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Why, you ask, did I ask the AI to show a newspaper office from 1819? We'll get to that.
In the gazebo, late afternoon. Hot sun. Someone’s mowing the lawn. Cicadas. Could be July, except A) the temps for the weekend top off in the 60s, and B) everything just feels not-summer, in a strange way, like people in a city distant from the capitol hear rumors of a revolution but there’s nothing in town to show that anything’s changed. All my imagination, probably. It’s supposed to be 80s next week.
Yesterday I was describing a Wilkie Collins story, and the true tale on which it was based. There’s a key plot point: what if the man they accused of murdering is really alive? Let’s put an ad in the paper describing him, and see if anyone notices. From the notes on the case on which the story was based:
A complete description of Colvin was published in the Rutland Herald. The article stated that if Colvin could be located, the lives of innocent men could be saved. The article was republished in the New York Evening Post of November 29, 1819, and started a series of events as strange as those which had led to the convictions.
Except . . . it’s not there.
I looked.
Yes, I had larger versions. I looked on the day before and the day after.
To modern eyes, the papers seem curiously lacking in, well, news. Notices of rewards for crimes are as close as you get to stories. Everything else is ads. The news is what's being sold, which ships are leaving, who's no longer in business with whom, and so on.
I need to know more about the newspapers of the era. There had to be one that was full of salacious details and murderous outrages. The market for crime has always been there; it’s just a question of picking it up, running it through a series of sensibilities (lurid, prurient, outraged, reformer) and selling it at a penny a pop. I think the British press was on this a bit quicker than the Yanks, but not by much. Movies about Jack the Ripper always have a grimy newsboy shouting headlines and selling papers, but search in, say, the Telegraph, and the first note is on page three, reprinting the famous “I am down on whores and shan’t stop ripping them until I do get buckled” letter.
Yes, it seems obvious to us now - why didn’t they do this in 1820, when it was clearly what the medium would do best? Because they didn’t, I suppose, until they did. Still, I think it’s odd that no trace of that letter seems to appear in the New York Evening Post. The whole story is fishy. It’s not that someone read the notice and said “why, I know that Colvin chap, I’d best alert the authorities.” Someone overheard someone reading the paper out loud.
The day after the article appeared in the Post, it was read aloud in a New York hotel. James Whelpley, a former resident of Manchester, was present. He knew Colvin and told a number of anecdotes about him. Mr. Tabor Chadwick of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, happened to be standing near by, and the story made a deep impression upon him. It finally occurred to him that a man answering Colvin’s description was living with his brother-in-law, William Polhemus, in Dover, New Jersey.
Does this seem a bit fanciful?
Mr. Chadwick wrote the Post, saying that the man who lived with his brother-in-law appeared to have once been a resident of Vermont, for he occasionally spoke of Manchester, mentioned the names Boorn, Jesse, etc., and seemed to have considerable knowledge of the town and its people. Mr. Whelpley saw Mr. Chadwick’s letter in the Post and decided to go to Dover and investigate.
I don’t mean to say I’m the first guy to check the primary sources on this, but, well, I just did?
Talked to Daughter tonight, settling in to her new apartment. I remember those days. Putting up your things on the wall. Arranging your room just so. Becoming accustomed to the new sounds outside the window. When I moved into Uptown I was not aware of the train tracks a half-block away, and came to love the occasional freight blasting through in the night - the frantic crossing-guard bells, the sound of the wheels (never a clackety-clack, always a serious and industrious chunkCHUNK) and, if we were blessed, the whistle. The line was abandoned years ago and turned into a pedestrian-bike path in a trench. The trains go elsewhere. The people who live by the old line now have no idea what extraordinary machines hurtled past their window once upon a time. Now and then, here, at Jasperwood, I hear a train whistle far away, and I cannot figure out where it’s coming from. When Natalie was growing up I called it the Ghost Train. I still think of that on the rare nights I hear it.
I have no desire to see passenger rail return, personally, but I do love a train ride. And I think what it must have been like at the start, to gaze out the window, sitting still, and lose yourself in the view, a sight no one had previously experienced in human history. Speed. To knife through the fields and shoot through stone tunnels in hills, driven by the ingenious force of will and steam. To this day, it has romance. I’ve driven from Suffolk to London in a car and every time it’s a bore. Every train trip out and back is a story, each sentence tumbling over the last.
It’s 1873.
I guess this is old boring newspaper day.
It's the type of front page that says it's time to get to work reading
A most unique suicide!
And it said:
LAST REQUESTS - Have my body taken to the Cook County Hospital for identification. John Gossfield Sieninth, my father, lives at 748 or 750 South Halsted street. The reporters will please not publish the details. The Coroner's jury may find any verdict except insanity, on recommendation of the doctor.
Well, so much for honoring the chap’s requests.
Floaters:
The Zuoaves?
The Zouaves were a class of light infantry regiments of the French Army serving between 1830 and 1962 and linked to French North Africa; as well as some units of other countries modelled upon them. The zouaves were among the most decorated units of the French Army.
That’s all we can tell you about the lecture! Wish we knew where it was.
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Well, considering the event, it’s not that surprising.
Mourning optics. |
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The reader, I assume, was expected to know what The Manitoba Business was all about. |
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Well:
Lord Gordon-Gordon (c. 1840 – August 1, 1874), also known as Lord Gordon Gordon, Lord Glencairn, and The Hon. Mr. Herbert Hamilton, was a British impostor responsible for a major swindle in 19th century United States. He swindled a million dollars from Jay Gould, who was fighting for control of the Erie Railroad, and then fled to Canada. Gould and associates attempted to kidnap him but were arrested themselves, which nearly caused a military confrontation between the United States and Canada.
!!!
Minnesota Governor Horace Austin demanded their return when he learned that they had been refused bail, and he put the militia on full readiness. Thousands of Minnesotans volunteered for a full military invasion of Canada, but the Canadian authorities released the abductors on bail.
Not enough Gordons in this story, I think:
Gordon-Gordon believed himself safe, as grand larceny and embezzlement were not crimes serious enough to warrant extradition. However, news reached Europe of his scandal, and the jewelers whom he had robbed years before sent a representative to Canada who identified Gordon-Gordon as Lord Glencairn. Gordon-Gordon claimed that it was a smear campaign created by Gould and his associates, but the Canadian authorities considered the charges serious enough to deport him. He held a farewell party in his hotel room, where he gave expensive presents to his guests.
He then shot himself on August 1, 1874 in Headingley.
The only decent thing to do, I suppose, when one’s honor has expired.
More on his swindling here. Quite the character.
That will do! Midweek miscellany for Substack subscribers. 1957 Gasoline for all! We conclude the series of brilliant white Gulf ads.
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