THE REVERENDS HORATIO ALGER, SR. AND JR.
“NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION,
THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY
Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1826
At Harvard Divinity School, the following gentlemen commenced their studies:
Stephen Alfred Barnard (A.B. Brown University)
Horatio Alger, Sr.
David Hatch Barlow
Stephen A. Barnard
William Barry
Washington Gilbert
Hersey Bradford Goodwin
Willard Newell
Cazneau Palfrey
William S. Prentiss
George Whitney
NEW “HARVARD MEN”
(George Washington Hosmer would also go on into this school — but he is not listed as having begun
immediately.)
George Washington Hosmer; A.M.; Grad. Div. S. 1830; S.T.D. 1853;
Prof. Past. Care, Meadville Theol. S. (Pa.); Prof. Hist. and
Ethics, Antioch (O.); President, Antioch 1866-1873
In early years of the Divinity School, there were no formal class graduations as students would be in the habit
of studying there for varying periods until they obtained an appropriate offer to enter a pulpit.
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1832
January 13, Friday: Horatio Alger, Jr. was born to Olive Augusta Fenno Alger in North Chelsea,
Massachusetts (which now is known as Revere), where his father the Reverend Horatio Alger was the
Unitarian minister. (Although said town may not have produced its quota of Tattered Toms or Ragged Dicks,
it has evidently managed to produce at least one reverend who couldn’t keep his pants buttoned.)
In Providence, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:
6th day 13 of 1 M / Time passes swiftly & silently away - I feel
that it is so & the necessity of a preparation for the end or
conclusion of it —
RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS
NOBODY COULD GUESS WHAT WOULD HAPPEN NEXT
Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1844
The Reverend Horatio Alger, Sr. was forced by bankruptcy to resign his position as a Unitarian minister in
North Chelsea, Massachusetts and go out on a search for some church that could offer him a more adequate
salary.
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1845
The Reverend Horatio Alger, Sr. was accepted as the Unitarian minister of West Church in Marlborough. In
Marlborough, Horatio Alger, Jr. would attend Gates Academy until he was fifteen in 1847.
We don’t know the exact year of this, and will be forced to put it here temporarily: Out of sheer mischief, in
an attempt to get something interesting going, Horatio Alger, Jr. started a bonfire during an abolitionist rally.
DO I HAVE YOUR ATTENTION? GOOD.
Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1848
Horatio Alger, Jr. matriculated at Harvard College.
NEW “HARVARD MEN”
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1852
Horatio Alger, Jr. graduated from Harvard College with Phi Beta Kappa honors.
NEW “HARVARD MEN”
His cousin, the Reverend William Rounseville Alger, who had attended the Harvard Divinity School without
first attending Harvard College, belatedly was awarded the degree of AM. His 30-page THE NATURE,
GROUNDS, AND USES OF FAITH was printed for the American Unitarian Association in Boston by W. Crosby
and H.P. Nichols. His 37-page THE FACTS OF INTEMPERANCE, AND THEIR CLAIMS ON THE PUBLIC ACTION OF
THE PEOPLE was printed in Boston by Crosby, Nichols, and Company.
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.
Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1856
At the age of 16 Bertie was required to attend Faraday’s Christmas Lectures at the Royal Institute, on
Attraction, and produce a report of what he was learning about chemistry. His father Prince Albert would
examine these notes and complain of their inadequacy.
A collection of sentimental stories by Horatio Alger, Jr.’s BERTHA’S CHRISTMAS VISION.
The Reverend William Rounseville Alger’s THE POETRY OF THE ORIENT, OR METRICAL SPECIMENS OF THE
THOUGHT, SENTIMENT, AND FANCY OF THE EAST, PREFACED BY AN ELABORATE DISSERTATION was published
in Boston by the firm of Whittemore, Niles and Hall. (This editions of poems translated from the Persian,
Arabic, and Sanskrit languages would be republished in an enlarged 2d edition in Boston by the firm of
Roberts Brothers in 1865, and in an further enlarged 4th edition in 1874, and in a further enlarged 5th edition
in 1883.)
POETRY OF THE ORIENT
The Reverend’s AMERICAN VOICE ON THE LATE WAR IN THE EAST was published in Boston by the firm of John
P. Jewett & Co.
The Reverend’s THE CHARITIES OF BOSTON, OR, TWENTY YEARS AT THE WARREN-STREET CHAPEL: AN
ADDRESS / DELIVERED AT THE CHAPEL BY WILLIAM R. ALGER, SUNDAY EVENING, JAN. 27, 1856 was
published in Boston by the firm of J. Wilson.
CHANGE IS ETERNITY, STASIS A FIGMENT
Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1857
Publication of Horatio Alger, Jr.’s long poem, “Nothing to Do, a Tilt at our Best Society.” He entered the
Harvard Divinity School to become, like his father and his cousin, a Unitarian reverend.
NEW “HARVARD MEN”
At the Lowell Institute, the Unitarian Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows delivered a series of lectures on “The
Treatment of Social Diseases.” Before the American Dramatic Fund Society at the Academy of Music in NewYork, the Reverend Bellows delivered an address on “The Relation of Public Amusements to Public Morality,
Especially of the Theatre to the Highest Interests of Humanity.” This would be published by C.S. Francis as
THE RELATION OF PUBLIC AMUSEMENTS TO PUBLIC MORALITY, ESPECIALLY OF THE THEATRE TO THE
HIGHEST INTERESTS OF HUMANITY: AN ADDRESS, DELIVERED AT THE ACADEMY OF MUSIC, NEW YORK
BEFORE “THE AMERICAN DRAMATIC FUND SOCIETY,” FOR THE BENEFIT OF THE FUND.
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1860
The Unitarian Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows’s RESTATEMENTS OF CHRISTIAN DOCTRINE IN TWENTY-FIVE
SERMONS.
The Reverend Horatio Alger, Sr. was accepted as the minister of the Unitarian church in South Natick,
Massachusetts. His son Horatio Alger, Jr. completed Harvard Divinity School and then instead of seeking a
church, would travel in Europe for the following ten months.
THE FUTURE IS MOST READILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1861
The Unitarian Reverend Henry Whitney Bellows planned the United States Sanitary Commission, the major
source of spiritual and physical aid for wounded Union soldiers during and after the American Civil War. He
would become the Commission’s only president.
A new edition of the Reverend William Rounseville Alger’s THE POETRY OF THE ORIENT, OR METRICAL
SPECIMENS OF THE THOUGHT, SENTIMENT, AND FANCY OF THE EAST, PREFACED BY AN ELABORATE
DISSERTATION (originally published in Boston in 1856). –Also, his A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DOCTRINE
OF A FUTURE LIFE, with a bibliography by Ezra Abbot comprising some 5,000 titles. –Also, his THE GENIUS
OF SOLITUDE; OR THE LONELINESS OF HUMAN LIFE.
Since his shortness (he was 5 foot 2) and poor eyesight were keeping him from being accepted into the military,
in this year or the following one the Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr. would accept a position as the Unitarian pastor
of the 1st Parish Church in Brewster. The ordination sermon would be delivered by the Reverend Edward
Everett Hale.
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Table of Altitudes
Yoda
2 ' 0 ''
Lavinia Warren
2 ' 8 ''
Tom Thumb, Jr.
