October 19, 2014

Whatever happened to Primo Communist Flitworth?

I'm reading Simon Winchester's "The Men Who United the States: America's Explorers, Inventors, Eccentrics and Mavericks, and the Creation of One Nation, Indivisible," the part about Robert Owen, born in Wales in 1771, who came to America with ideas of utopian socialism he'd developed in Scotland. He met "with President Monroe, took tea with Thomas Jefferson and James Madison, and gave two public lectures in the Capitol. John Quincy Adams, the president-elect, came to both talks, and was so taken that he had Owen build a scale model of his proposed New Harmony building and display it at the White House." New Harmony failed:
As is so often the way with utopias, factions developed — no fewer than ten had formed within just two years of Owen’s arrival, and all began bickering, squabbling, and arguing for various rewritings of the commune rules, each splinter group jostling for ideological supremacy. In the end, a demoralized and disillusioned Owen, shocked at a brand of waywardness he had never experienced back home among the Scots, returned to Britain. His confidence was sorely shaken: his ideas for the universal betterment of the working classes began slowly to evaporate, and he became steadily ever more marginalized and ridiculed a figure.
That paragraph ends with a footnote, and it is in that footnote where we encounter the most perfectly silly name I have ever seen:
Robert Owen’s final grand gesture was the creation of an immense and ruinously expensive cooperative community in Hampshire called Queenswood, in which seven hundred people lived, their inner quadrangle illuminated by “koniophostic light,” with conveyor belts bringing food from central kitchens to their dining halls. Couples moved in. A first baby born at Queenswood was formally named Primo Communist Flitworth. But the community never really prospered and closed after only a short while. Owen then changed gear once again and provided valuable help in settling the rival US-Canadian claims to Oregon territory, then tried in vain once more to sell his socialist ideas in Paris, where he died in 1858 and was buried in the grounds of a deconsecrated church.
What happened to Primo Communist Flitworth? Was he not worth a flit? Did he have some informal name that he used and blended into the general populace. He's the 19th century's Zezozose Zadfrack Glutz. Who did he become when he disaggregated himself from the commune that gave him his stigmatizing name? A nobody?

31 comments:

Lauderdale Vet said...

Perhaps he became good friends with a boy named Sue.

Ann Althouse said...

What is koniophostic light?

Anonymous said...

With Utopias it is not so much the people you let in but the people you keep out.

Lauderdale Vet said...

"What is koniophostic light?"

Limelight, I think.

"711. Combustion of in oxygen. Place a small piece of lime in a hole cut in lighted charcoal, as in Ex. 225 ; expose this to a stream of oxygen hi the manner there re-presented, it will become incandescent, and give out the most intense light. If instead of charcoal the combustion of the lime be assisted by a stream of hydrogen as well as a stream of oxygen, the effect is still more brilliant, and constitutes the oxyhydrogen microscope, and also the Drummond, or koniophostic light. "

mesquito said...

In free societies only insufferable busybodies would choose to join a commune. Of COURSE they get all up in each other's faces.

The trick is to force normal people to join.

Gahrie said...

He moved to the United States and changed his name to Dunham.

Meade said...

Maybe he changed his name to something more socially acceptable:

Like Sir Michael Carmichael Zutt.

Oliver Boliver Butt.

Even Zanzibar Buck-Buck McFate...

Or possibly, simply... Too Many Daves.

Bobber Fleck said...

He moved to the United States and changed his name to Dunham.

We have a winner!

Anonymous said...

An effective Utopia requires a well-practiced firing squad.

Anonymous said...

An effective Utopia also requires the Janet Renos to stay the hell away.

Lauderdale Vet said...

Tangentially, Koniophobia is a fear of dust.

Ambrose said...

Owen's son Robert Dale Owen had an impactful life. He was active in the NYC Working Man's Party in the 1820s and a strong and early advocate or public education. He then moved to Indiana, served as a Congressman, and wrote the legislation that created the Smithsonian Institute (with Smithson's bequest).

chickelit said...

"Limelight" etymology: link

Anonymous said...

I don't condone what he did, but Charles Manson WAS a Visionary. Indeed, he was one of the last True Men: a strong belief in how the World should be, and his plans at the forefront to attain it. Plus, he used dune buggies.

Today's Charles Mansons are all content to play video games, or write comments on blogs. Lots of comments on blogs. That doesn't get the chicks, and you need chicks to get that successful 'the-end-is-near' commune vibe going. Plus: chicks dig dune bu

Quaestor said...

