"Who Am I?"

 

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“Who am I?”

June 3, 2025

 

“Who Is It That Can Tell Me Who I Am?”

                                                                                                                                Lear, speaking to the Fool

                                                                                                                                King Lear. Act I, Scene IV, 1606

                                                                                                                                William Shakespeare (1564-1616)

 

Besides satisfying a personal curiosity, the study of one’s ancestry is fascinating in an intellectual sense: First, it personalizes history. How much more interesting it is to read about the American Revolution or the Civil War with knowledge of an ancestor then alive. Second, such a study considers a mathematical paradox –We know that about 75,000 years ago small groups of earliest humans began migrating out of Africa, traveling north, east and west. Those few humans have given us a global population today of over eight billion. But we also know that each of us descend from two parents, four grandparents, and eight great grandparents, a process that doubles with each generation going back. How could so many ancestors be reduced to so few that came out of Africa? How to reconcile that apparent contradiction? The answer – we are all related.  

 

A few weeks ago a friend and I were talking. She was born in England, raised in France, and as a nine-year old crossed the Pyrenes in 1940 on foot with her family to avoid Nazi occupation. In our conversation, she referred to me as a “Real American.” I was prompted to see if I could name all of my four-greats grandparents, most of whom would have been born before the American Revolution, and to discover if all (or most) were born in North America.

 

Starting with the surnames of my four grandparents, I spent many hours researching, working backwards into the past.  I had the invaluable help of a sister who had done most of the preparatory work years ago, and was thankful for the internet, which is a plethora of information, though not always accurate. Ultimately, I was able to name, with relative certainty, sixty of the sixty-four. (I believe I know the names of the other four, but I am not certain.) Of course I also had to come up with names and dates of thirty-two three-greats grandparents, along with sixteen two-greats and eight great grandparents – 120 names in all. Of the sixty four-greats for whom I was able to name and find a birth date, fifty-eight were born before the American Revolution (between 1713 and 1770), one in 1777 and one for which I could find no date. All but two were born in Colonial America. Two were born and died in Ireland – Martha Jackson (1777-1808) and Col. Hugh Hanna (1770-1806). A brother of Martha, James Jackson (1782-1840), brought their orphaned daughter – my three-greats grandmother Mary Jackson Hanna (1801-1843) – to Alabama in 1818, where she married Joseph Lawrence Dawson Smith (1799-1837). More on James later.

 

One of the fun things about studying one’s ancestry is coming across colorful characters; for most of my ancestors, to quote Henry David Thoreau, had to have led lives “of quiet desperation,” in an unsettled country, alive with danger. To name a few of the more interesting ones: James Williams (1741-1826) was a four-greats grandfather who married Susanna Shaw (1744-?). He was captain of a militia unit that marched to  Roxbury, Massachusetts on April 20, 1775 where they met no resistance. While he was not at either Lexington or Concord, he was still considered a “Minute Man.” Asa Messer, senior (1739-1806) and Abiah Whipple (1746-1809) gave birth to Asa Messer, junior (1769-1836) who married Deborah Angell (1776-1862). The younger Asa, a three-greats grandfather, became the third president of Brown College, then known as Rhode Island College. Noah Webster (1758-1843), the lexicographer, and his wife Rebecca Greenleaf (1766-1847) were four-greats grandparents. A seven-greats grandfather was Richard Hunnewell (c.1645-1703) of Scarborough, Maine. He was known as the “Indian killer.” Fittingly, he was killed by Indians, at what is now known as Massacre Pond near Prout’s Neck, on October 6, 1703. 

 

There is a connection to T.S. Eliot (1888-1965) on both my father’s and mother’s side. My grandfather Sydney M. Williams (1873-1963) was a second cousin of the poet, as they shared great grandparents: Thomas Heywood Blood (1775-1848) and Mary Sawyer (c.1775-1850). My grandfather once told me that the only time he met the poet, who was fifteen years younger than he was, Eliot was wearing a sailor’s suit. On my mother’s side, her father Henry Stuart Hotchkiss (1878-1947) descended from his three-greats grandparents, William Greenleaf (1725-1803) and Mary Brown (1728-1807). Those two were one set of T.S. Eliot’s two-greats grandparents. There is also a distant connection to Gideon Welles who was Lincoln’s Secretary of the Navy. He and my two-greats grandmother Isabella Welles Hunnewell were third cousins, sharing a common ancestor in Samuel Welles (1660-1731) who lived in Glastonbury, CT, which was home to Gideon Welles.

