1850

 __________ 

“All now is uproar, confusion, and menace to the existence of the Union and to the happiness and safety of the people.” 

Henry Clay

__________

 

GRACE GREENWOOD, perhaps in response to the stirrings of women, who want equal rights, suggests: “True feminine genius, is ever timid, doubtful, and clingingly dependent; a perpetual childhood.” (125/215)

*

March 1: Nathaniel Hawthorne’s book, The Scarlett Letter, is published in Boston. His ancestors had deep roots in Puritan Massachusetts, “causing the author no little portion of pain and guilt. William Hathorne had come to the colony no later than 1633.” In 1636, he settled in Salem, “just in time to vote in favor of banishing Roger Williams from the colony for his heretical views.” 

    Thomas Connolly, who edited The Scarlett Letter for a 1970s edition, added: 

    The coming of the Quakers to the Massachusetts Bay Colony was viewed by William Hathorne as a particularly dreadful blight, and he persecuted them vigorously and relentlessly. He ordered the constables to arrest Friends who met in private homes; he ordered them to be flogged and banished when arrested; he fined sea captains who transported Quakers to the colony; ultimately, he exerted a great influence on the General Court in Boston, which, about 1658 or 1659, sentenced two Quakers, William Robinson and Marmaduke Stephenson, to be hanged. (7/7)

 

    William’s fourth son, John (1641-1717) also became a magistrate, proving “as fanatical in his own way” as his father. He chose to persecute witches, instead. 

    When the story of witchcraft in Salem Village (a few miles from Salem) broke, on March 1, 1692, John Hathorne and Jonathan Corwin rode out to examine the suspects. A few days later they ordered Tituba, Sarah Good and Sarah Osborne to be sent to Boston and imprisoned. 

    John Hathorne spent several months conducting preliminary hearings for about one hundred accused persons. He sent most of them to jail to await trial. He sat on his horse and watched most of the convicted witches die, but he did not actually sentence them to  death. This was Hawthorne’s great-great-grandfather.

 

    Hawthorne was extremely sensitive about the fanatical roles played by his paternal ancestors in the early days of New England. A deep family guilt settled upon him, and this guilt undoubtedly prompted him to critical attacks in his literary works on the rigours of Puritanism. (7/8)

    Hawthorne had had difficulty as an author before, publishing a novel, Fanshawe, at his own expense, in 1828. He immediately regretted doing so and tried to suppress the work. He could find no publisher for his first collection of stories, Seven Tales from My Native Land, and burned the manuscript in frustration. In 1837, unknown to the author, a friend paid a $250 guarantee to a publisher to print Twice-Told Tales, which sold a thousand copies the first year. Hawthorn invested $1000 in the Brook Farm commune, only to see the experiment fail. He and his wife, Sophia Peabody Hawthorne, found themselves living in strained circumstances, and had to move back to live with the author’s mother. Still, his literary reputation was growing. 

    In “The Maypole at Merry Mount,” he provided an unhappy picture of the Puritans at work, keeping Massachusetts safe for the godly: 

    Not far from Merry Mount was a settlement of Puritans, most dismal wretches, who said their prayers before daylight, and then wrought in the forest or the cornfield, till evening made it prayer time again. Their weapons were always at hand, to shoot down the straggling savage. When they met in conclave, it was never to keep up the old English mirth, but to hear sermons three hours long, or to proclaim bounties on the heads of wolves and the scalps of Indians. Their festivals were fast days, and their chief pastime the singing of psalms. Woe to the youth or maiden, who did but dream of a dance! The selectman nodded to the constable; and there sat the light-heeled reprobate in the stocks; or if he danced, it was round the whipping post, which might be termed the Puritan Maypole. (7/23)                           

 

    The Puritans, in his phrase, wear “steeple-crowned hats.” (7/85) 

    In one story he describes an old clerk at the Customs House (possibly modeled on someone Hawthorne had known). The fellow seemed untroubled by his responsibilities, due to “the rare perfection of his animal nature, the moderate proportion of intellect, and the very trifling admixture of moral and spiritual ingredients; these latter qualities, indeed, being in barely enough measure to keep the old gentleman from walking on all-fours.” (7/48) 

    Hawthorne finds the scarlet letter among the old man’s effects: 

    I happened to place it on my breast. It seemed to me, – the the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word, – it seemed to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat; and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but of red-hot iron. I shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor. (7/62)

