The Morgesons.
by Elizabeth Stoddard.
PREFACE.
I suppose it was environment that caused me to write these novels; but the mystery of it is, that when I left my native village I did not dream that imagination would lead me there again, for the simple annals of our village and domestic ways did not interest me; neither was I in the least studious. My years were pa.s.sed in an attempt to have a good time, according to the desires and fancies of youth. Of literature and the literary life, I and my tribe knew nothing; we had not discovered "sermons in stones." Where then was the panorama of my stories and novels stored, that was unrolled in my new sphere? Of course, being moderately intelligent I read everything that came in my way, but merely for amus.e.m.e.nt. It had been laid up against me as a persistent fault, which was not profitable; I should peruse moral, and pious works, or take up sewing,--that interminable thing, "white seam," which filled the leisure moments of the right-minded. To the _personnel_ of writers I gave little heed; it was the hero they created that charmed me, like Miss Porter"s gallant Pole, Sobieski, or the ardent Ernest Maltravers, of Bulwer.
I had now come to live among those who made books, and were interested in all their material, for all was for the glory of the whole.
Prefaces, notes, indexes, were unnoticed by me,--even Walter Scott"s and Lord Byron"s. I began to get glimpses of a profound ignorance, and did not like the position as an outside consideration. These mental productive adversities abased me. I was well enough in my way, but nothing was expected from me in their way, and when I beheld their ardor in composition, and its fine emulation, like "a sheep before her shearers," I was dumb. The environment pressed upon me, my pride was touched; my situation, though "tolerable, was not to be endured."
Fortunate or not, we were poor. It was not strange that I should marry, said those who knew the step I had taken; but that I should follow that old idyl; and accept the destiny of a garret and a crust with a poet, was incredible! Therefore, being apart from the diversions of society, I had many idle hours. One day when my husband was sitting at the receipt of customs, for he had obtained a modest appointment, I sat by a little desk, where my portfolio lay open.
A pen was near, which I took up, and it began to write, wildly like "Planchette" upon her board, or like a kitten clutching a ball of yarn fearfully. But doing it again--I could not say why--my mind began upon a festival in my childhood, which my mother arranged for several poor old people at Thanksgiving. I finished the sketch in private, and gave it the t.i.tle of "A Christmas Dinner," as one more modern. I put in occasional "fiblets" about the respectable guests, Mrs. Carver and Mrs. Chandler, and one dreadful little girl foisted upon me to entertain. It pleased the editor of _Harper"s Magazine_, who accepted it, and sent me a check which would look wondrous small now. I wrote similar sketches, which were published in that magazine. Then I announced my intention of writing a "long story," and was told by him of the customs that he thought I "lacked the constructive faculty."
I hope that I am writing an object lesson, either of learning how, or not learning how, to write.
I labored daily, when alone, for weeks; how many sheets of foolscap I covered, and dashed to earth, was never told. Since, by my "infinite pains and groans," I have been reminded of Barkis, in "David Copperfield," when he crawled out of his bed to get a guinea from his strong box for David"s dinner. Naturally, I sent the story to _Harper"s Magazine_, and it was curtly refused. My husband, moved by pity by my discouragement, sent it to Mr. Lowell, then editor of the _Atlantic Monthly_. In a few days I received a letter from him, which made me very happy. He accepted the story, and wrote me then, and afterwards, letters of advice and suggestion. I think he saw through my mind, its struggles, its ignorance, and its ambition. Also I got my guinea for my pains. The _Atlantic Monthly_ sent me a hundred dollars.
I doubt but for Mr. Lowell"s interest and kindness I should ever have tried prose again. I owe a debt of grat.i.tude to him which I shall always give to his n.o.ble memory.
My story did not set the river on fire, as stories are apt to do nowadays. It attracted so little notice from those I knew, and knew of, that naturally my ambition would have been crushed.
Notwithstanding, and saying nothing to anybody, I began "The Morgesons," and everywhere I went, like Mary"s lamb, my MS. was sure to go. Meandering along the path of that family, I took them much to heart, and finished their record within a year. I may say here, that the clans I marshaled for my pages had vanished from the sphere of reality--in my early day the village Squire, peerless in blue broadcloth, who scolded, advised, and helped his poorer neighbors; the widows, or maidens, who accepting service "as a favor," often remained a lifetime as friend as well as "help;" the race of coast-wise captains and traders, from Maine to Florida, as acute as they were ignorant; the rovers of the Atlantic and the Pacific, were gone not to return. If with these characters I have deserved the name of "realist," I have also clothed my skeletons with the robe of romance.
"The Morgesons" completed, and no objections made to its publication, it was published. As an author friend happened to be with us, almost on the day it was out, I gave it to him to read, and he returned it to me with the remark that there were "a good many _whiches_ in it." That there were, I must own, and that it was difficult to extirpate them. I was annoyed at their fertility. The inhabitants of my ancient dwelling place pounced upon "The Morgesons," because they were convinced it would prove to be a version of my relations, and my own life. I think one copy pa.s.sed from hand to hand, but the interest in it soon blew over, and I have not been noticed there since.
