{"id":8868,"date":"2016-07-06T06:47:55","date_gmt":"2016-07-06T11:47:55","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/?p=8868"},"modified":"2021-08-09T12:02:22","modified_gmt":"2021-08-09T17:02:22","slug":"whitehead-in-greensboro","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/07\/06\/whitehead-in-greensboro\/","title":{"rendered":"Whitehead in Greensboro"},"content":{"rendered":"

This post follows up on my\u00a0previous note<\/a>\u00a0about Alfred North Whitehead’s time\u00a0spent in Greensboro, Vermont. It was updated on July 7, 2016, thanks to information obtained from the Mitchells’ descendants.<\/em><\/p>\n

\"s-l1600\"<\/a><\/p>\n

I have\u00a0found out where the Whiteheads stayed when he was writing his philosophical magnum opus,\u00a0Process and Reality<\/em>. It was in a two-story cottage owned by economist Wesley Clare Mitchell and progressive educator Lucy Sprague Mitchell. The cottage\u00a0is on the north shore of Caspian Lake very near to a place where the “Huckleberry Rocks” jut out into the lake, and on which the Mitchells used to hold fire gatherings they sometimes called “druid fires.”<\/p>\n

The\u00a0picture above is of the Huckleberry Rocks in the early 1900s. Below are the rocks today, with the cottage, known as the “Green House,” visible in the distance.<\/p>\n

\"f48de448cdca985ad9f42fa952085565.b2c7dcabcd02d6b1a207e0dffe7b5242\"<\/a><\/p>\n

It seems\u00a0I’m not the first to seek Whitehead’s history on the shores of Caspian Lake. Ralph Pred, author of Onflow: Dynamics of Consciousness and Experience<\/a>\u00a0(MIT Press, 2005), did that in the summer of 1999. At the time Pred was working on his book — a highly original synthesis of Whitehead, William James, John Searle, and contemporary neurobiology — he\u00a0decided to make “a trip to Greensboro to visit the spot where Whitehead had his great productive and creative period.” (He notes this in a letter sent to the Greensboro Historical Society, which the Society’s Cathie Wilkinson kindly shared with me.)<\/p>\n

This was where, according to Victor Lowe’s biography, “Whitehead’s metaphysical system was created and his magnum opus, later named Process and Reality<\/em>, was shaped.” Based on hints in Lowe’s book, Pred visited the Mitchell property and found “a beautiful and prominent spot” on it where he “felt ‘shivers,’ which,” he writes, “led me to tell my wife that I would be surprised if Whitehead hadn’t spent time quite nearby, if not on the very spot.”<\/p>\n

Confirmation that the Whiteheads stayed at the Mitchells’ property can be found in Lucy Sprague Mitchell’s biography Two Lives: The Story of Wesley Clare Mitchell and Myself<\/em>\u00a0(Simon & Schuster, 1953). Mitchell writes:<\/p>\n

“On the edge of the place when we bought it was an ugly little cottage with an enchanting close view of the lake. We fixed it up a bit and called it the Guest House and loaned it to a succession of friends for the summers. … For two summers, the Alfred North Whiteheads lived there.”<\/p>\n

(After I first posted this message, one of the Mitchells’ descendants contacted me to let me know that the cottage is still owned by\u00a0the family and that it is available for rental<\/a> when they are not using it.)<\/p>\n

Mitchell’s biographer, Joyce Antler, writes that<\/p>\n

“For several summers, the Alfred North Whiteheads and their daughter, Jessie, used the cottage, joining in picnics and toasts on Huckleberry Rocks and the charades the family played in the evenings” (Antler, Lucy Sprague Mitchell: The Making of a Modern Woman,<\/em>\u00a0Yale U.P., 1987, p. 274-5).<\/p>\n

Lucy Sprague Mitchell\u00a0recounts one of these episodes with the Whiteheads:<\/p>\n

“We had expected to find them the interesting and charming people they proved to be. But we had not expected to find Mr. Whitehead an able and extremely active actor. The Whiteheads, the ‘Harriets,’ who were in the Guest House, and the Mitchells played charades some evenings. … I don’t remember the word in the other memorable charade. But I can see vividly the learned Mr. Whitehead as an entomologist, springing spryly around the room catching rare flying creatures in his butterfly net.” [323-4]<\/p>\n