3 ' 4 ''
Lucy (Australopithecus Afarensis)
3 ' 8 ''
Hervé Villechaize (“Fantasy Island”)
3 ' 11''
Charles Proteus Steinmetz
4 ' 0 ''
Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (1)
4 ' 3 ''
Alexander Pope
4 ' 6 ''
Benjamin Lay
4 ' 7 ''
Gary Coleman (“Arnold Jackson”)
4 ' 8 ''
Queen Victoria with osteoporosis
4 ' 8 ''
Queen Victoria as adult
4 ' 10 ''
Margaret Mitchell
4 ' 10 ''
length of newer military musket
4 ' 10''
Charlotte Brontë
4 ' 10-11''
Harriet Beecher Stowe
4 ' 11''
Laura Ingalls Wilder
4 ' 11''
a rather tall adult Pygmy male
4 ' 11''
John Keats
5 ' 0 ''
Clara Barton
5 ' 0 ''
Isambard Kingdom Brunel
5 ' 0 ''
Andrew Carnegie
5 ' 0 ''
Thomas de Quincey
5 ' 0 ''
Stephen A. Douglas
5 ' 0 ''
Danny DeVito
5 ' 0 ''
Immanuel Kant
5 ' 0 ''
William Wilberforce
5 ' 0 ''
Mae West
5 ' 0 ''
Mother Teresa
5 ' 0 ''
Deng Xiaoping
5 ' 0 ''
Dred Scott
5 ' 0 '' (±)
Captain William Bligh of HMS Bounty
5 ' 0 '' (±)
Harriet Tubman
5 ' 0 '' (±)
Mary Moody Emerson per FBS (2)
5 ' 0 '' (±)
John Brown of Providence, Rhode Island
5 ' 0 '' (+)
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Bette Midler
5 ' 1 ''
Jemmy Button
5 ' 2 ''
Margaret Mead
5 ' 2 ''
R. Buckminster “Bucky” Fuller
5 ' 2 ''
Yuri Gagarin the astronaut
5 ' 2 ''
William Walker
5 ' 2 ''
Horatio Alger, Jr.
5 ' 2 ''
length of older military musket
5 ' 2 ''
the artist formerly known as Prince
5 ' 21/2''
typical female of Thoreau's period
5 ' 21/2''
Francis of Assisi
5 ' 3 ''
Voltaire
5 ' 3 ''
Mohandas Gandhi
5 ' 3 ''
Sammy Davis, Jr.
5 ' 3 ''
Kahlil Gibran
5 ' 3 ''
Friend Daniel Ricketson
5 ' 3 ''
The Reverend Gilbert White
5 ' 3 ''
Nikita Khrushchev
5 ' 3 ''
Sammy Davis, Jr.
5 ' 3 ''
Truman Capote
5 ' 3 ''
Kim Jong Il (North Korea)
5 ' 3 ''
Stephen A. “Little Giant” Douglas
5 ' 4 ''
Francisco Franco
5 ' 4 ''
President James Madison
5 ' 4 ''
Iosef Vissarionovich Dzugashvili “Stalin”
5 ' 4 ''
Alan Ladd
5 ' 4 ''
Pablo Picasso
5 ' 4 ''
Truman Capote
5 ' 4 ''
Queen Elizabeth
5 ' 4 ''
Ludwig van Beethoven
5 ' 4 ''
Typical Homo Erectus
5 ' 4 ''
typical Neanderthal adult male
5 ' 41/2''
Alan Ladd
5 ' 41/2''
comte de Buffon
5 ' 5 '' (-)
Captain Nathaniel Gordon
5 ' 5 ''
Charles Manson
5 ' 5 ''
Audie Murphy
5 ' 5 ''
Harry Houdini
5 ' 5 ''
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Hung Hsiu-ch'üan
5 ' 5 ''
Marilyn Monroe
5 ' 51/2''
T.E. Lawrence “of Arabia”
5 ' 51/2''
average runaway male American slave
5 ' 5-6 ''
Charles Dickens
5 ' 6? ''
President Benjamin Harrison
5 ' 6 ''
President Martin Van Buren
5 ' 6 ''
James Smithson
5 ' 6 ''
Louisa May Alcott
5 ' 6 ''
Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
5 ' 61/2''
Napoleon Bonaparte
5 ' 61/2''
Emily Brontë
5 ' 6-7 ''
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
5 ' ? ''
average height, seaman of 1812
5 ' 6.85 ''
Oliver Reed Smoot, Jr.
5 ' 7 ''
minimum height, British soldier
5 ' 7 ''
President John Adams
5 ' 7 ''
President John Quincy Adams
5 ' 7 ''
President William McKinley
5 ' 7 ''
“Charley” Parkhurst (a female)
5 ' 7 ''
Ulysses S. Grant
5 ' 7 ''
Henry Thoreau
5 ' 7 ''
the average male of Thoreau's period
5 ' 71/2 ''
Edgar Allan Poe
5 ' 8 ''
President Ulysses S. Grant
5 ' 8 ''
President William H. Harrison
5 ' 8 ''
President James Polk
5 ' 8 ''
President Zachary Taylor
5 ' 8 ''
average height, soldier of 1812
5 ' 8.35 ''
President Rutherford B. Hayes
5 ' 81/2''
President Millard Fillmore
5 ' 9 ''
President Harry S Truman
5 ' 9 ''
President Jimmy Carter
5 ' 91/2''
Herman Melville
5 ' 93/4''
Calvin Coolidge
5 ' 10''
Andrew Johnson
5 ' 10''
Theodore Roosevelt
5 ' 10''
Thomas Paine
5 ' 10''
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Franklin Pierce
5 ' 10''
Abby May Alcott
5 ' 10''
Reverend Henry C. Wright
5 ' 10''
Nathaniel Hawthorne
5 ' 101/2''
Louis “Deerfoot” Bennett
5 ' 101/2''
Friend John Greenleaf Whittier
5 ' 101/2''
President Dwight D. Eisenhower
5 ' 101/2''
Sojourner Truth
5 ' 11''
President Grover Cleveland
5 ' 11''
President Herbert Hoover
5 ' 11''
President Woodrow Wilson
5 ' 11''
President Jefferson Davis
5 ' 11''
President Richard M. Nixon
5 ' 111/2''
Robert Voorhis the hermit of Rhode Island
<6'
Frederick Douglass
6 ' (-)
Anthony Burns
6 ' 0 ''
Waldo Emerson
6 ' 0 ''
Joseph Smith, Jr.
6 ' 0 ''
David Walker
6 ' 0 ''
Sarah F. Wakefield
6 ' 0 ''
Thomas Wentworth Higginson
6 ' 0 ''
President James Buchanan
6 ' 0 ''
President Gerald R. Ford
6 ' 0 ''
President James Garfield
6 ' 0 ''
President Warren Harding
6 ' 0 ''
President John F. Kennedy
6 ' 0 ''
President James Monroe
6 ' 0 ''
President William H. Taft
6 ' 0 ''
President John Tyler
6 ' 0 ''
John Brown
6 ' 0 (+)''
President Andrew Jackson
6 ' 1''
Alfred Russel Wallace
6 ' 1''
President Ronald Reagan
6 ' 1''
Venture Smith
6 ' 11/2''
John Camel Heenan
6 ' 2 ''
Crispus Attucks
6 ' 2 ''
President Chester A. Arthur
6 ' 2 ''
President George Bush, Senior
6 ' 2 ''
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President Franklin D. Roosevelt
6 ' 2 ''
President George Washington
6 ' 2 ''
Gabriel Prosser
6 ' 2 ''
Dangerfield Newby
6 ' 2 ''
Charles Augustus Lindbergh
6 ' 2 ''
President Bill Clinton
6 ' 21/2''
President Thomas Jefferson
6 ' 21/2''
President Lyndon B. Johnson
6 ' 3 ''
Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr.
6 ' 3 ''
Richard “King Dick” Seaver
6 ' 31/4''
President Abraham Lincoln
6 ' 4 ''
Marion Morrison (AKA John Wayne)
6 ' 4 ''
Elisha Reynolds Potter, Senior
6 ' 4 ''
Thomas Cholmondeley
6 ' 4 '' (?)