"Two Men" I began as I did the others, with a single motive; the shadow of a man pa.s.sed before me, and I built a visionary fabric round him. I have never tried to girdle the earth; my limits are narrow; the modern novel, as Andrew Lang lately calls it,--with its love-making, disquisition, description, history, theology, ethics,--I have no sprinkling of. My last novel, "Temple House," was personally conducted, so far that I went to Plymouth to find a suitable abode for my hero, Angus Gates, and to measure with my eye the distance between the bar in the bay and the sh.o.r.e, the scene of a famous wreck before the Revolution. As my stories and novels were never in touch with my actual life, they seem now as if they were written by a ghost of their time. It is to strangers from strange places that I owe the most sympathetic recognition. Some have come to me, and from many I have had letters that warmed my heart, and cheered my mind. Beside the name of Mr. Lowell, I mention two New England names, to spare me the fate of the prophet of the Gospel, the late Maria Louise Pool, whose lamentable death came far too early, and Nathaniel Hawthorne, who lived to read "The Morgesons" only, and to write me a characteristic letter. With some slight criticism, he wrote, "Pray pardon my frankness, for what is the use of saying anything, unless we say what we think?... Otherwise it seemed to me as genuine and lifelike as anything that pen and ink can do. There are very few books of which I take the trouble to have any opinion at all, or of which I could retain any memory so long after reading them as I do of "The Morgesons.""
Could better words be written for the send-off of these novels?
ELIZABETH STODDARD. New York, May 2nd, 1901.
CHAPTER I.
"That child," said my aunt Mercy, looking at me with indigo-colored eyes, "is possessed."
When my aunt said this I was climbing a chest of drawers, by its k.n.o.bs, in order to reach the book-shelves above it, where my favorite work, "The Northern Regions," was kept, together with "Baxter"s Saints" Rest," and other volumes of that sort, belonging to my mother; and those my father bought for his own reading, and which I liked, though I only caught a glimpse of their meaning by strenuous study.
To this day Sheridan"s Comedies, Sterne"s Sentimental Journey, and Captain Cook"s Voyages are so mixed up in my remembrance that I am still uncertain whether it was Sterne who ate baked dog with Maria, or Sheridan who wept over a dead a.s.s in the Sandwich Islands.
After I had made a dash at and captured my book, I seated myself with difficulty on the edge of the chest of drawers, and was soon lost in an Esquimaux hut. Presently, in crossing my feet, my shoes, which were large, dropped on the painted floor with a loud noise. I looked at my aunt; her regards were still fixed upon me, but they did not interfere with her occupation of knitting; neither did they interrupt her habit of chewing cloves, flagroot, or grains of rice. If these articles were not at hand, she chewed a small chip.
"Aunt Merce, poor Hepburn chewed his shoes, when he was in Davis"s Straits."
"Mary, look at that child"s stockings."
Mother raised her eyes from the _Boston Recorder_, and the article she had been absorbed in the proceedings of an Ecclesiastical Council, which had discussed (she read aloud to Aunt Merce) the conduct of Brother Thaddeus Turner, pastor of the Congregational Church of Hyena. Brother Thaddeus had spoken lightly of the difference between Sprinkling and Immersion, and had even called Hyena"s Baptist minister "_Brother_." He was contumacious at first, was Brother Thaddeus, but Brother Boanerges from Andover finally floored him.
"Ca.s.sandra," said mother, presently, "come here."
I obeyed with reluctance, making a show of turning down a leaf.
"Child," she continued, and her eyes wandered over me dreamily, till they dropped on my stockings; "why will you waste so much time on unprofitable stories?"
"Mother, I hate good stories, all but the Shepherd of Salisbury Plain; I like that, because it makes me hungry to read about the roasted potatoes the shepherd had for breakfast and supper. Would it make me thankful if you only gave me potatoes without salt?"
"Not unless your heart is right before G.o.d."
""_The Lord my Shepherd is_,"" sang Aunt Merce.
I put my hands over my ears, and looked defiantly round the room.
Its walls are no longer standing, and the hands of its builders have crumbled to dust. Some mental accident impressed this picture on the purblind memory of childhood.
We were in mother"s winter room. She was in a low, chintz-covered chair; Aunt Merce sat by the window, in a straight-backed chair, that rocked querulously, and likewise covered with chintz, of a red and yellow pattern. Before the lower half of the windows were curtains of red serge, which she rattled apart on their bra.s.s rods, whenever she heard a footstep, or the creak of a wheel in the road below. The walls were hung with white paper, through which ran thread-like stripes of green. A square of green and chocolate-colored English carpet covered the middle of the floor, and a row of straw chairs stood around it, on the bare, lead-colored boards. A huge bed, with a chintz top shaped like an elephant"s back, was in one corner, and a six-legged mahogany table in another. One side of the room where the fireplace was set was paneled in wood; its fire had burned down in the shining Franklin stove, and broken brands were standing upright. The charred backlog still smoldered, its sap hissed and bubbled at each end.
