PEOPLE MENTIONED IN WALDEN

Transcription

1 1 1.There s a one-liner recorded in Richard Geoffrey George Price s A HISTORY OF PUNCH (London: Collins, 1957), a Victorian zinger that went I like the enthusiastic old Herald who pitied Adam because he had no opportunity of studying genealogy. For what it s worth, the illustration above is of the oldest known living thing, a creosote bush Larrea tridentata in the Mojave Desert which seems to have germinated from a seed in approximately 10,000 BCE. It has been growing at its edges and dying in the center, a single ancient organism now taking the shape of a circle the diameter of the circle is what gives us a way to calculate how very long ago its originating seed was germinated.

2 1845 Fall: Gregory R. Coyne and Dave Wilton have inquired concerning the compound modifier Adam s grandmother of the noun ways, which Henry Thoreau originated during this period and would be inserting into his manuscript for WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS:

3 WALDEN: Through want of enterprise and faith men are where they are, buying and selling, and spending their lives like serfs. O Baker Farm! Landscape where the richest element Is a little sunshine innocent. * * No one runs to revel On thy rail-fenced lea. * * Debate with no man hast thou, With questions art never perplexed, As tame at the first sight as now, In thy plain russet gabardine dressed. * * Come ye who love, And ye who hate, Children of the Holy Dove, And Guy Faux of the state, And hang conspiracies From the tough rafters of the trees! PEOPLE OF WALDEN Men come tamely home at night only from the next field or street, where their household echoes haunt, and their life pines because it breathes its own breath over again; their shadows morning and evening reach farther than their daily steps. We should come home from far, from adventures, and perils, and discoveries every day, with new experience and character. Before I had reached the pond some fresh impulse had brought out John Field, with altered mind, letting go bogging ere this sunset. But he, poor man, disturbed only a couple of fins while I was catching a fair string, and he said it was his luck; but when we changed seats in the boat luck changed seats too. Poor John Field! I trust he does not read this, unless he will improve by it, thinking to live by some derivative old country mode in this primitive new country, to catch perch with shiners. It is good bait sometimes, I allow. With his horizon all his own, yet he a poor man, born to be poor, with his inherited Irish poverty or poor life, his Adam s grandmother and boggy ways, not to rise in this world, he nor his posterity, till their wading webbed bog-trotting feet get talaria to their heels. JOHN FIELD GUY FAWKES They say: Thoreau only uses it once, and offers no clue as to its meaning. I would go along with [the] guess that it refers to a long and noble ancestry, except that would not seem to describe John Field. I have not found any slang usages of Adam or grandmother that would seem to fit either.

4 My response to them was that we have all at one time or another heard someone exclaim Well, I ll be a monkey s uncle! And in church we sometimes hear the strains of Faith of our Fathers, the lyrics of which suggest that whatever was once good enough for our revered ancestors is going to be proudly proclaimed to be good enough for us. This nonce modifier Adam s grandmother coined by Thoreau during this period came out of a context considerably before Charles Darwin beginning to elaborate in public on his theory of descent with modification. However, the human ancestry had at this point already become an open question. Robert Chambers had published the 4th edition of his enormously popular, anonymously scientistic, rancidly racist VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION, and at this point its anonymous sequel EXPLANATIONS: A SEQUEL TO VESTIGES OF THE NATURAL HISTORY OF CREATION was on its way into the bookstores. Waldo Emerson had been an avid peruser of this type of material and later would be pleased to meet its author. It was therefore well accepted even in those days that the First Man had indeed had an ancestry even more primitive than himself.

