ALFRED HAWKINS AND QUÉBEC

Transcription

1 AND ANDREW STUART JOHN CHARLTON FISHER NARRATIVE HISTORY AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Québec

2 1785 November 25, Friday: Andrew Stuart was born at Cataraqui, a son of Anglican priest John Stuart, a United Empire Loyalist. He would study with the Reverend John Strachan and then at Union College in New York. NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT Québec Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

3 1792 At about this point Alfred Hawkins was born in Bridport, Dorset, England, son of George Hawkins and Elizabeth Ellery Hawkins. LIFE IS LIVED FORWARD BUT UNDERSTOOD BACKWARD? NO, THAT S GIVING TOO MUCH TO THE HISTORIAN S STORIES. LIFE ISN T TO BE UNDERSTOOD EITHER FORWARD OR BACKWARD. Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Québec

4 1794 October 23, Thursday: John Charlton Fisher was born in Carlisle, England. He would obtain a doctorate in law and then go into the newspaper business. He would be a contributor to Alfred Hawkins s PICTURE OF. THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Québec

5 1807 George Heriot s TRAVELS THROUGH THE CANADAS, CONTAINING A DESCRIPTION OF THE PICTURESQUE SCENERY ON SOME OF THE RIVERS AND LAKES; WITH AN ACCOUNT OF THE PRODUCTIONS, COMMERCE, AND INHABITANTS OF THOSE PROVINCES (London: Printed for Richard Phillips; 602 pages with 27 aquatint engravings and a large fold-out map of Canada in color)

6 included an illustration of La Dansa Ronde, Circular Dance of the Canadians.

7 In an Encampment of the Domiciliated Indians, he depicted teepees made of bark: Hugh Gray traveled in Canada. The district of Pictou in Nova Scotia was divided into three townships: Pictou, Egerton and Maxwelton. Andrew Stuart, who had studied law in Lower Canada, was admitted to the bar and set up practice at Québec. Henry Black would be a partner in this law firm. Stuart would defend Pierre-Stanislas Bédard after he was arrested for his involvement with the newspaper Le Canadien. Curling was introduced as a winter ice sport in Canada (of course, this game had been being played in Europe since the 16th Century and in Scotland since the early 17th Century). SKATING THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Québec

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9 1814 Midshipman Hugh Clapperton was sent to Canada, where he was promoted to Lieutenant and put in command of a schooner on the Canadian lakes. Andrew Stuart was elected to the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada for the Lower Town of Québec, as a supporter of the Parti Canadien (he would be reelected in 1816). Parliament granted 3,000 for erecting the admiral s house at Halifax, Nova Scotia; the Assembly voted 1,500 to complete it. 2,500 was granted to aid the sufferers in the late war in Canada. The expedition under Sir John Sherbrooke against the United States sailed from Halifax. The body of Major-General Ross, who fell at Baltimore, was interred at St. Paul s church-yard in Halifax. WHAT I M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF Québec Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

10 1819 October 2, Saturday: Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Godwin Wollstonecraft Shelley moved to Firenze. Alfred Hawkins got married with a Martha Peterson or Patterson at the Anglican Cathedral of Québec. The gazette for October 13th would report: Married, at Québec on Saturday evening 2nd instant, by the Rev. G.J. Mountain, Mr. Alfred Hawkins, wine merchant, to Miss Patterson, daughter of Mr. James Patterson, of the same place. The nation was learning that Commodore Oliver Hazard We Have Met The Enemy And They Are Ours

11 Perry, hero of the War of 1812, had in Venezuela succumbed to the yellow fever: OLIVER HAZARD PERRY Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal: 7th day 2nd of 10 M 1819 / This Afternoon Attended the funeral of My Cousin Ruth Marsh, she departed this life last evening about a quarter past 8 OClock. I returned to the House & took tea with the family she being the last of her generation, & to take my leave of a house where I took much pleasure & derived much benefit in my youth from the proffitable conversation of her Sister Mary & Brother Jonathon. The estate will be divided