Franklin Benjamin Sanborn
6 ' 5 ''
Peter the Great of Russia
6 ' 7 ''
Giovanni Battista Belzoni
6 ' 7 ''
Thomas Jefferson (the statue)
7 ' 6''
Jefferson Davis (the statue)
7 ' 7''
Martin Van Buren Bates
7 ' 111/2''
M. Bihin, a Belgian exhibited in Boston in 1840
8'
Anna Haining Swan
8 ' 1''
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1865
April 8, Saturday: There was fighting at Appomattox Station.
The New York legislature passed the Willard Law, named for psychiatrist Sylvester D. Willard, providing a
mental health facility for the care of the “chronic pauper insane.” When this facility would open on October
13, 1869 on Seneca Lake, the Willard Asylum for the Insane would be the 1st US institution for chronically
ill patients, reflecting more sophisticated diagnosis and treatment methods. This is now the Willard Psychiatric
Center.1
PSYCHOLOGY
The Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.’s story “Aunt Jane’s Ear Trumpet” appeared in Gleason’s Literary
Companion:
The noise of wheels was heard in the street. It was the stage
coach with its load of passengers just returned from the railway
station. It paused before the gate of rather a pretentious house
in the main street of the village.
Mrs. Graves looked out of the window and an expression of dismay
crept over her face.
“I declare,” she exclaimed. “if it isn’t Aunt Jane Breed come
to make us a visitation.”
“O dear,” chimed in Arabella, a young lady of eighteen, “what a
pity! Just as we are going to have a party too. Couldn’t we tell
her it is inconvenient for us to have her, and send her to Uncle
Merriam’s?”
“No, Arabella, that would never do. You must consider that your
Aunt Jane has twenty thousand dollars which she can dispose of
as she pleases.”
She had no time to say more for the bell rang.
Mrs. Graves went to the door herself. By the time she had opened
it her face was composed into an expression of joy.
“Why Aunt Jane, how do you do? What a pleasant surprise! Arabella
and I were speaking of you only this morning.”
“Wait a minute, Eleanor,” said the old lady, fumbling in her
pocket.
She produced an ear trumpet which she adjusted to her ear.
“There,” said she “now we can talk”
1. Street, W.R. A CHRONOLOGY OF NOTEWORTHY EVENTS IN AMERICAN PSYCHOLOGY. Washington DC: American Psychological
Association, 1994
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“There,” said she, “now we can talk.”
“I had no idea you were deaf,” said Mrs. Graves through the
trumpet.
“Age has its infirmities,” said Aunt Jane.
“How is Arabella.”
“Very well, thank you. Here she is to speak for herself.”
Mrs. Graves turned towards her daughter, and spoke in her
natural voice.
“Aunt Jane’s as deaf as an adder,” she remarked. “You see she
has to use an ear trumpet.”
“I’m glad of it,” said Arabella. “Now we can say what we please
without her hearing us. Is she going to stay a long time?”
“I don’t know. I’ll ask her”
“Aunt Jane,” said she with her mouth to the ear trumpet “I hope
you are going to favor us with a long visit “
“I can’t spare you but a month,” said Aunt Jane, “that is, if
it is entirely convenient for you to have me with you so long.”
“We shall be delighted.” said Mrs. Graves, finishing the
sentence for her daughter’s benefit, “to have you go. That’s the
truth, isn’t it Arabella?”
“How shall we ever live through the month?” said Arabella
dismally without however venturing to express this feeling on
her countenance.
A peculiar expression flitted over the old lady’s face, but this
was observed neither by Mrs. Graves nor her daughter.
Three days passed. The old lady had become domesticated at the
house of her niece.
It so happened that Arabella had a beau —a young man of very
much the same calibre as herself— who was employed as a clerk
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in one of the village stores. He called one evening when Aunt
Jane had indulged herself to sitting up a little longer than
usual.
“I suppose I must introduce you to my aunt,” said Arabella. “She
won’t be in our way, for she is as deaf as a post. Aunt Jane,”
she said through the ear-trumpet, “this is Mr. Storrs.”
“I am glad to see him,” said Aunt Jane extending her hand.
“There we needn’t say anything more to her,” said Arabella
carelessly. “I believe you never saw her before.”
“No,” said the young man.
“Ain’t she a beauty? laughed Arabella.
“Are you not afraid she will hear?”
O no, she is entirely dependent on her trumpet. That’s lucky for
us. If she could hear, she might not always be gratified by what
she heard.”
“Ha, ha!” laughed Storrs.
“It’s a great trial to us to have her here, but you know when
one has a rich aunt, she can’t very well be put off.”
“So your aunt is rich,” said the young clerk with increased
interest.
“Yes, she’s worth twenty thousand dollars.”
“That’s a large sum,” said Storrs thinking how large a portion
of this sum would be likely to fall to Arabella whom he already
looked upon as his own.
“Yes, its worth some sacrifice. So we tolerate the old lady in
spite of her frumpy dress and odd ways.”
“I was just going to observe,” said Storrs banteringly, what a
strong resemblance there is between you and your aunt.”
“Take that for your impertinence sir,” said the young lady,
playfully tapping him with her fan. “I must be a charming
creature if that were the case”
Now aunt Jane was in reality a very good looking old lady, though
of course not as good looking as when she was young.
So the conversation ran on, entirely regardless of Aunt Jane,
who sat placidly in a rocking-chair at the window knitting a
stocking. She appeared to take little notice of the young
couple, but occasionally an amused look just flitted over her
face. Probably she was thinking of something.
Aunt Jane had been a fortnight at the house of Mrs. Graves when
one morning she said at the breakfast table “I should like to
go over to Merriam’s to spend the day.”
“Very well,” said Arabella with alacrity, “we can carry you down
there immediately after breakfast.”
“What a relief it will be” said she turning to her mother, “to
be rid of her a single day.”
“Yes,” said Mrs. Graves, who being older, was a little more
prudent, “but you must consider that your uncle is as nearly
related as I am, and we must not let her stay there too long.”
“Yes, I suppose so,” said Arabella with a sigh.
“You had better tell her that you hope she wont stay longer than
one day.”
“Well,” said Arabella, “if I must I suppose I must.”
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“Aunt Jane, you must be sure and not stay longer than a day or
two,” said the young lady through the ear trumpet.
You are very kind,” said the old lady, “I didn’t know but I was
getting troublesome.”
“O no, we are delighted to have you here,” said Mrs. Graves. “We
hope you will stay a long time.”
“How could you say that, mother?” protested Arabella.
“Because, my dear, your aunt is too old to last very long, and
we ought to feel willing to submit to some inconveniences for
the sake of being remembered in her will. If we work our cards
right she may leave us the whole. That would be worth having.
Twenty thousand dollars don’t grow on every bush.”
“As likely as not she’ll live to be a hundred,” muttered
Arabella.
After breakfast Aunt Jane was carried to the house of her nephew,
Mr. James Merriam, the only son of her sister.
Mr. Merriam was a poor man. He had met with reverses, and now
lived in a much less expensive way than his cousin. Mrs. Graves,
who despite the relationship looked upon Mr. Merriam as her
social inferior. He was a very worthy man however, and far from
being as worldly as Mrs. Graves. He had three children, all at
home. His wife was an excellent housekeeper, and far more
amiable than Mrs. Graves though her pretensions were much less.
“I am glad to see you, Aunt Jane,” said Mr. Merriam hospitably,
as he came out to help her from the carriage. “We have been
hoping to see you ever since we heard of your arrival in town.
Clara will be delighted to welcome you.”
