BEFORE ELLIS ISLAND: CASTLE CLINTON IN CASTLE … · BEFORE ELLIS ISLAND: CASTLE CLINTON IN CASTLE GARDEN “History is an endless chain of inventive and spurious continuities, as

BEFORE ELLIS ISLAND: CASTLE CLINTON IN CASTLE GARDEN

“History is an endless chain of inventive and spuriouscontinuities, as in the case of the USS Constellation1,the USS Constellation2, the USS Constellation3, and theUSS Constellation4.”

— Austin Meredith

2 Copyright Austin Meredith

CASTLE GARDEN CASTLE CLINTON

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June 22, Monday: Off the Virginia coast HMS Leopard demanded the return of four British “deserters” by the USS Chesapeake. When the Chesapeake refused the Leopard opened fire killing 3 and wounding 18, then proceeded to seize the four sailors in question (this would almost produce a war between Great Britain and the United States).

Since, except for the avoidable defenses of Fort Columbus on Governors Island, the city of New-York was unprotected from the cannon of sea invaders, there were mass meetings of the citizenry in this coastal population center, expressive of a “fortification fever.” John McComb Jr.’s Castle Clinton would be created as a cannon emplacement at the lower tip of Manhattan Island.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

2 day 22 of 6 M 1807 / Much occupied at Trade, but more life that Yesterday This Afternoon as the Soldiers were passing by the Shop my feelings were arrested with feelings which I hope ever to retain a sense of. I said in my heart surely the Lord has no delight in this, the Drum, the fife & all martial preparations are an offence in his holy eye sight

1807

RELIGIOUS SOCIETY OF FRIENDS

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/thumbnails/T/HDT.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/explanation.pdf

http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/ActiveIndex.pdf

“Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project 3

CASTLE CLINTON CASTLE GARDEN

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August 17, Wednesday: A well-dressed crowd gathered on the Hudson River side of Lower Manhattan Island on this hot afternoon of August 17, 1808 to view the new steamboat of Robert Fulton, which he had named the North River (this was the riverboat that is now referred to as the Clermont).

Construction was beginning in this year, of five D-shaped sandstone forts in defense of New-York harbor: Fort Wood on Bedloes Island, Fort Gibson on Ellis Island, three-tiered Castle William on Governors Island replacing or supplementing Fort Columbus, and, at the edge of the city itself, the North Battery and the “South-West Battery.” The north battery would be constructed at the foot of Hubert Street and the south-west battery, which would have 28 ports for its bronze cannon, would be constructed on a small island off the beach at the tip of Manhattan and its garrison would be linked to the shore only by way of a 200-foot causeway equipped with a drawbridge.1 These defensive fortifications would be completed in 1811.

The Battle of Rolica, during the Peninsular Campaign: The British forces under Wellington had landed in Portugal and moved south to Obidos, and had observed that the French forces under General Delaborde had taken up defensive positions four miles to the south, in front of the village of Rolica, which lay in the center of a horseshoe of steep hills a mile wide and two miles long. Wellington had spent the night of August 16th in

1808

1. In 1815 this little fortress would be renamed Castle Clinton.






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the small square palace in Obidos. The British had attacked opposite the French positions, simultaneously engaging a pincer mover to the west. The French had withdrawn to avoid the trap. As Wellington repeatedly attacked the French then carefully withdrew behind a strong cavalry screen. Wellington pressed south to Vimiero. When we now visit the beautiful Moorish town of Obidos, we can view from the northern ramparts of the town wall the scene of the skirmish action that preceded this battle. Then from the southern ramparts of this town wall we can view the scene of the French positions before Rolica three miles to the south as Wellington had on this day. We can visit the crest of the ridge along which the French had taken their initial positions, then the crest of the second ridge, south of Rolica, on which the French had taken their subsequent positions. We can visit, on the high ground north of Serranos, a monument that marks the spot where Colonel Lake and four companies of the 1/29th met their deaths. Here is an account by Rifleman Harris:

The Rifles, indeed, fought well this day, and we lost many men.They seemed in high spirits, and delighted at having driven theenemy before them. Joseph Cochan was by my side, loading andfiring very industriously, about this period of the day.Thirsting with heat and action, he lifted his canteen to hismouth. ‘Here’s to you, old boy,’ he said as he took a pull ofits contents. As he did so a bullet went through the canteen,and perforating his brain killed him in a moment. Another manfell close to him almost immediately, struck by a ball in thethigh. Indeed, we caught it severely just here, and the old ironwas also playing its part amongst our poor fellows very merrily.I saw a man named Symmonds struck full in the face by a roundshot, and he came to the ground a headless trunk. Meanwhile,many large balls bounded along the ground amongst us sodeliberately that we could occasionally evade them withoutdifficulty. I could relate many more of the casualties Iwitnessed on this day, but the above will suffice. When the rollwas called after the battle, the females who missed theirhusbands came along the front of the line to inquire of thesurvivors whether they knew anything about them. Amongst othernames I heard that of Cochan called, in a female voice, withoutbeing replied to. The name struck me, and I observed the poorwoman who had called it, as she stood sobbing before us andapparently afraid to make further inquiries about her husband.No man had answered to his name, or had any account to give ofhis fate. I myself had observed him fall (as related before)whilst drinking from his canteen, but as I looked at the poorsobbing creature before me I felt unable to tell her of hisdeath. At length Captain Leech observed her, and called out tothe company, ‘Does any man here know what has happened to Cochan?If so, let him speak out at once.’ Upon this order I immediatelyrelated what I had seen, and told the manner of his death. Aftera while Mrs Cochan appeared anxious to see the spot where herhusband fell, and in the hope of still finding him alive askedme to accompany her over the field. She trusted, notwithstandingwhat I had told her, to find him yet alive. ‘Do you think youcould find it?’ said Captain Leech, upon being referred to. Itold him I was sure I could, as I had remarked several objectswhilst looking for cover during the skirmishing. ‘Go, then,’said the captain, ‘and show the poor woman the spot, as she seemsso desirous of finding the body.’ I accordingly took my way overthe ground we had fought upon, she following and sobbing afterme; and quickly reaching the spot where her husband’s body lay,I pointed it out to her. She now soon discovered all her hopes






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were in vain. She embraced the stiffened corpse, and afterrising and contemplating his disfigured face for some minutes,with hands clasped and tears streaming down her cheeks, she tooka prayer book from her pocket, and kneeling down repeated theservice for the dead over the body. When she had finished sheappeared a good deal comforted; and I took the opportunity ofbeckoning to a pioneer I saw near with some other men, andtogether we dug a hole and quickly buried the body. Mrs Cochanthen returned with me to the company to which her husband hadbeen attached, and laid herself down upon the hearth near us.The company to which Cochan had belonged (bereaved as she was)was now her home; and she marched and took equal fortune withus to Vimiera. She hovered about us during that battle, and thenwent with us to Lisbon, where she succeeded in procuring apassage to England.

Margaretta Wedderburn’s “The Sky, or a Description of a fine Evening: August 17. 1808”:

With rapture and delight I oft admire Jehovah’s works that come within my view,Himself exceeding admiration’s ken,Or ought that I could fancy that is great,Is good, is glorious, without compare.The season this, when Autumn richly poursProlific bounty o’er this fav’rite isle.Here universal peace and plenty reigns,While beasts, and birds, and insects feed around.And when their thirst is quench’d at limpid stream,In sportive gambols spend the live-long day.Till sober eve invites to rural walk,By humble hedge-row, deck’d with foliage green,To smell the fragrance of the scented briar.Now ev’ry scene looks gay, it yields delight,And fits the mind to wonder and adore.Among the branches, feather’d choristersHave sung their ev’ning lay, and are retir’dTo rest their downy wings, till morning dawn.All but sweet philomel, her notes prolong’dSwell with the breeze, in charming symphony,To sooth the lover’s woe, that wanders forth,(When absent from the maid his heart holds dear,)Alone to vent his plaint. Pensive and sadHe seeks the shade, and shuns each vulgar joy.Thy song, sweet bird, hath lull’d his griefs to rest,While pleasing hope restores his fancied bliss.And now retard my wond’ring eyes this eve,With divers hues, and beauties manifold.The sky in azure clad, serene and clear,By sun’s decline, just tinged with florid gold;And not the most elaborate assayOf skilful artist, when his pencil’s dip’dIn ev’ry varied tint he hath prepar’d,A form so lovely ever could produceTo gazer’s eye, as that I now behold.But as I upwards look again, how chang’d!The clouds seem hov’ring round, with moisture fill’d,From vapours gather’d and laid up for use,(By sov’reign will of him who all commands,)






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And liberal sends on earth their copious show’rs,The water ev’ry flow’ret, tree, and plant,That else would languish, wither, and decay,If long withheld from vegetation’s store,The liquid juice that makes all nature bloom.But while my thoughts o’er various prospects rove,Or fix’d intent on some peculiar space,Behold the day’s most splendid visitant,His pow’rful beams withdrawn to other climes,And cheering warmth hath left our hemisphere.But in his absence not without solace,The moon appears with milder radiance,Her influence benign and fainter glow,With each revolving planet as it rolls,Performs her destin’d circuit through the sky,Tho’ not like sparkling emanation,Of dazz’ling, grand, majestic god of day,When he shines forth in full meridian blaze;Or when his rising beauties streak the east,And brightness gilds the lofty mountain’s brow;Yet peaceful and serene, she sheds her lightAround the globe, diffusing happiness,With less obtrusive unoffending lustre.Also those twinkling stars re-animate,With their resplendant rays, the dusky night.Throughout the vast expanse, those gems appear,(Beneficent that Power that plac’d them there,)When they withdraw, darkness reigns absolute,And throws around a joyless total gloom.One lucid orb, more glitt’ring then the rest,’Tis called the star of eve, and strikes the eye,Amidst the num’rous throng, with circled sphere,Surpassing, and more refulgent brightness.

