The Other Nineteenth Century Read online

  “Sidney Coolidge claims,” is what Ellis next says.

  “Sidney Coolidge!”—his sister Lucinda—“dirty-mouthed boy. Dirty-faced, too,” she says.

  Ellis emphatically agrees. “Dirty in lots of other places, too, say, you wouldn’t believe—” His brother Lewis advises him to finish his fish-cake. His brother Samuel wants to know why they don’t more often have bacon for breakfast, and Uncle Abel Sawyer, as though he had been waiting for the chance, says that bacon is fourteen cents a pound! Farmers never had it so good, Uncle Sawyer says. Aunt Effie (Sutter) Sawyer, pouring skim milk over something arid called Breakfast Food, declares, “The less pig, the more pie.” Aunt Harriet Sutter looks at her nephews with perhaps something like foreboding. Perhaps not. What she says is not overheard. Aunt Sarah Sutter is looking at her plate. And the discussion as to what Aunt Effie Sawyer’s saying means causes Uncle Zachary and Sidney Coolidge to be forgotten.

  Agnes brings in the pie. The real and not the proverbial one. There is always pie. And always Agnes. Not always the same ones, of course.

  Aunt Sarah eats well enough. And, as usual, she is silent.

  Aunt Sarah is usually in the same chair in the library and doesn’t talk much, but saying this is not to describe a woman in rusty black with massive hands on ivory-headed walking-stick: no. Sarah is really quite slender, has been becomingly grey-haired since memory runs, wears something quite too chic to be called a pants-suit: and besides, pants-suits are yet to be invented. It is called Aunt Sarah’s house-costume and she does not wear it out of doors. Usually the costume is grey, sometimes it has a small black checked pattern. Sarah reads a lot. There is no television in the world, the radio yet has earphones, and would it still had. If one asks, and few do, “What are you reading, Sarah?” one is quietly and quickly told the name of the author. Never the title. Once in a long while someone ventures to ask, “What’s it about?” Really, what is Emerson, for example, about? A brief and level stare, and her eyes return to her book. Sarah does not suffer fools gladly.

  Once, at least, Aunt Sarah tries to revive the pleasant old-fashioned custom of reading aloud to the family circle. Her choice is Longfellow’s lovely poem The Aftermath.

  When the summer fields are mown,

  When the birds are fledged and flown,

  And the dry leaves strew the path;

  With the falling of the snow,

  With the cawing of the crow,

  Once again the fields we mow

  And gather in the aftermath.

  Not the sweet, new grass with flowers

  Is this harvesting of ours;

  Not the upland clover bloom;

  But the rowan mixed with weeds,

  Tangled tufts from marsh and meads,

  Where the poppy drops its seeds,

  In the silence and the gloom.

  The very brief silence at the poem’s end is not broken by a murmur of pleasure; but by an alto, a tenor, and a baritone, guffaw. A voice says, “How well he knows—!” Says? Sneers?

  Directly after this short poem comes by far a longer, beginning, Should you ask me, whence these stories? Nobody asks her, nobody at all. Aunt Sarah quietly closes the book. And—publicly, at least—never opens it again. The custom is not revived.

  She reads, too, things unpublished. Family histories, letters, journals, diaries: these things she reads downstairs in the library.

  Aunt Sarah knows all about, for instance, the question of the twenty-two and a half acres of good meadow-land on which the good fortunes of the Sutter family (of the County of Berne in the Switzers Land) are founded. Well, the good fortunes of one part of the Sutter family. Some say that land is rightfully the property of another part of that family. It is more than twenty-two and a half acres, some say. A bit more, some say, a good bit more. Ill feelings are often caused in families by the division of property. Or by its non-division.

  Upstairs or down Aunt Sarah plays solitaire, or sets out what is understood to be the Tarot.

  Mostly she is silent. One tends to leave her alone.