The old lady drew out her trumpet. Mr. Merriam looked concerned.
“I am sorry that you have lost your hearing,” be said.
“Old people can’t expect to hear as well as young folks,” said
Aunt Jane.
“You must make us a good long visit,” said Mrs. Merriam who now
appeared.
“I will see,” said Aunt Jane.
“I always liked Aunt Jane,” said Mrs. Merriam to her husband.
She is always so gentle and kind. It seems very pleasant to have
her in the house.”
“So it does. The only thing I think of is that we have a small
house, and can’t make her as comfortable as at your cousins.”
“Well we will make up in the warmth of our welcome.”
Aunt Jane seemed unusually happy that day. As night approached
she seemed thoughtful, and finally consented to stay longer.
“I must write a letter to my niece to explain it,” she said.
An hour after the following note was placed in the hands of Mrs.
Graves.
Niece Eleanor: I have concluded to stay where I am
during the remainder of my visit. As you remarked to
Arabella when I came that you should be delighted to
have me go, this information will doubtless be pleasing
to you. As for Arabella she will be easily consoled for
the departure of her “frumpy old aunt” who must have
annoyed her with her “odd ways.”
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Aunt Jane.
P. S. My hearing has been wonderfully restored so that
I can now dispense with my ear-trumpet.
This letter filled Mrs. Graves and Arabella with dismay. They
had sinned so deeply against the old lady that they felt that
no apologies would be adequate. To add to Arabella’s
misfortunes, when the young clerk learned that there was an
estrangement between her and her rich aunt he unceremoniously
deserted her for another young lady.
Aunt Jane bequeathed the bulk of her possession to her nephew.
Her will contained the following provision.
Item. I bequeathe to my niece Eleanor my ear trumpet
which I found on one occasion of excellent service
THE FUTURE CAN BE EASILY PREDICTED IN RETROSPECT
Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1866
The Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr. came to be suspected of being engaged in “questionable relations” with a
choirboy or two and was ousted from the Unitarian church of Brewster on Cape Cod, at which he had been the
pastor. He agreed never again to accept a position as a minister, and returned to the home of his father and
mother. He then relocated to the New-York metropolis, where, over the following three decades, he would
“adopt,” live with, and nurture a series of teen-age boys.
His cousin, the Reverend William Rounseville Alger, who on August 1, 1854
had been the first to
purchase a copy of WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS –hot off the press eight days before its official
publication date– during this year prepared a treatise THE SOLITUDES OF NATURE AND OF MAN; OR, THE
LONELINESS OF HUMAN LIFE which immediately went through a number of printings, a treatise in which in no
uncertain terms he denounced Henry Thoreau.
TIMELINE OF WALDEN
On page vii of the Introduction we learn that the objective of this treatise is to learn “how at the same time to
win the benefits and shun the evils of being alone.” ... “The subject –the conditions and influences of solitude
in its various forms– is so largely concerned with disturbed feelings that it is difficult, in treating it, to keep
free from everything unhealthy, excessive, or eccentric.” On page viii we learn that: “The warm effusion of
Christianity is better adapted to human nature than the dry chill of Stoicism.”
It was obviously a very low blow, hitting below the belt, to describe Thoreau as he did (see below), in terms
that suggested that this author had been not only a solitary but also had been “feeling himself,” had been
“fondling himself,” which is to suggest, going one better on the previously published derogations of James
Russell Lowell, that Henry had been a masturbator. Nowadays, however, it requires some special explanation
of the context for us to grasp just what an utterly low blow it was, because nowadays we have a more accurate
theory, an infection theory, of the origins of the tuberculosis from which Thoreau died. This was, however, the
period before, during which the contagious nature of the ailment was not yet generally understood. One of the
pervasive theories of “phthisis” of that era was that it was a debility brought about through excessive and
unrestrained masturbation. The reverend was therefore in effect suggesting to his appreciative audience that
the Concord author had, through his lack of self-restraint as persistently exhibited in the text of his manual
for life, been responsible for his own early death!
The second half of the volume bears this title page:
SKETCHES OF LONELY CHARACTERS:
or,
PERSONAL ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE GOOD AND EVIL OF SOLITUDE.
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In this second half the reverend author deals serially, in sub-chapters, with Gautama Buddha, Confucius,
Demosthenes, Tacitus, Lucretius, Cicero, Boethius, Dante, Petrarch, Tasso, Bruno, Vico, Descartes, Hobbes,
Leibnitz, Milton, Pascal, Rousseau, Zimmermann, Beethoven, Shelley, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Byron,
Blanco White, Leopardi, Foster, Channing, Robertson, Chopin, Thoreau (pages 329-338), Maurice de Guérin,
Hegel, Schopenhauer, Eugenie de Guérin, Comte, and then with Jesus.
Pages 329-338: If any American deserves to stand as a
representative of the experience of reclusiveness, Thoreau is
the man. His fellow-feelings and alliances with men were few and
feeble; his disgusts and aversions many, as well as strongly
pronounced. All his life he was distinguished for his aloofness,
austere self-communion, long and lonely walks. He was separated
from ordinary persons in grain and habits, by the poetic
sincerity of his passion for natural objects and phenomena. As
a student and lover of the material world he is a genuine apostle
of solitude, despite the taints of affectation, inconsistency,
and morbidity which his writings betray. At twenty-eight, on the
shore of a lonely pond, he built a hut in which he lived entirely
by himself for over two years. And, after he returned to his
father’s house in the village, he was for the chief part of the
time nearly as much alone as he had been in his hermitage by
Walden water. The closeness of his cleaving to the landscape
cannot be questioned: “I dream of looking abroad, summer and
winter, with free gaze, from some mountain side, nature looking
into nature, with such easy sympathy as the blue-eyed grass in
the meadow looks in the face of the sky.” When he describes
natural scenes, his heart lends a sweet charm to the pages he
pens: “Paddling up the river to Fair-Haven Pond, as the sun went
down, I saw a solitary boatman disporting on the smooth lake.
The falling dews seemed to strain and purify the air, and I was
soothed with an infinite stillness. I got the world, as it were,
by the name of the neck, and held it under, in the tide of its
own events, till it was drowned; and then I let it go down stream
like a dead dog. Vast, hollow chambers of silence stretched away
on every side; and my being expanded in proportion, and filled
them.”
In his little forest-house, Thoreau had three chairs, “one for
solitude, two for friendship, three for society.” “My nearest
neighbor is a mile distant. It is as solitary where I live as
on the prairies. It is as much Asia or Africa as New England. I
have, as it were, my own sun and moon and stars; and a little
world all to myself.” “At night, there was never a traveler
passed my door, more than if I were the first or last man.” “We
are wont to imagine rare and delectable places in some remote
and more celestial corner of the system, — behind the
constellation of Cassiopea’s Chair, far from noise and
disturbance. I discovered that my house actually had its site
in such a withdrawn, but forever new and unprofaned, part of the
universe.” “I love to be alone. I never found the companion that
was so compatible as solitude.” In this last sentence we catch
a tone from the diseased or disproportioned side of the writer.
