My recent posts have featured info on Eben Jenks Loomis, the father of Mabel Loomis Todd, the first editor of posthumous editions of Emily Dickinson’s poetry. Before I move on to other topics, I thought I’d share a few funny items I found about him.
When I first came upon the name Eben Jenks Loomis, I found info about him on Wikipedia:
“Eben Jenks Loomis (November 11, 1828 – December 2, 1912) was an American astronomer, born in Oppenheim, New York. He attended the Lawrence Scientific School (Harvard) in 1851–53. He was assistant in the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac office from 1850 until his retirement in 1900. During this time he also held the position of special assistant at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.”
When I first came upon the name Eben Jenks Loomis, I found info about him on Wikipedia:
“Eben Jenks Loomis (November 11, 1828 – December 2, 1912) was an American astronomer, born in Oppenheim, New York. He attended the Lawrence Scientific School (Harvard) in 1851–53. He was assistant in the American Ephemeris and Nautical Almanac office from 1850 until his retirement in 1900. During this time he also held the position of special assistant at the United States Naval Observatory in Washington, DC.”
| However, I later found this bit of information on him on – of all places – an archive on Walt Whitman in “a clarification of the misidentification of Eben J. Loomis as Elias J. Loomis in a Whitman letter to William D. O’Conner dated June 25, 1982." I have to admit, I was a bit baffled there for a minute! A letter from Whitman in 1982? LOL – the actual date was June 25, 1882. Funny that they need a correction on the very page on which they’re announcing a correction! Anyway, the point of the matter was to set the record straight involving a footnote where “EBEN” Loomis had been erroneously identified as “ELIAS” Loomis. Here’s what the site says: |  |
“In a letter dated 25 June 1882 to William D. O'Connor, Whitman writes that he sent a copy of Leaves of Grass ‘to Prof. Loomis’ (The Correspondence, edited by Edwin 28 Haviland Miller [New York: New York University Press, 1964], 3:294), and Mr. Miller records in a footnote that Whitman ‘sent the volume on June 20 [1882] to Professor Elias Loomis (1811-1889), the astronomer and Yale professor, who at the time was in the Nautical Almanac Office of the Navy Department in Washington (CB). According to O'Connor's letter of June 19, Loomis knew that Emerson had never qualified his praise of Leaves of Grass (Feinberg; Traubel, I, 313).’”
But here’s the odd bit of info that caught my eye (which I’ve underlined):
“Polly Longsworth's Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair & Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1984) is the last place one might expect to find anything about Walt Whitman. But on p.13, and also on p. 18, we read that Mabel Loomis Todd's father, Eben Jenks Loomis, took walks with Whitman when he was in Washington between 1867 and 1872. Loomis, his daughter learned, distorted the truth about himself – ‘exaggeration, it was, rather than lying’ -and he was never a ‘mathematician, scientist, astronomer, philosopher, or professor-all titles by which his family identified him’ (p.15). But for 50 years, beginning about 1851, he was little more than a clerk (later a senior assistant) in the nautical almanac office in Washington.”
How strange is that? And it gets stranger.
The Wikipedia article also included a link to “a paper read by his granddaughter Millicent Todd, to a group of friends, 8 February 1913.” I did not read the entire paper, but I did scan the introduction, and I found that to be more than a bit odd. Personally, I believe the opening story of the “mere passerby” in the first three paragraphs is a total (and utterly bizarre) fabrication. Give the intro a gander and let me know what you think.
But here’s the odd bit of info that caught my eye (which I’ve underlined):
“Polly Longsworth's Austin and Mabel: The Amherst Affair & Love Letters of Austin Dickinson and Mabel Loomis Todd (New York: Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 1984) is the last place one might expect to find anything about Walt Whitman. But on p.13, and also on p. 18, we read that Mabel Loomis Todd's father, Eben Jenks Loomis, took walks with Whitman when he was in Washington between 1867 and 1872. Loomis, his daughter learned, distorted the truth about himself – ‘exaggeration, it was, rather than lying’ -and he was never a ‘mathematician, scientist, astronomer, philosopher, or professor-all titles by which his family identified him’ (p.15). But for 50 years, beginning about 1851, he was little more than a clerk (later a senior assistant) in the nautical almanac office in Washington.”
