Hugh Wynne, free Quaker

Prefatory Note

One is almost enjoined by Benjamin Franklin’s remark about ‘ ‘ commentators spoiling the best books” from prefacing any book which tells its story well. In this case the author has protected himself by writing his own preface, and that after all affords the best kind of an introduction to a book. However, it is hoped that the reader will notice that in the arrangement of this volume, the full text is given, and that the annotations are not intended to be exhaustive, but merely for ready reference, and to suggest a method for further investigation of the many names and places which are found in abundance within its covers.

To follow in detail the historic by-paths suggested by a reading of Hugh Wynne would awaken such an interest in our colonial times and manners as to make one a fairly good student of early American history, and if this edition of the novel should accomplish such an end alone, its purpose would be well served. If one reads Hugh Wynne in the spirit which actuated the author himself when he wrote, he cannot fail to become imbued with a deeper realization of the significance of the events which helped to shape the early affairs of our country, and to feel a

VI

Prefatory Note keener and more personal interest in maintaining the fundamental principles which were fought for by the men and women of colonial times whose loyal and heroic actions are bodied forth in the story.

Dr. Mitchell himself visited the places mentioned in the novel and knew their historic backgrounds and settings. Then too he became so deeply interested in the characters themselves that he took the trouble to acquire the signatures of many of them through the descendants of the families whose names appear in his pages.

The author was once asked how long it took him to write Hugh Wynne.

‘ ‘ It was written in six weeks, ’ ’ was the reply.

“Planned, blocked out and written ?” was asked again.

“Everything except the seven years I have been thinking about it,” he replied simply.

It is a pleasure to chat with the friends of the author, now living, but the anecdotal material thus obtainable would make a biographical sketch suitable here, too lengthy. Mr. Joseph Horner Coates, a very close friend; Mr. Maurice Abbott, of the Philadelphia Library Company, of which Dr. Mitchell was a director; Dr. John Chalmers DaCosta, who occasionally accompanied him on his historic jaunts; and Dr. J. Madison Taylor, another of his colleagues in medicine and literature, especially emphasized the care with which he sought information which would make the material

Prefatory Note vii

of Hugh Wynne accurate historically and geographically.

I wish to thank Mr. Dana H. Ferrin of New York for his helpful interest, and to acknowledge indebtedness to Dr. Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer and Dr. Charles W. Burr, both fellow members with Dr. Mitchell in the Franklin Inn, that notable group who meet in their quaint building in that quaintest street of little clubs in the world, for biographical material and friendly suggestion.

Vincent B. Brecht.

Philadelphia,

September 27, 1922.

SILAS WEIR MITCHELL

While Silas Weir Mitchell bore naturally a patrician, old-school air, particularly in his later years, and came of scholarly and intellectual forebears, he once remarked that he had come of a respectable family which enjoyed the very unusual distinction of not having arrived in the British Isles with William the Conqueror. As an interesting bit of literary genealogy at least, it is related that his great-grandfather, while an internal revenue collector in Scotland, appointed Robert Burns to his position as gauger. He was also the Mitchell alluded to by Burns in an earlier poem, “To Mitchell, on asking for a loan of five pounds.” His grandfather, Alexander Mitchell of Virginia, was of Scotch birth. He was known as “one of the ablest physicians in the Virginia valley.”

His father, Dr. John Kearsley Mitchell, was born in Virginia in 1798; educated in Scotland; and later came to Philadelphia, where he established a medical practice and in 1841 became Professor of the Theory and Practice of Medicine in Jefferson Medical College. He was one of the strongest advocates of the germ theory when such a belief was not popular. He too had a strong ix

X bias toward literature. In fact he is said to have thought more highly of some of the poems he wrote than he did of his more widely recognized medical achievements. His volume Indecision , and Other Poems bears testimony to his skill in the field of versification.