12 into so many divisions that it is Probable it will now soon go out of the name & the house so old that it must be Pulled down. from the best information I can obtain the Marsh House on the east side of Thames Street was built by Walter Clarke & given to one of his daughters who married a Gould & their daughter Mary Married Jonathon Marsh the father of Ruth aforementioned & has been regularly inhabited by Friends to the present day & she is the last of our society that will probably have any claim to it. - The fashon & all things in this World change. - while sitting in the Room at the funeral my mind was lead into a very serious train of reflection, on the many changes I had seen in that House & now it seemed as if the final change had come to it. May I proffit by the feelings which I experienced while commemorating the past hours spent with the past inhabitants of that house, & I am Sure I felt much more that I have here conveyed. RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT Québec Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

13 1820 April: Andrew Stuart was elected to represent the Upper Town of Quebec (he would continue to represent that riding until an electoral defeat in 1834, after he had become a supporter of the government party and had voted against the Ninety-Two Resolutions). DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD. Québec Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project

14 1822 James Cooper relocated his family from upstate New York to New-York, where he would help to start up the Bread and Cheese club, a social association for active American writers. The office of New-York mayor became an elective position. In New-York, the Fulton Fish Market was completed. For reasons of sanitation, it would no longer be possible to have churchyard burials within the city of New- York. The Red Star Line began regular monthly sailings between New-York and Liverpool, with four vessels. By this point John Charlton Fisher had emigrated from England to America. In New-York, he, J.R. McDowell, and John Bartlett founded a newspaper devoted to British news, the Albion.

15 1823 Thomas Chandler Haliburton s A GENERAL DESCRIPTION OF NOVA SCOTIA. Halifax harbour froze over. A public subscription library was established at Halifax. Roman Catholics were allowed to be members of the House of Assembly. John Charlton Fisher relocated from New-York to Québec to take over as publisher of the Quebec Gazette. He would also work as a journalist for the Quebec Mercury. CANADA October 10, Friday: Governor Lord Dalhousie appointed John Charlton Fisher as Queen s Printer (he would serve in this capacity for the remainder of his life). CANADA

16 1824 The Literary and Historical Society of Québec came into being, with John Charlton Fisher as its first treasurer and corresponding secretary. Nova Scotia was divided into three districts: eastern, middle, western. Commissioners were appointed to hold Courts of Common Pleas and Quarter Sessions in each district. Cape Breton was divided into three districts: north-eastern, southern, and north-western. The Shubenacadie Canal Company was incorporated by act of legislature. The Township of Kempt, Hants County, was laid out. CANADA

17 1830 Early in this decade, John Charlton Fisher was serving as secretary and librarian of the Garrison Library.

18 1834 Alfred Hawkins s HAWKINS S PICTURE OF, WITH HISTORICAL RECOLLECTIONS, printed for the Proprietor of Québec in Canada by Neilson & Cowan, involved 477 pages of description of that city s history, geography, institutions, religious orders, sieges, architecture, etc. The 14 lithographed plates drawn on stone by Sproule included views, buildings, street scenes, gates, harbour, etc. (It was this Alfred Hawkins who searched out the place high upon the rocks at which Major-General Montgomery had fallen on December 31, 1775, and placed a board there bearing an historical inscription. John Charlton Fisher and Andrew Stuart contributed materials to this volume, which would be withdrawn by Henry Thoreau from the Harvard Library

19 on February 10, 1851 and returned on April 29, 1851.) Thoreau accessed this volume to check historical details. He noted a mention of the antiquity of the name Saguenai. He was interested in learning when it had been that Europeans had begun to make regular fishing trips to the Grand Banks. H e noted Hawkins thinks that Roberval did not go to the Saguenay up the S. river.

20 1836 Elijah Abel, a black American, became an Elder in the Mormon priesthood, and was then ordained to the highest priesthood office of Seventy. He would serve as a minister of the Gospel in upstate New York and Canada for the remainder of the 1830s, surviving even a charge that he had murdered a mother and her five children, up to the point at which he began to be suspected of having contrary ideas about the group s doctrine. Thomas Chandler Haliburton s THE CLOCKMAKER. This had originated as a series of popular and humorous articles in the Novascotian, a newspaper of Halifax, Nova Scotia, and had to do with the adventures of one Sam Slick. Andrew Stuart was elected again in a by-election, and would serve until the suspension of the constitution following the Lower Canada Rebellion.