P.C. Flitworth's fate, whatever it was, is emblematic of the universal tendency of parents to regard their children as extensions of themselves. When the parents regard themselves as revolutionary and/or visionary, the tendency is only magnified -- they seek to dominate their offspring's identity, outlook, philosophy, everything -- choosing a goofy name is just the tip of the iceberg.

This "let's give baby a name he'll resent forever" tendency has a history in the West that goes back centuries and continues to the present day -- the Cathars did it, the early Lutherans did it, as well as the Calvinist (check out the given names of Massachusetts Bay Colony settlers). French revolutionaries were particularly egregious offenders, as were the Utopian socialists and the doctrinaire Stalinist of the 1930s (witness Valdimir Illich Sanchez). And then came the Hippies and their ill-starred spawn -- Rain, Breeze, Doobie, Zephyr, Moon Unit...

chickelit said...

"P.C. Flitworth" is excellent coinage..

Anonymous said...

The 'role' of Sharon Tate will now be played by Gwyneth Paltrow. Just thinking aloud.

Quaestor said...

Oops. I got that name wrong. "Carlos" isn't Vladimir. He's Ramirez Ilich Sanchez, so he's a Red Diaper baby who didn't even get a revolutionary name that made literal sense, Ilich being a misspelling of Lenin's patronymic.

Imagine being "Son of Il."

Fernandinande said...

From Dave Barry:

"Ole Ass" in the 1940 Census
http://www.archives.com/1940-census/ole-ass-mn-42715040

"Fart Low" United States Census, 1940
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/V1LG-R7B

"Albino Urine" in the 1940 Census
http://www.ancestry.com/1940-census/usa/California/Albino-Urine_2jr66f

"Vagina M Buckerhoff" in 1920 Census
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/M8CZ-ZSW

"Ima Urethra Mosher"
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/V6QJ-GQM

"Pervy Tingle"
https://familysearch.org/pal:/MM9.1.1/VBSK-X4Q

Anonymous said...

If you play Beatles' albums backwards you get secret messages.

If you play 'Coldplay' albums you get Radiohead.

Gwyneth Paltrow used to be married to the singer of Coldplay. It's all connected, man.

Anonymous said...

Corrected:
If you play 'Coldplay' albums BACKWARDS you get Radiohead.

Michael said...

If you play Coldplay backwards at 78 rpm you get Portishead.

Quaestor said...

No, Portishead is what you hear if you play Radiohead backwards.

If you play Coldplay backwards at 78 rpm you get Blur.

Quaestor said...

And if you play Blur backwards at 78 you get Muse. And you play Muse backwards you hear Coldplay

It's a recursive alternative world out there, man.

chickelit said...

The ham was done at 8:26 AM.

Put a fork in it, beta3000

chickelit said...

La bianca supremacy and all...

William said...

Primo Levi said "I'm constantly amazed at man's inhumanity to man". You get such a jaundiced outlook on life after a stay at Auschwitz. When you stop to think about it, Auschwitz had some of the qualities of a utopian commune. No one had any special privileges and everyone had the time and motivation necessary to contemplate the bind of mortality that links all living creatures.......At any rate Primo isn't such a bad name to be stuck with.

Anonymous said...

Who knows what happened to PC Flitworth?

His namesakes, however, were instrumental in installing the first Community-Organizer-Golfer-in-Chief in the White House.

kcom said...

I think we've had quite enough of Europeans bringing their utopian socialist ideas over here. With oh so predictable results, as the article mentions.

Anonymous said...

The real lessons of the Utopian societies that sprung up in the early and mid 19th century in America, such as Charles Lane's and A. Bronson Alcott's (father of Louisa May Alcott) quickly abandoned Fruitlands, and nearby Brook's Farm was that, depite all the talk of a new way to live, there was never enough of other people's money to make a go of it, which was wisely observed by Ralph Waldo Emerson.

For instance, Alcott and Lane were away from Fruitlands, traveling, looking for donors and inspiration when the women-folk, left behind, mostly Alcott's wife and four daughters, had to bring in the barley crop in the face of violent late summer storms, to prevent starvation later in the winter. Fruitlands, as an experiment in consociate living was abandoned in January of the next year when firewood supplies were almost exhausted.

It's a struggle to believe life isn't a struggle.

Xmas said...

I suspect Primo got himself a nice laudanum addiction then died young from the consumption.