  Sutter sisters and daughters are quiet and almost plain: very well, then: plain. Sutter brothers and sons are something else, and although there are older Sutter women at home, there are no older Sutter men. Wars consume them, they go to far-off places and do not return and neither do they write. There are in these days only three young Sutter brothers at home, and then there are none. Of the older set, Gerald is generally understood to be somewhere very far off where he wears a burnoose or a turban and perhaps it is not true that a foreign ruler places a price upon his head. Kingston’s name is on a cross in France in a place of many crosses row on row. Woodruff’s name is not, although he, too, goes to France and never returns. Unless his mother’s belief, seldom expressed aloud, is true. And that it is Woodruff Sutter who is buried in the Tomb of the Unknown Soldier.

  And if the older brothers do leave some memories of unfortunate incidents at home, surely their heroic deeds abroad, one year apart, redeem them. And more. And more. Valiant and courageous (official). Reckless and suicidal in bravery (unofficial). Come on, you sons of bitches, do you want to live forever? ... echoes … echoes … dying, dying, dying … .

  The younger set of this generation of young men Sutters at home consists of Lewis, Ellis, and Samuel, boys of great charm and rascal beauty and of, one hears, increasingly devilish behavior. So the Headmaster of Afton says (this last phrase). For a while they are away at school or college; one by one (again and again) are expelled … run off … invited not to return from vacation … suspended … dismissed … . Uncle Sawyer, the non-Sutter who actually runs the business, thinks it is time they settle down and learn something about running it themselves. So one hears. Uncle Sawyer is perhaps an optimist.

  They all live together in a large, an immense, wooden house overlooking a river with an American Indian name, the river which (with all its rights) is sometimes described as “a wholly-owned subsidiary of the Sutter family.” Its waters are imponded by a series of dams and by each dam is a dirty brick building wherein wool from far and wide is washed … spun … woven … made into rugs and blankets said to wear like iron: these both perhaps more sought after formerly than presently.

  The water, thus collected, washes and scours the wool and carries away the effluents of everything from sheep-dung to caustic soda and solute suint or wool-sweat and overwashes of stinking dyestuffs: it is long since the alewife or the shad were found in these streams. The Sutter Corporation collects the waters in its pens and ponds, releases them at times and between times to turn its wheels and fill its vats and, of later days, kindle its electricity. And if the river, restive, overflows its pent-up backwaters, converting tillable fields or sites for houses into sog and bog, nourishing on others’ lands instead of hay or potatoes the coarse and uncommercial cat-tail, the rank and profitless goldenrod and purple milkweed, and the frail, pale wild white rose which cannot be cut and sold: why, what is this to the Corporation? nothing and less than nothing; let the former freeholders, if they will, take the Pauper’s Oath and receive fifty cents a day viaticum and forfeit their suffrage: root, hog, or die is a saying worthy of the saints, and pecunia non olet, of the sages.

  Cousin Chester Boswell lives in a small house the other side of the Village green. This, and shares in the Sutter Corporation, constitute the larger part of his patrimony. Well … anyway, a large part. And a large part consists of an intense interest in local and familial history, and he shares this with Aunt Sarah. They also share a cousin Waldo Sutter who lives in an even smaller house by a smaller river which has yet to know its place, unlike Waldo Sutter, who does not choose to get around much. Very rarely does Someone ask, “What does Waldo Sutter do?” and the answer is that He minds his own business. A … well … not exactly a message and not exactly a present but Something of Interest has come from him. As it has about once a year. Bridey has come in bearing a large brown paper bag, made in the days before paper bags were made by machinery. It is thick and
heavy. And it is old. She says, “Waldo Sutter sends John Kelly with this to drop off if he’s coming this way.” And adds, “Waldo wants the bag back. And could you let him have a little kerosene in a bottle.” The words and deeds are invariable. So is Aunt Sarah’s nod as she empties the contents into a shallow wicker basket and hands over the bag. Bridey takes it and goes out.