 

As for the southern branch of my family, the James Jackson mentioned above emigrated to Tennessee and then to Alabama, where he owned a large cotton farm, “Forks of Cypress.” He was a two-greats grandfather of Alex Haley, author of Roots: The Saga of an American Family and Queen: The Story of an American Family. James and Martha Jackson (a four-greats grandmother of mine) were children of Hugh Jackson (1709-1777) and Elinor Gault (c.1710-1791), both of whom lived and died in Ireland. Thus Alex Haley and I – he as the three-greats grandson of Hugh and Elinor, and I as the five-greats grandson of the same couple – are cousins. James Jackson was also the owner of “Peytona,” considered the greatest race horse of the time. His race against the mare “Fashion” on May 13, 1845 at Union Course on Long Island – a race between the north and the south (as well as mare versus stallion) – was the subject of a Currier & Ives print. “Peytona,” who had traveled 1,500 miles, won the race.

 

The most colorful connection, however, is Edward Augustus Silsbee. He was the youngest of eleven children, seven of whom lived into adulthood. My paternal grandmothers’ maternal grandmother (in other words, a two-greats grandmother) was the third oldest, Sarah Ann Silsbee. She was born June 18, 1814 in Salem, MA. He was born on February 19, 1826 in the same town and died on April 5, 1900 in Boston. At age 24 Silsbee commanded the clipper ship Columbia on an 18^th month voyage from Salem to San Francisco, the East Indies, Calcutta and back home. The Log of the voyage is now at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem. A copy of it is at the home of our son who was named for Edward Silsbee. Following his career at sea, Silsbee, a life-long bachelor, became, as described in 2017 by Dr. Tim Sommer, a Visiting Fellow at Harvard’s Houghton Library, “a Shelley enthusiast and ardent collector in pursuit of literary relics.” Silsbee lived in Florence between 1872 and 1879. There, he ingratiated himself with Claire Clairmont and her niece Paulina. Claire had been an intimate companion of Percy Bysshe Shelley who had died in 1822. The story of Silsbee, Clair Clairmont and her niece inspired Henry James’ novella, The Aspern Papers. Ultimately, Silsbee acquired Shelly’s notebooks and donated them to the Houghton Library at Harvard. A charcoal sketch of Edward Silsbee by John Singer Sargent (photo attached) is now at the Bodleian Library at Oxford (donated by him in 1899), with other Shelly artifacts Silsbee had collected. In the portrait, Silsbee’s craggy face is discernable behind his flowing white beard.

 

On my desk I have a photograph of my only great-grandparent who lived to see me born. In the photo, she holds me – at a slight distance, as though I had soiled my clothes. I look happy (see attached photo). Sadly, I do not remember her. She was born Mary Bolling Kemp in Petersburg, VA on January 15, 1861. Her mother died young, in 1867, likely from the effects of the siege of the city, which lasted from June 9, 1864 until March 25, 1865.

 

Marriage among cousins was not unusual at the time. Four sets of three-greats grandparents married cousins: Benjamin Williams (1757-1830) married Lydia Williams (1774-1845) on November 28, 1793. She was his first cousin once removed. John Welles (1764-1855) married his first cousin Abigail Welles (1776-1844) on April 28, 1795. Justus Hotchkiss (1772-1812) married his third cousin Susanna Hotchkiss (1775-1825) on April 27, 1800. And on March 12, 1812 Joseph Washington (1770-1848) married his second cousin once removed, Mary Cheatham (1796-1865).         

 

History comes alive when personalized. We know these people lived. They laughed and they cried; they loved and they argued; most important, they bred and produced descendants. Their lives cause us to behold the miracle of our own birth. It is difficult, with our conveniences, to imagine the lives they led – no paved roads or even trains; no telephone, telegraph, or flush toilets. Leaving home, many expected to never return. Most of my four-greats grandparents lived to see the United States gain its freedom from Britain, yet they all died before slavery ended. Most of their grandchildren (my great grandparents) died before women gained the vote. 