Annexed to the Sky, a Paraphrase.—August 18, 1808.But shone superior in degree,That Morning Star so bright,Which rising on our darken’d world,Dispell’d the gloom of night.Transcendently illustrious,Appear his rays divine;The mist of error to disperse,And make each virtue shine.Hard sayings to elucidate,Each myst’ry to unfold,Which handed down, from age to age,By prophets were foretold.Till then the mind of man was held,In ignorance obscure,With superstitious rites profan’d,His intellectual power.Idolatrous impiety,Completely envelop’d;Freed from its baneful influence,He scarcely could have hop’d.Until that beauteous Star arose,The Gentiles to enlight,And of his people Israel,The glory, strength, and might.To whom ever be ascrib’d,All praise in earth and heaven,But whose exalted name is far.Above all blessing given.






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John Jacob Astor’s ship Beaver sailed from New-York harbor, bound for China.

At the Battle of Roliça, British troops compelled the French to retreat from the heights between Caldas and Obidos north of Lisbon.

Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

4th day 17 of 8 M / We are now as the saying is laying upon our Oars, but expect to commence housekeeping next week - How we shall get along is very uncertain, but I trust if our dependence is rightly placed, & our own exercions continued, we shall be enabled to get forward, at least with a comfortable degree of peace, & I can honestly say I ask no more than peace of mind with a comfortable subsistance, & a little for emergencies, believing beyond all doubt that Riches, adding house to House & field to field, is nothing short of a corrosive sublimate to that peace which is pure & springs from within, then how necessary is a double watch - And Oh how is it to be longed for, & prayed for, that the Mind is all things & on all occasions be kept from the hurtful mixtures of the World, & preserved in that which will enable us to perfor Jerusalem as the chiefest Joy, then shall we be enabled to meet with christian patience, fortitude & resignation the, the vicisitudes & cross occurrences incident to us in passing thro’ this (which may indeed be called) a Vail of tribulation & tears -I dont know that it will be assuming too high language to Say, that my mind while writing, is bowed under a sense of them, & that a prayer is raised, that I may stand firm, & fast in that which will enable us to endure to the END -My beloved H spent the Afternoon & part of the eveng at my fathers the connection being new & she naturally diffident I felt much sympathy for her -

November 25, Monday: Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

2nd day 25 of 11 Mo// E W Lawton much as yesterday. — This day my Dear Aunts Martha Mary & Hannah Gould Moved into the House which My father has purchased for their accommodation in Malborough Street. I am thankful on this acct that they have got it & are comfortably settled. -

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1811








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Two works by Carl Maria von Weber were performed for the initial time, in München: The Clarinet Concerto no.2 J.118 and the concert aria Qual altro attendi J.126.

This was Evacuation Day, the 28th Anniversary of the departure of the British from New-York at the successful completion of the American revolution. The fortifications of Manhattan Island finally standing ready to defend the exposed population center against the armament of any previous conflict, the southwest battery2 fired the first of the many, many broadsides that it would fire over the centuries “at nothing more dangerous than a harmless hulk moored in the river for practice.”

Throughout the War of 1812 the 28 brass cannon of the battery at the tip of Manhattan Island3 would stand charged with powder and shot and ready to repel at a moment’s notice anyone attacking — if they happened to be attacking from the general direction of the cannon’s target “hulk moored in the river.” Your tax dollars at work, keeping you safe from fear.

Documents associated with the “War of 1812”:

The D-shaped sandstone artillery fort on a tiny offshore island at the tip of Manhattan became the headquarters for the 3d Military District and was renamed Castle Clinton, in honor of Governor DeWitt Clinton.

At the toe of Manhattan Island, the 3d Military District headquarters was relocated to Castle William on Governors Island and Castle Clinton was closed.

2. In 1815 this southwest battery would be renamed Castle Clinton.

1812

3. In 1815 this south-west battery would be renamed Castle Clinton.

1815

1821

READ THE FULL TEXT




http://www.yale.edu/lawweb/avalon/diplomacy/britain/br1814m.htm



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Castle Clinton, the D-shaped sandstone artillery fort on a tiny offshore island at the tip of Manhattan, was surrendered by the US Army to New-York City, which would make its magnificence the centerpiece of a municipal garden.

Field-glasses were invented, a pair of telescopes put side-to-side, one for each eye.