  Invariably, too, the bag (and now the basket) contains some old papers and an old book, which they all know the cousin (not a first cousin and not even a second) has had delivered at the back door. There is no other reason in the world why he would have been coming “this way,” but John Kelly is Waldo Sutter’s (only) tenant and no longer employable at the mill. Not for money or any other consideration would their conjoint cousin dispose of any books or papers to a historical society or a college library, a dealer, or collector; but month by month as they work their way out of the disintegrating boxes in his closely packed little house (it smells strongly of many things and the rare callers are perhaps grateful for the kerosene) he drops them in the old brown paper bag, its smell now too faint than to more than guess if it had once contained say fresh whole nutmegs or macouboy snuff or pigtail twist chewing tobacco. Candied ginger. Something for old man Waldo Sutter to smell now and then besides his rancid socks. And once a year he sends these fragments to the large house which he himself never enters by the back door or the front.

  Bridey or Agnes or Katie is even now handing over the kerosene in a gallon-jug as per instructions … a full gallon jug. And giving Old Man Kelly a doughnut. Or a piece of johnnycake.

  “Well, what have we here?” asks Chester Boswell. Lame, pensioned. Part of the patrimony. A patriot, Chester, even if he is not left for dead two days at Chickamauga; but merely breaks his leg in camp at Tampa before he can get to Cuba; Chester Boswell never hears the bugle-call at Kettle Hill, the bone has not healed well and there is always talk that it will have to be re-broken and re-set. When Chester Boswell comes to visit the large house—which is fairly often—he stays put for the whole day. “What have we here?” He adds, “This time.”

  Here, and Chester handles it ver-ry carefully, is a sadly broken old book, pages worn and foxed and stained with candle-grease (to Old Sutter, kerosene is a modern invention). He points the title out to his cousin Sarah. Wonders of the Invisible World / by the Revd Mr Cotton Mather, they exchange glances, she turns some soiled leaves, indicates with a finger the marginal notations; they nod. Out of the book slips a piece of flowered wallpaper, evidently trimmed with a knife. “Waste not, want not,” Chester Boswell says. “Use it up. Wear it out. Make it do. Or do without.” Part of the wisdom of their fathers. On the back of the wallpaper something is written with a lead-pencil made in the days when lead-pencils had lead in them and not graphite. He and she bend their heads to read. Kin deamons marry? “That’s Crossley’s writing.—Crossley’s kind of question, too.” The next question leaps across a vast sea of supposition. Is the divorc leagle? Crossley’s spelling is not meticulous. But it is clear. How are thes leagal and ill liegal children told apart? How indeed; like someone better-known, Crossley Sutter does not stop for an answer: in smaller letters writes prepar ye The feast. Beneath that begins a list

  frsh Porke

  Samp

  “When is the last time I ate samp?” asks Chester Boswell. “Boy,” he answers. “Makes a rougher mush than regular hominy grits. Well. Taste and scent? No argument. Eh? Sal?” Aunt Sarah’s part of the conversation is made chiefly by little motions of her mouth and brows. Though now and then she gestures. Slightly. Feast? Slattern hog and half-cracked corn? Crossley Sutter, their great-grandfather’s half-brother, has not been known as a delicate eater. Has not been delicate. Lines from his will are long repeated by generations of children when adults are not present. To my Bastard son Nathaneal five pounds. To my basterd Son Slatheal Five pounds. To my imprudent dauhgther Prudence born in christain wedlock but most UnGreatful slutt Three cents and a buckit of ashes.

  Still …

  And what have they here? Prudence’s long-missing will they have here and she has made many dispositions and someone’s heavy hand has printed DIED INTESTATE, for her Will is not signed, impetuous death does not wait for that. Prudence is Waldo Sutter’s grandmother. She has never married. Its presence here signifies that he has at last given up all hope of getting any of those bolts of cloth, that cherrywood furniture (is it anything like this cherrywood furniture), those cases of pewter plates, sets of best blue chinaware. A little kerosene in a bottle. Last time he sends sixteen Old Farmers Almanacs, 1810-1826, and a straight razor in a flaking case; the boys, amused, use it in turn.

  Old John Kelly is his only tenant, a gallon of lamp oil will last Waldo a long while, and the jugs are worth a penny apiece in trade. Pork. Samp. Chickamauga does not kill Waldo Sutter. Neither do the floods drown him. Certainly not the Spring freshets. Even if the Sutter Company will not adjust its river-level to his comfort.