How strange is that? And it gets stranger.
The Wikipedia article also included a link to “a paper read by his granddaughter Millicent Todd, to a group of friends, 8 February 1913.” I did not read the entire paper, but I did scan the introduction, and I found that to be more than a bit odd. Personally, I believe the opening story of the “mere passerby” in the first three paragraphs is a total (and utterly bizarre) fabrication. Give the intro a gander and let me know what you think.
NOTE: The full text of the introduction follows the image below:
Last summer my grandfather and I were visiting Newport. We were sitting in the automobile of our friend waiting while she did an errand. A poor girl walked past, then turned and came back again.
“Excuse me,” she said to me, “but will you tell me that old gentleman’s name? He shows so much thought in his face.”
A mind so filled with fascinating facts, so clear in it understanding and interpretation of them, a spirit so exquisite in its trust and in its power of direct beholding had quickened a mere passerby. The poor girl asked his name. It was her way of getting a little nearer to the beautiful nature she perceived. We may ask the sources of its power, looking at him in his perfection, surveying in loving wonder the work of art we call his life.
His serene philosophy brought to himself vigor of body and soul, and glimpses of it to everyone who knew him. He had achieved simplicity. A steady growth of spirit like his can be compared to that of a plant, expanding at last into the flower which Ruskin called “the part of the plant’s form developed at the moment of tis intensest life. What the character of the flower shall be,” he said, “depends entirely upon the portion of the plant into which this rapture of spirit has been put.” The plant holds within itself the impetus to such a culmination, reaching it slowly, and in perfect stillness. My grandfather’s death was like the fading of the flower, just drooping its dear perfected head.
“Excuse me,” she said to me, “but will you tell me that old gentleman’s name? He shows so much thought in his face.”
A mind so filled with fascinating facts, so clear in it understanding and interpretation of them, a spirit so exquisite in its trust and in its power of direct beholding had quickened a mere passerby. The poor girl asked his name. It was her way of getting a little nearer to the beautiful nature she perceived. We may ask the sources of its power, looking at him in his perfection, surveying in loving wonder the work of art we call his life.
His serene philosophy brought to himself vigor of body and soul, and glimpses of it to everyone who knew him. He had achieved simplicity. A steady growth of spirit like his can be compared to that of a plant, expanding at last into the flower which Ruskin called “the part of the plant’s form developed at the moment of tis intensest life. What the character of the flower shall be,” he said, “depends entirely upon the portion of the plant into which this rapture of spirit has been put.” The plant holds within itself the impetus to such a culmination, reaching it slowly, and in perfect stillness. My grandfather’s death was like the fading of the flower, just drooping its dear perfected head.
| I also learned that Loomis himself wrote poetry. A Sunset Idyl and Other Poems, reproduced from the original artifact, is available on Amazon-dot-com, and the description states, “This work has been selected by scholars as being culturally important, and is part of the knowledge base of civilization as we know it.” I gotta say – I’ve made it near 70 years here on this earth, and I’ve never heard of this work. I suppose I’m just lacking in my knowledge base of civilization. The eponymous poem, "A Sunset Idyl" is below. It is rather lengthy, and I believe if you click on the images in the gallery below, the images should enlarge. I'll talk a little bit more about this poem tomorrow -- or soon -- as some of the lines called to mind a few poems by Dickinson. If the images do not enlarge, and you are unable to read it, you can find the work -- and the entire book -- online HERE. |  |
| One last item that piqued my interest in Eben Loomis was this headline/link at the right from the New York Times. As a true-crime buff, I couldn’t help but wonder what dastardly deed had transpired to bring about the sudden deaths of two astronomers. |  |
Alas, there was nothing scandalous. It just turns out that two astronomers died on the same date, Eben J. Loomis, who notably served at the U.S. Nautical Almanac Office, and Edwin Smith, an astronomer who spent over 30 years working for the U.S. Coast and Geodetic Survey.
| Below: Loomis' obituary from the New York Sun from December 3, 1912. Right: A portion of a lengthy obituary on Loomis from The Springfield Weekly Republican, dated December 5, 1912.  |  |
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