Inkwell: Authors and Artists

    
it was when I started finding out some of it that I decided to write the
story - the only biographical material out there was largely inaccurate, and
almost all references assume he died a drug addict because he died young.
(he actually died of tuberculosis).  The western trip on the Overland
Stagecoach, a pretty strenous endeavor, with visits to Brigham Young and
Mark Twain, was really what cinched my decision to write.

But the real universal themes, his relationship with his father the
religious zealot, and his marriage to the daughter of a wealthy man who
later left him to marry his best friend, only emerged after long hours with
the primary source material.  There are two collections of family
correspondence centered around his father (whom Fitz Hugh outlived by only
two years) that I went through at length, and one of the great experiences o
f the research was how relationships emerged by reading the letters over
time.

his father was so committed to the cause of Abolition that he named Fitz
Hugh after the son of a wealthy patron of causes who was wavering between
emancipation and "colonization" (returning freed slaves to Africa) - the
man's son died at age 12, and the Reverend Ludlow named his son after him
even though there was virtually no family connection.  Fitz Hugh's mother
died when he was 12, his father remarried less than a year later to a much
younger woman, and Fitz Hugh from that time was a terror and a scandal to
his father, yet they had a powerful ongoing relationship their whole lives.

the love triangle between Fitz hugh, his wife and painter Albert Bierstadt
became evident early on from looking at the dates of the divorce and the re-
marriage six months apart, but then it was fasciniating to watch Fitz Hugh's
bitterness emerge in his fiction writing (there is a page-long curse
delivered by a character to his unfaithful wife in one novel) as well as in
edits to his travel writing where Bierstadt morphs from best friend to snake
between the first magazine articles and their later collection into a book.
  

    
One thing that really struck me as I read your book, was the thorough
modernity of the struggle of the content creator, um, author with his
publisher. Can you tell us a bit about the role of the media of his day
in promoting, and eventually surpressing his work and the public’s
awareness of him?

Also, what comparisons can you make in terms of the popular American
media’s effect on culture and society, then and now?
  

    
The Hasheesh Eater was published by Harper Brothers (now Harper and Row, or
whoever owns them now - but not HarperCollins), maybe the largest publisher
in New York at the time, and also publisher of Harper's magazine (now, uh,
Harper's magazine).  After that, Fitz Hugh quickly became maybe the most
popular author in Harper's magazine over the ensuing seven or so years.
Mostly light fiction, which was bread and butter in a literary time known as
the Feminine Fifties. Formulaic romance tales, but with healthy doses of
Fitz Hugh's erudition. His more satirical work went to Vanity Fair (then
styled as an American Punch), but Harper's drained a lot of his time. the
bad side was, the Harpers liked to keep the magazine material exclusive, and
so would not publish anthologies which would have been much more lucrative
.  His best serial novel, the Household Angel, was never published in book
form.

After this Overland Stage journeys, he was engaged by the Atlantic Monthly,
the premier literary journal in America, to write travel sketches, which he
did for two years.  At the same time, he had come to be accepted into New
York's high society (Century Club), and in general appeared to be on the
verge of overcoming his notoriety for The Hasheesh Eater when his marriage
fell apart.  I never was able to pinpoint a smoking gun, but from that point
forward The Atlantic never published another piece by him.

From then on, he bounced from journal to journal, with several magazines
advertising Fitz Hugh's latest, but then folding after one or two issues,
apparently without paying him.  He returned to the Harper's fold, but they
put The Household Angel, the book he viewed as his first truly mature,
serious work, into serial form in their Harper's Bazaar weekly, largely a
fashion magazine.  It must have broken his heart.
..
  

    
after his death, none of his four full length books were reprinted by a
mainstream publisher.  The Hasheesh Eater was periodically revived by
Bohemian/outsiders, most recently reprinted by City Lights back in the
1980's.  I don't know if suppression is the right word - I just don't think
mainstream publishers knew what to make of it.
  