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He was unhealthy and unjust in all his thoughts on society;
underrating the value, overrating the dangers, of intercourse
with men. But his thoughts on retirement, the still study and
love of nature, though frequently exaggerated, are uniformly
sound. He has a most catholic toleration, a wholesome and
triumphant enjoyment, of every natural object, from star to
skunk-cabbage. He says, with tonic eloquence, “Nothing can
rightly compel a simple and brave man to a vulgar sadness: while
I enjoy the friendship of the seasons, I trust that nothing can
make life a burden to me.” But the moment he turns to contemplate
his fellow-men, all his geniality leaves him, — he grows
bigoted, contemptuous, almost inhuman: “The names of men are of
course as cheap and meaningless as Bose and Tray, the names of
dogs. I will not allow mere names to make distinctions for me,
but still see men in herds.” The cynicism and the sophistry are
equal. His scorn constantly exhales: “The Irishman erects his
sty, and gets drunk, and jabbers more and more under my eaves;
and I am responsible for all that filth and folly. I find it
very unprofitable to have much to do with men. Emerson says that
his life is so unprofitable and shabby for the most part, that
he is driven to all sorts of resources, and, among the rest, to
men. I have seen more men than usual, lately; and, well as I was
acquainted with one, I am surprised to find what vulgar fellows
they are. They do a little business each day, to pay their board;
then they congregate in sitting-rooms, and feebly fabulate and
paddle in the social slush; and, when I think they have
sufficiently relaxed, and am prepared to see them steal away to
their shrines, they go unashamed to their beds, and take on a
new layer of sloth.” Once in a while he gives a saner voice out
of a fonder mood: “It is not that we love to be alone, but that
we love to soar, the company grows thinner and thinner, till
there is none at all.” But the conceited and misanthropic fit
quickly comes back: “Would I not rather be a cedar post, which
lasts twenty-five years, than the farmer that set it; or he that
preaches to that farmer?” “The whole enterprise of this nation
is totally devoid of interest to me. There is nothing in it which
one should lay down his life for, — nor even his gloves. What
aims more lofty have they than the prairie-dogs?”
This poisonous sleet of scorn, blowing manward, is partly an
exaggerated rhetoric; partly, the revenge he takes on men for
not being what he wants them to be; partly, an expression of his
unappreciated soul reacting in defensive contempt, to keep him
from sinking below his own estimation of his deserts. It is
curious to note the contradictions his inner uneasiness begets.
Now he says, “In what concerns you much, do not think you have
companions; know that you are alone in the world.” Then he writes
to one of his correspondents, “I wish I could have the benefit
of your criticism; it would be a rare help to me.” The following
sentence has a cheerful surface, but a sad bottom: “I have lately
got back to that glorious society, called solitude, where we
meet our friends continually, and can imagine the outside world
also to be peopled.” At one moment, he says, “I have never felt
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lonesome, or the least oppressed by a sense of solitude, but
once; and then I was conscious of a slight insanity in my mood.”
At another moment he says, “Ah! what foreign countries there
are, stretching away on every side from every human being with
whom you have no sympathy! Their humanity affects one as simply
monstrous. When I sit in the parlors and kitchens of some with
whom my business brings me — I was going to say — in contact, I
feel a sort of awe, and am as forlorn as if I were cast away on
a desolate shore. I think of Riley’s narrative, and his
sufferings.” That his alienation from society was more bitter
than sweet, less the result of constitutional superiority than
of dissatisfied experience, is significantly indicated, when we
find him saying, at twenty-five, “I seem to have dodged all my
days with one or two persons, and lived upon expectation”; at
thirty-five, “I thank you again and again for attending to me”;
and at forty-five, “I was particularly gratified when one of my
friends said, ‘I wish you would write another book, — write it
for me.’ He is actually more familiar with what I have written
than I am myself.”
The truth is, his self-estimate and ambition were inordinate;
his willingness to pay the price of their outward gratification,
a negative quantity. Their exorbitant demands absorbed him; but
he had not those powerful charms and signs which would draw from
others a correspondent valuation of him and attention to him.
Accordingly, he shut his real self in a cell of secrecy, and
retreated from men whose discordant returns repelled, to natural
objects whose accordant repose seemed acceptingly to confirm and
return, the required estimate imposed on them. The key of his
life is the fact that it was devoted to the art of an interior
aggrandizement of himself. The three chief tricks in this art
are, first, a direct self-enhancement, by a boundless pampering
of egotism; secondly, an indirect self-enhancement, by a
scornful deprecation of others; thirdly, an imaginative
magnifying of every trifle related to self, by associating with
it a colossal idea of the self. It is difficult to open many
pages in the written record of Thoreau without being confronted
with examples of these three tricks. He is constantly, with all
his boastful stoicism, feeling himself, reflecting himself,
fondling himself, reverberating himself, exalting himself,
incapable of escaping or forgetting himself. He is never
contented with things until they are wound through, and made to
echo himself; and this is the very mark of spiritual
disturbance. “When I detect,” he says, “a beauty in any of the
recesses of nature, I am reminded, by the serene and retired
spirit in which it requires to be contemplated, of the
inexpressible privacy of a life.” In the holiest and silentest
nook his fancy conjures the spectre of himself, and an ideal din
from society for contrast. He says of his own pursuits, “The
unchallenged bravery which these studies imply is far more
impressive than the trumpeted valor of the warrior.” When he
sees a mountain he sings: —
Wachuset, who, like me,
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Standest alone without society,
Upholding heaven, holding down earth, —
Thy pastime from thy birth, —
Not steadied by the one, nor leaning on the other,
May I approve myself thy worthy brother!
This self-exaggeration peers out even through the disguise of
humor and of satire: “I am not afraid of praise, for I have
practised it on myself. The stars and I belong to a mutualadmiration society.” “I do not propose to write an ode to
dejection, but to brag as lustily as chanticleer in the morning,
standing on his roost.” “The mass of men lead lives of quiet
desperation.” But he, — he is victorious, sufficing, royal. At
all events he will be unlike other people. “I am a mere arena
for thoughts and feelings, a slight film, or dash of vapor, so
faint an entity, and make so slight an impression, that nobody
can find the traces of me.” “I am something to him that made me,
undoubtedly, but not much to any other that he has made.” “Many
are concerned to know who built the monuments of the East and
West. For my part, I should like to know who, in those days, did
not build them, — who were above such trifling.” “For my part,
I could easily do without the post-office. I am sure that I never
read any memorable news in a newspaper.” This refrain of
opposition between the general thoughts and feelings of mankind
and his own, recurs until it becomes comical, and we look for
it. He refused invitations to dine out, saying, “They make their
pride in making their dinner cost much; I make my pride in making
my dinner cost little.” One is irresistibly reminded of Plato’s
retort, when Diogenes said, “See how I tread on the pride of
Plato.” — “Yes, with greater pride.”
But he more than asserts his difference; he explicitly proclaims
his superiority: “Sometimes when I compare myself with other
men, it seems as if I were more favored by the gods than they.”
“When I realize the greatness of the part I am unconsciously
acting, it seems as if there were none in history to match it.”
Speaking of the scarlet oaks, he adds with Italics, “These are
my china-asters, my late garden-flowers; it costs me nothing for
a gardener.” The unlikeness of genius to mediocrity is a fact,
but not a fact of that relative momentousness entitling it to
monopolize attention. He makes a great ado about his absorbing
occupation; his sacred engagements with himself; his consequent
inability to do anything for others, or to meet those who wished
to see him. In the light of this obtrusive trait the egotistic
character of many passages like the following become emphatic:
“Only think, for a moment, of a man about his affairs! How we
should respect him! How glorious he would appear! A man about
his business would be the cynosure of all eyes.” He evidently
had the jaundice of desiring men to think as well of him as he
thought of himself; and, when they would not, he ran into the
woods. But he could not escape thus, since he carried them still
in his mind.