21 1838 John Charlton Fisher sat as clerk, and then as secretary, to the Rebellion Losses Commission. Andrew Stuart was named solicitor general for Lower Canada (he would also serve as president of the Literary and Historical Society of Quebec and vice president of the Société pour l Encouragement des Sciences et des Arts en Canada).

22 1840 Following the report by Lord Durham on a Canadian Constitution, the British Parliament passed the Act of Union uniting Upper and Lower Canada in a self-governing union. John Charlton Fisher gave up the post of publisher of the Québec Gazette. During this decade there would be a craze for ferns as a Victorian rustic parlor adornment, in sealed glass cases. (This craze would be supplanted, in the 1850s, by a craze for salt-water aquariums and this craze would be being led and fomented by Philip Henry Gosse.) The only lesson of history is that there are no lessons of history. A.J.P. Taylor Philip Henry Gosse s THE CANADIAN NATURALIST. A SERIES OF CONVERSATIONS ON THE NATURAL HISTORY OF LOWER CANADA (London: John Jan Voorst). THE CANADIAN NATURALIST

23 February 21, Friday: Andrew Stuart died at Québec. The British Parliament began to hear rumors that there had been skirmishes between two frigates of the Royal Navy, and Chinese war-junks, on the waters of the Pearl River estuary. William Jardine, a e-n-t-r-e-p-r-e-n-e-u-r (d-r-u-g d-e-a-l-e-r) Scottish entrepreneur, influenced the British Foreign Secretary, Lord Palmerston, to respond to this national insult with national firmness and energy, 1 and orders were dispatched to India to prepare an expeditionary force. OPIUM 1. Henry John Temple, Lord Palmerston ( ), who was frequently referred to in the period as Lord Pumice-Stone, was, shall we say, ever eager to express his personal abrasiveness with firmness and energy.

24 1841 John Charlton Fisher undertook to publish his own weekly, the Conservative but it was unsuccessful. Upper and Lower Canada united in the Province of Canada as Canada West and Canada East. CARTOGRAPHY November 29, Monday: Louisa Neville Haliburton died at the age of 48 at Windsor, Nova Scotia. Charles Melvin Jr. (2) died in Concord. THE MELVINS OF CONCORD

25 1842 June: Mr. and Mrs. Charles Dickens had traveled on a steamboat on the Mississippi River I trust never to see the Mississippi again except in dreams and nightmares. and had viewed Niagara Falls. It was a miserable day; chilly and raw; a damp mist falling; and the trees in that northern region quite bare and wintry. Whenever the train halted, I listened for the roar; and was constantly straining my eyes in the direction where I knew the Falls must be, from seeing the river rolling on towards them; every moment expecting to behold the spray. Within a few minutes of our stopping, not before, I saw two great white clouds rising up slowly and majestically from the depths of the earth. That was all. At length we alighted: and then for the first time, I heard the mighty rush of water, and felt the ground tremble underneath my feet. The bank is very steep, and was slippery with rain, and halfmelted ice. I hardly know how I got down, but I was soon at the bottom, and climbing, with two English officers who were crossing and had joined me, over some broken rocks, deafened by the noise, half-blinded by the spray, and wet to the skin. We were at the foot of the American Fall. I could see an immense torrent of water tearing headlong down from some great height, but had no idea of shape, or situation, or anything but vague immensity. When we were seated in the little ferry-boat, and were crossing the swollen river immediately before both cataracts, I began to feel what it was: but I was in a manner stunned, and unable to comprehend the vastness of the scene. It was not until I came on Table Rock, and looked Great Heaven, on what a fall of bright-green water! that it came upon me in its full might and majesty... Niagara was at once stamped upon my heart, an image of beauty, to remain there changeless and indelible, until its pulses cease to beat forever. In this month they passed into Canada and arrived at Montréal s most acceptable accommodation, Rosco s Hotel. Moving downriver from there, when they arrived at Québec they were the guest of John Charlton Fisher.