 

Like us, they grew to adulthood. As the 1950s were my generation’s time to grow from child to adult, and the 1920s the decade for my parents and the 1890s for my grandparents, my four-greats grandparents came of age in the years just before, during, or just after the American Revolution. It is sobering to think of the challenges they faced, and one is reminded of these lines from Kipling: “Beyond all outer charting/We sailed where none have sailed.”[1]

 

Yet their values were the ones we espouse: humility, justice, diligence, dignity, responsibility and kindness. “We are,” former Senator Paul Tsongas (D-MA) is quoted, “a continuum. Just as we reach back to our ancestors for our fundamental values, so we, as guardians of that legacy, must reach ahead to our children and grandchildren.” When asked why spend so much time looking back to those long dead, I am reminded of Edmund Burke’s quote in Reflections on the Revolution in France, published in 1790: “People will not look forward to posterity who never looked backward to their ancestors.” Can we derive wisdom from the past? Perhaps. Though Canadian comedian Norm MacDonald once wrote: “The only thing an old man can tell a young man is that it goes fast, real fast.” That it does.

 

I think of the question that titles this essay: Who am I? Unlike Lear’s relationship with Goneril, my daughter loves me. While I have genes from all my ancestors, I am not them. I am my own self, an individual who has tried to do the best he could with the talents he inherited and with the knowledge he acquired. I love my wife and the children we raised together, and the children they, with their chosen spouses, have raised. One’s personal history does provide a sense of belonging, but we are a consequence, not the cause. As for who we are, Dr. Seuss put it well in Happy Birthday to You: “Today you are You, that is truer than true. There is no one alive who is Youer than You.” So, yes, even though not all of my four-greats grandparents were born in North America, I proudly accept the moniker of “Real American.” 

 

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[1] Rudyard Kipling, “The merchantmen,” first published in Pall Mall Budget, May 15, 1893.

"Europe - One Man's Perspective"

 Yesterday’s violent sell-off was a reminder to recall Benjamin Graham’s advice: “In the short run the market is a voting machine, but in the long run, it is a weighing machine.”

 

I don’t pretend to have any insights as to the future direction of stocks, but I would caution against quick judgments. A grandson, a graduate student, born in 2001, asked me yesterday if he should be concerned about the market. While we should always be alert, ‘concerned’ was too strong a word. I told him that the compounded annual price return of the DJIA, since he was born, was about 6%, roughly the same annualized return since I was born 84 years ago. Not that that means anything, other than to suggest stocks may be fairly priced, but one has to expect volatility. Stocks can become overvalued, just as they can become undervalued. Five years ago, the market acted violently to the outbreak of COVID. In March of that year 20 days out of 23 trading days had the DJIA up or down more than 1.5%. On March 12, the Index was down 10%; the next day it was up 9.4%. Uncertainty leads to volatility, but long-term investors have always benefitted by the magic of compounded returns – that the market, in the short term, is a voting machine, but in the long term it is a weighing machine.

 

Now, on to today’s TOTD, which has nothing to do with the market.

 

Sydney M. Williams

www.swtotd.blogspot.com

 

Thought of the Day

“Europe – One Man’s Perspective”

April 4, 2025

 

“Europe was created by history. America was created by philosophy.”

                                                                                                                                Margaret Thatcher (1925-2013)

                                                                                                                                British Prime Minister, 1979-1990

 

I remember my first trip to England, looking out from the plane’s window at the island’s green fields, thinking that it was from this place that most of my ancestors sailed westward across the Atlantic to a new world. Most were poor, traveling as indentured servants, but endowed with a belief in the promise of a new start in a new world. They were driven by optimism, a belief that an unknown future in a strange country would be better than what was ordained for them at home. It was with a sense of wonder and pride in their courage that I gazed at a land that, had they not emigrated, I might have called home.

 

However, what prompted this essay were recent condescending remarks of Vice President J.D. Vance and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth. In his February 14^th speech in Munich, Mr. Vance said, “What I worry about is the threat from within.” While I am sympathetic to the idea of the threat from within – a failure to focus on economic growth, anti-democratic attempts to silence opposing opinions (for example, the extraordinary treatment of Marime Le Pen), and the failure of most European nations to assimilate hordes of migrants seeking refuge, and the consequence of their impact on culture. However, his patronizing tone unnecessarily imperils our relationship with Europe. And the comments by Vance and Hegseth, relayed by Jeffrey Goldberg of The Atlantic, from what is now being called “SignalGate:” Vance: “I just hate bailing Europe out again.” Hegseth: “I fully share your loathing of European free-loading. It’s pathetic.” While it is true that most European countries have not complied, until recently, with the two percent rule for defense contributions, most have increased their spending since then President Trump made a fuss in 2017. They should give credit where credit is due