 

    Of Hester Prynne, he says: 

    Aged persons alive in the time of Mr. Surveyor Pue, and from whose oral testimony he had made up his narrative, remembered her, in their very youth, as a very old, but not decrepit woman, of a stately and solemn aspect. It had been her habit, from an almost immemorial date, to go about the country as a kind of voluntary nurse, and doing whatever miscellaneous good she might; taking upon herself, likewise, to give advice in all matters, especially those of the heart; by which means, as a person of such propensities inevitably must, she gained from many people the reverence due to an angel. (7/62-63) 

    In view of my previous weariness of office, and vague thoughts of resignation, my fortunes somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. 

               

 

“That early severity of the Puritan character” 

    It might be that a sluggish bond-servant, or an undutiful child, whom his parents had given over to the civil authority, was to be corrected at the whipping-post. It might be, that an Antinomian, a Quaker, or other heterodox religionist, was to be scourged out of the town, or an idle and vagrant Indian, whom the white man’s fire-water had made riotous about the streets, was to be driven with stripes into the shadow of the forest.

 

    When Prynne is forced to display her scarlet letter in public, she shocks the entire town. At first, as she steps out of prison, she seems to hold her baby over her breast – to conceal the shame. After a moment, however, 

wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush, and yet a haughty smile, and a glance that would not be abashed, looked around at her townspeople and neighbours. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore; and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the Colony.

 

    The young woman was tall, with a figure of perfect elegance, on a large scale. She had dark and abundant hair, so glossy that it threw off the sunshine with a gleam, and a face which, besides being beautiful from regularity of features and richness of complexion, had the impressiveness belonging to a marked brow and deep black eyes. She was lady-like too, after the manner of the feminine gentility of those days; characterized by a certain state and dignity, rather than by the delicate, evanescent, and indescribable grace, which is now recognized as its indication. And never had Hester Prynne appeared more lady-like, in the antique interpretation of the term, then as she issued from the prison. Those who had before known her, and had expected to behold her dimmed and obscured by a disastrous cloud, were astonished, and even startled, to perceive how her beauty shone out, and made a halo of the misfortune and ignominy in which she was enveloped.

 

    Watching Prynne step forward, an older woman in the crowd remarks: 

    “She hath good skill at her needle, that’s certain,” remarked one of the female spectators; “but did ever a woman, before this brazen hussy, contrive such a way of showing it! Why, gossips, what is it but to laugh in the faces of our godly magistrates, and make a pride out of what they, worthy gentlemen, meant for a punishment?” (7/80-81)

 

    She must then pass through the crowd of spectators and go stand on a scaffold at the marketplace, for all to see her shame. An official tells the throng to make passage so Hester can   

be set where man, woman, and child may have a fair sight of her brave apparel, from this time till an hour past meridian. A blessing on the righteous Colony of the Massachusetts, where iniquity is dragged out into the sunshine! Come along, Madam Hester, and show your scarlet letter in the marketplace! (7/82)

 

    Reverend Dimmesdale is watching Hester’s ordeal from a balcony above. He is eloquent, loving, and weak. 

    His eloquence and religious fervor had already given the earnest of high eminence in his profession. He was a person of very striking aspect, with a white, lofty, and impending brow, large, brown, melancholy eyes, and a mouth which, unless when he forcibly compressed it, was apt to be tremulous, expressing both nervous sensibility and a vast power of self-restraint. Notwithstanding his high native gifts and scholar-like attainments, there was an air about this young minister, – an apprehensive, a startled, half-frightened look, – as of a being who felt himself quite astray and alone at a loss in the pathway of human existence, and could only be at ease in some seclusion of his own.

 

    Such was the young man whom the Reverend Mr. Wilson and the Governor had introduced so openly to the public notice, bidding him speak, in the hearing of all men, to that mystery of a woman’s soul, so sacred even in its pollution. The trying nature of his position drove the blood from his cheek, and made his lips tremulous.

 

    “Speak to the woman, my brother,” said Mr. Wilson. “It is of moment to her soul, and therefore, as the worshipful Governor says, momentous to thine own, in whose charge hers is. Exhort her to confess the truth!”

 

    The Reverend Mr. Dimmesdale bent his head, in silent prayer, as it seemed, and then came forward.