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28 1846 John Charlton Fisher became president of The Literary and Historical Society of Québec. During this year and the next and the one following that, the Royal Engineers would be surveying routes for a Canadian Intercolonial Railway. The final surveyed right-of-way would be 1,158 miles long (it borders the Gulf of St. Lawrence and the St. Lawrence River for the most part of its run from Halifax to Québec City). CARTOGRAPHY

29 1847 Robert Michael Ballantyne returned from Canada to Scotland and learned that his father Sandy Ballantyne had deceased. John Charlton Fisher became president of the Québec Library Association and vice-president of The Literary and Historical Society of Québec.

30 August 10, Friday: John Charlton Fisher died at sea aboard the steamship Sarah Sands, which he had boarded in Liverpool three days earlier to return to Québec. He had been a contributor to Alfred Hawkins s PICTURE OF. Henry Thoreau wrote to H.G.O. Blake Concord Aug 10 th 49 Mr Blake, 1849 I write now chiefly to say, before it is too late, that I shall be glad to see you in Concord, and will give you a chamber in my father s &c house, and as much of my poor company as you can bear. I am in too great haste this time to speak to your or out of my condition. I might say you might say. Comparatively speaking, be not anxious to avoid poverty. In this way the wealth of the universe may be securely invested. What a pity if we do not live this short time according to the laws of the long time, the eternal laws! Let us see that we stand erect here, and do not lie along by our whole length in the dirt. Let our meanness be our footstool not our cushion. In the midst of this labyrinth let us live a thread of life. We must act with so rapid and resistless a purpose in one direction, that Page 2 our vices will necessarily trail behind. The nucleus of a comet is almost a star. Was there ever a genuine dilemma? The laws of earth are for the feet, or inferior man; the laws of heaven

31 are for the head, or superior man; the latter are the former sublimed and expanded, even as radii from the earths centre go on diverging into space. Happy the man who observes the heavenly and the terrestrial law in just proportion, whose every faculty from the soles of his feet to the crown of his head obeys the law of its level, who neither stoops no[r] goes on tiptoe, but lives a a balnced life, acceptable to natur[ ] ^ & to God. These things I say; other thing[ ] I do. I am sorry to hear that you did not receive my book earlier. I directed it and left it in Munroe s shop to be sent to you immediately, on the twenty-sixth of May, before a copy had been sold. Will you remember me

32 1851 February 10, Monday: Giuseppe Garibaldi wrote to Specchi in Havana, complaining of the cold and of hunting restrictions that were in effect on Staten Island. Henry Thoreau wrote to the university librarian, Dr. Thaddeus William Harris, who had taught him Entomology and Botany during his senior year at Harvard College, at Harvard Library, to check out Alfred Hawkins PICTURE OF QUEBEC and Silliman s TOUR TO QUEBEC (contrary to what had been thought by some Thoreau scholars, he requested neither Hawkins s THIS PLAN OF THE CITY OF QUEBEC, of 1835, nor Hawkins s THE ENVIRONS OF QUEBEC, of 1844).