 

Americans should be careful about belittling old allies. The United States – for better or worse – is far different than Europe. More than a hundred and fifty years ago, Henry James wrote to Harvard professor Charles Eliot Norton: “It’s a complex fate being an American & one of the responsibilities it entails is fighting a superstitious valuation of Europe.” Unlike Europe, where migrants mostly live segregated lives, years of assimilation in the U.S. have produced a multi-cultural population, so that almost all Americans, whether white, black or Asian, can trace part of their ancestry to one country (or several) in Europe.

 

And consider what Europe has gifted us over the Centuries: Artists like Michelangelo, Rembrandt, Constable and Picasso. Writers like Tolstoy, Jane Austen, Victor Hugo, and Dante Alighieri. Composers like Bach, Vivaldi, Debussy and Tchaikovsky. Scientists like Archimedes, Galileo, Darwin, Einstein and Enrico Fermi. Thinkers and philosophers, from Plato and Aristotle to Adam Smith, Voltaire and Nietzsche. Think of the palaces, museums and cathedrals designed by architects like Louis le Vau, Bernini, Juan de Villanueva and Christopher Wren.

 

These are gifts from the past that keep on giving, as can be heard in any symphony, seen in every museum, and read in libraries and classrooms. But what about the present and the future? The European Union is a worthwhile experiment. Keep in mind, the Continent was embroiled in two world wars in the 20^th Century. Peaceful coexistence is better than war. But there remains much that is unknown. Will a united Europe retain the customs, cultures and languages of their individual states? Or will it become an amorphous mixing bowl? George Washington once, allegedly, forecast: “Someday, following the example of the United States of America, there will be a United States of Europe.” I hope so.

 

During the Cold War, Western Europe and the United States were united in their pledge to defeat the scourge of Soviet Communism. Europe was divided, because of an imperialistic Soviet Union, by what Winston Churchill described as an “iron curtain” that had “descended across the continent.” One consequence was the formation of NATO three years later, in 1949. Russia’s continued belligerence, after the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991, meant that NATO remained relevant, but the situation changed. Russia was smaller, but still the possessor of thousands of nuclear weapons, and had aligned with other totalitarian regimes like China, North Korea and Iran. Europe, after being battered in two World Wars, a decade-long global depression, and a forty-five-year Cold War, focused on becoming social welfare states. Since the end of the Cold War, E.U. nations have spent roughly ten times as much on “social protection” as on defense. (Eastern Europe, with close memories of Soviet occupation, spends less on welfare and more on defense than does Western Europe.) 

 

But that generosity has brought other problems. As Margaret Thatcher once said: “The problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people’s money.” Europe has not focused on the productive side of its economy. In 2023, the U.S., with a population 110 million less than that in the E.U., produced a GDP 62% larger. Since the turn of the millennium, Europe’s economy has increased 134% versus 172% in the U.S. Europe needs to ensure they can continue to afford the governments and societies they have created.

 

As well, the continent has a more significant problem – an unaddressed demographic problem, which will further affect their future well-being. Not enough women are having babies. The total fertility rate (TFR) in Europe in 2023 was 1.38. The last time that rate was above replacement (2.1) was 1974. Today, the population of the European Union stands at 449 million, with an average age of 44.7. Projections suggest that the population in Europe by the end of the Century will decline to 420 million, with an average age in excess of 50. Europe is not alone with this demographic challenge. South Korea, Taiwan, Singapore, Hong Kong share the dubious distinction of having the planet’s lowest birth rates. China at 1.18 and Japan at 1.26 are both below Europe’s. The United States’ is higher but at 1.78, still below replacement. Low birthrates in Europe are being offset by increased migration. For example, in 2023 3.67 million babies were born in the E.U., while 4.6 immigrants arrived from non-E.U. countries. Nevertheless and as mentioned above demographers suggest the population will continue to age, and their culture will change to accommodate their changing populations. No one knows what the economic and cultural effects will be, but over the past several decades growth rates have shown a persistent slowing, yet the welfare state continues uninterrupted. That trend is unsustainable.

