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8/20/24
What a pity no-one may ever read this, because this second entry will be significant and interesting in its own way. I suppose I could save it to post tomorrow, but, never mind.
I mentioned, earlier this morning in the first entry, that my AI co-pilot has said that scholars have carefully analyzed the story, "A Child's Dream of a Star," pronouncing it Charles Dickens' work. The little I have observed of how these scholars make such determinations, their methods are fanciful and amateurish, in my opinion. They imagine they are being very sophisticated, but it's like their astute analyses in their papers--mostly a charade. I say that very reluctantly. But I have come to the conclusion that the retired English professor I hired briefly as a researcher, was right on the money when he enthusiastically praised me as doing "above Ph.D. level work!" Indeed, in my home-grown methodologically, I am doing far above Ph.D.-level work. (This fellow had seen only the barest glimpse of my methods--just one instance).
Now, I have said many times that Mathew Franklin Whittier used to bring back some of his favorite ideas, and improve upon them. In a particular sense you could say he was self-plagiarizing, but whatever you call it, there are many examples of him doing it. One of these concerns the passage in "A Christmas Carol" in which Ebenezer Scoorge dismisses Marley's Ghost as a "bit of undigested beef." But I've presented that evidence, before, and it's in my lengthy paper on that topic.
I just ran into another example, while doing the photographic archiving project I'm currently immersed in, and I'd like to share it with you. I think there are other instances of this style, but I'll give you two. Mathew's technique, here, is to describe a crowd of people, conveying in a sort of stream-of-consciousness style, the impressions which are converging on his senses and his mind. Our first instance appears in the December 19, 1829 edition of the New York "Constellation." Mathew had just moved from Boston to New York City, and had begun writing for this newspaper. The sketch is unsigned (as was much of his work for this paper). You can read it here, and you will be looking for the very first piece, entitled "Post Office Scene." I'd suggest reading the entire article, as he works his way into the style. At this time, Mathew is 17 years old.
Next we turn to the one I just photographed, from the May 4, 1850 edition of the Portland "Transcript." You can access it here. Again, he works into the style in the course of his narrative. This is the third number in a series about landmarks in the City of Portland, entitled "Local Sketches," and we are reading "Sights and Scenes at the Railroad Stations." It's a topic Mathew is very familiar with, because at this time he is traveling the New England states as a postal inspector. This series in the "Transcript" is running concurrently with Mathew's travelogue for another newspaper, the Boston "Weekly Museum," signed "Quails." ("Quails" has been mistakenly identified, by the one or two scholars who have been interested, as a musical entertainer named Ossian Dodge.)
Incidentally, the opening piece on this page is the editor viciously panning Mathew's anonymous novel, "The Mistake of a Lifetime." Mathew got it published by conservative editor Frederick Gleason, for reasons of his own. Presumably, the liberal editor of the "Transcript" is unaware that his own writer, Mathew Franklin Whittier, was its author, and is automatically prejudiced about anything that Gleason has praised. There's more to that story, because Mathew writes a caricature of his own book for the "Transcript," playing along with the error in self-deprecating humor. But that's a story for another day. For now, just look at how prejudice has twisted his own editor's perception of what I would say can justifiably be termed a masterpiece. (After all, if Mathew was that bad a writer, he shouldn't be allowed on the same page writing a series about the editor's beloved city of Portland.)
I will leave it with you to make the comparison between the 1829 piece and the 1850 piece. This is a relatively rare literary style, and not an easy one to write. It also bears Mathew Franklin Whittier's unique stamp, which I know from deep familiarity with his work--over 3,000 pieces which I have digitized and archived.
This, I would have to guess, is far stronger scholarly evidence than the logic used by scholars to identify "A Child's Dream of a Star" as the work of Charles Dickens. Why would my layman's methods be so much superior to that of the trained historians? I really don't know. It seems to me that it goes to Mathew Franklin Whittier's caricature of Academia, "Dr. E. Goethe Digg" (mistakenly attributed, by scholars, to Benjamin Drew). Dr. Digg was sort of the scholarly equivalent of "Mrs. Partington"--he got everything wrong. I don't think this goes to a lack of intelligence, or even, in all cases, to a lack of rigor. Some of the work done by these historians is truly exhaustive--they, and their research assistants, must have spent thousands of hours doggedly looking up information from primary sources. I don't doubt their work ethic. I think that, like the editor of the "Transcript" in 1850, something is wrong with their objectivity.
Actually, I have a serious philosophical problem with "objectivity." I don't believe in it. I think objectivity is the poor-man's version of discernment. And discernment requires spiritual development, which is to say, intuition. Intuition requires not just belief in God, but an actual relationship with God (i.e., however you conceive Him). This kind of secular scholarship is like trying to do the AA steps without a personal relationship with one's higher power. It just doesn't work. They end up fooling themselves, thinking they are being "objective," when there is actually a massive failure in discernment.
I could be wrong, but it's intuitively obvious to me that both of these pieces were written by the same person, and that that person was Mathew Franklin Whittier, who also wrote the "Quails" travelogue. It is also intuitively obvious to me that the Charles Dickens who emerged from my study of his life, based on primary sources, could not possibly have written "A Child's Dream of a Star"; but that the Charles Dickens I came to understand, most certainly would have falsely claimed authorship to patch some holes in his "sheep suit," and make himself look spiritual, refined, sensitive, and inspired. He had an image to sustain, ever since falsely claiming authorship of "A Christmas Carol."
This is not rocket science. I don't think it's that I am so astute in these matters; I think it's that Academia, as a whole, is so awful at them.
Incidentally, if you'd like to see an example of "Dr. Digg," you can do so here. This is the March 20, 1852 edition of the Boston "Weekly Museum." We are up against the limits of my equipment, and with a large page like this, the lens is soft in the upper-left-hand corner (I could try again with better lighting, which might yield better depth of field and sharper focus throughout). The link, above, is to a compressed file. However, the uncompressed version, here, while easier to read, will take longer to download. On this page you will see the next-to-last "Quails" travelogue installment, in which Mathew reports traveling to visit famous singer Jenny Lind. The letter, itself, is dated March 10th. He is reporting to his abolitionist colleagues--and, I think, as a direct liaison to William Lloyd Garrison--to tell them, in code, that he has met with Jenny Lind to ask her for a donation to the cause. On this same page, you will see, reprinted from the "Carpet-Bag," an installment of the "Dr. Digg" series, in which Dr. Digg remarks on a strange new species of fish, of which he has been sent a sample. Note the phrase "the finny tribe," which was one of Mathew's favorites.
I find, from a brief conversation with my AI co-pilot, that Jenny Lind did in fact give a donation of $1,000 (as I had remembered) in February of 1852. (An online inflation calculator tells me that in 1852, $1,000 would be worth $40,849.35 today.) So Mathew Franklin Whittier has now been identified as the operative who approached her for that donation. Sadly, no scholar of the abolitionist movement will work with me, so the discovery goes unnoticed and unrecorded.
Best regards,
Stephen Sakellarios, M.S.
