THE PATHETIC FAMILY • Mr. Amos Bronson Alcott born November 29, 1799 as Amos Bronson Alcox in Wolcott, Connecticut married May 23, 1830 in Boston to Abigail May, daughter of Colonel Joseph May died March 4, 1888 in Boston • Mrs. Abigail (May) “Abba” Alcott born October 8, 1800 in Boston, Massachusetts died November 25, 1877 in Concord, Massachusetts • Miss Anna Bronson Alcott born March 16, 1831 in Germantown, Pennsylvania married May 23, 1860 in Concord to John Bridge Pratt of Concord, Massachusetts died July 17, 1893 in Concord • Miss Louisa May Alcott born November 29, 1832 in Germantown, Pennsylvania died March 6, 1888 in Roxbury, Massachusetts • Miss Elizabeth Sewall Alcott born June 24, 1835 in Boston, Massachusetts died March 14, 1858 in Concord, Massachusetts • Abby May Alcott (Mrs. Ernest Niericker), born July 26, 1840 in Concord, married March 22, 1878 in London, England to Ernest Niericker, died December 29, 1879 in Paris “NARRATIVE HISTORY” AMOUNTS TO FABULATION, THE REAL STUFF BEING MERE CHRONOLOGY “Stack of the Artist of Kouroo” Project The Alcotts HDT WHAT? INDEX THE ALCOTTS THE PATHETIC FAMILY 1616 1 A family coat of arms was granted to Thomas Alcocke, made up of the device “three cocks emblematic of 2 watchfulness,” and the motto “Semper vigilans” — which is an interesting aside on Thoreau’s use of Chanticleer in the epigraph for WALDEN; OR, LIFE IN THE WOODS, and his original desire to use a drawing of a rooster on the title page rather than a drawing of the cabin, for Amos Bronson Alcox would among others be a descendant of this Alcocke family and as the text makes clear, this older man had been a frequent visitor at the cabin and during this period had been a great influence upon Henry Thoreau. THE ALCOTT FAMILY Here’s something I am currently finding amusing — for what it’s worth. The leaves of Thoreau’s initial WALDEN manuscript, from which he would lecture, would employ the 19th-Century polite term “rooster”; however, in 1849 while he would still be going around to the lyceums of various New England towns giving readings from what would become the various earlier chapters, at some point he would line out “rooster” and substitute the 19th-Century rude terms “cock” and “cockerel.” Thoreau would leave his manuscript that way, and when after its 8 drafts and 11 years of gestation his book would finally get published in 1854, the polite word “rooster” would still have been replaced by the impolite “cock” and “cockerel.” This in the America in which the young Amos Bronson Alcox had seen fit to change his family name to Alcott because of the “all- cocks” jokes he had been having to put up with. Isn’t it interesting, that Thoreau would flaunt his “cock” in the face of this contemporary usage? Background on these 19th-Century usages and polite conventions can come to us from pages 38-43 of Peter Fryer’s MRS. GRUNDY: STUDIES IN ENGLISH PRUDERY (1963), from 1. Doctor George Alcock, a physician who would settle in Roxbury, with his brother Thomas, would come over in the fleet with Winthrop in 1630. Dr. Alcock would represent at the first court on May 14, 1634. Francis Alcock would come over in the Bevis in 1638 at the age of 26. Samuel Alcock, who would settle in Kittery in 1652 and become a freeman of Massachusetts. 2. “Arms—Gules a fesse between three cocks’ heads erased argent, braked and crested or.” “Crest—A cock ermine braked and membered or.” “Motto—Vigilate.” HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PATHETIC FAMILY THE ALCOTTS which I will here quote at length: The commonest demotic words for the male sex organ, prick (from Old English prica, “point” or “dot”) and cock (from Old English cocc) date back in written sources to the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries respectively. The former has been a vulgarism since the eighteenth century, the latter since about 1830 (somewhat earlier in the USA). Both words were suggested punningly by Shakespeare. “The bawdy hand of the dial is now upon the prick of noon”, says Mercutio in Romeo and Juliet [circa 1595]; “Pistol’s cock is up, / And flashing fire will I follow, says Pistol in King Henry V [circa 1599]. Florio, in his Italian- English dictionary, A Worlde of Wordes (1598), renders coglinto as “one that hath a good prick.” “The main Spring’s weaken’d that holds up his cock,” says a servant to Sulpitia, Mistress of the Male Stewes about a Dane exhausted in her service, in Fletcher and Massinger’s