 

Nevertheless, for reasons both sentimental and practical, Europe is worthy of our friendship. It is the first line of defense against Russia. As well, it is our past and, given what it has produced over the past two thousand years, it is a fount of inspiration and brings pleasure to our futures. Despite despots and kings, wars and famines, the world is a better place because of Europe. It needs a correction but deserves our respect.

Review - "The Portrait of a Lady," Henry James

 Apologies for two essays in two days, but we have to leave for Rye this afternoon and will be gone for two days.

 

Indicative of how little things change, there is an exchange in this novel, which will be familiar to many today. It is when old Daniel Touchett speaks to Isabel about the “radicals of the upper class:” Their “progressive ideas are about their greatest luxury. They make them feel moral and yet don’t damager their positions.” Plus c’est la même chose.

 

Regardless, I believe you will enjoy this book, among the best I have read.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

Burrowing into Books

The Portrait of a Lady, 1908, Henry James (1843-1916)

February 16, 2025

 

“I’m very fond of my liberty.”

                                                                                                                                Isabel speaking

                                                                                                                                The Portrait of a Lady, Henry James

 

I like to read but am no expert on literature. Nevertheless, in my opinion, this novel ranks with Tolstoy’s Anna Karenina. The title is interesting, as we learn about Isabel Archer, because a person is more than an artist’s rendition. In the last few pages, Isabel slips from the frame we had thought enclosed her. Writing the “Introduction” to the Oxford Word’s Classic edition, Professor Roger Luckhurst concludes: “From this busted frame Isabel evades final determination, and James leads us toward the era of the modern novel.”  

 

The story opens at Gardencourt, an early Tudor mansion on the Thames, about 40 miles west of London, home to the American expatriate Daniel Touchett, his wife Lydia and their sickly son Ralph. Lydia Touchett had visited her sisters in Albany, New York and returns with her niece, Isabel Archer, who is in her early 20s. She displays “a great deal of confidence,” is “slim and charming, and “unexpectedly pretty.” She is a breath of fresh air in an English society locked in a class struggle. It is significant that her first marriage proposal in England comes from Lord Warburton whose home Lockleigh, with its 50,000 acres, is adjacent to Gardencourt. She rejects him on the basis that she wants to be free, to see more of life, just as she had earlier rejected Casper Goodwood, an old flame from the U.S., a suitor who reappears in the story.

 

The scene shifts to Florence and then Rome, where most of the story takes place. In Florence, she meets the impoverished, deceptive American ex-patriate Gilbert Osmond – an older man, with a beautiful 15-year-old daughter, Pansy, who has been schooled by Catholic nuns – and the duplicitous Madame Merle who serves as nemesis to Isabel. At first the two women are thrown together, and the naïve Isabel opens up to her. “Sometimes she [Isabel] took alarm at her candour: it was as if she had given to a comparative stranger the key to her cabinet of jewels.” Once Madame Merle convinces Osmond he should marry the heiress Isabel, she goes to work on Isabel. Isabel marries Osmond, but as time progresses, she is unhappy and realizes Madame Merle does not have her interests: “She carried her flag discreetly, but her weapons were polished steel, and she used them with a skill which struck Isabel as more and more that of a veteran.”

 

Roughly five years pass from Isabel’s arrival in England until her return alone to Gardencourt to see her dying cousin. It is Ralph who advises Isabel: “Take things more easily…Don’t question your conscience so much…Spread your wings; rise above the ground. It’s never wrong to do that.” She had spread her wings in Florence, then found herself in an uncomfortable nest. She knows she does not belong in her marriage nest and senses wisdom in her dying cousin’s words.

 

James does not tell the reader how Isabel’s search ends, what the finished portrait looks like. But then, do any of us know how our stories will end? We suspect Isabel is wiser, and we also know she is both loyal and fond of liberty. Will she return to her husband in Florence, go back to the U.S. and marry Casper, or will she continue to travel, to investigate, to learn more about herself? We don’t know. It is an unfinished portrait.

"A Valentine's Day Message"

With Valentine’s Day appearing Friday, this essay is a little early, but love knows no calendar.

A beautiful wintery morning has arrived here in Connecticut. It reminds me of February days of yore.

 

The photo (“When Cupid’s Arrow Struck”) was taken on Friday March 9, 1962, the day Caroline agreed to be my Valentine for life. With her roommate and fiancé, Caroline and I were driving from Boston to New Hampshire for a weekend skiing at Wildcat Mountain. The photo was taken somewhere along New Hampshire’s coast.