 

    “Hester Prynne,” said he, leaning over the balcony, and looking down steadfastly into her eyes, “thou hearest what this good man says, and seest the accountability under which I labor. If thou feelest it to be for thy soul’s peace, and that thy earthly punishment will thereby be more effectual to salvation, I charge thee to speak out the name of thy fellow-sinner and fellow-sufferer! Be not silent from any mistaken pity and tenderness for him, for, believe me, Hester, though he were to step down from a high place, and stand there beside thee, on thy pedestal of shame, yet better were it so, than to hide a guilty heart through life. What can thy silence do for him, except it tempt him – yay, compel him, as it were – to add hypocrisy to sin? Heaven hath granted thee an open ignominy, that thereby thou mayest workout an open triumph over the evil within thee, and the sorrow without. Take heed how thou deniest to him – who, perchance, hath not the courage to grasp it for himself – the bitter, but wholesome, cup that is now presented to thy lips!”

 

    Even the poor baby, at Hester’s bosom, was affected by the same influence; for it directed its hitherto vacant gaze toward Mr. Dimmesdale, and held up its little arms, with a half pleased, half plaintive murmur. (7/93-94)

 

    At one point, the Governor suggests that Pearl be taken and raised in a good Puritan family. “Here is a child of three years old, and she cannot tell who made her! Without question, she is equally in the dark as to her soul, its present depravity, and future destiny! Methinks, gentlemen, we need enquire no further.” 

    Hester confronts the Governor, her expression fierce. 

    Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the death.

 

    “God gave me the child!” cried she. “He gave her, in requital of all things else, which he had taken from me. She is my happiness! – she is my torture, nonetheless! Pearl keeps me here in life! Pearl punishes me too! See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for my sin! Ye shall not take her! I will die first!”

 

    “My poor woman,” said the not unkind old minister, “the child shall be well cared for! – far better than thou canst do it.”

 

    “God gave her into my keeping, repeated Hester Prynne, raising her voice almost to a shriek, “I will not give her up! – And here, by a sudden impulse, she turned to the young clergyman Mr. Dimmesdale, at whom, up to this moment, she had seemed hardly so much as once to direct her eyes. – “Speak thou for me!” cried she. “Thou wast my pastor, and hadst charge of my soul, and knowest me better than these men can. I will not lose the child! Speak for me! Thou knowest – for thou hast sympathies which these men lack! – thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother’s rights, and how much the stronger they are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter! Look thou to it! I will not lose this child! Look to it!”(7/135-136)

 

    One day, Roger Chillingworth, the old physician, finds Rev. Dimmesdale fast asleep, perhaps exhausted by his ordeal, having spoken for Hester to keep the child. He 

advanced directly in front of this patient, laid his hand upon his bosom, and thrust aside the vestment, that, hitherto, can always covered it even from the professional eye.

 

    Then, indeed, Mr. Dimmesdale shuddered and slightly stirred.

 

    After a brief pause, the physician turned away.

 

    But with what a wild look of wonder, joy, and horror! (7/159)

 

    Arthur Dimmesdale has a habit of clutching at his breast, when he speaks, and now we understand why. 

    One day, he and Hester happen to meet in the woods. Pearl, as always, is with her mother. Seven years have passed. It is as if he and Hester have seen ghosts. He reaches forth his hand, “chill as death,” and touches hers. Her hand, too, is cold, but they “now felt themselves, at least, inhabitants of the same sphere.” 

    “Hester, hast thou found peace?” he asks. 

    “Hast thou?” she replies. (7/208)

 

    Dimmesdale is almost distraught. He admits his great wrong. Hester tries to console the man. 

    “The people reverence thee,” said Hester. “And surely thou workest good among them! Doth this bring thee no comfort?”

 

    “More misery, Hester!” – only the more misery!” answered the clergyman, with a bitter smile. “As concerns the good which I may appear to do, I have no faith in it. It must needs be a delusion. What can a ruined soul, like mine, affect towards the redemption of other souls? – or a polluted soul, towards their purification? And as for the people’s reverence, would that it were turned to scorn and hatred! Canst thou deem it, Hester, a consolation, that I must stand up in my pulpit, and meet so many eyes turned upward to my face, as if the light of heaven were beaming from it! – must see my flock hungry for the truth, and listening to my words as if a tongue of Pentecost were speaking! – and then look inward, and discern the black reality of what they idolize? I have laughed in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! And Satan laughs at it!”