Silas Weir Mitchell, one of a family of nine children, was born in Philadelphia on February 15, 1829. He was not precocious, but slowly and steadily reached his maturity. Once when about seven years old he told his mother that he had just seen a golden chariot with horse and trappings. She, not realizing that he like all imaginative children had in very truth seen a vision, seen by the physical eye the thing he dreamed of, chided him for untruthfulness. He felt the injustice of the charge, never forgot the incident, and years later, during his professional life, many times urged parents to be careful, when their children related such things, not to mistake richness of imagination for poverty of the moral sense. He did not enjoy the most robust health in his youth and this helped to lead him into that wide reading of books which became a fixed habit throughout his life. “I just read everything I could get hold of” he once said. “I think I read every book in the Philadelphia library. I used to lie flat in front of the fire and read, read, read. Anything, everything. The History of the Incas of Peru for instance, — bully reading. After all, some people are born readers, as some are born

XI poets.’ ’ He studied at the University of Pennsylvania and then at Jefferson Medical College, graduating from the latter in 1850. After graduation he studied in Paris. In his later life he received honorary degrees from Harvard, Edinborough and Bologna.

His early career in the practice of medicine was one of hard work and burdensome responsibilities. Dr. Talcott Williams, a warm personal friend and biographer of Dr. Mitchell, is authority for the statement that ten years after he began the practice of medicine his receipts in practice were only about a thousand dollars, and in that year he had suddenly thrown upon him the responsibility of caring for his father’s family, and was approaching his own marriage.

Not content with a mere devotion to the every-day routine of a physician, he became a student of the deeper problems of the science of medicine. In 1853 he was elected to the Academy of the Natural Sciences. He read the first paper before the newly created biological section in 1858. He was one of the founders of the Pathological Society of Philadelphia. From the time of his graduation until 1863, when he assumed charge of an army hospital for nervous diseases, he had written twenty-two scientific papers. His most valuable contribution previous to his war work was his monograph on the venom of rattlesnakes. His work in the field of arrow poison and snake venom was epochal. His book Gunxii Hugh Wynne: Free Quaker

shot Wounds and other Injuries to the Nerves, appeared in 1864 as a result of his Civil War experiences and won for him scientific reputation.

A little book, Fat and Blood, which taught that tired nerves/ states of nervous irritability, suspiciousness short of real delusions, terrible haunting ideas which terrify the victims, can often be cured by isolation, massage, milk diet and rest, brought him national and international recognition as the originator of what is generally known as “the rest cure,” or the “Weir Mitchell Treatment. ’ ’

While he was distinguished as a physician, a man of science, a man of affairs, and a man of letters, it is principally in the lastnamed field that he is considered here. One of his first poems to find its way into a prominent magazine was “The Strasburg Clock,” first published anonymously in the Atlantic Monthly in 1862, after it had been sent by Dr. W. H. Furness to Ralph Waldo Emerson, who in turn showed it to James T. Fields as the work of “an unpretending and right lovable man.” He relates the following about his first work that brought pay. “I never could resist telling a story. While this subject (a discussion about amputation stumps) was occupying my mind, a friend came in one evening and in our talk said ‘How much of a man would have to be lost in order that he should lose any portion of his sense of individuality ? J

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This odd remark haunted me, and after he had left I sat up most of the night manufacturing my first story, The Case of George Dedlow, Related by Himself. In this tale my man had lost all four limbs. I left this tale in the hands of a delightful lady, now long dead, the sister of Horace Howard Furness. Then I forgot it. Dr. Furness, her father, sent it to Mr. Hale, editor of the Atlantic Monthly. To my surprise about three months afterward came a proof and a welcome check for $85.00, my first literary earning, and certainly not a contribution on my part, for I had nothing to do with the disposal of the paper and had not authorized its being put into print. The story has had a dreadful number of successors, the product of my lengthening summer leisure. Some of them you have read to your cost. The unfortunate George Dedlow ’s sad account of himself proved so convincing that people raised money to help him and visited the stump hospital to see him. If I may judge it by one of its effects, George Dedlow must have seemed very real. At the close of my story, he — a limbless torso — is carried to a spiritualist meeting, where the spirits call up his lost legs and he capers about for a glorious minute. The spiritualist journals seized on this as a new proof of the verity of their belief. Imagine that. ’ ’