    
as for popular media impact on culture, that's a pretty big topic. It's
pretty clear that the popular press put Fitz Hugh and The Hasheesh Eater
into the "cautionary tale" slot from the get go.  Much of the book is
philosophical reflections on the experience, but the reviews never addressed
them, preferring to essentially say, "isn't this naughty? of course, no one
respectable would ever do drugs."   This dynamic doesn't look to have
changed since that time, as far as I can see.  Journalists are, for themost
part, not specialists in the fields they cover - Fitz Hugh himself was a
music critic for the New York Evening Post for a while, not becasue he knew
much about music but because he was a contributing editor and he wrote what
he was assigned.  The easiest, and maybe only practical way to do that job,
is to rely on pre-established templates. (I should probably be careful -
there are lots of professional journalists around the Well - of course, the
above does not apply to them %-)
  

    
What about the popular media’s effect on popular attitudes toward
psychotropic substances, in general, and their (for lack of a more
precise term) potentially enlightening promise? Their inherent dangers?
Was the situation in the 1860's much different than the 1960's (or
90's, for that matter)?

Can you see the tide ever turning in the direction of sanity and
balance?
  

    
well, I never dreamed medical marijuana initiatives would get anywhere. but
there's a constituency there and an easily understood benefit.  Things like
enlightenment, or fun for that matter, don't move people to political
action. And that's really the core of what's different today than 150 years
ago - the drug "issue" became a crime issue in the early 1980's, thanks to
the Reagans, and maybe Miami Vice.  Being "tough on crime" means votes, and
any politician who is not zero tolerance on drugs will be attacked for it.
Popular media today only reflect that context, I think.

In Fitz Hugh's time, the context for media treatment of drugs, as I said
earlier, was morality. And morality was still very close to Puritanism in
this country at that time. And any intoxication was bad almost by
definition.
  

    
This sounds like such a fascinating life!
  

    
Indeed, it was. I knew quite a bit about this character, I thought,
from my 25 years around the Kappa Alpha Society, its legends and musty
old books, but Don's book was a revelation in so many ways. Many of
these revelations, or maybe kernels of such, had much to do with the
real and secret history of American culture.

For instance, I was prompted to think along this line of thought
concerning 1860's media and concerns we're discussing today. 

At one point, Don relates that during his adventure West, Fitz Hugh
was invited to a good ol' hanging in the Kansas Territory. FHL wrote of
later being asked; “Have you been to the hanging?”, and comments that
the question was asked “with as much sang-froid as a New Yorker might
inquire, have you seen Faust?” I’m curious, Don, was such a play the
violent media of its day? I mean, it’s no hanging, but it did involve
the portrayal of ultimate evil, mortal gambles, and plenty of exploding
flash-pots.

Oh, and <sumac> glad to see you here!
  

    
also glad to hear you say that (sumac) - I knew the book would be of
interest to drug users and maybe drug warriors, but it's a great story at a
number of levels.

Fitz Hugh actually was a drama critic for a while as well - his beat was
pretty mainstream, a lot of Shakespeare, which indeed lets me name drop
another of his friends, the premier Shakespearean actor of the day in
America, Edwin Booth, the brother of John Wilkes Booth himself.  Maybe
Shakespeare should be banned - obviously it drove JWB to murder!

But on the other side of a broad gap, there was also a brand of theatre that
was more spectacle and was popular with a working class audience. One such
piece was called Mazeppa, which starred Adah Isaacs Menken, the Marilyn
Monroe of her time (how many times have I used that figure of speech in this
interview?) - the climax of the play, so to speak, had Menken clad in body
stocking and nothing else, strapped to the back of a horse that charges
across the stage.  One of Twain's buddies in California saw the road show,
and said Menken was the greatest in her line, it just wasn't a clothes line.
(one of the things that caused the San Fran crew to warm to FItz Hugh was
his love of paranomasia).
  