His quotations are not often beautiful or valuable, but appear
to be made as bids for curiosity or admiration, or to produce
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some other sharp effect; as they are almost invariably strange,
bizarre, or absurd: culled from obscure corners, Damodara,
Iamblichus, the Vishnu Purana, or some such out-of-the-way
source. He seems to take oddity for originality, extravagant
singularity for depth and force. His pages are profusely
peppered with pungent paradoxes and exaggerations, — a straining
for sensation, not in keeping with his pretence of sufficing
repose and greatness: “Why should I feel lonely? is not our
planet in the Milky Way?” “All that men have said or are, is a
very faint rumor; and it is not worth their while to remember
or refer to that.” He exemplifies, to an extent truly
astonishing, the great vice of the spiritual hermit; the
belittling, because he dislikes them, of things ordinarily
considered important; and the aggrandizing, because he likes
them, of things usually regarded as insignificant. His
eccentricities
are
uncorrected
by
collision
with
the
eccentricities of others, and his petted idiosyncrasies spurn
at the average standards of sanity and usage. Grandeur,
dissociated from him, dwindles into pettiness; pettiness, linked
with his immense ego, dilates into grandeur. In his conceited
separation he mistakes a crochet for a consecration. If a worm
crosses his path, and he stops to watch its crawl, it is greater
than an interview with the Duke of Wellington.
It is the wise observation of Lavater, that whoever makes too
much or to little of himself has a false measure for everything.
Few persons have cherished a more preposterous idea of self than
Thoreau, or been more persistently ridden by the enormity. This
false standard of valuation vitiates every moral measurement he
makes. He describes a battle of red and black ants before his
wood-pile at Walden, as if it were more important than Marathon
or Gettysburg. His faculties were vast, and his time
inexpressibly precious: this struggle of the pismires occupied
his faculties and time; therefore this struggle of the pismires
must be an inexpressibly great matter. A trifle, plus his ego,
was immense; an immensity, minus his ego, was a trifle. Is it a
haughty conceit or a noble loftiness that makes him say, “When
you knock at the Celestial City, ask to see God, — none of the
servants”? He says, “Mine is a sugar to sweeten sugar with: if
you will listen to me, I will sweeten your whole life.” Again,
“I would put forth sublime thoughts daily, as the plant puts
forth leaves.” And yet again, “I shall be a benefactor if I
conquer some realms from the night, — if I add to the domains
of poetry.” After such manifestos, we expect much. We do not
find so much as we naturally expect.
He was rather an independent and obstinate thinker than a
powerful or rich one. His works, taken in their whole range,
instead of being fertile in ideas, are marked by speculative
sterility. “He was one of those men,” a friendly but honest
critic says, “who, from conceit or disappointment, inflict upon
themselves a seclusion which reduces them at last, after
nibbling everything within reach of their tether, to simple
rumination and incessant returns of the same cud to the tongue.”
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This unsympathetic temper is betrayed in a multitude of such
sentences as this: “O ye that would have the cocoanut wrong side
outwards! when next I weep I will let you know.” Thoreau is not
the true type of a great man, a genuine master of life, because
he does not reflect greatness and joy over men and life, but
upholds his idea of his own greatness and mastership by making
the characters and lives of others mean and little. Those who,
like Wordsworth and Channing, reverse this process, are the true
masters and models. A feeling of superiority to others, with
love and honor for them, is the ground of complacency and a
condition of chronic happiness. A feeling of superiority to
others, with alienation from them and hate for them, is the sure
condition of perturbations and unhappiness.
Many a humble and loving author who has nestled amongst his
fellow-men and not boasted, has contributed far more to brace
and enrich the characters and sweeten the lives of his readers
than the ill-balanced and unsatisfied hermit of Concord, part
cynic, part stoic, who strove to compensate himself with nature
and solitude for what he could not wring from men and society.
The extravagant estimate he put on solitude may serve as a
corrective of the extravagant estimate put on society by our
hives of citizens. His monstrous preference of savagedom to
civilization may usefully influence us to appreciate natural
unsophisticatedness more highly, and conventionality more
lowly. As a teacher, this is nearly the extent of his narrow
mission. Lowell [James Russell Lowell], in a careful article,
written after reading all the published works of Thoreau, says
of him: “He seems to us to have been a man with so high a conceit
of himself, that he accepted without questioning, and insisted
on our accepting, his defects and weaknesses of character, as
virtues and powers peculiar to himself. Was he indolent, — he
finds none of the activities which attract or employ the rest
of mankind worthy of him. Was he wanting in the qualities that
make success, — it is success that is contemptible, and not
himself that lacks persistency and purpose. Was he poor, — money
was an unmixed evil. Did his life seem a selfish one, — he
condemns doing good, as one of the weakest of superstitions.”
In relation to the intellectual and moral influence of solitude,
the example of Thoreau, with all the alleviating wisdom,
courage, and tenderness confessedly in it, is chiefly valuable
as an illustration of the evils of a want of sympathy with the
community. Yet there is often a deep justice, a grandly tonic
breath of self-reliance, in his exhortations. How sound and
admirable the following passage: “If you seek the warmth of
affection from a similar motive to that from which cats and dogs
and slothful persons hug the fire, because your temperature is
low through sloth, you are on the downward road. Better the cold
affection of the sun, reflected from fields of ice and snow, or
his warmth in some still wintry dell. Warm your body by healthful
exercise, not by cowering over a stove. Warm your spirit by
performing independently noble deeds, not by ignobly seeking the
sympathy of your fellows who are no better than yourself.”
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Though convinced of the justice of this sketch, the writer feels
rebuked, as if it were not kind enough, when he remembers the
pleasure he has had in many of the pages of Thoreau, and the
affecting scene of his funeral on that beautiful summer day in
the dreamy town of Concord. There was uncommon love in him, but
it felt itself repulsed, and too proud to beg or moan, it put
on stoicism and wore it until the mask became the face. His
opinionative stiffness and contempt were his hurt self-respect
protecting itself against the conventionalities and scorns of
those who despised what he revered and revered what he despised.
His interior life, with the relations of thoughts and things,
was intensely tender and true, however sorely ajar he may have
been with persons and with the ideas of persons. If he was sour,
it was on a store of sweetness; if sad, on a fund of gladness.
While we walked in procession up to the church, though the bell
tolled the forty-four years he had numbered, we could not deem
that he was dead whose ideas and sentiments were so vivid in our
souls. As the fading image of pathetic clay lay before us, strewn
with wild flowers and forest sprigs, thoughts of its former
occupant seemed blent with all the local landscapes. We still
recall with emotion the tributary words so fitly spoken by
friendly and illustrious lips. The hands of friends reverently
lowered the body of the lonely poet into the bosom of the earth,
on the pleasant hillside of his native village, whose prospects
will long wait to unfurl themselves to another observer so
competent to discriminate their features and so attuned to their
moods. And now that it is too late for any further boon amidst
his darling haunts below,
There will yet his mother yield
A pillow in her greenest field,
Nor the June flowers scorn to cover
The clay of their departed lover.
WHAT I’M WRITING IS TRUE BUT NEVER MIND
YOU CAN ALWAYS LIE TO YOURSELF
Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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1867
RAGGED DICK; OR, STREET LIFE IN NEW YORK WITH THE BOOT-BLACKS by Horatio Alger, Jr.
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1868
The Reverend William Rounseville Alger became the pastor of the Reverend Theodore Parker’s “fraternity”
(congregation) worshiping in the Boston Music Hall. His MAN FROM THE MEDICAL POINT OF VIEW, and his
THE ABUSES AND USES OF CHURCH-GOING: A DISCOURSE SPOKEN AT THE FIRST SERVICE OF THE MUSIC-HALL
SOCIETY IN BOSTON, OCT. 18, 1868, were published in Boston.
His disgraced cousin Horatio Alger, Jr. offered his photograph as a bonus to subscribers to Student and
Schoolmate:
Horatio Alger, Jr. began basically to write the same formula story 130 times. He would be putting out what
would amount to RAGGED DICK; OR, STREET LIFE IN NEW YORK WITH THE BOOT-BLACKS, using 130 different
hero names and 130 different titles. This was a story America needed to believe because it was so far in every
particular from the truth. Even today it would seem we have a need to believe in this story, still as false as ever
it was.