In 1867 the same magazine published anonymously The Autobiography of a Quack. This was contemporary in the same publication with xiv Hugh Wynne: Free Quaker

Oliver Wendell Holmes’s Guardian Angel. From this time on for two decades Dr. Mitchell devoted his energies to his profession. In general his poems and novels were the by-products of a busy life. While it is true that writing was secondary in his career, as he always considered his scientific and medical work of first importance, he approached it in the same painstaking manner which characterized his work in his chosen profession. In 1880 Lippincott published three short stories in a volume — Hephzibah Guinness, Thee and Thou and A Draft on the Bank of Spain, the general title being that of the first-named story. Dr. Mitchell was then fifty years of age. He had followed the advice of Oliver Wendell Holmes not to go into literature until his professional position was established, lest it injure him as a physician, because people would say that he had lost his interest in his medical work. In 1884 Houghton Mifflin & Company published In War Time, his first long story, the result of his experiences as a young man in the military service of his country. In 1887 the same publishers brought out Boland Blake, another novel of the Civil War. In 1889 Lippincott published a book of a different type and one of his best novels, Far in the Forest. In 1892 there issued from the press of the Century Company, who from that time on published most of his writings, the book Characteristics, a series of comments by a doctor, a poet, a sculptor, and other men with temperaments

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and sensibilities upon a wide range of subjects. In 1894 appeared that charming love tale with the tang of the Maine woods and the Canadian wilds, When All the Woods Are Green. In 1896 appeared Hugh Wynne with its background of thirty years of American history from 1753 to 1783, and dealing with the sorrows and reality of those stirring times in so absorbing a fashion that it captivated and held the interest of the reading public and brought fame to the author and an enviable position in the world of letters. The Adventures of Frangois, which contains one of the most delightful vagabond characters in literature, was published in 1898 ; Dr. North and His Friends , in which Dr. Mitchell pays a tribute to his father’s verse by quoting one of his lyrics, was printed in 1900 ; Circumstance in 1901 ; A Comedy of Conscience , which deals with a charming young woman with an uncompromising New England conscience, in 1903. In the same year came forth Little Stories, a book of thirteen little sketches in which moral philosophy is given in the guise of entertaining fiction. In 1904 appeared The Youth of Washington in which the author essays the rather bold literary adventure of writing an imaginary biography of our first President and putting the story into the mouth of Washington in his later years. Constance Trescott, a powerful psychological novel of which Dr. Mitchell once said, “That is my great book!” was published in 1905. It dealt with a woman’s vendetta which

XVI actually came under the author’s personal observation. A Diplomatic Adventure appeared in 1906. Two years later he brought out The Red City with its historic setting of Washington’s second administration, and containing the character of Hugh Wynne in the role of employer of the hero, a Huguenot emigre who comes to Philadelphia to work out his career. John Sherwood: Ironmaster bears 1911 as its date of publication. His last novel was Westway s (1913), which but for Tolstoi’s use of the title would have been called Peace and War. It dealt with the affairs of a Pennsylvania iron town during the Civil War, dominated socially and economically by one family.

Dr. Mitchell had a wide range of subjects, extending through two American wars and the French Revolution; and dealing with the less heroic but not less interesting fields of his scientific and psychological studies and experiences ; and his travels at home and abroad. The pen of a doctor wielded by the hand of a poet essayed nearly every literary form: the novel, the short story, the essay, drama, and verse. In his short stories plot is the main thing; in his novels plot is of lesser consequence, analysis of character and creation of the atmosphere of the time he depicts being of chief concern. In his local delineation of the subtleties of character, of the complexities, alert yet hidden in the silent activities of human

Hugh Wynne: Free Quaker xvii nature, he often rises to the power of Balzac, and at times by reason of his understanding of psychological reasoning excels him. In his poetry he reached a high degree of excellence of artistic expression. In The Ode on a Lycian Tomb he won the independent judgments of Thomas Bailey Aldrich and of Dr. Henry van Dyke that it is the finest elegiac poem written by an American.

