The Trouble With Tom: The Strange Afterlife And Times Of Thomas Paine (2005) - Plot & Excerpts
Paul Collins writes:He did still have some visitors to break up his loneliness, though. His old friend John Stewart was in the city for a while, and - how time was changing him! Strange to think of all that had passed since their days together in London, reading the day's papers and philosophizing until the wee hours of the morning at the White Bear coffeehouse on Piccadilly. Back in 1790, Stewart had been perhaps the only man in London who could draw more stares than Paine himself. Tall, muscular, and exotic, Stewart had lived the kind of life found only in adventure fiction. He'd shipped out to Madras as a young clerk for the East India Company in 1763, only to decide that - as he announced brusquely in a letter to company directors - he was "born for nobler pursuits than to be a copier of invoices and bills of landing to a company of grocers, haberdashers, and cheese-mongers." And he was right: joining an Indian prince as a secretary, he rose through the ranks to become an army general and a prime minister - before, incredibly, throwing it all over to walk on foot through the mountains of Persia and Turkey, the deserts of Arabia and Egypt, deep into Ethiopia and into the terra incognita of central Africa, and then back around the Adriatic and Mediterranean to Paris. When he reached London, he was dubbed by the incredulous press "Walking Stewart." Never was there a more apt name; for he later hiked through Lapland and down into central Asia, and after sailing to New York walked all the way down to Paraguay. Walking Stewart became, as his friend Thomas De Quincey put it, the first circumambulator of the globe. Stewart attributed his survival to two things that struck anyone else back then as incomprehensible: a vegetarian diet, and an utter refusal to ever carry a weapon.Yes, they'd made quite a pair back then. Paine, a failed grocer and customs officer who had moved to America and overthrown the monarchy, and Stewart, who paraded through Piccadilly in Armenian garb, his mannerisms mixed with those of all the exotic lands he'd walked through, and his speech and accent now a mélange from the innumerable languages he'd learned. It was muttered among onlookers that Paine had become some sort of inventor, going about trying to sell iron bridges - and Stewart, well, nobody knew quite what to make of him at all. The man wouldn't talk of his fantastic travels; instead, he was always distributing bizarre pamphlets he'd privately printed, bearing titles like The Roll of a Tennis Ball Through the Moral World. The few who could read past their strange diction and publication date - for Stewart had invented his own calendar - found all sorts of curious ideas inside. Stewart found it incomprehensible that women put up with child care, and believed the state should establish daytime nurseries so that mothers and fathers might work or improve their minds. He saw nothing wrong with prostitution, and considered it a typical city business like lamplighting or driving a taxi - indeed, he saw little wrong with sex, and so believed there should be "promiscuous intercourse... that the population might not be come redundant."And now, as they sat aged in Manhattan, Paine and his old friend still warmly disagreed on many issues: Walking Stewart had always been dubious of Paine's cries for overthrowing kings, and he thought Paine's support of voting rights was absurd. What would it come to, Stewart scoffed - giving the vote to women and apprentices as well? And while Stewart was a confirmed atheist, Paine still believed in a God - in an animating moral force, if you will - he just didn't believe in the Bible or in clergy.But they were both misunderstood geniuses of a sort; Paine found his books banned in England and despised in America, and Stewart brooded over the fate of his own pamphlets as well. He had a notion, he said, of preserving them for posterity. Stewart bid his readers, when done reading him, to bury his books in their gardens at a depth of seven or eight feet. They were to tell no one else of the location; but then, on their deathbeds, they were to breathe the secret to a trusted few. These fellows would keep the secret burial place until their deathbeds years later, and would communicate it again - down though the centuries, and the millennia, a secret society of philosophers passing down at death the sacred memory of the locations of Stewart's writings. Oh - the Circumambulator then feared - but what if someday my works prove unreadable because the English language itself has moldered away by then? He thereupon decided that first his readers should translate the works into Latin, then bury them.Paine watched his strange friend return to England. Poor John! a traveling ascetic whose only real pleasure had been in music - the man was going deaf now. Their times were drawing near now... too near, in fact. Word came back from across the ocean months later that Stewart's ship had been dashed to pieces on its way to Liverpool. It sounded like he hadn't survived, hadn't even had the chance to pass on his secret burial spots to his brotherhood.
There's something very Sarah Vowell-ish about this book - a fond traipsing around America (and beyond) in search of the history behind sites and stones and monuments (and in this instance, bones) in which the author reflects as much on what brought us to any particular moment, and what culture is making of that moment, as on the alleged subject. That's not a criticism - I found this absorbing, and even charming in places - I'm not sure I needed to know all this about what happened to Tom Paine's body after he died, but since I'm so very fond of his prose (and that, in and of itself, is something of a cultural miracle) perhaps it's fitting that I know his body's legacy as well as that owned by his words.There were a couple of places where Collins made me uncomfortable - slightly too . . . nice an analysis of race relations in the 19th century, for example (and nice truly is the word I need - it was insipid rather than lacking entirely; pretty rather than deep). I would have also appreciated an analysis of why it was men who kept buying Tom Paine's bones - what did that say about money, property, wills, and the relative political positions of the sexes (quite aside from their racial and religious identities) that women were never at the heart of this mess?