33 This would have amounted to, specifically, Alfred Hawkins s HAWKINS S PICTURE OF, WITH HISTORICAL RECOLLECTIONS (1834), and Benjamin Silliman, Sr. s REMARKS MADE, ON A SHORT TOUR, BETWEEN HARTFORD AND QUEBEC IN THE AUTUMN OF 1819 (1824, 2d edition). Concord Feb 10 th 1851 Dear Sir, I return by the bearer De Laet s Norvus Orbis &c Will you please send me Alfred Hawkins Picture of Quebec and Silliman s Tour to Quebec? If these are not in then Wytfliet s Descriptionis Ptolemaicae Argumentum &c and Lescarbot s Les Muses de la Nouvelle France. Yrs respec ty Henry D. Thoreau (It may well be that on this day he also returned to Harvard Library the checked out Volume 1 of François André Michaux s THE NORTH AMERICAN SYLVA, OR A DESCRIPTION OF THE FOREST TREES, OF THE UNITED STATES, CANADA, AND NOVA SCOTIA..., April 29, Tuesday: Opposite the courthouse grounds, Henry Thoreau helped the County Commissioners plan a series of monuments and burying-ground tracts. Thoreau wrote to Dr. Thaddeus William Harris 2 at the Harvard Library: BIGELOW Concord Ap. 29 th 1851 Dear Sir, I return, herewith, Young s Chronicles of the Pilgrims Hawkins s Quebec & Silliman s Tour of Quebec. Will you please send me by the bearer the 2 nd & 3 d vols of the Forest Trees of North America, by F. Andrew Michaux, of which I have already had the 1 st vol also Bigelow s Medical Botany. Yrs respectfully Henry D. Thoreau. April 29: Every man perhaps is inclined to think his own situation singular in relation to Friendship. 2. Franklin Benjamin Sanborn reported that one of Harvard College s natural historians (we may presume this to have been Dr. Harris, Thoreau s teacher in natural science in his senior year) had remarked to Bronson Alcott that if Emerson had not spoiled him, Thoreau would have made a good entomologist.

34 Our thoughts would imply that other men have friends, though we have not. But I do not not know of two whom I can speak of as standing in this relation to one another Each one makes a standing offer to mankind On such & such terms I will give myself to you but it is only by a miracle that his terms are ever accepted. We have to defend ourselves even against those who are nearest to friendship with us. What a difference it is! to perform the pilgrimage of life in the society of a mate and not to have an acquaintance among all the tribes of men! What signifies the census this periodical numbering of men to one who has no friend? I distinguish between my actual and my real communication with individuals. I really communicate with my friends, and congratulate myself & them on our relation and rejoice in their presence & society oftenest when they are personally absent. I remember that not long ago as I laid my head on my pillow for the night I was visited by an inexpressible joy that I was permitted to know & be related to such mortals as I was then related to & yet no special event {One leaf missing} that I could think of had occurred to remind me of any with whom I was connected and by the next noon perchance those essences that had caused me joy would have receded somewhat. I experienced a remarkable gladness in the thought that they existed Their existence was then blessed to me. Yet such has never been my actual relation to any. Every one experiences that while his relation to another actually may be one of distrust & disappointment he may still have relations to him ideally & so really in spite of both He is faintly conscious of a confidence & satisfaction somewhere. & all further intercourse is based on this experience of success, The very dogs & cats incline to affection in their relation to man. It often happens that a man is more humanely related to a cat or dog than to any human being. What bond is it relates us to any animal we keep in the house but the bond of affection. In a degree we grow to love one another.

35 1854 June 30, Friday: Spanish government troops engaged conservative rebels at Vicálvaro without strategic result. The Emperor Napoléon III decreed that henceforward the Paris Opéra would be controlled by the Minister of State. Alfred Hawkins died in Québec (the body would be placed at the Cathedral of the Holy Trinity). In the afternoon Henry Thoreau walked to Walden Pond and Hubbard s Close. MAGISTERIAL HISTORY IS FANTASIZING: HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY Stack of the Artist of Kouroo Project Québec

36 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 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 Please contact the project at <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. It s all now you see. Yesterday won t be over until tomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago. Remark by character Garin Stevens in William Faulkner s INTRUDER IN THE DUST Prepared: January 5, 2015

37 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.

38 Commonly, the first output of the algorithm has obvious deficiencies and we need to go back into the modules stored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, and then we need to punch that button again and recompile the chronology but there is nothing here that remotely resembles the ordinary writerly process you know and love. As the contents of this originating contexture improve, and as the programming improves, and as funding becomes available (to date no funding whatever has been needed in the creation of this facility, the entire operation being run out of pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweaking and recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation of a generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward and upward in this brave new world. First come first serve. There is no charge. Place requests with <Kouroo@kouroo.info>. Arrgh.

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