thinking can be epitomized by a few of the terms
which he coined or put into renewed currency” (6-7). Matthiessen goes on to discuss
some of these terms which reek with Romanticism: subjective aesthetic, intuitive,
idealize, intellectualize, organic, organization, and self conscious. Matthiessen
goes on to discuss Emerson’s participation in the movement, as he battled against
“the formulas of eighteenth-century rationalism in the name of the fuller resources
of man”(7). The new emphasis was on the immediate within each human, and on the
importance of the knowledge of the individual. These ideas lie behind romantic
literature, “and naturally made an particular appeal to isolate, provincial
America.”
This romantic elevation of the individual is celebrated in Emerson’s “SelfReliance.” Emerson writes, “Nothing is at last sacred but the integrity of your
own mind” and “The highest revelation is that God is in every man.” Emerson was
concerned to point out the right and wrong kinds of subjectivism: “My prayer is
that I may never be deprived of a fact, but be always so rich in objects of study
as never to feel this impoverishment of remembering myself.” Individualism and
subjectivity then may be easily confused, because of what Emerson called, “the
pernicious ambiguity in the use of the term subjective.” His answer to the romantic
cultivation of the ego was “the One Mind, and that all the powers and privileges
which lie in any, lie in all.” Because of this, “the great always introduce us to
facts; small men introduce us always to themselves” (9).
Another romantic idea which Emerson and Thoreau relied on is that of perception,
which is “not whimsical but fatal.” There is here a “mystical acceptance of
intuition as final, and demands an unswerving loyalty to its dictates”(9).
Matthiessen points out a difference from much of romanticism in Emerson. Because
he approaches art through his initial preoccupation with Unitarian and
transcendental thought, he comes at it from a very intellectual tack.
Another romantic strand besides transcendentalism was the optimism of American
democracy. Emerson applauded the revolution and the democratic emphasis on the
private man.
Matthiessen goes on to discuss Emerson’s view of expression. He points out that
“his doctrine of art is also one of religion, that it assumes the superiority of
soul to matter”(25). The old forms and conventions should be thrown over for the
freedom of the inner man. Art was seen as inspiration, not as craft, a natural
understanding when the spirit is elevated above the letter and the “soul that lies
behind all expression” is superior to “any embodiment of it.” For Emerson, the
creative process bound expression and intuition together. “We need not much mind
what people please to say, but what they must say” (26).
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“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
Matthiessen devotes several chapters to Emerson’s view of art. He tells us that,
“Emerson was concerned not merely with choosing his words and arranging them, but
with probing to the origins of speech in order to find out the sources of its
mysterious powers” (30). Emerson believed, in essence, that “in good writing, words
become one with things.” In this he followed Coleridge’s desire to “reinstate the
Logos as a living power, to demonstrate in poetry itself the word made flesh”(31).
Emerson believed that “all knowledge rests on the coincidence of an object with a
subject.” In this he followed Coleridge in his conception of the actual act of
knowing: Coleridge wrote that “the truth is universally placed in the coincidence
of the thought with the thing, of the representation with the object represented.”
Matthiessen points out a similar passage in Emerson’s “The Over-Soul”: The act of
seeing and the thing seen, the seer and the spectacle, the subject and the object
are one.” This is at the basis of organic unity, and is also reminiscent of
Wordsworth who wrote that language “should not be the dress of thoughts, but the
incarnation of thoughts, the thought made concrete”(31).
When Matthiessen moves to discuss the American Renaissance and its roots in a
chapter called “The Metaphysical Strain,” he defines Transcendentalism as
“romanticism in a Puritan setting” (104). He goes on to point out how different
romanticism would have been for Emerson from Keats or Coleridge. Unlike them, his
distrust of Catholicism and the theater kept him from a sense of unity with Medieval
writers or even Shakespeare, when he rejected the rationalism of the past.
Matthiessen goes on to trace some of the influences on Emerson and Thoreau through
Cudworth and other Cambridge Platonists. Emerson was primarily drawn through the
emphasis on the individual and its increased awareness of self. He also appreciated
the “complex analogy they made between man and nature through the theory of the
microcosm and macrocosm” (106). Although Emerson admired Herbert’s poetry, he
rejected the blatantly Christian religious element. This, as Matthiessen points
out, makes a large difference, as Emerson “for whom man’s dazzling potentiality
quite obscured any necessity for struggle against evil or for dependence on God as
a protection against himself” (109). Another romantic strand which Matthiessen
deals with is the enamorment with oriental culture and religion.
Matthiessen compares Emerson and Coleridge’s conceptions of “how the artist creates
his forms.” Coleridge writes:
No work of true genius dares want its appropriate form, neither indeed is there
any danger of this. As it must not, so genius can not, be lawless; for it is even
this that constitutes it genius — the power of acting creatively under laws of its
own origination.... Such as the life is, such is the form. Nature, the prime genial
artist,
inexhaustible
in
diverse
powers,
its
equally
inexhaustible
in
forms....(134)
Emerson and Thoreau adopted this idea of the form flowing out of genius in their
work. “Emerson rejoiced that in the strict reliance of art upon nature, the artist
works not as he will but as he must...”(135). Thoreau wrote that “true art is but
the expression of our love of nature” (154). They both believe in the organic style.