What do You think about The Trouble With Tom: The Strange Afterlife And Times Of Thomas Paine (2005)?
Once again Paul Collins proves himself to be one of the most important historians of our time. The Trouble with Tom is the most important piece of early American history that Americans will never know about. Collins explores not only the misadventures surrounding Paine's missing bones, but more importantly, what lasts long after the body- Paine's works, and the figures throughout history that his writing has affected, and how one of the most important-and forgotten-American revolutionaries influenced generations of progressive activists to come. Absolutely hilarious and touching when it needs to be, Collins shows us once again that history is first and foremost about people, not dates or places. Hands down the best book I've read in the past year.
—Michael
I find that the more I learn out about Thomas Paine, the more intriguing of a figure of history he becomes. Unfortunately, I’ve yet to find a biography that does him proper justice. For, he was both equally a wonderfully principled and admirable patriot as well as something of a rather despicable and greatly reviled Bukowski-like character. To find a truthful and accurate accounting of his life that balances this disparity of his character has proved difficult for me. In the meanwhile, I’ve found this wonderful book that deals with the truly bizarre afterlife of the man. That’s right, his afterlife! For, not only did Thomas shape and influence the ultimate direction of our present form of government while he still lived and breathed but also even long after he took his last breath he is seen to have nearly just as much effect on history in a variety of surprising ways. Oddly, this all comes about through one of his most fiercest enemies who in a somewhat shocking change of heart towards the man dug up the mortal remains of Thomas Paine out of a deep reverence for him. His goal was to triumphantly return him to his birthplace of England and give him the honor he was due. Unfortunately, this misguided yet somehow affectionate plan didn’t pan out and the bones of the great philosopher ended up shelved in a box and were forgotten.Afterwards, the path that these bones take and the lives they touch are documented in this little book and makes up for some of the most engrossing tales ever told. However, despite the amazing details of this story I initially questioned whether this author was actually the right person for this job. This may have been partly my own high expectation of finally finding a good book about Thomas Paine but largely I feel that it was more due to the style of writing that the author uses to present this story.Of course, this also might fall under my own expectations as well. I was hoping for more of a typical straightforward historical approach rather than what is seen here. The author, Paul Collins, is clearly a very clever and well-educated writer. Maybe, too much for his own good. He presents this story in something of a loosely connected narrative told almost as if by a time-traveler with something like a Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy improbability drive attached to it. The button that operates this time machine of his seems to sends him to different times and places in this sprawling maze of a story in ridiculously and jarringly unconnected places. I found this extremely frustrating and unnecessary at first but the story is just too good to put down over such quibbling complaints and in the end I finally warmed up to it.At times, this manner of telling the story shows itself to be absolutely brilliant and other times seems rather corny and old-fashioned. In the end, it may have been the best way to approach such an insanely diverse subject matter as this but despite its flaws it ends up becoming a rather satisfying read regardless. Moreover, the tangled web of participants in this story concerning Tom’s bones grows exponentially larger as over the years bits and fragments of his remains are seen to take divergent paths. This complicates the narrative even further for the investigation is not just looking for a single corpse but any number of its different parts in a variety of places. In the end, one can only hope for some sort of resolution to this tale after so many detours but it becomes clear with the ever dwindling pieces of him going ever which way that the prospect of this is essentially hopeless. Needless to say, having taken us on this fascinating yet morbid tour of history the author owes his readers some semblance of a conclusion and thankfully he does manage to come up with one. It might not exactly be what one could hope for but it is the best one could expect considering the prospects. At the very least, this book introduces us to such a vast array of fascinating characters, many of who are worthy of having books written solely about themselves, that the journey itself ultimately becomes its own reward. With some allowances and a little patience this book delivers a compelling saga that is unquestionably worth all “the trouble with Tom” brings.
—Rob Charpentier
Tom Paine caused trouble even after he died--it wasn't enough to livelong enough to annoy the revolutions he helped to start, he lived on as a gave-robbed body, attached to every 19th century genuinely radical and absolutely crackpot idea. From vegetarianism, octagon communes, birth control, abolition, phrenology, spiritualism, free press, Quakers, quack medicine and deism to the Reform Act of 1832, that man's stolen head got around. Clever way to connect the 18th century's rationalism with the 19th century's romantic lunacy.
—Margaret Sankey