5 Thoreau s phrase may be taken to have been intended as a humorous intensifier. What was being suggested was that this person was old-fashioned, respectful of tradition, deferring to the ways of the fathers, to the point of wrongheadedness. This creosote bush Larrea tridentata in the Mojave Desert, imaged below, seems to have germinated from a seed in approximately 10,000 BCE. It has been growing at its edges and dying in the center, a single ancient organism now taking the shape of a circle the diameter of the circle is what gives us the idea of how ancient it actually is. This may well be the oldest living thing but you ll need to admit that it s pretty set in its ways it s never been anything but just another creosote bush and it s unlikely ever to amount to more than that: Hey, good enough for me. Why don t you go away? I went over to neighbor Hugh Quoil s the waterloo soldier the Colonels house the other day. He lay lately dead at the foot of the hill the house locked up and wife at work in town but before key reaches padlock or news wife another door is unlocked for him and news is carried farther than to wife in town In his old house an unlucky castle now pervious to wind & snow lay his old clothes his outmost cuticle curled up by habit as it were like himself upon his raised plank bed. One black chicken still goes to roost lonely in the next apartment stepping silent over the floor frightened by the sound of its own wings never croaking black as night and silent too, awaiting reynard its God actually dead. And in his garden never to be harvested where corn and beans ad potatoes had grown tardily unwillingly as if foreknowing that the planter would die how how luxurious the weeds cockles and burs stick to your clothes, and beans are hard to find corn never got its first hoeing I never was much acquainted with Hugh Quoil the Ditcher dubbed Colonel sometime killed a Colonel in some war and rode off his horse? Soldier at Waterloo son of Erin. though sometimes I met him in the path, and can vouch for it that he verily lived and was once an inhabitant of this earth fought toiled joyed sorrowed drank experienced life and at length Death and do believe that a solid shank bone or skull which no longer aches lie somewhere and can still be produced which once with garment of flesh and broad-cloth were called and hired to do work as Hugh Quoil. I say I have met him got and given the rod as when man meets man and not ghost At distance seemingly a ruddy face as of cold biting January but nearer clear bright carmine with signs of inward combustion It would have made the ball of your finger burn to touch his cheek with sober reflecting eye that had seen other sights. Straight-bodied snuff colored coat long familiar with him, he with it, axe or turf knife in hand no sword nor firelock now fought his battles through still but did not conquer on the Napoleon side at last and exiled to this st Helena Rock A man of manners gentleman like who had seen this world more civil speech than you could well attend to. He and I at length came to be neighbors not speaking nor ever visiting hardly seeing neighbors but nearest inhabitants mutually.