 

Sydney M. Williams

 

More Essays from Essex

“A Valentine’s Day Message”

February 9, 2025

 

“The opposite of love is not hate; it’s indifference.”

                                                                                                Elie Wiesel (1928-2016)

                                                                                                Interview, U.S. News & World Report, October 27, 1986

 

Love is a unique sensation. Your definition of the word may differ from mine. It is ubiquitous in that every child born is embraced with the instinctual, maternal love of its mother. Love allows a child to understand they are integral to their family. Love is all around us, yet also singular. When missing, its absence is felt. It can arrive quickly, as did my love for Caroline not long after we met (and which has persisted for sixty-three years), or it may germinate for several months, even years, before blossoming. And, sadly, it sometimes dies.

 

We mostly think of love in terms of the one we marry, the individual we have chosen to share our life. But love assumes different forms. Love for one’s parents and one’s children are not the same. The former rests on the appreciation for one’s conception, while the latter is based on the knowledge that one’s children are the creation of you and your spouse, and that all one’s descendants, carry one’s genes into the future, making life eternal. It is spiritual, as in love for God. It can be generic, as in love for one’s country or for one’s fellow man. Love for one’s pets is not the same as love for one’s spouse, but it is nonetheless real. Love demands involvement, as Elie Wiesel suggested. It may be blind, however, as when passion, compassion, or admiration are mistaken for love. In such cases, it may be unrequited, for love is not always equally shared. 

 

Two hundred years ago Noah Webster defined the word as an “affection of the mind,” feelings of “esteem and benevolence” “animal desires between the sexes.” The Oxford English Dictionary defines the word: characterized “by strong feelings of affection for another, arising out of kinship, companionship, admiration, or benevolence;” it is “an individual emotion.” It has been used, the dictionary says, “to refer to sexual attraction or erotic desire.”

 

Today, we use the word liberally. “love you,” we say or write to our children and grandchildren when departing, ending a phone call or completing a text message. We hug one another and say how much we love them. Is the word over-used? I think not, for expressions of love make us considerate and respectful. On my shaving mirror is a saying, attributed to the University of Notre Dame’s longest serving president, Father Theodore Hesburgh (1917-2015): “The most important thing a man can do for his children is to love their mother.”

 

Like many of my generation, I was born into a family who loved me but who were not demonstrative of love, or, in fact, of most emotions. Saying “I love you,” and hugging were not common forms of expression. While I knew I was loved, the word ‘love’ was used only when signing letters. The last time I saw my father, in late November 1968 as he was dying of cancer, I told him I loved him, and I remember the awkwardness I felt when I said the words. Less than a year later – the evening before he died – I stopped to see my father-in-law in New York before heading back to Connecticut. I told him my wife loved him. I recall my words seemed forced, even as I knew Caroline loved him deeply.

 

As a college freshman in an introductory class in psychology, we were asked to define love. I demurred, unable to define a sensation I barely understood. Perhaps I was wrong for not attempting, as today I suspect the professor was not looking for a precise definition but to initiate a discussion.

 

A fun story: In the early 2000s, I was in Louisiana on a business trip. Two of us had been visiting a client in Baton Rouge, before driving to New Orleans to fly back to New York the next day. That evening we had dinner at Galatoire’s, a century-old restaurant on Bourbon Street. By chance, we were seated at a table next to Leon Galatoire and a lady friend. Mr. Galatoire had had a few drinks, and we started chatting and soon joined the two tables. My friend bought two copies of Leon Galatoire’s cookbook. Asked to sign them, Mr. Galatoire complied. My copy – today one of my treasures – shows three attempts to sign it, the last reading: “For Sydney, Love you so much! Bon appétit, Leon Galatoire.”

 

To love and to be loved are among the greatest sensations available to us as humans. As one of life’s eternal mysteries, it is too big a subject to be covered in this short essay. It has been written about by poets and portrayed by artists, far more articulate than I am. Nevertheless, I felt the urge to write something as we approach Valentine’s Day. “Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies,” is a quote attributed to Aristotle, signifying the deep connection felt between two people in love.  When Justice Stewart Potter was asked to describe his test for obscenity, he replied, “I know it when I see it.” Today my answer to my psychology professor would be, I know love when I feel it. And I have been fortunate in being loved, especially by my wife Caroline, and by my children and grandchildren, but also by a large extended family and by numerous friends.