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1874
The Reverend William Rounseville Alger relocated his operation from Boston to New-York. He put out an
enlarged 4th edition of his THE POETRY OF THE ORIENT, OR METRICAL SPECIMENS OF THE THOUGHT,
SENTIMENT, AND FANCY OF THE EAST, PREFACED BY AN ELABORATE DISSERTATION.
POETRY OF THE ORIENT
Horatio Alger, Sr., the minister father of William’s cousin Horatio Alger, Jr., retired from his Unitarian
ministry in South Natick, Massachusetts.
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1877
The Reverend William Rounseville Alger’s, and his cousin Horatio Alger, Jr.’s, LIFE OF EDWIN FORREST, THE
AMERICAN TRAGEDIAN, WITH A CRITICAL HISTORY OF THE DRAMATIC ART was published in 2 volumes in
Philadelphia by the firm of J.B. Lippincott & Company.
Cousin Horatio had done most of the research and writing in regard to the career of Forrest, while Cousin
William had supplied the materials dealing in general with the history of the American theater.
LIFE OF EDWIN FORREST
I don’t know the year in which this happened, and am therefore inserting the material quite randomly: at some
point Horatio Alger, Jr. discussed his sexual preferences with the psychologist William James.
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1881
The Reverend William Rounseville Alger moved from Chicago to Portland. He would not remain there, but
would return to Boston. His THE SCHOOL OF LIFE would be published in this year in Boston. His A SYMBOLIC
HISTORY OF THE CROSS OF CHRIST also would be published in this year.
HISTORY OF THE CROSS
Horatio Alger, Sr., the minister father of his cousin Horatio Alger, Jr., died in Natick, Massachusetts.
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1896
During his years in this enormous impersonal metropolis, Horatio Alger, Jr. had been “adopting,” living with,
and nurturing a series of vulnerable teen-age boys. This had been good for him and it had also been good for
them to have a protector, or so one may suppose. At this point, due to illness, he needed to return to Natick,
Massachusetts to finish out his life in the home of a sister — he wasn’t going to be able to help the defenseless
teen-age boys of New-York any more, they were on their own.
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1899
July 18, Tuesday: Micronesia was placed under the domain of German New Guinea.
Le Matin announced that Major Esterhazy had admitted having written the original letter in the Dreyfus case
— his defense would be that he had done so under the orders of a superior officer.
Horatio Alger, Jr., whose lads always had enough pluck to succeed, died of heart disease in Natick,
Massachusetts. His funeral would be at the church at which his father had been the reverend, his papers would
largely be destroyed by his family at his own request, and his tombstone would be caused to read as follows:
HERE LIES THE BODY OF HORATIO ALGER, JR. WELL, WHAT OF IT?
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1907
The books of Horatio Alger, Jr. were banned from the Worcester Public Library.
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1934
Nathaniel West’s A COOL MILLION parodied the novels of Horatio Alger, Jr.
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1983
Summer: Gary Scharnhorst’s article “Biographical Blindspots: The Case of the Cousins Alger” appeared in Biography
6/2.
WILLIAM ROUNSEVILLE ALGER
HORATIO ALGER, JR.
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2004
January 1, Thursday: Daniel Akst’s article “Buyer’s Remorse,” suggesting of Henry Thoreau and Horatio Alger, Jr.
that they were probably a couple of homosexuals, appeared in The Wilson Quarterly (Akst is a novelist and
essayist living in New York’s Hudson Valley):
There are two things at which Americans have always excelled:
One is generating almost unimaginable material wealth, and the
other is feeling bad about it. If guilt and materialism are two
sides of a single very American coin, it’s a coin that has
achieved new currency in recent years, as hand-wringing and
McMansions vie for our souls like the angels and devils who perch
on the shoulders of cartoon characters, urging them to be good
or bad.
When Princeton University researchers asked working Americans
about these matters a decade ago, 89 percent of those surveyed
agreed that “our society is much too materialistic,” and 74percent said that materialism is a serious social problem. Since
then, a good deal has been written about materialism, and
magazines such as Real Simple (filled with advertising) have
sprung up to combat it. But few of us would argue that we’ve
become any less consumed with consuming; the latest magazine
sensation, after all, is Lucky, which dispenses with all the
editorial folderol and devotes itself entirely to offering
readers things they can buy.
The real question is, Why should we worry? Why be of two minds
about what we buy and how well we live? Most of us have earned
what we possess; we’re not members of some hereditary landed
gentry. Our material success isn’t to blame for anyone else’s
poverty — and, on the contrary, might even ameliorate it (even
Third World sweatshops have this effect, much as we might lament
them).
So how come we’re so sheepish about possessions? Why do we need
a class of professional worrywarts –AKA the intelligentsia– to
warn us, from the stern pulpits of Cambridge, Berkeley, and
other bastions of higher education (and even higher real estate
prices) about the perils of consumerism run amok?
There are good reasons, to be sure. If we saved more, we could
probably achieve faster economic growth. If we taxed ourselves
more, we might reduce income inequality. If we consumed less,
our restraint might help the environment (although the
environment mostly has grown cleaner as spending has increased).
Then, too, there’s a personal price to be paid for affluence:
Because we’re so busy pursuing our individual fortunes, we
endure a dizzying rate of change and weakened community and
family ties.
There is merit in all these arguments, but while I know lots of
people who are ambivalent about their own consumerism, hardly
any seem to worry that their getting and spending is undermining
the economy or pulling people off family farms. No, the real
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reason for our unease about possessions is that many of us, just
like the makers of Hebrew National franks, still seem to answer
to a higher power. We may not articulate it, but what really has
us worried is how we think God wants us to behave. And on that
score, materialism was making people nervous long before there
was an America. In the BIBLE, the love of money is said to be the
root of all evil, and the rich man has as much of a shot at
heaven as a camel has of passing through the eye of a needle.
On the other band, biblical characters who enjoy God’s blessings
have an awful lot of livestock, and other neat stuff as well.
Though Job loses everything while God is testing him, he gets
it all back when he passes the test. Perhaps even God is of two
minds about materialism.
Here on earth, however, traditional authorities have always
insisted that materialism is a challenge not just to the social
order but to the perfection of God’s world. James B. Twitchell,
a student of advertising and a cheerful iconoclast on
materialism, has observed that sumptuary laws were once enforced
by ecclesiastical courts “because luxury was defined as living
above one’s station, a form of insubordination against the
concept of copia — the idea that God’s world is already full and
complete.”
America represents the antithesis of that idea. Many of the
earliest European settlers were motivated by religion, yet by
their efforts they transformed the new land –God’s country?–
into a nation of insubordinates, determined not so much to live
above their station as to refuse to acknowledge they even had
one. Surely this is the place Joseph Schumpeter had in mind when
he wrote of “creative destruction.”
America was soon enough a nation where money could buy social
status, and American financial institutions pioneered such
weapons of mass consumption as the credit card. Today, no other
nation produces material wealth on quite the scale we do — and
citizens of few other affluent countries are allowed to keep as
much of their earnings. In America, I daresay, individuals have
direct control of more spending per capita than in just about
any other nation. If affluence is a sign of grace, is it any
wonder that Americans are more religious than most other modern
peoples?