 

    “You wrong yourself in this,” said Hester, gently. “You have deeply and sorely repented. Your sin is left behind you, in the days long past. Your present life is not less holy, in very truth, than it seems in people’s eyes. Is there no reality in the penitence thus sealed and witnessed by good works? And wherefore should it not bring you peace?” (7/209)

 

    In the forest, then, Hester and Arthur resolve to be together, if only for a brief time. Dimmesdale gains strength in her presence. 

    The minister – painfully embarrassed, but hoping that a kiss might prove a talisman to admit him into the child’s kindlier regards – bent forward, and impressed one on her brow. Hereupon, Pearl broke away from her mother, and running to the brook, stooped over it, and bathed her forehead, until the unwelcome kiss was quite washed off, and diffused through a long lapse of the gliding water. She then remained apart, silently watching Hester and the clergyman; while they walked together, and made such arrangements as were suggested by their new position and the purposes soon to be fulfilled. (7/229)

 

    When Dimmesdale finally resolves to tell the truth before the people, however, Pearl senses his goodness of heart. He turns toward the scaffold and stretches forth his arms. “Hester,” said he, “come hither! Come, my little Pearl!” 

    It was a ghastly look with which he regarded them; but there was something at once tender and strangely triumphant in it. The child, with the bird-like motion which was one of her characteristics, flew to him, and clasped her arms about his knees. Hester Prynne – slowly, as if impelled by inevitable fate, and against her strongest will – likewise drew near, but paused before she reached him. (7/265) 

    Chillingworth tries to stop the minister from telling the truth – calls him a “madman.” He whispers, “Wave back that woman! Cast off this child! All shall be well! Do not blacken your fame, and perish in dishonor!” 

    Dimmesdale tells the old man he no longer has any power. “With God’s help, I shall escape thee now!” 

    He again extended his hand to the woman of the scarlet letter. 

    “Hester Prynne,” cried he, with a piercing earnestness, “in the name of Him, so terrible and so merciful, who gives me grace, at this last moment, to do what – for my own heavy sin and miserable agony – I withheld myself from doing seven years ago, come hither now, and twine thy strength about me! Thy strength, Hester; but let it be guided by the will which God hath granted me! This wretched and wronged old man is opposing it with all his might! – with all his own might and the fiend’s! Come, Hester come! Support me up yonder scaffold!”

 

    The spectators gathered about the scaffold, and even the other ministers, watch with awe. “They beheld the minister, leaning on Hester’s shoulder and supported by her arm around him, approach the scaffold, and descend its steps; while still the little hand of the sin-born child was clasped in his.” 

    Dimmesdale admits to Hester that he is “a dying man. So let me make haste to take my shame upon me.” 

    “People of New England!” cried he, with a voice that rose over them, high, solemn, and majestic, – yet had always a tremor through it, and sometimes a shriek, struggling up out of a fathomless depth of remorse and woe, – “ye, that have loved me! – ye, that deemed me wholly! – behold me here, the one sinner of the world! At last! – at last! – I  stand upon the spot where, seven years since, I should have stood; here, with this woman, whose arm, more than the little strength wherewith I have crept hitherward, sustains me, at this dreadful moment, from groveling down upon my face! Lo, the scarlet letter which Hester wears! You have all shuddered at it! Wherever her walk hath been – wherever, so miserably burdened, she may have hoped to find repose, – it hath cast a lurid gleam of awe and horrible repugnance round about her. But there stood one in the midst of you, and whose brand of sin and infamy you have not shuddered!”

 

    He finally rips off his “ministerial band,” and reveals his own scarlet letter to the crowd. Then, down he sank upon the scaffold! Hester partly raised him, and supported his head against her bosom.” 

    Chillingworth is defeated. He tells the minister that he has finally escaped. “My God forgive thee!” said the minister. “Thou, too, hast deeply sinned!” Dimmesdale turns his eyes on little Pearl and asks her for a kiss. 

    Pearl kissed his lips. A spell was broken. The great sea of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor forever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl’ errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.

 

    “Hester,” said the clergyman, “farewell!”

 

    “Shall we not meet again?” whispered she, bending her face down close to his. “Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe! Thou lookest far into eternity, with those bright dying eyes! Then tell me what thou seest?”