 

In Henry James novel The Portrait of a Lady there is a scene in which the dying Ralph Touchett, speaks to his cousin Isabel Archer; he contrasts physical pain and love: “It’s (the pain) very deep, but…it passes; it’s passing now. But love remains.” It does, but to receive and experience it, we must be open to it and generous with it.

 

HAPPY VALENTINE’S DAY!

"The Ambassadors," Henry James

 As a reminder, these short essays are not critical reviews, but to provide a sense of the book, and to convey, I hope, why I found it enjoyable and/or informative. Henry James’ books tend to be longer, as he wrote for a people whose time was not taken up by television and social media. But, if you can find the time you will appreciate his characters and their lives. 

 

Sydney M. Williams

30 Bokum Road – Apartment 314

Essex, CT 06426

 

Burrowing into Books

The Ambassadors, Henry James

October 2, 2021

 

“Live all you can; it’s a mistake not to. It doesn’t matter

what you do in particular, so long as you have your life.”

                                                                                                             Lambert Strether speaking to Little Bilham

                                                                                                             The Ambassadors

 

Lambert Strether, a 50-something, educated but impoverished, widower, has been sent, as an ambassador, by Mrs. Newsom of Woollett, Massachusetts, to retrieve her son Chad who has spent the past five years in Paris, allegedly beguiled by a “foreign” woman. His reward is a promise of matrimony by the widowed Mrs. Newsom. Upon arriving in Liverpool, he makes the acquaintance of Maria Gostrey, an American woman in her mid 30s. They become friendly. She questions him about his ambassadorial duties: “You’ve accepted the mission of separating him from the wicked woman. Are you quite sure she’s bad for him?” He responds: “Of course we are. Wouldn’t you be?” They both travel, independently, to Paris where Chad has been living and where Maria, a former schoolmate of the “wicked woman,” becomes confidant to Strether. 

 

The woman is Madame de Vionnet. Several months later Chad’s sister Sarah, her husband Jim Pocock and sister-in-law Mamie Pocock (whom Chad’s mother had pre-selected for her son) arrived in Paris, also as “ambassadors,” to check on Strether. We see him closeted with Chad’s friend “Little” Bilham who asks him whom Chad should marry: Strether replies: “Not marry at all events Mamie.” “And who then?” “Ah, that I’m not obliged to say. But Madame de Vionnet – I suggest – when he can.” The strait-laced Strether has been seduced by the sexual freedom that is late 19^th Century Paris, anticipating Walter Donaldson’s 1919 song, “How You Gonna Keep ‘em Down on the Farm.”

 

While the allures of Paris can be catching, they do not infect everyone. Chad’s sister Sarah is immune from the city’s attractions. On the other hand, “charming” and “funny” Mamie Pocock blossoms. Strether had met her in Woollett, as she was in a literature class he had taught in Mrs. Newsome’s parlor, but he had no real memory of her; “it not being in the nature of things at Woolett that the freshest of buds should find herself in the same basket with the most withered of winter apples.” 

 

While reading 19^th and early 20^th Century novels can be challenging because of the syntax and vocabulary, one of the pleasures is seeing how definitions have changed: gay – happy; glass – mirror; festal – festive; drollery – comical gestures. Other words common at the time, like mirth, twigged, verily and fortnight are rarely used today.

 

But back to the story; it is the change in Strether that is at its essence – from a conservative “stuffed shirt” to a renewed free spirit, as can be seen in his quote that heads this essay. Nevertheless, in the end, Chad, on his own, chooses to return to Woollett and the family business, while Strether, despite offers of intimacy from Madame de Vionnet and Maria Gostrey, dismisses the appeal of Paris and decides to return to Puritan Massachusetts. “To what do you go home?” asks Maria Gostrey. “I don’t know. There will always be something,” answers Strether. 

 

What happens back in Woollett is left to our imagination.

"The Duke's Children," by Anthony Trollope

Sydney M. Williams

Burrowing into Books

“The Duke’s Children,” Anthony Trollope

July 18, 2020

“He had already been driven to acknowledge that these children of his –

thoughtless, reckless, though they seemed to be – still had a will of

their own. In all which, how like they were to their mother.”