Twitchell is right in observing that the roots of our
ambivalence about materialism are essentially religious in
nature. They can be traced all the way back to Yahweh’s
injunction against graven images, which might distract us from
God or suggest by their insignificant dimensions some limits to
his grandeur. Over the centuries the holiest among us, at least
putatively, have been those who shunned material possessions and
kept their eyes on some higher prize. From that elevated
perspective, material goods, which are essentially transient,
seem emblems of human vanity and gaudy memento mori. Unless you
happen to be a pharaoh, you can’t take it with you; there’s a
much better chance that your kids will have to get rid of it at
a garage sale.
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Ultimately,
our love-hate relationship with
materialism
reflects the tension between our age-old concern with the
afterlife and our inevitable desire for pleasure and comfort in
this one. The Puritans wrestled this contradiction with
characteristic intelligence and verve, but our guilt about
materialism is probably their legacy. They understood that there
was nothing inherently evil in financial success, and much
potential good, given how the money might be used.
The same work ethic, Protestant or otherwise, powers the economy
today. Americans take less time off than Europeans, for
instance, and there is no tradition here of the idle rich. But
the Puritans also believed that poverty made it easier to get
close to God. Worldly goods “are veils set betwixt God and us,”
wrote the English Puritan Thomas Watson, who added: “How ready
is [man] to terminate his happiness in externals.” Leland Ryken,
a biblical scholar and professor of English at Wheaton College
who has written extensively about Christian attitudes toward
work and leisure, shrewdly observes that the Puritans regarded
money as a social good rather than a mere private possession:
“The Puritan outlook stemmed from a firm belief that people are
stewards of what God has entrusted to them. Money is ultimately
God’s, not ours. In the words of the influential Puritan book A
GODLY FORM OF HOUSEHOLD GOVERNMENT, money is ‘that which God hath lent
thee.’”
So who are you to go buying a Jaguar with that bonus check? As
if to dramatize Puritan ambivalence about wealth, New England
later produced a pair of influential nonconformists, Horatio
Alger, Jr. (1832-99) and Henry Thoreau (1817-62), whose work
embodies sharply contrasting visions of material wealth; for
better or worse, we’ve learned from both of them. Alger’s many
novels and stories offered an ethical template for upward
mobility, even as they gave him a sanitized outlet for his
dangerous fantasies about young boys. Thoreau, meanwhile, came
to personify the strong disdain for materialism –what might be
called the sexual plumage of capitalism– that would later be
expressed by commentators such as Thorstein Veblen and Juliet
Schor.
Alger and Thoreau had much in common. Both were from
Massachusetts, went to Harvard, and lived, in various ways, as
outsiders. Their lives overlapped for 30 years. Both struggled
at times financially, and both apparently were homosexual. The
popular image of Thoreau is of the lone eccentric contemplating
nature at Walden Pond. In fact, he spent only two years and two
months there, and while he always preferred to be thinking and
writing, he spent much of his life improving his father’s pencil
business, surveying land, and otherwise earning money.
Of course, Thoreau scorned business as anything more than a
means to an end. His literary output, mostly ignored in his
lifetime, won a wide audience over the years, in part, perhaps,
because of the triumph of the materialism he so reviled.
Thoreau’s instinctive disdain for moneymaking, his natural
asceticism and implicit environmentalism, his embrace of civil
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disobedience, and his opposition to slavery all fit him well for
the role of patron saint of American intellectuals. Alger’s
work, by contrast, is read by hardly anyone these days, and his
life was not as saintly as Thoreau’s. When accusations of
“unnatural” acts with teenage boys –acts he did not deny– forced
him from his pulpit in Brewster, the erstwhile Unitarian
minister decamped for New York City, where he became a
professional writer. It was in venal New York that he made his
name with the kind of stories we associate with him to this day:
tales of unschooled but goodhearted lads whose spunk, industry,
and yes, good looks, win them material success, with the help
of a little luck and their older male mentors.
Alger’s hackneyed parables are tales of the American dream,
itself an accumulation of hopes that has always had a strongly
materialistic component. The books themselves are now ignored,
but their central fable has become part of our heritage. “Alger
is to America,” wrote the novelist Nathanael West, “what Homer
was to the Greeks.”
If Thoreau won the lofty battle of ideology, Alger won the war
on the ground. This tension is most clearly visible among our
“opinion leaders,” who identify far more easily with Thoreau
than with, say, Ragged Dick. One reason may be that few writers
and scholars seem to have Alger stories of their own. I rarely
meet journalists or academies from poor or even working-class
families, and even the movie business, built by hardscrabble
immigrants from icy Eastern Europe, is run today by the children
of Southern California sunshine and prosperity.
Hollywood aside, journalists, academics, and intellectuals have
already self-selected for anti-materialist bias by choosing a
path away from money, which may account for why they’re so down
on consumerism (unless it involves Volvo station wagons). In
this they’re true to their ecclesiastical origins; monasteries,
after all, were once havens of learning, and intellectuals often
operated in a churchly context. Worse yet, some intellectuals,
abetted by tenure and textbook sales, are doing very well
indeed, and they in turn can feel guilty about all those
itinerant teaching fellows and underpaid junior faculty whose
lives suggest a comment by Robert Musil in his novel THE MAN
WITHOUT QUALITIES: “In every profession that is followed not for
the sake of money but for love,” wrote Musil, “there comes a
moment when the advancing years seem to be leading into the
void.”
There are no such feelings in the self-made man (or woman). Once
a staple of American life and literature, the self-made man is
now a somewhat discredited figure. Like the Puritans, knowing
moderns doubt that anyone really can be self-made (except maybe
immigrants), though they’re certainly not willing to assign to
God the credit for success. Besides, more of us now are born
comfortable, even if we work as hard as if we weren’t, and this
change may account for the persistence of minimalism as a style
of home decor among the fashionable. The perversely Veblenesque
costliness of minimalist design –all that glossy concrete, and
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no cheap clamshell moldings to slap over the ragged seams where
the doorways casually meet the drywall– attests to its ascetic
snob appeal. So does the general democratization of materialism.
Once everybody has possessions, fashion can fulfill its role,
which is to reinforce the primacy of wealth and give those in
the know a way of distinguishing themselves, only by shunning
possessions altogether. “Materialism,” in this context, refers
to somebody else’s wanting what you already have.
When my teenage nephew, in school, read Leo Tolstòy’s “How Much
Land Does a Man Need?” –a parable about greed whose grim answer
is: six feet for a burial plot– nobody told the students that
Tolstòy himself owned a 4,000-acre estate (inherited, of
course).
We have plenty of such well-heeled hypocrites closer to home.
John Lennon, for example, who lugubriously sang “imagine no
possessions,” made a bundle with the Beatles and lived at the
Dakota, an unusually prestigious and expensive apartment
building even by New York City standards. And before moving into
a $1.7 million house in New York’s northern suburbs, Hillary
Rodham Clinton told the World Economic Forum in Davos that
without a strong civil society, we risk succumbing to unbridled
materialism. “We are creating a consumer-driven culture that
promotes values and ethics that undermine both capitalism and
democracy,” she warned. But Mrs. Clinton soon suspended her
concerns
about
capitalism
and
democracy
to
accept
a
controversial avalanche of costly china and other furnishings
for the new house.
Heck, Thoreau could never have spent all that time at Walden if
his friend Ralph Waldo Emerson hadn’t bought the land. It’s
fitting that getting and spending –by somebody– gave us our most
famous anti-materialist work of literature. Getting and spending
by everyone else continues to make the intellectual life
possible, which is why universities are named for the likes of
Carnegie, Rockefeller, Stanford, and Duke.
Every church has a collection plate, after all, even if the
priests like to bite the hands that feed them.
“MAGISTERIAL HISTORY” IS FANTASIZING, HISTORY IS CHRONOLOGY
Reverend Horatio Alger, Jr.
“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project
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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 2014. 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 <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: April 15, 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.
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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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