As Christian evangelicalism spread, pugilism, which was a source of crude pleasure for the idle rich and the vicious working classes, and associated with voyeuristic homoeroticism,4 and therefore from the point of view of evangelicalism iniquitous, was becoming less fashionable in Britain. A quarrel over a bet had caused the retirement of the aging Gentleman John Jackson and, as there was no longer an honest broker, individual fighters were more vulnerable to gamblers trying to fix fights, which had led to a rash of scandals. Also, John Thurtell, a homicidal boxing promoter, received a well-publicized trial and execution. Emigrating to America was one of the ways that fighters would avoid the new anti-prizefight laws.

In Edinburgh, George Roland’s TREATISE ON THE ART OF FENCING, the initial fencing book to offer lithographed illustrations, decried the use of the left hand for parrying sword thrusts.

June: Castle Clinton, the D-shaped sandstone artillery fort on a tiny offshore island at the tip of Manhattan that had sheltered 28 bronze cannon from naval bombardment, was leased by New-York City as the Castle Garden, a place of public entertainment.

July 3, Saturday: In New-York, Castle Clinton, the D-shaped sandstone artillery fort on a tiny offshore island at the tip of Manhattan that had sheltered 28 bronze cannon from any and all naval bombardment, became the centerpiece of Castle Garden and opened its doors as a venue of hospitality. Make love not war! The interior was a “fanciful garden, tastefully ornamented with shrubs and flowers.” In time an imposing fountain would be added. Atop the wall a romantic covered promenade with a 14-foot-wide walkway would be constructed.

In Newport, Rhode Island, Friend Stephen Wanton Gould wrote in his journal:

7th day 3 of 7 M / This Afternoon recd a letter from my old friend Rowse Taylor now living at Lanesville Ohio dated 4 M [April] & 6 M 20th partly in answer to one I wrote him in the 5th M last mentioning the illness of James Mitchell. — Its contents is solemn for it appears his mind is distressed with embarrassments — his circumstances so far from being better’d by a removal from Newport in a lapse of Years has become reduced, & I believe much more so than if he had remained on this Island. — We hardly know what is for the best or what is for the worst, as respects this life, but certainly it does look that if he had

1823

4. During the Regency heroic nudity had been a vogue and rich artists and art collectors had paid pugilists to pose for them — Lord Elgin for instance hired pugilists to stand around naked amidst his Greek marbles.

1824






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staid here he might have been as well off in every respect. —

August 16, Monday: Citoyen Lafayette, the “guest of the nation” arrived in New-York harbor for his triumphal geriatric tour of the young opponent of Britain which he and his France had helped to create after their Seven Years War with Britain,5 and to be the recipient of an outpouring of official gratitude and public enthusiasm. He brought with him his son George Washington Lafayette. By arrangement they disembarked at Castle Clinton in Castle Garden, where there was a public welcome ceremony. A memorial punchbowl crafted in honor of Lafayette’s visit was presumably fashioned at the time at the American Pottery Company of Jersey City NJ.

Lafayette would travel through New England to Washington DC, and thence to Monticello for a visit with Thomas Jefferson.

Ester Loughbridge, who had murdered a sister-in-law, was hanged at Carrickfergus in England (she would be the sole Englishwoman to be executed, during the entire year).

5. We should never fail to mention in these contexts that such policies and actions are not due to warm and fuzzy affection between nations, but are due rather to the usual calculated statecraft along the lines of “The enemies of my enemies are my friends.” Nations are not individuals and neither feel emotions in the manner in which individuals feel emotions nor endure loyalties in the manner in which individuals endure loyalties, and when we encourage ourselves to believe that such things are so, we are not submitting to an innocent penchant for the preposterous but are, rather, carefully coaching ourselves in the most calculated of self-manipulations.


Lafayette, nous sommes ici!

—General “Black Jack” Pershing,arriving with US troops in Franceat the very end of the WWI trench warfare.






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July: Henry Swasey McKean was hired as the librarian of the new Mercantile Library Association of New-York.

The balloon of the intrepid master Boston goldbeater and aeronaut Louis Lauriat again graced the skies of New-York from a takeoff point at Castle Garden.

1842






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May: “Went to [Judge William Emerson’s home “The Snuggery” at Castleton on] Staten Island, June, 1843, and returned in December, 1843, or to Thanksgiving.”6 Immediately after arrival Henry Thoreau would come down with two and a half weeks of cold and bronchitis, then a month later he would have an attack of the family narcolepsy. Passing back and forth on the ferry between New-York and Staten Island, Thoreau would have repeatedly passed the immigration center at Castle Garden, a repurposed fortress structure which did not even as yet have a roof.7 Thoreau would visit the picture gallery of the National Academy of Design, but his haunts on Manhattan Island would be the New York Society Library and the Mercantile Library, and his reading list has recently been investigated.