                                                                                                Anthony Trollope (1815-1882)

                                                                                                The Duke’s Children, 1880

                                                                                                Chapter 61

The story begins with the Duchess of Omnium, Lady Glencora, having just died. She has left her husband the Duke, Plantagenet Palliser, a widow with three children: Lord Silverbridge, Lady Mary and Gerald. They are young people on the verge of adulthood – wealthy, aristocratic, impetuous and independent. We follow the gambling, horses and love affair of the oldest son, the romance of the daughter and the college pranks and sporting adventures of the youngest. Thrown into the mix is a hail of characters, scenes from fox hunting – a favorite sport of the author – and observations on politics and society

Anthony Trollope was prolific. In all, he wrote forty-seven novels. The Duke’s Children completes the sixth volume of the Palliser series. In this, Trollope provides a perspective on mid-late Nineteenth Century life among Britain’s upper classes. “He never wearied,” Henry James wrote in 1888, in a not-very-flattering essay on Anthony Trollope in Partial Portraits, “of the pre-established round of English customs…”

Plantagenet Palliser, now a Duke and former Prime Minister and “not yet fifty,” is one of the wealthiest men in England. He had inherited his title when his uncle, the former Duke of Omnium, died. Palliser has mixed feelings about Britain’s caste system. He is a traditionalist: “To the Duke’s thinking the maintenance of the aristocracy of the country was second only in importance to the maintenance of the Crown.” Tradition affected his attitude toward Silverbridge’s and Mary’s choices of marriage partners. But he is a man of contradictions: He tells the American Isabel Boncassen, Silverbridge’s intended: “There is no greater mistake than to suppose that inferiority of birth is a barrier to success in our country.” This he says while urging his son to seek a marriage partner from among Britain’s nobility.

Trollope describes the Duke as a parent: “A more loving father there was not in England, but nature had made him so undemonstrative that as yet they had hardly known his love.” Silverbridge, when we meet him, is a young man out of Oxford and into gambling “who imagined himself to be anything but extravagant, [so] wondered how the figures could mount up so rapidly.” After a flirtation with Lady Mabel Grex, Silverbridge meets Isabel, daughter of Ezekiel Boncassen a self-made American millionaire and scholar. He falls in love. Eighteen-year-old Lady Mary had fallen in love with Francis Oliphant Tregear while she was on vacation in Switzerland with her parents and while Tregear was traveling in the region. Frank was the son of a gentleman of no financial means. He had been a classmate of Silverbridge’s at Eton and Oxford. It was a romance known to Lady Glencora but not to her husband who, when he hears of it after his wife’s death, disapproves. Lady Mary, however, is a young woman of determination, with a clear understanding of her rights: “Being the child of rich parents she had the right to money. Being a woman, she had a right to a husband. Having been born free she had a right to choose one for herself. Having had a man’s love given to her she had a right to keep it.”

We read of the ups and downs of the two romances, of Silverbridge coming to terms with his turf buddies and Lady Mary’s handling of her father-imposed seclusion. Along the way, we pick up bits of Trollope’s wisdom: On life: “It is so much easier to think of the past than of the future – to remember what has been than to resolve what shall be.” On politics: “The statesman who falls is he who does much, and thus injures many. The statesman who stands the longest is he who does nothing and injures no one.” On diligence: “But for the feeling of self-contentment, which creates happiness – hard work, and hard work alone, can give it to you.” On finances: “Money is the reward of labour.” And on communication: “You have first to realize in your mind the thing to be said, and then the words in which you should say it…” Amen to that.

In the end, the Duke becomes reconciled to the inevitable. Silverbridge marries the beautiful Isabel, and Mary weds her beloved Frank. Left undetermined is the fate of Gerald, who having been tossed out of Cambridge for violating curfew, is now at Oxford.

Anthony Trollope wrote knowingly of his time and environment. The love affair between Silverbridge and Isabel was representative of a then popular trend – daughters of American millionaires marrying titled, but impoverished, Englishmen. Six years before this book was published American Jenny Jerome married Lord Randolph Churchill, the third son of the Marquess of Blandford. To read Trollope, and his vignettes on everything – from shooting in Scotland, horse racing at Doncaster, fox hunting near Trumpington Woods to parlors in Mayfair – is to better understand the social history of the time. Turning the last page is to say farewell to friends.