Thoreau wrote to Emerson, that “if the man took too much pains with the expression,
he was not any longer the Idea himself” (156). Matthiessen records Emerson’s reply.
After agreeing with Thoreau he pointed out, “that this was the tragedy of Art that
the artist was at the expense of the man”(157).
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“A Review From Professor Ross’s Seminar”
Perhaps one of the reasons that Thoreau and Emerson regarded their art organically,
as “a natural fruit” was because their topics were visible nature in such large
part. Matthiessen compares Emerson and Thoreau’s handling of landscape to achieve
some understanding of their organicism. He points out, from WALDEN, that Thoreau’s
victory is that “he had understood that in the act of expression a man’s whole
being, and his natural and social background as well, function organically
together” (175).
Matthiessen turns his reflections to Thoreau. He points out that Thoreau has often
been regarded more as a naturalist than an artist. But he is, within his political
context, a left-wing individualist, generally remembered for two things: his move
to live in a hut in the woods and his act of civil disobedience. Matthiessen
questions the social significance of either of these acts, given the fact that the
land he lived on was borrowed and that one night in jail is not too uncomfortable.
The real contribution which Thoreau makes to social thought, according to
Matthiessen “lies in his thoroughgoing criticism of the narrow materialism of his
day”(78).
Matthiessen points out that Thoreau considers himself significant only as a writer,
and yet he writes, “I am a natural reader, and only a writer in the absence of
natural writers. In a true time, I should never have written” (81). Matthiessen
traces Thoreau’s sense of what role language played: “Talk about learning our
letters and about being literate! Why, the roots of letters are things. Natural
objects and phenomena are the original symbols or types which express our thoughts
and feelings, and yet American scholars, having little or not root in the soil,
commonly strive with all their might to confine themselves to the imported symbols
alone. All the true growth and experience, the living speech, they would fain reject
as Americanisms” (Journal 1859). Thoreau carries this romantic idea of words
further when he says, “Give me a sentence which no intelligence can understand.
There must be a kind of life and palpitation to it, and under its words a kind of
blood must circulate forever” (85). The importance of the superrational is clear
here: Thoreau considered poetry to be superior to philosophy, because the former
expresses the whole truth, the latter a particle of it. He didn’t, however, consider
language to be superior to other mediums of expression (87). According to
Matthiessen, all the above would be Thoreau’s following of Emerson. What
differentiates the two is Thoreau’s “interest in the varied play of all his sense,
not merely of the eye, a rare enough attribute in New England and important to
dwell on since it is the crucial factor in accounting for the greater density of
Thoreau’s style”(87). Matthiessen points out examples of the other senses in
Thoreau. Thoreau at his best, according to Matthiessen, is Thoreau pulled back from
thought to surfaces: “Whatever things I perceive with my entire man, those let me
record, and it will be poetry. The sounds which I hear with the consent and
coincidence of all my sense, these are significant and musical; at least, they only
are heard” (91). Thoreau saw the material world as a symbol of the spiritual. He
writes “What I lived for is that we are able to apprehend at all what is sublime
and noble only by the perpetual instilling and drenching of the reality that
surrounds us” (93).
[Review not attributed to a particular graduate student, and not dated]
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1957
December: William J. Griffin’s “Thoreau’s Reaction to Horatio Greenough” (New England Quarterly XXX, pages
508-12).
If the “hostility” expressed in WALDEN [toward some unnamed
architect]
is
so
patently
irrational,
if
enthusiastic
recommendation by Emerson [of Greenough, who was not an
architect] could so totally blind him to the fact that when he
stated his own doctrine on architectural beauty “he was simply
repeating, in looser, less technical language, one of
Greenough’s own cardinal assumptions,” then Thoreau was a lesser
man and a fuzzier thinker than he is usually taken to have been.
What are the facts? ...To suppose that in developing WALDEN he
found his first sharply pointed comments on Greenough too useful
to be discarded, and hence chose to ignore his later impression,
would seem to be more nearly in line with his character than to
assume that he was irrationally incapable of appreciating the
“radical good sense” of his “natural ally.”
In other words, there is no reason to suppose that Thoreau’s remarks in WALDEN about some unnamed architect
were remarks about Horatio Greenough who had in fact never erected any building. (In my own evaluation,
since there was an architect during Thoreau’s period who would properly qualify to be the target of Thoreau’s
ire, to wit Asher Benjamin, we ought to be presuming Benjamin to have been the proper target of Thoreau’s
proper ire.)
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 2012. 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 <[email protected]>.
“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
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Prepared: April 27, 2014
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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT
GENERATION HOTLINE
This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by a
human. Such is not the case. Instead, someone has requested that
we pull it out of the hat of a pirate who has grown out of the
shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (as above). What these
chronological lists are: they are research reports compiled by
ARRGH algorithms out of a database of modules which we term the
Kouroo Contexture (this is data mining). To respond to such a
request for information we merely push a button.
Commonly,
the
first
output
of
the
algorithm
has
obvious
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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 <[email protected]>. Arrgh.
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