Aunt Merce rummaged her pocket for flagroot; mother resumed her paper.
"May I put on, for a little while, my new slippers?" I asked, longing to escape the oppressive atmosphere of the room.
"Yes," answered mother, "but come in soon, it will be supper-time."
I bounded away, found my slippers, and was walking down stairs on tiptoe, holding up my linsey-woolsey frock, when I saw the door of my great-grandfather"s room ajar. I pushed it open, went in, and saw a very old man, his head bound with a red-silk handkerchief, bolstered in bed. His wife, grandmother-in-law, sat by the fire reading a great Bible.
"Marm Tamor, will you please show me Ruth and Boaz?" I asked.
She complied by turning over the leaves till she came to the picture.
"Did Ruth love Boaz dreadfully much?"
"Oh, oh," groaned the old man, "what is the imp doing here? Drive her away. Scat."
I skipped out by a side door, down an alley paved with blue pebbles, swung the high gate open, and walked up and down the gravel walk which bordered the roadside, admiring my slippers, and wishing that some acquaintance with poor shoes could see me. I thought then I would climb the high gateposts, which had a flat top, and take there the position of the little girl in "The Shawl Dance." I had no sooner taken it than Aunt Merce appeared at the door, and gave a shriek at the sight, which tempted me to jump toward her with extended arms. I was seized and carried into the house, where supper was administered, and I was put to bed.
CHAPTER II.
At this time I was ten years old. We lived in a New England village, Surrey, which was situated on an inlet of a large bay that opened into the Atlantic. From the observatory of our house we could see how the inlet was pinched by the long claws of the land, which nearly enclosed it. Opposite the village, some ten miles across, a range of islands shut out the main waters of the bay. For miles on the outer side of the curving p.r.o.ngs of land stretched a rugged, desolate coast, indented with coves and creeks, lined with bowlders of granite half sunken in the sea, and edged by beaches overgrown with pale sedge, or covered with beds of seaweed. Nothing alive, except the gulls, abode on these solitary sh.o.r.es. No lighthouse stood on any point, to shake its long, warning light across the mariners" wake. Now and then a drowned man floated in among the sedge, or a small craft went to pieces on the rocks. When an easterly wind prevailed, the coast resounded with the bellowing sea, which brought us tidings from those inaccessible spots. We heard its roar as it leaped over the rocks on Gloster Point, and its long, unbroken wail when it rolled in on Whitefoot Beach. In mild weather, too, when our harbor was quiet, we still heard its whimper. Behind the village, the ground rose toward the north, where the horizon was bounded by woods of oak and pine, intersected by crooked roads, which led to towns and villages near us. The inland scenery was tame; no hill or dale broke its dull uniformity. Cornfields and meadows of red gra.s.s walled with gray stone, lay between the village and the border of the woods. Seaward it was enchanting--beautiful under the sun and moon and clouds. Our family had lived in Surrey for years. Probably some Puritan of the name of Morgeson had moved from an earlier settlement, and, appropriating a few acres in what was now its center, lived long enough upon them to see his sons and daughters married to the sons and daughters of similar settlers. So our name was in perpetuation, though none of our race ever made a mark in his circle, or attained a place among the great ones of his day. The family recipes for curing herbs and hams, and making cordials, were in better preservation than the memory of their makers. It is certain that they were not a progressive or changeable family. No tradition of any individuality remains concerning them. There was a confusion in the minds of the survivors of the various generations about the degree of their relationship to those who were buried, and whose names and ages simply were cut in the stones which headed their graves. The _meum_ and _tuum_ of blood were inextricably mixed; so they contented themselves with giving their children the old Christian names which were carved on the headstones, and which, in time, added a still more profound darkness to the anti-heraldic memory of the Morgesons. They had no knowledge of that treasure which so many of our New England families are boastful of--the Ancestor who came over in the Mayflower, or by himself, with a grant of land from Parliament. It was not known whether two or three brothers sailed together from the Old World and settled in the New.
They had no portrait, nor curious chair, nor rusty weapon--no old Bible, nor drinking cup, nor remnant of brocade.
_Morgeson_--_Born_--_Lived_--_Died_--were all their archives. But there is a dignity in mere perpetuity, a strength in the narrowest affinities. This dignity and strength were theirs. They are still vital in our rural population. Occasionally something fine is their result; an aboriginal reappears to prove the plastic powers of nature.
My great-grandfather, Locke Morgeson, the old man whose head I saw bound in a red handkerchief, was the first noticeable man of the name.
He was a scale of enthusiasms, ranging from the melancholy to the sarcastic. When I heard him talked of, it seemed to me that he was born under the influence of the sea, while the rest of the tribe inherited the character of the landscape. Comprehension of life, and comprehension of self, came too late for him to make either of value.
The spirit of progress, however, which prompted his schemes benefited others. The most that could be said of him was that he had the rudiments of a Founder.