play The Custom of the Country (composed between 1619 and 1622). The word cock seems to have had a specially strong aura in America, where, as the polite term for a male domestic fowl, rooster (1772) became cock of the walk early in the nineteenth century; it has remained so to this day. Bache protested energetically, but unavailingly: Why ... should we substitute rooster for cock? Does not the hen of the same species roost also? We say woodcock, peacock, weathercock,—although some persons object to these,—why, then, should we not use the distinctive name from which the compounds are derived? ... Or shall we read, where Peter denies the Master— “the rooster crew”? The word rooster is an Americanism, which, the sooner we forget, the better. De Vere quotes an anonymous Englishman who professed to have heard a rooster and ox (i.e., cock and bull) story in the United States. But even rooster was considered somewhat advanced; one New York boarding-house keeper preferred barn-door he-biddy, and gamechicken (1846) and crower (1891) were quite frequent. Roaches started to oust American cockroaches in the 1820s; haystacks began to replace haycocks in the same decade; by 1859 cockchafers were being called chafers; and a young woman tells Judge Haliburton’s Sam Slick (1838) that her brother is a rooster swain in the navy! It is, on the whole, surprising that the USA was the home of a drink called a cocktail (one colloquial English meaning of which is “whore”). But these changes were not all. What Bartlett in 1877 called the “mock modesty of the Western States” required that a male turkey should be called—a gentleman turkey. In comparison with the plain words prick and cock, such expressions as member (circa 1290), privy member (1297), genitals (1390), privy parts (1556), pudenda (1634), penis (1693), arbor vitae (1732), tree of life (1732), means of generation (1791), genitalia (1876), private parts (1885), (male) organ, and sex sound distinctly emasculate. So do the HDT WHAT? INDEX THE ALCOTTS THE PATHETIC FAMILY more literary euphemisms—catso (the 17th Century and the early 18th; from the Italian cazzo), gadso (late 17th Century to mid- l8th; cf. catso; used in Dickens as an interjection), cyprian sceptre, mentule, priap, and thyrsus—and also the colloquial (but still respectable) ones: thing (Century 17), (matrimonial) peacemaker (mid-18th Century), private property (the 19th Century), affair (the 19th Century), it (the 19th Century), concern (circa 1840), Athenaeum or the A (before 1903), thingummy (the 20th Century), contrivance, privates, and privities. Less so, perhaps, Rochester’s rector of the females, or champion of women’s rights, or nakedness, or phallus. But the feebleness, or archness, of most of these terms is more than compensated for by a wealth of popular synonyms —THE SLANG OF VENERY lists about 600— both euphemistic and dysphemistic, which reflect the unquenchable verbal inventiveness, sexual vigour and pride (and, to a certain extent, cynicism) of Englishmen over several centuries. These synonyms fall into five main groups. First, there are words —colloquialisms or slang terms— which refer to the bodily position, appearance, or shape of the relaxed or tumescent penis. The majority of words in this group seem euphemistic — though we must bear in mind that both euphemism and dysphemism are relative terms, depending on the context and on the degree of social acceptability, in a specific milieu, of the plain word which the chosen synonym is replacing. The position of the penis is indicated by such terms as middle finger (the 19th Century), middle leg (the 19th Century), middle stump (the 20th Century) and middle; best leg of three (the 19th Century); down-leg; and foreman. For the organ in detumescence there are tail (mid- Century 14; Standard English until the 18th Century) and such compounds as tail-pipe and tail-tree; flip-flap (circa 1650); flap-doodle (late 17th Century); lobcock (mid-18th Century); flapper (the 19th Century); dingle-dangle (circa 1895), and a nursery term, worm. Two other nineteenth-century euphemisms of this kind are dropping member (especially if gonorrhoea’d) and hanging Johnny (especially if impotent or diseased). Little finger (the 20th Century) is a female euphemism. There is a series of expressions likening the penis to a tool or machine- part or domestic article of some kind: tool itself (mid-Century 16; Standard English until the 18th Century), master-tool, and