The spryly “entomologist” would have been in his late 60s at the time.<\/p>\n

Whitehead’s productivity at Caspian Lake is recounted in two letters he sent to his son, which are shared in the appendix of Victor Lowe’s biography. (Whitehead’s personal\u00a0papers\u00a0were destroyed after his death,\u00a0according to\u00a0his request — why he asked for that is an interesting question — but the letters sent to his son were spared.)<\/p>\n

In one of the letters, dated August 22, 1927, and written from\u00a0“Plympton Camp, Caspian Lake–Greensboro” (neither Pred nor I nor anyone I know has been able to determine the meaning of the name “Plympton”), Whitehead writes\u00a0that “I have written nearly half a book on Metaphysics this summer … 9 1\/2 chapters … out of a projected plan of 20 or 25 chapters.”<\/p>\n

On the lakeside location Whitehead\u00a0writes, “I do wish you could see this place in its glory,” and adds that the rainy cold days “are the price to be paid for the wonderful air and vegetation, of the other days.”<\/p>\n

Two years later, writing again\u00a0from Caspian Lake on August 12, 1929, Whitehead wrote to his son:<\/p>\n

“At last I have got through with my Gifford Lectures — final proofs corrected, Index printed, and the last corrections put in. It is the biggest piece of imaginative work which I have attempted, and has been a great strain, especially for the last year. Whether it will be a success I cannot have any idea. It is rather an ambitious book, of the sort which may be a dead failure. We post the last package tomorrow.”<\/p>\n

What this tells us\u00a0is that Process and Reality<\/em> took between two and three years to write, though it was much longer in its conceptual development. As\u00a0Whitehead seemed to do a lot of writing in the summers, it’s fair to say, following Lowe, that the book was “shaped” in Greensboro during the summers of 1927-29. At least half of it was likely written there, if not more.<\/p>\n

For a town of 700 (though the population rises substantially in summertime), the northeast Vermont\u00a0town\u00a0of Greensboro can now add one more thing to its boasts. In addition to being the longtime summer residence of Wallace Stegner<\/a> and the focus of his\u00a0novels Second Growth<\/em> and\u00a0Crossing to Safety;<\/em>\u00a0the final resting place of ecotheologian Thomas Berry, who was buried there at the “ecozoic” Green Mountain Monastery<\/a>; and the home of award winning brewery Hill Farmstead (currently<\/a> the “Best Brewery in the World” according to RateBeer), cheese maker Jasper Hill (makers<\/a> of the 2014 “World’s Best Unpasteurized Cheese”), the\u00a0youth circus outfit Circus Smirkus, the Greensboro Arts Alliance and Residency, and with the neighboring town of Hardwick<\/a> the center of northeast Vermont’s lauded<\/a>\u00a0new agriculture scene<\/a>; it is now also the place where Alfred North Whitehead wrote what is possibly the most important work of metaphysical philosophy<\/a> of the twentieth century.<\/p>\n

\"20160705_094750\"<\/p>\n

The Huckleberry Rocks as seen from the Highland Lodge beach on the northeast side of Caspian Lake. The green cottage is hidden by trees to the right of the boathouse visible in the center-right of the photograph.<\/em><\/p>\n

Thanks to Maureen and Siobhan Mitchell for sharing information about the cottage, and to the Greenboro Historical Society and historian Allen Davis for helping me in my sleuthing for the site. The second photo above is taken from the Mitchells’\u00a0rental website<\/a> for the property<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

