Writing New England: An Anthology from the Puritans to the Present

509 Pages·2001·22.77 MB·English

by  Andrew Delbanco

WRITING NEW ENGLAND

W R I T I NG
N EW E N G L A ND
LAU LAnthology from the
^Puritans to the ^Present
EDITED BY
ANDREW DELBANCO
The ^Belknap Tress of
HARVARD UNIVERSITY PRESS
CAMBRIDGE, MASSACHUSETTS
LONDON, ENGLAND
200I
Copyright © 2001 by Andrew Delbanco
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
Pages 455-459 constitute an extension of this copyright page.
Library of Congress Catabging-in-Publication Data
Writing New England : an anthology from the Puritans to the present /
edited by Andrew Delbanco.
p. cm.
Includes index.
ISBN 0-674-00603-8 (alk. paper)
ι. New England—Civilization—Sources.
2. New England—Literary collections.
3. American literature—New England.
I. Delbanco, Andrew, 1952-
F4.5 .W75 2001
974—den
2001025779
Frontispiece: John Smith, Map of New England, 1616
CONTENTS
Preface ix
Introduction xiii
Chronology xxxi
THE FOUNDING IDEA
JOHN WINTHROP · From A Model of Christian Charity 3
SAMUEL DANFORTH · From A Brief Recognition ofNew England's
Errand into the Wilderness 12
GOD SPEAKS TO THE RAIN
EDWARD TAYLOR · Preface to God's Determinations Touching His Elect 21
COTTON MATHER · From The Christian Philosopher 23
JONATHAN EDWARDS · The Spider Letter 26
WILLIAM CULLEN BRYANT · "Forest Hymn" 32
RALPH WALDO EMERSON · From Nature 36
MARGARET FULLER · "Dialogue" 49
RICHARD HENRY DANA, JR. · From Two Years before the Mast 50
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE · From American Notebooks 53
PETER OLIVER · From The History of the Puritan Commonwealth 58
EMILY DICKINSON · "Four Trees upon a Solitary Acre" 60
HENRY DAVID THOREAU · From The Maine Woods 61
MARK TWAIN · "The Oldest Inhabitant—The Weather of New England"
WILLIAM JAMES · "What Pragmatism Means" 80
ROBERT FROST · "Out, Out—" 94
WALLACE STEVENS · "The Snow Man" 96
HENRY BESTON · From The Outermost House 97
vi Contents
ROBERT LOWELL · "Mr. Edwards and the Spider" 101
GALWAY KINNELL · "Another Night in the Ruins" 103
RICHARD WILBUR · "Mayflies" 106
THE EXAMINED SELF
JOHN COTTON · From Christ the Fountain of Life ш
ANNE BRADSTREET · "Before the Birth of One of Her Children" 115
JONATHAN EDWARDS · Personal Narrative 117
EMILY DICKINSON · "I Should Have Been Too Glad, I See" 130
HENRY ADAMS · From The Education of Henry Adams 132
W. Ε. B. Du BOIS · From Darkwater 140
ROBERT FROST · "To Earthward" 145
ELIZABETH BISHOP · "In the Waiting Room" 147
DOROTHY WEST · From The Richer, the Poorer 151
A GALLERY OF PORTRAITS
HARRIET BEECHER STOWE · From Uncle Tom's Cabin 159
ELIZABETH STODDARD · From TheMorgesons 165
HENRY JAMES · From The Bostonians 168
EDWIN ARLINGTON ROBINSON · "Miniver Cheevy" 171
WILLIAM DEAN HOWELLS · From Literary Friends and Acquaintance 173
Ε. E. CUMMINGS · "The Cambridge Ladies" 175
JOHN P. MARQUAND · From The Late George Apley 176
EDWIN O'CONNOR · From The Last Hurrah 181
JOHN CHEEVER · "Reunion" 184
JOHN UPDIKE · "Plumbing" 187
TIMOTHY LEWONTIN · From Parsons'Mill 193
EDUCATION
HARVARD COLLEGE · From New England's First Fruits 203
BENJAMIN FRANKLIN · Dogood Papers, No. 4 207
ELIZABETH PALMER PEABODY AND A. BRONSON ALCOTT ·
From Conversations with Children 211
HORACE BUSHNELL · From Christian Nurture 219
Contents
CHARLES SUMNER · From "Equality before the Law" 223
CHARLES W. ELIOT · Inaugural Address 229
JOHN JAY CHAPMAN · "The Function of a University" 234
DOROTHY CANFIELD FISHER · "Sex Education" 238
Louis AUCHINCLOSS, JOHN MCPHEE, AND GEOFFREY WOLFF ·
Schoolmasters 249
DISSIDENT DREAMERS
JOHN WINTHROP · Letter to His Wife 259
JAMES OTIS · From The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved
ABIGAIL ADAMS AND JOHN ADAMS · Letters 269
GEORGE RIPLEY, RALPH WALDO EMERSON, AND NATHANIEL
HAWTHORNE · Letters concerning Brook Farm 273
JOHN QUINCY ADAMS · Argument before the Supreme Court in the
Amistad Case 281
NATHANIEL PARKER WILLIS · "The Lady in the White Dress, Whom I
Helped into the Omnibus" 286
DANIEL WEBSTER · Speech in the United States Senate 288
THEODORE PARKER · From Three Sermons 297
JULIA WARD HOWE · "Battle-Hymn of the Republic" 306
LOUISA MAY ALCOTT · Transcendental Wild Oats 308
WILLIAM GRAHAM SUMNER · From What Social Classes Owe to
Each Other 321
OLIVER WENDELL HOLMES, JR. · "Natural Law" 328
JOHN F. KENNEDY · Broadcast Address 333
A. BARTLETT GIAMATTI · "The Green Fields of the Mind" 338
STRANGERS IN THE PROMISED LAND
THE SALEM COURT · Examination of Susanna Martin 343
WILLIAM APESS · From Eulogy on King Philip 346
FREDERICK DOUGLASS · From My Bondage and My Freedom 356
HENRY WADSWORTH LONGFELLOW · "The Jewish Cemetery at
Newport" 358
MARY ANTIN · From The Promised Land 361
Vlll
FELIX FRANKFURTER · From "The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti"
F. O. MATTHIESSEN · Journal Letters 381
JEAN STAFFORD · From Boston Adventure 387
SHIRLEY JACKSON · "The Lottery" 391
ROBERT LOWELL · "For the Union Dead" 399
MALCOLM X AND ALEX HALEY · From The Autobiography
of Malcolm X 402
ANNE SEXTON · "Her Kind" 416
JONATHAN KOZOL · From Death at an Early Age 418
J. ANTHONY LUKAS · From Common Ground 422
THE ABIDING SENSE OF PLACE
RALPH WALDO EMERSON · "Hamatreya" 433
SARAH ORNE JEWETT · "A White Heron" 436
HENRY JAMES · From The American Scene 445
Ε. B. WHITE · "Maine Speech" 447