It seems that Thoreau was reading in the Elizabethan and Jacobean poets (he would quote from John Donne on pages 137, 281, 310-11, and 352 of A WEEK, using two lines from “To the Countesse of Huntington” beginning with “That unripe side of earth,” one line from “The Second Anniversary,” and two lines from “The First Anniversary”).

1843

6. Thanksgiving, in November, according to the Universal Traveller, was one of the occasions upon which traditionally apprentices “who are not permitted to visit their parental and rural homes more than twice in a year” were expected to travel home “to renew the bonds of affinity and affection under the paternal roof.”7. Very little of what Henry Thoreau saw now remains, as the building has been demolished back to its 1811 appearance.

Wm Emerson






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May 6: On the day that Ellery Channing’s ill-fated POEMS BY WILLIAM ELLERY CHANNING was with great fanfare being published, Henry Thoreau escorted Mrs. William Emerson, bound from Concord for Staten Island.

Henry was to tutor Judge Emerson’s son Haven, 7 years old, for wages of $50.00 per year plus room and board, while seeking publishing contacts in New-York. They took a boat from New London, Connecticut to a wharf by Castle Garden Emigrant Depot in Battery Park on Manhattan Island, and then boarded the ferry to Staten Island.

Immigrants disembarking at Castle Garden Emigrant Depot

POEMS (FIRST SERIES)




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/transclusions/18/43/1843_ElleryChanningII.pdf



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Two more views of a place now forgotten that was important inthe memories of a whole lot of people in the 19th Century






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As Thoreau was departing for Staten Island, Elizabeth Sherman Hoar made him the present of an inkstand, which he would use throughout his life.

This is the one now on exhibit in the Concord Museum:

PEOPLE OFWALDEN

WALDEN: Housework was a pleasant pastime. When my floor wasdirty, I rose early, and, setting all my furniture out of doorson the grass, bed and bedstead making but one budget, dashed wateron the floor, and sprinkled white sand from the pond on it, andthen with a broom scrubbed it clean and white; and by the timethe villagers had broken their fast the morning sun had dried myhouse sufficiently to allow me to move in again, and mymeditations were almost uninterrupted. It was pleasant to see mywhole household effects out on the grass, making a little pilelike a gypsy’s pack, and my three-legged table, from which I didnot remove the books and pen and ink, standing amid the pines andhickories. They seemed glad to get out themselves, and as ifunwilling to be brought in. I was sometimes tempted to stretch anawning over them and take my seat there. It was worth the whileto see the sun shine on these things, and hear the free wind blowon them; so much more interesting most familiar objects look outof doors than in the house. A bird sits on the next bough, life-everlasting grows under the table, and blackberry vines run roundits legs; pine cones, chestnut burs, and strawberry leaves arestrewn about. It looked as if this was the way these forms cameto be transferred to our furniture, to tables, chairs, andbedsteads, –because they once stood in their midst.

ELIZABETH SHERMAN HOAR




http://www.kouroo.info/kouroo/WALDEN/PeopleOfWALDEN.pdf



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One can imagine this inkstand later, on the table in the mottled light under the pines.

While Thoreau would be living on Staten Island and putting up with the stodgy William Emerson the “clear

Jones” in him would be becoming so drowsy, or narcoleptic, that in his efforts to counteract this he would even attempt making spare change by selling magazine subscriptions door to door.

WALDEN: That man who does not believe that each day contains anearlier, more sacred, and auroral hour than he has yet profaned,has despaired of life, and is pursuing a descending and darkeningway. After a partial cessation of his sensuous life, the soul ofman, or its organs rather, are reinvigorated each day, and hisGenius tries again what noble life it can make. All memorableevents, I should say, transpire in morning time and in a morningatmosphere. The Vedas say, “All intelligences awake with themorning.” Poetry and art, and the fairest and most memorable ofthe actions of men, date from such an hour. All poets and heroes,like Memnon, are the children of Aurora, and emit their music atsunrise. To him whose elastic and vigorous thought keeps pace withthe sun, the day is a perpetual morning. It matters not what theclocks say or the attitudes and labors of men. Morning is when Iam awake and there is a dawn in me. Moral reform is the effort tothrow off sleep. Why is it that men give so poor an account oftheir day if they have not been slumbering? They are not such poorcalculators. If they had not been overcome with drowsiness theywould have performed something. The millions are awake enough forphysical labor; but only one in a million is awake enoughfor effective intellectual exertion, only one in a hundredmillions to a poetic or divine life. To be awake is to be alive.I have never yet met a man who was quite awake. How could I havelooked him in the face?






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Castle Garden’s D-shaped sandstone artillery fort, Castle Clinton, at the foot of Manhattan Island, was for the first time given a roof.