 

    “Hush, Hester, hush!” said he, with tremulous solemnity. “The law we broke! – the sin here so awfully revealed! – let these alone be in thy thoughts! I fear! I fear! It may be, that, when we forgot our God, – when we violated our reverence each for the other’s soul, – it was thenceforth vain to hope that we could meet hereafter, in an everlasting and pure reunion. God knows; and He is merciful! He hath proved his mercy, most of all, in my afflictions. By giving me this burning torture to bear upon my breast! By sending yonder dark and terrible old man, to keep the torture always at red-heat! By bringing me hither, to die this death of triumphant ignominy before the people! Had either of these agonies been wanting, I had been lost forever! Praised be his name! His will be done! Farewell!”

 

    That final word came forth with the minister’s expiring breath. The multitude, silent till then, broke out in a strange, deep voice of awe and wonder, which could not as yet find utterance, saving this murmur that rolled so heavily after the departed spirit.  (7/265-268)

 

    In his “Conclusion,” Hawthorne tells us that Chillingworth “withered up” and died within a year. In his will 

he bequeathed a very considerable amount of property, both here and in England, to little Pearl, the daughter of Hester Prynne. So Pearl – the elf-child – the demon offspring, as some people, up to that epoch, persisted in considering her – became the richest heiress of her day, in the New World. Not improbably, this circumstance brought a very material change in the public estimation; and had the mother and child remained here, little Pearl, at a marriageable period of life, might have mingled her wild blood with the lineage of the devoutest Puritan amongst them all. (7/273)

 

    It was not to be, for Hester and Pearl soon disappeared. Vague reports from across the sea would be received. That was all the people of Massachusetts knew. 

    The story of the scarlet letter grew into a legend. Its spell, however, was still potent, and kept the scaffold awful where the poor minister had died, and likewise the cottage by the sea-shore, where Hester Prynne had dwelt. Near this latter spot, one afternoon, some children were at play, when they beheld a tall woman, in a gray robe, approach the cottage-door. In all those years it had never once been opened; but either she unlocked it, or the decaying wood and iron yielded to her hand, or she glided shadow-like through these impediments – and, at all events, went in.

 

    The children saw her turn, “a scarlet letter on her breast.” 

    In years to follow, Hester lived alone, but there were letters from across the sea, “indications that the recluse of the scarlet letter was the object of love and interest” by someone. 

    Letters came, with armorial seals upon them, though of bearings unknown to English heraldry. In the cottage there were articles of comfort and luxury, such as Hester never cared to use, but which only wealth could have purchased, and affection have imagined for her. … And once, Hester was seen embroidering a baby-garment, with such a lavish richness of golden fancy as would have raised a public tumult, had any infant, thus apparelled, been shown to our somber-hued community. (7/274)

 

    Hester never took off the scarlet letter in all these years. She became a counselor to others who had been afflicted. Women, especially, sought her out for advice, wondering why it might be they were so “wretched” themselves, and what was the remedy. 

    Hester comforted and counseled them, as best she might. She assured them, too, of her firm belief, that, at some brighter, when the world should have grown ripe for it, in Heaven’s own time, a new truth would be revealed, in order to establish the whole relation between man and woman on a surer ground of mutual happiness. (7/275)

  

    Other lines of interest from the book might resonate with students today. Hawthorne speaks of Dimmesdale, trapped in “the saddest of all prisons, his own heart” 

    “It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates,” he writes. 

    As for his ancestors, he describes the Puritans as “the most intolerant brood that ever lived…” (7/118) 

    They were, he says, “a people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical” (7/77) 

    In King Philip’s War, he suggests that the natives killed more than 1,000 colonists and destroyed twelve towns. (2/373)   

A minister in New England was an exalted figure.

* 

April 22: The very first session of the California Legislature passes “The Act for the Government Protection of Indians.” Kayley Berger explained how the act worked in reality, in an award-winning paper submitted to the California Supreme Court’s Historical Society in 2022. 

Although the name of this act may lead one to think it advocates for the protection of Indians, the name is a misnomer. The act is more appropriately referred to as “The Indenture Act of 1850” because it functioned to enslave California Indians. Specifically, Section 20 provided for public auctions whereby the indigent Indian would go to the highest bidder who would then use the Indian for labor. Such a practice cannot be explained as anything but the state selling indigent Indians into slavery. In that same vein, Section 14 allowed a white person to post a bond for an Indian and “in such case the Indian shall be compelled to work for the person so bearing, until he has discharged or cancelled the fine assessed against him.” Moreover, the act allowed whites to take ownership of Indian children via Section 3 which provided instructions for “[a]ny person obtaining a minor Indian . . . and wishing to keep it.” The act also functioned to deny California Indians equal status under the law, as Section 6 provided that “in no case shall a white man be convicted of any offence upon the testimony of an Indian.”

