Chasing after some scrap of information the other day, I ended up leafing through a book I bought once for a college course—an anthology, America in Literature, volume 1, covering the colonial period up to the Civil War, edited by David Levin and Theodore Gross. I don't think the editor's selections are at all idiosyncratic and one thing their anthology makes you realize is that, before 1850, America had contributed virtually nothing to the world's literature. Quick, name a great work written by an American within a normal lifetime of our Declaration. Benjamin Franklin's Autobiography? I've read it more than once, and enjoy it, but I'm not sure it qualifies, and anyway, supposing it's allowed, name another. This anthology is filled with diaries, personal narratives, sermons, pamphlets, and poetry in imitation of European models. The interest is largely historical. What was it like to be a pioneer, a Puritan in 17th-century America, a slave? Our early "literature" can shed light on such questions, but when Jane Austen and William Wordsworth were at work there was no American of genius similarly employed. And then, suddenly, without warning or barely a sense that the field had been ploughed: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Moby Dick (1851), Walden (1854), the first edition of Leaves of Grass (1855), and, though it wasn't published till later, the poetry of Emily Dickinson composed mostly during the Civil War years. It's almost as if a civilization, like a teenager, has to attain the age of majority before you can expect anything of it.
Paging through that book: what a bleak landscape—I'd rather watch Fox News's coverage of the impeachment hearings than read again the poetry of William Cullen Bryant, or Thomas Jefferson's Notes on the State of Virginia, or any of the ghoulish theologizing of the Puritans. The professor, Edward Griffin, assigned the Journal of John Woolman, a Quaker who lived from 1720 to 1772, and I was an earnest enough student to force my eyes to pass over all the words, but, seeing it again in this anthology, all I could remember of it was trying to whip up artificial interest by tracking how much time elapsed between the author's nocturnal emissions, which he duly and self-laceratingly recorded in his journal.
There is one glorious exception, and that is the Diary of Samuel Sewall. Sewall, who lived from 1652 to 1730, was one of New England's leading citizens. If he hadn't kept a diary through almost his entire life, he'd be known, if he was known, only as one of the judges at the Salem witch trials. To his credit, he was in later life ashamed of the part he'd played, though a cynic might say that both his legal judgments and subsequent renunciation were in line with current public opinion. But he kept this diary, too. He makes no visible effort to be eloquent, just notes things that happened, lots of weather reports, lots of church-going, and, most notably, lots of death, including in his own family, children, not an excess of emotion in these parts or any other, just the facts, and you get the idea that it wasn't that he was at all stone-hearted: death was just more common then, it happened all the time and was normal. Finally, when he's in his mid-60s, his wife dies, and, a couple years later, he undertakes the courtship of a widow whom he identifies as Madam Winthrop. In Boston in 1720 you did not "date"; you paid visits and talked, then, after awhile, you'd pop the question—that part was the same. The reader of the diary can deduce, though Sewall never spells it out himself, that notwithstanding his prominence he is much more interested in her than she is in him. For example, she always seems to be away when he calls on her—suspicious, since when taking his leave he'd usually mention when he expected to call again, or would send a note a few days in advance (which she would not answer). Consequently, he spent a lot of time sitting around with her maid and her kids, waiting for her to show up, and you can again deduce, from his very spare prose, that they know the score and feel a little sorry for him: there's a fair amount of, "Well, she should be back soon" or "You might want to call on her at So-and-So's." He sends her gifts (always noting in his diary how much the gift cost) and then notes later, after seeing her, that she failed to thank him for it. He persists with the courtship, and persists too in recording, Dragnet-style, the many small indignities he suffers. It's hard, but intriguing, and somewhat humorous, to imagine him returning home from these defeats and recording them in his diary. At first, she had been polite but expert in parrying his gallantries. As time passes and he doesn't give up, she adopts more aggressive strategies. For example, she tells him she's noticed that he doesn't travel in a horse-drawn carriage. Niceties soon give way altogether and the "courtship" takes on a purely mercenary aspect: he tells her, directly, what she could expect to receive if they were to marry and he then die first. She's not impressed. His next-to-last visit took place on Friday, November 4, 1720:
Went again about 7. a-clock; found there Mr. John Walley and his wife: sat discoursing pleasantly. I showed them Isaac Moses's writing. Madam W. served comfits to us. After awhile a table was set. I urged Mr. Walley to crave a blessing; but he put it upon me. About 9. they went away. I asked Madam what fashioned necklace I should present her with, she said None at all. I asked her whereabout we left off last time; mentioned what I had offered to give her; asked her what she would give me; she said she could not change her condition: she had said so from the beginning; could not be so far from her children, the Lecture. Quoted the Apostle Paul affirming that a single life was better than a married. I answered that was for the present distress. She said she had not pleasure in things of that nature as formerly: I said, you are the fitter to make me a wife.
Paul, especially in his first letter to the Corinthians, does take a dim view of matrimonial love, asserting famously that he thought it best for people to remain single, like him, though allowing that "it's better to marry than burn." This is the biblical text Madam Winthrop refers to, not (one suspects) because she esteems it but because she hopes to encourage Sam Sewall to leave (and not return). The sophisticated judge and lay biblical scholar replies that Paul's instruction was guidance for another time, when it was thought the world would soon end. Just in case you missed it, she then plays what she must have hoped would be the ace of trumps—she's no longer interested in sex—to which he replies (in effect), "Great, neither am I!" The "courtship" arrived at this point on November 4 after having begun with Sam's first mention of Madam Winthrop on October 11. There'd be one more visit, on November 7, when Sam, before a dying fire (symbolism!), announces his intention to call no more, eliciting from Madam Winthrop some kind words in which one might detect more relief than kindness. A question raised by this remarkable document is just how much of what the reader detects was first detected by Sam Sewall. He might seem obtuse, but it's his words that reveal the truth of the situation, all of it modestly conveyed, in few words, a possible small masterpiece of precision, humor, and humanity.
Sewall was also the author of "The Selling of Joseph," one of the first anti-slavery tracts published in North America.
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