Box Turtle Bulletin

The Daily Agenda for Tuesday, July 26

TODAY’S AGENDA:
Henry Fielding’s A History of Tom Jones, A Foundling is purported to be a biography of a young bastard child trying to make his way in the world. It begins with his birth and continues on up until his marriage to Sophia. Published in 1749, Fielding’s satirical novel is interspersed with amusing essays with literally descriptive titles. Book three, for example, opens with “Containing Little or Nothing,” while Book four’s opening essay is titled “Containing Five Pages of Paper.” Book fourteen opens with “An Essay to Prove That an Author Will Write the Better for Having Some Knowledge of the Subject on which He Writes,” an essay that should be required reading for bloggers everywhere. My favorite is the essay which opens book two, “Showing What Kind of a History This Is: What It Is Like, and What It Is Not Like”:

Though we have properly enough entitled this our work, a history, and not a life, nor an apology for a life, as is more in fashion; yet we intend in it rather to pursue the method of those writers who profess to disclose the revolutions of countries, than to imitate the painful and voluminous historian, who, to preserve the regularity of his series, thinks himself obliged to fill up as much paper with the detail of months and years in which nothing remarkably happened, as he employs upon those notable eras when the greatest scenes have been transacted on the human stage.

Such histories as these do, in reality, very much resemble a newspaper, which consists of just the same number of words, whether there be any news in it or not. They may likewise be compared to a stage-coach, which performs constantly the same course, empty as well as full. The writer, indeed, seems to think himself obliged to keep even pace with time, whose amanuensis he is; and, like his master, travels as slowly through the centuries of monkish dullness, when the world seems to have been asleep, as through that bright and busy age …

Now it is our purpose, in the ensuing pages, to pursue a contrary method. When any extraordinary scene presents itself (as we trust will often be the case), we share spare no pains nor paper to open it at large to our readers; but of whole years should pass without producing anything worthy his notice, we shall not be afraid of a chasm in our history, but shall hasten on to matters of consequence, and leave such periods of time totally unobserved.

These are indeed to be considered as blanks in the grand lottery of time. We therefore, who are the registers of that lottery, shall imitate those sagacious persons who deal in that which is drawn at Guildhall, and who never trouble the public with the many blanks they dispose of; but when a great prize happens to be drawn, the newspapers are presently filled with it, and the world is sure to be informed at whose office it was sold: indeed, commonly two or three different offices lay claim to the honour of having disposed of it; by which, I suppose, the adventurers are given to understand that certain brokers are in the secrets of Fortune, and indeed of her cabinet council.

My reader then is not to be surprised, if, in the course of this work, he shall find some chapters very short, and others altogether long; some that contain only the time of a single day, and others that comprise years; in a word, if my history sometimes seems to stand still, and sometimes to fly. For all which I shall not look on myself as accountable to any court of critical jurisdiction whatever; for as I am, in reality, the founder of a new province of writing, so I am at liberty to make what laws I please therein. And these laws, my readers, whom I consider as my subjects, are bound to believe in and to obey; with which that they may readily and cheerfully comply, I do hereby assure them that I shall principally regard their ease and advantage in all such institutions; for this I do not, like a jure divino tyrant, imagine that they are my slaves or my commodity. I am, indeed, set over them for their own good only, and was created for their use, and not they for mine. Nor do I doubt, while I make their interest the great rule of my writing, they will unanimously concur in supporting my dignity, and in rendering me all the honour I shall deserve or desire.

That was his way of marking the passage of time by filling several more pages in his novel despite nothing much happening in the story. It is also my way of marking time for today, since I have nothing to show in the way of birthdays, history, or planned events. It’s not that there’s nothing out there, nor that is there nothing in our past for today. I just don’t have it. Unfortunately, I don’t possess the literary tyrannical powers of the emminently entertaining Hank F. to pass the day unnoticed without posting something. This feature, after all, is called the Daily Agenda, whether anything is happening or not.

If you know of something going on today or of an event in history, please feel free to share it in the comments.

If you know of something that belongs on the agenda, please send it here. PLEASE, don’t forget to include the basics: who, what, when, where, and URL (if available).