 

*

AS THE DEBATE over slavery grows heated, Van Loon boils it down to this: “Both sides pleaded and argued and made a great showing of unselfish patriotism. But both sides knew that there was only one issue, that it was moral rather than economic and that the name thereof was slavery [emphasis added]. (124-361)

 

*

 

“‘ALL NOW is uproar,’ wrote [Henry] Clay, ‘confusion, and menace to the existence of the Union and to the happiness and safety of the people.’” Clay was a slave owner, “but he had no great love for slavery.”

 

*

 

September 18: The Fugitive Slave Act is passed. McMaster explains its impact: 

The fugitive slave law gave great offense to the North. It provided that a runaway slave might be seized wherever found, and brought before a United States judge or commissioner. The negro could not give testimony to prove he was not a fugitive but had been kidnapped, if such were the case. All citizens were “commanded,” when summoned, to aid in the capture of a fugitive, and, if necessary, in his delivery to his owner. Fine and imprisonment were provided for anyone who harbored a fugitive or aided in his escape. The law was put in execution at once, and “slave catchers,” “man-hunters,” as they were called, invaded the North. This so excited the people that many slaves when the seized were rescued. Such rescues occurred [the next year] at New York, Boston, Syracuse, and at Ottawa in Illinois.

 

NOTE TO TEACHERS: I had good success asking students to explain the difference, if any, between “law” and “justice.”

 

* 

“By the Light of My Own Effigies.” 

“[Stephen] Douglas [who had helped work out an agreement for passage of the act] was for the time being bitterly denounced. ‘I could then travel,’ he said at a later day, ‘from Boston to Chicago by the light of my own effigies.’” The Whig Party: “It was said to have ‘died of an attempt to swallow the fugitive slave law.’” (56-378, 391, loose pieces)

 

*

 

“Dripping Fast Away.”

 

In an era long before air conditioning was invented, George P. Morris pens a poem, “New York in the Dog Days,” which appears in Godey’s Lady’s Book.

 

These lines amuse me:

 

Oh, this confounded weather!

    (As someone sung or said),

My pen, though but a feather,

    Is heavier than lead;

At every pore I’m oozing –

    My plumptitude I’m losing,

And dripping fast away. (254)

 

*

 

THAT SAME  YEAR, Jenny Lind came to America and performed a series of 93 concerts. As Finley writes,

 

    Jenny Lind was the first great singer brought here at the height of her fame. And the country went Jenny Lind mad. Glass factories perpetuated the diva’s image in Jenny Lind bottles; a new type of chaise was named in her honor; cabinet-makers designed the Jenny Lind bed; while milliners, modistes, tobacconists and cooks all concocted something new or different and called it Jenny Lind.

 

    Not all the music in Godey’s, Finley notes, was to be sung, “some of it was directed at the toes.” Hale “advocated dancing in an era when many people, in fact by far the majority outside of large centers, looked upon it as a sinful pastime invented by the devil.” Hale considered dancing “a healthful exercise conducive to bodily grace.” (255-256)

 

    Horace Greeley contributed fiction, Irving, Longfellow, Emerson, Bryant and many more contributed to Godey’s. William Gilmore Simms’s Katherine Walton was serialized in the magazine – and later praised by Professor Vernon Louis Parrington. He particularly liked the character of Lieutenant Porgy, who, says Finley, “took to throwing pots of hot hominy into the faces of persons who displeased him.” Parrington also liked Simms’ inclusion of “a goodly company of blackguards that are an asset to American literature.” Charlotte Cushman’s Extracts from My Journal, Finley also commends. (257)

Jenny Lind: "The Swedish Nightingale."

 

*

 

CHARLES COFFIN writes of this era, that in New England, dancing was still thought of by some as “an invention of the devil. When oyster-suppers came into fashion the old folks opposed them. One woman said oysters would lead to dancing.”  (72/84) 

    Fall was a time for gathering apples, making cider, harvesting corn, and for the young to gather for husking parties… “the finding of a red ear entitled the finder the privilege of kissing the prettiest girl in the company.” (72/86)