  What else is here? An old pamphlet on growing pot-herbs, an old booklet on raising silkworms (the smell is soon got used to), and exactly twenty small empty envelopes from a Department of Agriculture once generous with new types of seeds. All very old. But no doubt useful. And here is a note in age-browned ink on a part of a page torn from, it might be, one of those small bound “pocketbooks” in which thrifty goodwives record sales of Best Brown Eggs in terms of shillings, for complete changeover to dollars and cents has to await the later 1850s; on it a short note:

  Salatheal Sutter

  old and mauger

  torn a part by wolves

  And a note upon the note, in somewhat darker ink, the iron nib biting deep into the page NOT WOLVES

  No more.

  And also just such a tiny volume and Aunt Sarah at once finds the half-torn page to match the torn-out note; in a tiny hand is neatly written, John Q. Adams dead today.

  No more.

  But enough of ancient history. Lewis, Ellis, and Samuel Sutter. “Charm and rascal beauty”? Yes. Increasingly “devilish behavior”? Yes. As children they are as sprightly and nimble as goat-kids. There is, later, something fawn-like (faun-like?) about the young Sutter boys, indeed devilishly bad as their behavior is sometimes said to be, eh? their childish presences disarm, eh? At twenty a growing heaviness becomes apparent, not fat, nothing like that, something immensely strong seems coming; the early wildness is replaced by a more deliberate quality, quite beyond description. And now they get into fights, fights—reports go about of a brutality which is not to be explained—though sometimes it has to be explained away.

  Does Helen Sutter have a palsy? Dr. Brainert says no. Then what is the reason for the frequent trembling? Dr. Brainert prescribes this and suggests that. But Helen Sutter Woodruff Sutter continues so often to tremble. Aunt Harriet proposes a trip south. South Carolina. Northern Florida. “I will go with you,” Aunt Harriet offers. “And Effie.”

  “There isn’t enough money,” Aunt Sawyer (Effie) says at once.

  “There is enough money for that,” her niece Lucinda insists. Cinda’s sister Amy has married, and moved away to Portland, Oregon, which is about as far as she can move away and still keep her feet dry.

  “Since Abel died,” says her aunt, she means Uncle Sawyer, “there hasn’t been enough money for anything.” And, it is true that things seem shabbier in the very big house. Katie has died, and Mary, grown old, is retired. Neither has been replaced. Often there is talk of “having the carpenters in,” but so far they are not being had. “I wish that the boys would set aside the nonsense. I wish that the boys would take hold.”

  Aunt Harriet leaves for a moment the subject of Aiken or Vero Beach. “It is The Prohibition,” she says. “The Volstead Act. It doesn’t prevent. It encourages.”

  Helen says that she hoped It would skip another generation. “I know that people blame Henry and me for marrying although we are cousins. But it had skipped two generations. And I had hoped It would skip this one, too.” Tremble. Tremble. “If Kingston o
r Woodruff had lived. If Gerald …” Aunt Sarah’s mouth moves. But she remains silent.

  “Does no one hear from Gerald?” asks Chester Boswell.

  A universal silence. No one hears from Gerald.

  Aunt Harriet looks all around. Almost furtively. As though she knows she should not ask, she asks. “How much money was settled on the De Sousa family?”

  Aunt Effie Sawyer is a lady, and ladies do not glare. Almost, though, she glares. “You know very well how much. One. Hundred. Thousand. Dollars. Taken out of capital.” She does gasp, however, and she rolls up her eyes: tightens, but does not clench, her fists. “Out of capital.”

  Lucinda reminds them (yet again) of the condition of Harry De Sousa’s body. Witnesses report how the red touring-car (is there another custom-painted red touring-car in all the world?) backs up and runs over Harry De Sousa again and again. “There are five small children,” Lucinda says. “If there is ever a prosecution …” Her mother trembles, trembles. Perhaps she remembers other … incidents … . Before. And since.

  And other settlements.

  It is long since that a settlement can be made (thus leaving Zachary free to absquatulate for Teckshus. Free? Zachary? free?) by giving someone a ninety-nine year lease on an ice-house for ninety-nine dollars a year. And, anyway, there is only one ice-house, for