Castle Garden at the foot of Manhattan Island, with its newly roofed D-shaped sandstone artillery fort, was fitted out as New-York’s concert hall. The season opened with “Semiramide” and “The Barber of Seville.” Each of the 28 gun rooms, converted into theater boxes, accommodated up to eight guests. What had been the officers’ quarters had been transformed into a bar which vended liquors, confections, and ices, “the most delicious fluids so that the audience may at once be regaled with the choicest Italian music, and the most inspiring mint juleps.” Hot damn.

May 5, Saturday: Frederick Douglass was escorting two white women, the British friends Julia and Eliza Griffiths, along the Battery and Castle Garden at the toe of Manhattan Island, when he was set upon by gang of white men.

1844

1845

1849






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September 11, Wednesday: Jenny Lind began a series of six sold-out performances at the 6,000-seat Castle Garden municipal concert hall. “Welcome Sweet Warbler,” the banner in the upper balcony proclaimed. The cheapest seat was $3. The audience broke into a “tempest of cheers.”

The Swedish nightingale was under the sponsorship of Phineas Taylor Barnum as she opened her American tour at this vast auditorium at the foot of Manhattan Island. The impresario, despite being a determined racist, showed up for the concert in the company of a touring delegation of tribesmen of the Crow nation, “a lazy,

1850






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shiftless set of brutes, though they will draw.”8

Phineas Taylor Barnum had had to provide Jenny Lind, who was already a big deal as a singer in Europe, the 8. Only later would this auditorium be converted into a huge immigration office, and then become dear to New Yorkers as “The Aquarium.”

“Specimen Days”

PLAYS AND OPERAS TOOAnd certain actors and singers, had a good deal to do with the business. All throughthese years, off and on, I frequented the old Park, the Bowery, Broadway andChatham-square theatres, and the Italian operas at Chambers-street, Astor-place orthe Battery — many seasons was on the free list, writing for papers even as quitea youth. The old Park theatre — what names, reminiscences, the words bring back!Placide, Clarke, Mrs. Vernon, Fisher, Clara F., Mrs. Wood, Mrs. Seguin, Ellen Tree,Hackett, the younger Kean, Macready, Mrs. Richardson, Rice — singers, tragedians,comedians. What perfect acting! Henry Placide in “Napoleon’s Old Guard” or“Grandfather Whitehead,” — or “the Provoked Husband” of Cibber, with Fanny KembleButler as Lady Townley — or Sheridan Knowles in his own “Virginius” — or inimitablePower in “Born to Good Luck.” These, and many more, the years of youth and onward.Fanny Kemble — name to conjure up great mimic scenes withal — perhaps the greatest.I remember well her rendering of Bianca in “Fazio,” and Marianna in “the Wife.”Nothing finer did ever stage exhibit — the veterans of all nations said so, and myboyish heart and head felt it in every minute cell. The lady was just matured,strong, better than merely beautiful, born from the footlights, had had threeyears’ practice in London and through the British towns, and then she came to giveAmerica that young maturity and roseate power in all their noon, or rather forenoon,flush. It was my good luck to see her nearly every night she play’d at the old Park— certainly in all her principal characters.

I heard, these years, well render’d, all the Italian and other operas in vogue,“Sonnambula,” “the Puritans,” “Der Freischutz,” “Huguenots,” “Fille d’Regiment,”“Faust,” “Etoile du Nord,” “Poliuto,” and others. Verdi’s “Ernani,” “Rigoletto,”and “Trovatore,” with Donnizetti’s “Lucia” or “Favorita” or “Lucrezia,” and Auber’s“Massaniello,” or Rossini’s “William Tell” and “Gazza Ladra,” were among my specialenjoyments. I heard Alboni every time she sang in New York and vicinity — alsoGrisi, the tenor Mario, and the baritone Badiali, the finest in the world.

This musical passion follow’d my theatrical one. As boy or young man I had seen,(reading them carefully the day beforehand,) quite all Shakspere’s acting dramas,play’d wonderfully well. Even yet I cannot conceive anything finer than old Boothin “Richard Third,” or “Lear,” (I don’t know which was best,) or Iago, (or Pescara,or Sir Giles Overreach, to go outside of Shakspere) — or Tom Hamblin in “Macbeth”— or old Clarke, either as the ghost in “Hamlet,” or as Prospero in “the Tempest,”with Mrs. Austin as Ariel, and Peter Richings as Caliban. Then other dramas, andfine players in them, Forrest as METAMORA or Damon or Brutus — John R. Scott as TomCringle or Rolla — or Charlotte Cushman’s Lady Gay Spanker in “London Assurance.”Then of some years later, at Castle Garden, Battery, I yet recall the splendidseasons of the Havana musical troupe under Maretzek — the fine band, the cool sea-breezes, the unsurpass’d vocalism — Steffanone, Bosio, Truffi, Marini in “MarinoFaliero,” “Don Pasquale,” or “Favorita.” No better playing or singing ever in NewYork. It was here too I afterward heard Jenny Lind. (The Battery — its pastassociations — what tales those old trees and walks and sea-walls could tell!)