instrument; pen and pencil (late 19th Century); pin (the 17th Century; used by Burns), tail-pin and needle (Standard English in the 18th Century); pump(-handle) (the 18th Century); horn (the 18th Century); key (the 18th Century); rod (the 18th Century), rod of love and Aaron’s rod; copper-stick (the 19th Century); pendulum (the 19th Century); pole (the 19th Century); button (the 19th Century; baby’s); spout (the 19th Century); pestle (the 19th Century); machine (the 19th Century); (k)nob (late 19th Century), broom-handle, broomstick, busk, candle, clothes-prop, cork, golden rivet, peg, spigot, sponge, and spindle. Other names come from the kitchen or the sweet shop: poperine-pear (late 16th Century to mid-17th; used by HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PATHETIC FAMILY THE ALCOTTS Shakespeare); pudding (the 17th Century) and roly-poly (the 19th Century); sugar-stick (late 18th Century) and lollipop (the 19th Century); bone (mid-19th Century; Cockneys’), gristle (circa 1850) and marrowbone (the 19th Century); banana, potato inger, radish, and (live) sausage. Others again, from the animal kingdom: nag (circa 1670-1750), cuckoo (the 19th Century; schoolboys’), mole (the 19th Century), mouse (the 19th Century), goose’s neck (circa 1872), winkle (late 19th Century; nursery and schoolboys’), bird, goat, live rabbit, lobster, pony, snake, and trouser-snake. The penis is also euphemized into a prickle (circa 1550; Standard English), a pilgrim’s staff (the 18th Century), a star-gazer (the 18th Century), a flute (the 18th Century), living, one-holed, and silent flute (the latter, late 18th Century-mid-19th) and a whistle, a pointer, a root (the 19th Century) and an Irish root (circa 1830-1914), fiddle-bow (circa 1830), a stick, fiddle-stick (the 19th Century), a drumstick and a night stick, a sceptre (of authority), a tent- peg, and a yard. Among sailors it becomes a stern-post (mid-19th Century) or a rudder; in the countryside a handstaff (circa 1850). A whole armoury is drawn on: weapon itself (late 19th Century); dirk (the 18th Century; Scots); pikestaff (the 18th Century), pike of pleasure, and tail-pike; bow and (love’s) arrow; bayonet, cutlass, (murton) dagger, dart, nature’s scythe, sabre, spear, and spike; club (the 19th Century) and bludgeon; pistol (late 19th Century), fowling-piece, gun, and cutty-gun (Scots). Of the few dysphemisms in this group, three emphasize the phenomenon of erection: bit of hard (the 19th Century), hard-lit, and bit of stiff (the 19th Century). The other is hairy wheel (circa 1870). In the second group, euphemisms are heavily outnumbered; this group contains words which refer, sometimes with gusto or with crudity, to the sexual or reproductive or excretory functions of the male sex organ. The euphemisms are lullaby (mid-19th Century), badge (or label) of manhood, Cupid’s torch, bed- fellow, carnal part, guest, little lover, lodger, loveflesh, mark of the man, master of the ceremonies, object of enjoyment, ploughshare, sex’s pride, thorn in the flesh, and unruly member; cuckoldmaker (circa 1610); baby-maker (late 19th Century), child-getter, brat-getter, and life-preserver (circa 1840); pee-wee (the 19th Century; nursery), P-maker (mid-19th Century), waterworks (mid-19th Century), water-engine (late 19th Century), and make-water. Many of the dysphemisms introduce into the name of the male sex organ a more or less direct allusion to the female sex organ: trap-stick (1670-1900); plum-tree shaker (the 17th and 18th Centuries); tickle-tail (the 17th Century); tickletoby (? the 17th to 19th Centuries), plug-tail (mid- 18th Century-mid-19th), tail-trimmer, and tenant-in-tail (punning upon the legal meaning of tail); quim-wedge (the 19th Century), wedge, quim-stake (the 19th Century), crack-h(a)unter (the 19th Century), hunter, cracksman, cranny-h(a)unter, cunny- catcher, gap-stopper (the 19th Century), gullyraker, chink- stopper, and touch-trap; rump-splitter (circa 1560-1800), arse- HDT WHAT? INDEX THE ALCOTTS THE PATHETIC FAMILY opener, arse-wedge, bum-tickler, and claw-buttock; beard- splitter (the 18th Century-19), hair-splitter (circa 1810), hair-divider (circa 1850), splitter (1876), quiff-splitter, bush-beater, and bush-whacker; leather-stretcher (the 18th Century) and leather-dresser, sky-scraper (circa 1840), button- hole worker (the 19th Century), holy iron (circa 1860; punning), gardener (the 19th Century) and garden-engine, (bald-headed) hermit (late 19th Century), bung-starter, dilator, distender, and vestryman; split-mutton (the 17th to 19th Centuries), kidney-wiper (the 20th Century; used in “The Highland Tinker”) and kidney-scraper, gut-stick, liver-turner, meat-skewer, spike-faggot, trouble-guts, and womb-brush. Others make a fairly direct allusion to the movement of the penis in the act of copulation: knocker (circa 1650) and knock (the 18th Century), wriggling pole (late 17th Century or early 18th), jigger (the 19th Century) and jiggling-bone (Irish), gaying instrument (the 19th Century), fornicating-engine, -member, and -tool (the 19th Century), grinding-tool (the 19th Century), pile-driver (the 19th Century), tickler (the 19th Century), poker (circa 18?0) and holy poker (circa 1860), ram-rod (mid-19th Century) and rammer (mid-19th Century), gooser (circa 1871); piston(-rod) (the 20th Century), sexing-piece (circa 1925), connecting rod, coupling pin, plunger, and shove-devil. Elsewhere the allusion to copulation is metaphorical, but the reference is plain and the effect dysphemistic: angler and fishing-rod, butcher and chopper, and floater. The penis is named as a provider of semen- cream-stick (the 18th Century), gravy-giver (the 19th Century), butter-knife, and Old Slimy-and of urine: pisser (the 19th Century). Its temperature at certain times is alluded to: red- hot poker (the 19th Century; female), bonfire, burning rod, and firebrand. It is seen as a source of sexual pleasure: ladies’ lollipop (the 19th Century), sweetmeat (mid-19th Century), merry-maker (mid-19th Century) and merry man, joy-stick (late 19th Century), joy-prong and love-prong, giggle-stick (the 20th Century), shaft of delight, delight of women, plaything, toy, and yam-yam. And there are names that appear to reflect the popular belief that the tumescent organ is not unduly troubled by pangs of conscience: (belly-)ruffian (? 17th to 19th Centuries), ranger (the 18th Century; from range, “to be inconstant”), girl-catcher (circa 1870), and girlometer (circa 1870). The third group of synonyms, of great interest, consists of personifications of the penis; almost all are euphemistic. The Bible makes a large contribution: Nimrod (the 19th Century; “a mighty hunter”), the old Adam (the 19th Century), Jacob (the 19th Century), Nebuchadnezzar (circa 1860-1915), Abraham (late 19th Century), Father Abraham, Jezebel, and Saint Peter (who holds the keys of heaven). Greek myth supplies Polyphemus (the 19th Century); history, Julius Caesar (circa 1840) and Old Rowley (i.e., Charles II); literature, Dr. Johnson (circa 1790- 1880; “perhaps”, suggests Partridge, “because there was no one that Dr. Johnson was not prepared to stand up to”); fable, HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PATHETIC FAMILY THE ALCOTTS Bluebeard and Master Reynard. The personal names that have been recorded start with Roger (circa 1650) and Jock (before 1790; compare jock-strap) and include Jack, Jack-in-the-box (the 19th Century; also, since circa 1870, as rhyming slang for pox, signifies syphilis) and Jack Robinson, the lately celebrated John Thomas (circa 1840; cf. J.T., before 1923), Thomas (the 19th Century), man Thomas, John Henry, Peter (mid-19th Century), Dick (1860; military), Dick(e)y (circa 1870; schoolboys’), Little Davy (Scots), Billy-my-nag, Bob-my-nag, and two nursery terms: Timothy(-tool) and the hypocoristic Willie, in use before 1847 and before 1905 respectively. She, a twentieth-century Londoners’ term, is “partly euphemistic, partly proleptic.” His Majesty in Purple Cap, a one-eyed man, an old man (the 19th Century?, a bishop (late 19th Century), the boy (late 19th Century), and two anonymous kinsmen, a little brother (mid-19th Century) and an uncle, complete the roll. The fourth group is made up of literary synonyms coined or used by English writers; a few have passed into the spoken language for a time. George Gascoigne gave us Robin; Shakespeare, bauble; Sir Thomas Urquhart, aspersing-tool, bracmard, coral-branch, Don Cypriano, Don Orsino, gentle-tittler, Master John Goodiellow, Master John Thurslay, nilnisistando, and nudinuddo; Denham, wand and ware; Dorset, tarse; Rochester, angle; Cleland, animated ivory, beloved guest, blind favourite, centre of sense, dear morsel, engine of love, (piece of) furniture, grand movement, handle, instrument of pleasure, man machine, master- member, mutinous rogue, nipple of love, picklock, playfellow, pleasure