FRED ALLEN · Letter to The Cape Codder 450
DONALD HALL · "Scenic View" 452
Acknowledgments 455
Index 461
PREFACE
Long before the modern dogma took hold that early childhood experience de-
termines adult character, Alexis de Tocqueville applied the idea to America.
Convinced that the childhood of the United States was to be found in colo-
nial New England, he wrote, "if we would understand the prejudices, the hab-
its, and the passions which rule" the life of the mature man, "we must watch
the infant in his mother's arms." Today, however, not many Americans—not
even, perhaps, many New Englanders—feel that in observing the strict Prot-
estants who emigrated to New England nearly four centuries ago they are
watching their younger selves.
And why should they? As New England expanded geographically from the
scant coastal settlements with which it began, and as it grew more than com-
mensurately in population, it was shocked, enriched, and transformed by the
infusion of many traditions alien to its founders. One purpose of this book is
to convey how New Englanders have come to live in different and distinct re-
gions of cultural inheritance—as J. Anthony Lukas makes vivid in Common
Ground, from which I have excerpted a chapter about a Boston family, the
McGoffs, whose memories cluster not around Brahmin worthies with
Mayflower names, but around such Boston Irish politicians as James Michael
Curley and John Francis Fitzgerald, better known as Honey Fitz. By contrast,
consider a remark the historian Bernard Bailyn once made about his predeces-
sor at Harvard, Samuel Eliot Morison. A recreational sailor born to privilege
who rode on horseback from his Beacon Hill home to his classroom building
in Harvard Yard, Morison first discovered his passion for maritime history, ac-
cording to Bailyn, in the "lore he had picked up from the old sailors whose
memory went back to the days of the great clipper ships." McGoffs and
Morisons lived barely a mile apart, but in utterly different worlds.
Imposing one unitary meaning on New England would be as foolish as it
would be unconvincing. Yet one purpose of this book is to convey some sense
of New England's continuities and coherence. I am persuaded that there does
exist something that may be called, as Perry Miller called it some sixty years
ago, the "New England mind." In pursuing that elusive entity, I have tried to
χ Preface
avoid what Benjamin DeMott, with typical pungency, calls the "hallowing of
New England," an attitude he summarizes with a list of symbols that tend to
provoke automatic piety: "Pilgrims, Puritans, Boston Tea Party, Paul Revere,
City on the Hill, Underground Railway, Massachusetts alone for McGovern,
etc." The transience and diversity of cultural memory and the slippage of
history into myth are among the reasons this book stresses both continuities
and discontinuities, confrontations and accommodations—even as it remains
committed to the idea that New England is more than merely a geographical
term.
This having been said, a few words about the shape and contents of the
book are in order. Soon after I accepted the invitation from Harvard Univer-
sity Press to edit a volume for the general reader covering the whole range,
and whole history, of New England writing, I began to feel—as Howard
Mumford Jones once remarked about an anthology of his own—as if I were
"trying to sample the Atlantic Ocean with a tablespoon." Each piece has
fought hard for its place against other contenders. Inevitably, the final cast
and arrangement are expressions of personal taste; and so I imagine readers of
this book as house guests spending time in the company of pictures and fur-
nishings that matter to me and that seem to me to belong together. In making
the choices, I relied on a principle of inclusion suggested by Helen Vendler in
reviewing another anthology: "reading any major poet is an experience in how
description may be renewed." Not all the writers in this book are major fig-
ures (a few are barely known), and only a minority of them are, strictly speak-
ing, poets. But all are here because of the bracing freshness with which they
describe places, people, ideas, and events, to which, even if the subject is fa-
miliar, we are reawakened by their words.
With the goal in mind of producing a relatively compact and readable
book, I considered excluding altogether such writers as Emerson, Thoreau,
and Hawthorne on the grounds of their ready availability elsewhere. As an op-
posite expedient, I also considered simply producing a book of ten or twenty
"classics." In the end, I decided to include the major writers, but generally
to represent them with less well-known instances of their writing—on the
grounds that such standard works as Waiden or Benjamin Franklins Autobiog-
raphy are widely accessible. The best way to read this book is in conjunction
with these missing masterpieces. I should add that since novelists and histori-
ans suffer especially at the paring hand of the anthologist, I have excerpted
sparingly from the former and, with regret, virtually not at all from the lat-
ter—favoring instead letters, poems, stories, and essays that can be feasibly
printed without truncation. I hope that readers of this book will be stimulated
to go to the full sources, and to other works by more authors than they meet
here.