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sum of $187,500.00 up front (cash in advance), before she would consent to get on the boat for her American tour, and in the middle of the voyage she already felt like turning around and going back. Only the fact that she did not enjoy performing in the European operas, and the fact that she was on a passenger liner that would not turn back, had conveyed this temperamental musical prodigy to our shores even for this grand reward.9

Wednesday sept 11th The river higher than I ever knew it at this season as high as in the spring.

September 11: Autumnal mornings, when the feet of countless sparrows (Sparrow Fringillidae)are heard like rain-drops on the roof by the boy who sleeps in the garret.

August 3, Friday: Castle Garden at the foot of Manhattan Island, with its D-shaped sandstone artillery fort Castle Clinton which had been in use as New-York’s concert hall, was, with the inauguration of the first immigration restrictions,10 leased to the State of New York and recycled into being the Emigrant Lading Depot which would by the year 1890 process some 8,000,000 incoming Americans (approximately two out of every three persons arriving). At this point it had just been surrounded by fill to make it into part of Manhattan Island, and separated off from the open wharves and the rest of Battery Park by a wooden fence.

US forces would, on this and the following two days, engage in battle with pirates near Hong Kong.

Henry Thoreau wrote a note of thanks to Dix & Edwards of Putnam’s Monthly Magazine of American Literature, Science and Art for payment of $35.00 for “The Beach.”

9. Phineas Taylor Barnum had had a really rough time coming up with this money but would –before his performer would dump him and go it alone– obtain $700,000.00 return on that investment.

1855

US MILITARY INTERVENTIONS






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Concord Aug 3d

1855Messrs Dix & EdwardsYour check for thirty-five dollars in payment for my article in the Au-gust number of Putnam’s Monthly has come duly to hand — for which accept the acknowledgments ofYrs respectfullyHenry D. ThoreauPS. Will you please forward the following note to the Editor?

To cut down on labor abuses, during this decade a formal labor bureau would be inaugurated next door to the Castle Garden immigrant depot at the foot of Manhattan Island.

After this point, as more and more immigrants arrived in America, buildings would be erected around the Castle Garden Emigrant Lading Depot at the foot of Manhattan Island, and brick walls would replace its wooden fences.

10. Before this there had been no restriction upon immigration to the United States of America, other of course than the Constitutional compromise that subsequent to 1808 one would not be permitted to immigrate as a slave.

1860

1882






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Our national birthday, the 4th of July: General Abraham Dally, 89-year-old veteran of the War of 1812, hoisted the American flag over Castle Garden at the foot of Manhattan while the French man-of-war La Flore, at anchor in New-York harbor decorated with flags and bunting, invited the public to come on board for a reception.

In Jamestown, New York, re-enactors fought a mock Civil War battle.

In Utah, municipal officials and Mormon leaders ordered that all American flags in Salt Lake City were to be at half-mast to emphasize their religious freedom. Californians who witnessed this became indignant.

April 18, Friday: Having processed in all some 8,000,000 incoming Americans, the Castle Garden site of the Emigrant Lading Depot at the foot of Manhattan Island was closed, and immigrant processing was transferred to the temporary quarters of the US Superintendent of Immigration in the Barge Office pending the opening of the new Ellis Island facility.

January 1, Friday: Ellis Island opened its doors as America’s primary immigrant depot.11

1885

1890

1892

11. Processing a million a year, it would become the port of entry for more than 17 million foreigners — until its closing in 1954.

CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY

CASTLE GARDEN






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Our national birthday, the 4th of July: The World’s Fair continued in Chicago, Illinois as a spanking new Liberty Bell was rung.

Auburn, New York, celebrated not only our nation’s birthday but also the centennial anniversary of its settlement.

Julia Ward Howe read poetry to the crowd at Woodstock, Connecticut.

For the benefit of the citizenry of Cape May, New Jersey, former President William Henry Harrison delivered a patriotic oration on the rights and duties of citizenship.

At Castle Garden at the tip of Manhattan, a gunner delivered a 23-gun national salute, rather than the precise number of 21 rounds (this man would be searched out and taken into custody).

In Bridgeport, Connecticut, a bronze statue as ugly as Phineas Taylor Barnum was unveiled. This had been sculpted from life by Thomas Ball.

December 10, Thursday: Castle Garden became Manhattan Island’s public aquarium (until 1941). There were some 30,000 visitors on this first day, to view the various fish specimens which had been taken from the waters around the city. (It would only be later that arriving ship captains and yachtsmen would begin to donate interesting and colorful fish from other locales around the world, such as a harbor seal from West India.)

Alfred Nobel died of a cerebral hemorrhage in his house at San Remo, Italy. His will would establish the “Nobel Prize,” which would be awarded first in 1901 and annually thereafter on December 10th.

Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakov’s drastic rewriting of Boris Godunov by Modest Musorgsky was performed for the initial time, privately, in the Great Hall of St. Petersburg Conservatory.

Nadia Boulanger entered the Paris Conservatoire as a solfège student.

Thème et variations for piano op.73 by Gabriel Fauré was performed for the initial time, in St. James’ Hall of London.

1893

1896

CELEBRATING OUR B-DAY






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During this decade two stories would be added atop the remains of Castle Clinton, the D-shaped 1811 sandstone artillery fort at the tip of Manhattan Island.

In Rochester, New York, 489 garbage collectors and street cleaners attempted to form a union and their employment was terminated.

Because it stood above the planned Brooklyn-Battery Tunnel, the Castle Garden aquarium at the foot of Manhattan Island was closed and the more interesting and unusual of its denizens of the deep were transferred to the zoo in the Bronx (and later to Coney Island in Brooklyn). A preservation effort was begun — but meanwhile the wrecking balls removed the roof, upper stories, and other structures that had been accretions to the original 1811 fortress.

August 12, Monday: The stripped-back-to-its-1811-structure remains of Castle Garden at the foot of Manhattan Island became the Castle Clinton National Monument. All that was left was what you might term “military history”: nothing remained of the location’s long heyday as an immigration center (not worth commemorating), or of its long heyday as a cultural center (not worth commemorating), or of its long heyday as an amusement center (not worth commemorating). It was a repurposed building — but repurposed “back to authenticity,” which is to say, back to its origination.

1920

1941

1946






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After 34 years of restoration work by the National Park Service, Castle Clinton on the toe of Manhattan Island re-opened its fortress doors. “Today where fish once swam lazily, where anxious immigrants awaited entry into the land of their choice, where audiences cheered a favorite performer, and where lookouts squinted as they searched for a British invasion fleet that never came, you can learn the remarkable history of this unpretentious fortress. you can attend a concert, small community festival, a fair, or just sit on one of the benches in Battery Park, eating lunch and daydreaming about Castle Clinton in all its various manifestations. Or you can just people-watch. It’s that kind of place. Enjoy it, the view, and your daydreams.”

1975






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Castle Clinton closes once per year, for observation of Christmas Day.

COPYRIGHT NOTICE: In addition to the property of others,such as extensive quotations and reproductions ofimages, this “read-only” computer file contains a greatdeal of special work product of Austin Meredith,copyright 2013. Access to these interim materials willeventually be offered for a fee in order to recoup someof the costs of preparation. My hypercontext buttoninvention which, instead of creating a hypertext leapthrough hyperspace —resulting in navigation problems—allows for an utter alteration of the context withinwhich one is experiencing a specific content alreadybeing viewed, is claimed as proprietary to AustinMeredith — and therefore freely available for use byall. Limited permission to copy such files, or anymaterial from such files, must be obtained in advancein writing from the “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo”Project, 833 Berkeley St., Durham NC 27705. Pleasecontact the project at <[email protected]>.

“It’s all now you see. Yesterday won’t be over untiltomorrow and tomorrow began ten thousand years ago.”

– Remark by character “Garin Stevens”in William Faulkner’s INTRUDER IN THE DUST

mailto:[email protected]

Well, tomorrow is such and such a date and so it began on that date in like 8000BC? Why 8000BC, because it was the beginning of the current interglacial -- or what?




Bearing in mind that this is America, "where everything belongs," the primary intent of such a notice is to prevent some person or corporate entity from misappropriating the materials and sequestering them as property for censorship or for profit.



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Prepared: June 22, 2013






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ARRGH AUTOMATED RESEARCH REPORT

GENERATION HOTLINE

This stuff presumably looks to you as if it were generated by ahuman. Such is not the case. Instead, upon someone’s request wehave pulled it out of the hat of a pirate that has grown out ofthe shoulder of our pet parrot “Laura” (depicted above). Whatthese chronological lists are: they are research reportscompiled by ARRGH algorithms out of a database of data moduleswhich we term the Kouroo Contexture. This is data mining.To respond to such a request for information, we merely push abutton.






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Commonly, the first output of the program has obviousdeficiencies and so we need to go back into the data modulesstored in the contexture and do a minor amount of tweaking, andthen we need to punch that button again and do a recompile ofthe chronology — but there is nothing here that remotelyresembles the ordinary “writerly” process which you know andlove. As the contents of this originating contexture improve,and as the programming improves, and as funding becomesavailable (to date no funding whatever has been needed in thecreation of this facility, the entire operation being run outof pocket change) we expect a diminished need to do such tweakingand recompiling, and we fully expect to achieve a simulation ofa generous and untiring robotic research librarian. Onward andupward in this brave new world.

First come first serve. There is no charge.Place your requests with <[email protected]>.Arrgh.

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