    
Well, let’s talk a bit about Ludlow’s remarkable circle of
acquaintences. As you say, it included folks like Mark Twain, Albert
Bierstadt, the painter, Edwin Booth, and Walt Whitman. Among the lesser
known figures today, was a fellow named Louis Moreau Gottshchalk. He
was then a reknown composer and is known to have been among the
earliest of what we’d now call ethnomusicoligists, compiling Voodoun
music in the New Orleans area.
  

    
Gottschalk is also attributed with innovations in composition and
performance that contributed to the development of jazz some forty years
later.  He had a child out of wedlock, and what musician doesn't, with a
woman named Ada Clare.  Ada was known as the "den mother" to a group of
Bohemians associated with Pfaff's restaurant in New York City, a group to
which Fitz Hugh belonged.  Ada scandalized society by simply living as a
single mother. The Pfaff's crew is where Fitz Hugh met Whitman - the de
facto leader of the group was Henry Clapp, editor of the Saturday Review,
which was the place to be published for the youngest hippest authors.  Clapp
was one of few to positively review Leaves of Grass.

Back to Gottschalk - Fitz Hugh while doing music/concert reviews got to know
Gottschalk, as he got to know Booth, Menken, and other performers.
Gottschalk told him he "perceived music through all of the senses" not just
sound.  Fitz Hugh had similar feelings during hashish experiences - he later
wrote a short story about a man who invents a "kaleidaphone" so that his
deaf wife can experience music visually.
  

    
Yes, you mention Fitz Hugh’s propensity toward synethesia, seeing the
color of music, and so forth. In “The Music Essence”, he imagined that
machine that allowed the deaf to hear music by representing it as
color.

His synethestetic capacitiy was likely enhanced or discovered through
his experiments with Hasheesh, but I was intrigued by the illustration
showing one of Ludlow’s pictographic letters addressed to a friend
identified only as “C”. It is dated 1853, possibly prior to his first
experience with the drug. In it he mixes sketches with normal letters
to create whole sentences. If he were alive today, would he be a
multi-media artist? What might he have made of a modern computer?
Digital film-making? A Grateful Dead concert?
  

    
he loved technology. got it from his father,who numbered among his flock at
his Poughkeepsie church Telegram Sam, Samuel F.B. Morse.  so he would likely
buy into the most optimistic notions of what technology can do and how it
improves everyday life.  As a creative artist, I'm not sure he wouldn't
still be a writer.  He never abandoned his classical education, but
attempted to incorporate novelty into that foundation.  He wrote a lot about
visual and performing artss, but the most he did in that direction was some
lecturing, which only lasted a year or two, and some comical line drawings
which decorate a few of his personal letters. I think he'd be happy to write
for Salon, if they paid well (or even at all.)
  

    
Maybe we can get back to some of the issues around the collision of
the Age of Enlightenment with the Industrial Revolution, and some of
the tech/cultural stuff that issued forth in this social phase-change
in a minute. I want to go back to something you mentioned about
Gottschalk and Ludlow first, if I may (try to stop me ;-)

You mention in the book that he and Ludlow may have compared notes on
African american spirituality vis a vis their "ethnomusicological"
pursuits in the area of New Orleans. What do we know of Fitz Hugh’s
interest in this? Was there some link to his family’s anti-slavery
activities, or was it more an extension of his bent toward the
mystical, in general?  Both?
  

    
OK, I'm going to get this book tomorrow.  You folks have me intrigued and
very interested...
  

    
Cool!  Anyone else out there with any questions? Steve is getting ready to
ask a question I can't answer.

As for African American spirituality, despite living in a stop on the
Underground Railway, Fitz Hugh's real introduction came during a visit to
Florida he made just before the shooting started at Fort Sumter. After a
formal dinner, he snuck into the kitchen with a group of slaves who were
performing a combination healing ceremony/religious service, complete with
gospel music.  He was shocked as a good Presbyterian, but struck by the
power of the service. He was more interested in the religious aspect, I
think, than in the musicological.  Especially how the service was more of sa
 direct religious experience, much like some of his hashish journeys, than
his father's formal ceremonies.  Fitz Hugh's sister Helen was the one who
carried on their father's more classic liberalism - she was one of the
original teachers at the Hampton Institute, now Hampton University, one of
the first of the historically Black colleges.
  