This post follows up on my\u00a0previous note\u00a0about Alfred North Whitehead’s time\u00a0spent in Greensboro, Vermont. It was updated on July 7, 2016, thanks to information obtained from the Mitchells’ descendants. I have\u00a0found out where the Whiteheads stayed when he was writing his philosophical magnum opus,\u00a0Process and Reality. It was in a two-story cottage owned by economist […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":99,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"advanced_seo_description":"","jetpack_seo_html_title":"","jetpack_seo_noindex":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[688977,4422],"tags":[350273,123514,350274,350272,350269,551,423],"class_list":["post-8868","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-geo_philosophy","category-process-relational-thought","tag-alfred-north-whitehead","tag-greensboro","tag-greensboro-vt","tag-place-and-philosophy","tag-process-and-reality","tag-vermont","tag-whitehead"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p4IC4a-2j2","jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":8836,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2016\/06\/20\/whiteheads-genius-loci\/","url_meta":{"origin":8868,"position":0},"title":"Whitehead’s genius loci","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"June 20, 2016","format":false,"excerpt":"I was astounded\u00a0to read the following passage as I sat in a cottage on the shore of Caspian Lake in Greenboro, Vermont, earlier today: \"Work on 'The Concept of Organism' began with the summer of 1927, which the Whiteheads spent in a cottage on the shore of Caspian Lake, in\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":10041,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2019\/01\/28\/process-and-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":8868,"position":1},"title":"Process and Reality","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"January 28, 2019","format":false,"excerpt":"I've been trying to convince acclaimed northeast Vermont brewer Shaun Hill to add Whitehead's Process and Reality to his Philosophical Series\u00a0of ales, stouts, lambics, and porters, on the pretext that it was written down the road from the brewery. But also because Nietzsche, Foucault, Emerson, Thoreau, and Deleuze would appreciate\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music & soundscape"","block_context":{"text":"Music & soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2019\/01\/a3292134263_10-275x275.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":13535,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2024\/03\/19\/musical-process-and-reality\/","url_meta":{"origin":8868,"position":2},"title":"Musical process and reality","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"March 19, 2024","format":false,"excerpt":"A lot has been written about music and the philosophy of Gilles Deleuze: for instance, on Deleuze and music theory, on music after Deleuze, and on Deleuze's \"Thought-Music,\" and there've been some valiant efforts to put Deleuze to music, like this one, this one, and this one, and several related\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Music & soundscape"","block_context":{"text":"Music & soundscape","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/music-soundscape\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/img.youtube.com\/vi\/c3xK35N0XKg\/0.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":1366,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2010\/11\/05\/process-relational-theory-primer\/","url_meta":{"origin":8868,"position":3},"title":"Process-relational theory primer","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"November 5, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"One of the tasks of this blog, since its inception in late 2008, has been to articulate a theoretical-philosophical perspective that I have come to call \u201cprocess-relational.\u201d This is a theoretical paradigm and an ontology that takes the basic nature of the world to be that of relational process: that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Eco-theory"","block_context":{"text":"Eco-theory","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/ecophilosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":8355,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2015\/07\/28\/sr-or-morton-on-the-universe-of-things\/","url_meta":{"origin":8868,"position":4},"title":"SR, or Morton on The Universe of Things","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"July 28, 2015","format":false,"excerpt":"Tim Morton has penned a nice (if thoroughly Mortonish)\u00a0introduction\u00a0to a very nice introduction (by Steven Shaviro) to speculative realism. With lines like these: \"Theory class, in other words, needs an upgrade. Theory class is pretty obviously quite narrow in any case. \u201cTheory\u201d is basically (mostly continental) philosophy or derivatives of\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Philosophy"","block_context":{"text":"Philosophy","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/geo_philosophy\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Gallery_Image_10562","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2015\/07\/Gallery_Image_10562-275x206.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":9856,"url":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/2018\/10\/09\/shadowing-the-anthropocene\/","url_meta":{"origin":8868,"position":5},"title":"Shadowing the Anthropocene","author":"Adrian J Ivakhiv","date":"October 9, 2018","format":false,"excerpt":"Shadowing the Anthropocene: Eco-Realism for Turbulent Times arrived in the mail today. It's published by punctum books, an open-access academic and para-academic publisher I've found to be a real delight to work with. Eileen Joy deserves a medal for her leadership of punctum, and\u00a0Vincent W.J. van Gerven Oei's cover and\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Anthropocene"","block_context":{"text":"Anthropocene","link":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/category\/anthropo_scene\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/files\/2018\/10\/180502shadowingtheanthropocene-cover-front-draft-647x1024-174x275.png?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/99"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8868"}],"version-history":[{"count":27,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12101,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8868\/revisions\/12101"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.uvm.edu\/aivakhiv\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}