6 He was thirstier than I drank more probably but not out of the pond It was never the lower for him perhaps I ate more than he. The last time I met him the only time I spoke with him it was at the foot of the hill in the highway where I was crossing to the spring one warm afternoon in summer the pond water being too warm for me I was crossing pail in hand when Quoil came down the hill still in snuff colored coast as last winter shivering as with cold rather with heat delirium tremens they name it I greeted him and told him my errand to get water at the spring close by only at the foot of the hill over the fence he answered with stuttering parched lips bloodshot eye staggering gesture he d like to see it Follow me there then. But I had got my pail full and back before he scaled the fence And he drawing his coat about him to warm him to cool him answered in delirium tremens hydrophobia dialect not easy to be written here he d heard of it but had never seen it so shivered his way along toward the town not to work there nor transact special business but to get whack at a sweet remote hour to liquor & to oblivion. Sundays and even on days of the moon and consecrated to other gods sons of Erin and of New England crossed my bean field with jugs or with unstoppled mouths as capacious toward Quoil s But what for? did they sell rum there? Respectable people they know no harm of them never heard that they drank too much is the answer of all wayfarers Travellers went sober stealthy silent skulking no harm to get elm bark sundays return loquacious sociable, having long intended to call on you. At length one afternoon Hugh Quoil feeling better, with snuff-colored coat has paced solitary soldier look not forgetting waterloo along the woodland road to the foot of the hill by the spring and there the fates meet him and throw him down in his snuff-colored coat on the grass and get ready to cut his thread but not till travellers pass who would raise him up get him perpendicular then settle lay me down says Hugh hoarsely House locked key in pocket wife in town and the fate cuts and there he lies by the way side 5 feet 10 looking taller than in life. He had half contemplated a harvest much corn and many beans but that strange trembling of the limbs delayed the hoeing. Skin of woodchuck just stretched never to be cured no cap no mittens wanted. Pipe on hearth no more to be lighted best buried with him He tells us wisely whom & what to mark saving much time. Only the convalescent are conscious of the health of nature. No thirst for glory, only for strong drink. He has gone away his house house here all tore to pieces he will not come back this way But how it fares with him whether his thirst is quenched whether there is still some semblance of that carmine cheek struggles still with some liquid demonic spirit perchance on more equal terms till he drinks him up I cannot by any means learn. What his salutation is now what his January morning face what he thinks of waterloo what start he has gained or lost what work still for the ditcher & forester and soldier now There is no evidence. He was here the likes of him for a season standing in his shoes like a faded gentleman with gesture almost learned in drawing rooms Wore clothes hat shoes made ditches felled wood did farm work for various people kindled fires worked enough ate enough drank too much. He was one of those unnamed countless sects of philosophers who founded no school. Poor John Frost 2 he has let go the anchor in the Fair Haven mud even now perchance and sits there with his shiner bait & his alder rod to see what his luck will be this time. His horizon all his own none to intrude and yet he a poor man born to be poor. I asked for water hoping to get a sight of the well bottom but there alas are shallow quick sands and rope broken bucket irrecoverable Meanwhile the right culinary vessel is selected water is distilled and passed out to the thirsty one not yet suffered to cool not yet to settle such gruel sustains life here exclude these motes and those by a skilful undercurrent and drink responsive to genuine hospitality a hearty brave draught. John Frost with his inherited Erse poverty or poor life his Adams grandmother and boggy ways not to rise in this 2. John Frost is known in mythology by his nickname, Jack, as the entity who draws white lines on winter windowpanes overnight. It is a common enough name. This eponymous John Frost is featured in one of Hawthorne s STORIES, A Visit to the Clerk of the Weather. There were any number of John Frosts, including one who got married in Concord, and there was a John Frost in Boston and/or Auburn, who may or may not have been the same person, whether or not either one of them was in addition this person mentioned by Thoreau, who has previously referred to that same person as John Field: Paley, William ( ). THE PRINCIPLES OF MORAL AND POLITICAL PHILOSOPHY... WITH QUESTIONS FOR THE EXAMINATION OF STUDENTS, BY JOHN FROST. Boston School edition. Boston: N.H. Whitaker, 1846 Frost, John. INDIAN WARS OF THE UNITED STATES. Auburn MA: Derby & Miller, 1852

7 world he or his posterity till their wading webbed feet get talaria light membranous wings. In case of an embargo there will be found to be old clothes enough in every body s garrett to last till the millenium We are fond of news novelties new things The bank bill that is torn in two will pass if you save the pieces, if you have only got the essential piecce with the signatures Lowell & Manchester and Fall river think you will let go its broad cloth currency when it is torn but hold on have an eye to the signature clout the back of it and endorse the mans name from whom you received it And they will be the first to fail and find nothing at all in their garretts Every day our garments become more assimilated to the man that wears them More near and dear to us and not finally to be laid aside but with such delay and medical appliance & solemnity as our other mortal coil We know after all but few men a great many coats and breeches dress a scare crow with your last shift you standing shiftless by who would not soonest address the scarecrow and salute it? Hi right back at you! King James loved his old shoes best Who does not? Indeed these new clothes are won and worn only after a painful birth at first moveable prisons oyster shells which the tide only raises opens and shuts washing in what nutriment may be Men walk on the limits carrying their limits with them in the stocks they stand, not without gaze of multitudes only without rotten eggs in old torturing boots. the last wedge but one driven.