pivot, plenipotentiary instrument, sceptre member, sensitive plant, shaft, and standard of distinction; Sterne, sausage; Burns, dearest member; Ann Radcliffe, pego (from the Greek pEgE, “spring,” “fountain”). Whitman has man-root, pond- snipe, and thumb of love. All these may be classed as euphemisms; but up to the death of Smollett, English writers were also in the habit of coining or using names intended to draw attention to the sexual function of the penis. Shakespeare has pike; Ebsworth, Captain Standish; Urquhart, cunny-burrow ferret, crimson chitterling, generating- (or generation-) tool, intercrural pudding, jolly-member, live sausage, nervous cane, nine-inch knocker, placket-rackel, shove-straight, Sir Martin Wagstff, split-rump, touch-her-home, and trouble-giblets; Rochester, quickening-peg and whore-pipe; D’Urfey, what Harry gave Doll; Cleland, oattering-piece and -ram, conduit pipe, gristle, and sensitive truncheon; Burns, plug. Lastly, there is a group of synonyms for the penis and testicles together. There was a plain word, gear, first used in the sixteenth century and Standard English until the nineteenth. Euphemisms include the Netherlands (the 18th Century), place (the 18th Century), rule of three (the 18th Century), barber’s sign (late 18th Century-19), kit (the 19th Century) and kit of tools, bag of tricks (mid-19th Century), fancy work (the 20th Century; a female euphemism for the male genitals, including the pubic hair), pencil and tassel (the 20th Century; nursery), twig and berries (the 20th Century; nursery) wedding kit (circa 1918; mostly army and air force), Adam’s arsenal, ladyware, luggage, other parts, parts, parts below, parts more dear, parts of shame, and watch and seals. Dysphemisms include meat (Century HDT WHAT? INDEX THE ALCOTTS THE PATHETIC FAMILY 16), raw meat, (mid-18th Century) and meat and two veg. (the 20th Century), beef (the 19th Century), marrowbone and cleaver (the 19th Century), oil can, and tail tackle. HDT WHAT? INDEX THE PATHETIC FAMILY THE ALCOTTS 1659 John Evelyn published several Royalist pamphlets, such as a witty piece on the “Character of England,” 3 a critique of sloppy habits during the Interregnum. He also put out the first English translation of THE 4 GOLDEN BOOK OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, on the proper education of children. This latter effort was his memorial to his son Richard who had died at age 5 in 1658, so the bereaved father added an Epistle packed with quotes from a small section of the CONFESSIONS OF AUGUSTINE and extracting freely from a secondary source for the letters of Jerome. However, this author had not yet begun to lard his prose with Latin quotes. A SPIRITUAL JOURNEY OF A YOUNG MAN TOWARDS THE LAND OF PEACE, TO LIVE THEREIN ESSENTIALLY IN GOD, WHO MET IN HIS JOURNEY WITH THREE SORTS OF DISPUTES ... ALSO, A SPIRITUAL DIALOGUE, WHEREUNTO IS ANNEXED A ROUND OR CHORUS-DANCE, WHEREUNTO THE VAIN HEATHENISH LUSTS ... DANCING HAND IN HAND, SKIP AND JUMP TO HELL. Translated out of Dutch, in London, in this year (since a copy of this would be inventoried in Bronson Alcott’s library at the point of his death, it is very possible that Henry Thoreau at some point was able to consult it). THE ALCOTT FAMILY Samuel Pepys went along with Montagu on a voyage to the Sound. In this year he secured a clerkship of £50 per annum in the office of George Downing, one of the tellers of the Exchequer (the teller after whom Downing Street would later be named). It would be while clerking in Downing’s office, and living in a small house in Axe Yard, that at the start of the following year he would begin his famous diary. 3. A CHARACTER OF ENGLAND: AS IT WAS LATELY PRESENTED IN A LETTER TO A NOBLE MAN OF FRANCE. Londons [i.e. London]: Printed for Jo. Crooke..., 1659. 4. THE GOLDEN BOOK OF ST. JOHN CHRYSOSTOM, CONCERNING THE EDUCATION OF CHILDREN / TRANSLATED OUT OF THE GREEK BY J.E., ESQ. London: Printed by D.M. for G. Bedel and T. Collins.... (Saint John Chrysostom had deceased as of 407CE. He is famous for something.) HDT WHAT? INDEX THE ALCOTTS THE PATHETIC FAMILY 1688 In Concord, John Flint continued to be the Town Clerk. In Concord, Nathaniel Ball, Sr. deeded to his son, Nathaniel Ball, Jr., the unimproved half of a “house lott,” the other half to go to Nathaniel, Jr. on the death of the father. (This property eventually would become the Alcott family’s “Hillside” and the Hawthorne family’s “The Wayside.”)