    
Yes, I'm definitely getting the book right away, also. You've got me
going. And I remember my stepfather, a music therapist working with
autistic people for years before his death, mentioned Gottschalk - in
what connection, I'll need to ruminate a while to remember. The fact
that you don't consider Ludlow to have been "addicted" to hasheesh is a
relief, as everyone nowadays wants to renounce their drug experiences.
I find this just plain annoying and cloying. If one doesn't want to
take drugs anymore, fine. Why the need to grovel and regret? Anyway,
back to the book... 
  

    
how much of Ludlow's life does this book cover?  Seems he is in NEw ORleans
and in NY.  HAve you re-constructed his adolecence, young adult life, and
mature years?  It seems that from your writing here, that his childhood had
great influence on his approach to the rest of his life, or maybe his young
adult life anyway...
  

    
oh I definitely covered his childhood, and even a bit of his father's life
for context (angry mobs ransacked his house a year before Fitz Hugh was born
on the rumor he'd officiated at the wedding of a black man and a white
woman).  By the way, he never actually made it to New Orleeans - he knew
Gottschalk from New York.
  

    
OK, I just got some email that is one of the interesting unexpected
sidelights on this project for me.  There is an email discussion group
called Gaslight that focuses on literature of the mid to late 19th century.
Their moderator contacted me because they had read one of Fitz Hugh's Poe-
influenced suspense stories, The Phial of Dread.  The following email is
some discussion of the story The Music Essence we discussed above, which was
recently the subject of a Gaslight discussion.
  

    <hidden>
  

    
It's a few pages long, so is hidden. If you are reading this from outside
the Well on the Well Web site, I think you just click on the word "hidden"
to see it.
  

    
following is an extract from that email that bears on the question Steve
asked in response #40 above re: Age of Enlightenment vs. Industrial
Revolution:

when I was reading about the hero's
      effort in "The Music Essence" to co-ordinate colors with musical
tones,
      I was reminded more of efforts widespread in the Renaissance, and
going
      back to Neoplatonic times, to co-ordinate all sorts of things. Such
      philosphers, of what we would now call an occult temperament, used to
      line things up in charts to show the harmony of the universe. The
seven
      planets, the seven metals, the seven colors, the seven tones; the four
      elements, the four humors, the four seasons; etc. etc.This view of the
      universe, as a harmonious composition, was widespread all during the
      Middle Ages and reached flood tide in the seventeenth century, even as
      the scientific view was beginning to take root. I would think that a
      story that builds (in part) on that sort of world view, even in the
      mid-19th century, would owe some of its power to the lure of
nostalgia.
      I don't mean any of this condescendingly. That lure is still potent
      today (and I am certainly not immune to it, nor do I wish to be); I
      suspect is will get more potent as the vertigo induced by progress
      becomes more acute.
  

    
Back in the early to mid-1880's some perhaps spooky stuff was afoot
amid all the scientific optimism, around issues like the order of the
Universe and Man's role in it. I read somewhere, that with the
discovery of the Rosetta Stone in the early days of the steam
revolution, just shortly before Ludlow's birth, there was the following
popular sentiment;  that  the Secret Wisdom of the Ages would be
unlocked from the Rosetta Stone (and other discoveries in the mid-east
and Egypt), and married to the power of modern technology, ushering in
a New Age for Humankind.

Well, that wasn't the last time we heard the term, New Age.

Don, can you tell us a bit about the real and supposed roles of secret
societies, such as the Masons, in supposedly promoting this New World
Order (can't shake that term, either)? To what degree did the Masons
influence Kappa Alpha, and how were they different?