8 Why should we be startled at death life is constant putting off of the mortal coil Coat cuticle flesh and bones all old clothes Not till the prisoner has got some rents in his prison walls possibility of egress without lock and key some day result of steel watch spring on iron grate will he rest contented in his prison Clothes brought in sewing a kind of work you may call endless A man who has at length found out something important to do will not have to get a new suit to do it in for him the old will do lying dusty in the garrett for an indefinite period Old shoes will serve a hero longer than they have served his valet bare feet are the oldest of shoes and he can make them do Only they who go to legislatures and soirees they must have new coats coats to turn as often as the man turns in them. Whoever saw his old shoes his old coat actually worn out returned to their original elements so that it were not a deed of charity to bestow them on some poorer boy. and by him to be bestowed on some poorer still or shall we say on some richer who can do with less Over eastward of my bean field lived Cato Ingraham slave born slave perhaps of Duncan Ingraham Esqr gentleman of Concord village who built him a house and gave him permission to live in Walden woods and then on the N E corner Zilpha colored woman of fame and down the road on the right hand Bristow colored man on Bristow s hill where grow still those little wild apples he tended now large trees but still wild and farther still you come to Breeds location and again on the left by well and roadside Hilda lived Farther up the road at the ponds end Wyeman the potter who furnished his towns men earthen ware the squatter Now only a dent in the earth marks the site of most of those human dwellings sometimes the well dent where a spring oozed now dry and tearless grass or covered deep not to be discovered till late days by accident with a flat stone under the sod. These dents like deserted fox burrows old holes. Where once was the stir and bustle of human life over head and man s destiny fate free will foreknowledge absolute were all by turns discussed Cato and Bristow pulled wool Universally a thirsty race. drank of the ton only the strongest of waters Still grows the vivacious lilack for a generation after the last vestige else is gone unfolding still its early sweetscented blossoms in the spring to be plucked only by the musing traveller planted tended nursed watered by children s hands in front yard plot Now by wall side in retired pasture, or giving place to a new rising forest. The last of that strip sole survivor of that family little did the children think that this weak slip with its two eyes which they watered would root itself so and out live them and house in the rear that shaded it and grown man s garden & field. and tell their story to the retired wanderer a half century after they were no more blossoming as fair smelling as sweet as in that first spring Its still cheerful tender civil lilack colors The woodland road though once more dark and shut in by the forest resounded with a laugh and gossip of inhabitants and was notched and dotted here and there with their little dwellings Though now but a rapid passage to neighboring villages or the woodmans team it once delayed the traveller longer and was a lesser village in itself You still hear from time to time the whinnering of the raccoon still living as of old in hollow trees washing its food before it eats it the red fox barks at night The loon comes in the fall to sail and bathe in the pond making the woods ring with its wild laughter in the early morning At rumor of whose arrival all Concord sportsmen are on the alert in gigs on foot two by two three with patent rifles patches conical balls spy glass or pin hole on the barrel they seem already to hear the loon laugh these on this side those on that for the poor loon cannot be omnipresent if he dive here must come up somewhere The october wind rises rustling the leaves ruffling the pond water so that no loon can be seen ruffling the surface Our sportsmen sweep the pond with spy glass in vain for the loon went off in that morning rain with one loud long hearty laugh and our sportsmen must

9 beat a retreat to town & stable and daily routine Or in the grey dawn the sleeper hears the long ducking gun explode over toward goose pond and hastening to the door sees the remnant of a flock black-duck or teal go whistling by with out stretched neck with broken ranks but in ranger order And the silent hunter emerges into the carriage road with ruffled feathers at his belt from the dark pond side where he has lain in his bower since the stars went out. And for a week you hear the circling clamor clangor of some solitary goose through the fog seeking its mate peopling the woods with a larger life there than they can hold. For hours you shall watch the ducks cunningly tack and veer and hold the middle of the pond far from the sportsman on the shore tricks they have learned and practised in far Canada lakes or in Louisiana bayous. The waves rise & dash taking sides with all waterfowl. 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: August 19, 2014

10 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.

11 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.