Two facts in Dr. Mitchell's career stand out with prominence : first, that success in any field need not be despaired of because it delays its appearance until well into middle age, provided only that the waiting period has been devoted to an apprenticeship of earnest and faithful work ; second, that there is no essential incompatibility between sustained literary activity, on the one hand, and high professional distinction in science, with successful medical practice on the other.

Dr. Mitchell is a conspicuous example of the fact that an active pursuit of science and literature can co-exist with benefit to both. His life is a complete refutation of the fallacy that there is a time limit to a man's capacity for original work. His physical and literary longevity were remarkable. John Sherwood and Westivays are notable achievements for a man over eighty years of age. Bayard Taylor died at the age of fifty-three and that was fourteen years before Dr. Mitchell in his literary career had had his first real success, xviii Hugh Wynne: Free Quaker and before he had acquired that leisure which made possible the attainment of one of the cherished goals of his young manhood.

Never was there a writer who so conserved the art of friendship, so practised it, so knew all its ranging, and who perpetually was ready, if another failed or forgot, to forgive and to act. In some of his dedications he pays a tribute to his New York friendship with William Dean Howells, Richard Watson Gilder, Dr. John S. Billings and John Lambert Cadwalader. In his own city with Henry C. Lea and Horace Howard Furness he formed what another friend called Philadelphia ’s triumvirate of eminent men. He became the moving spirit of a coterie of Philadelphia’s literary men who in 1902 founded the Franklin Inn. He was its first president and was one of its most active members until his death on January 4, 1914. With Harrison S. Morris and a few others, occasionally joined at the luncheon hour by F. Hopkinson Smith and Dr. Henry van Dyke, he formed a regular group known as “The Southwest Corner.” In his later years he set great store by his friendships and many were the feasts of reason and flowings of soul which the pleasant wood fire of his study inspired on those memorable “Saturday evenings” over which he presided with the dignity and in which he entertained with the hospitality of an older day.

Dr. Mitchell was twice married. His first wife was Mary Elwyn. Their children were John

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Kearsley Mitchell and Langdon Elwyn Mitchell. The former made the fourth generation of Mitchells! in one family to distinguish themselves in the field of medicine. While devoted to a large practice he found time to cultivate the arts of literature. The latter is well known as the author of The New York Idea , in which his wife Marian Lea had acted the leading role, and as the author of the dramatization of Becky Sharp and The Adventures of Frangois. Dr. Mitchell’s second wife was Miss Mary Cadwalader of New York. She became, as he said, his “best literary critic.” Their daughter Mary, who died before his own time of passing away, was the critic of the French words and phrases of Hugh Wynne.

One of the finest tributes to Dr. Mitchell was paid near the end of his career when a friend said, “The world will know the books he has written, but not all will know the men he has helped.” Again the feeling he inspired in others is expressed in another ’s remark, ‘ 1 There are a wisdom and selfconfidence and a distinct aristocracy of culture in his face, while above all one feels in his presence a sense of his increasing respect for truth in life and in fiction.”

In his later years particularly, when he received in his home or appeared in public gatherings, his bearing brought home the truth of Owen Wister’s description of him after he saw him passing one day before Independence Hall: “He and it match each other pretty well.” And if age brought its

XX furrows to his face it brought them in the spirit of a line which Dr. Mitchell himself once wrote in a letter to a friend from abroad in describing a castle: “Time and ivy have ruined it into magnificence. ’ ’

Few men of letters have had so wide a sphere of individual achievement and have brought more honor to the immediate community which they served thereby than he. Nor have many writers in prose or verse struck a more consistently patriotic note. He left a rich heritage of friendships in the actual life in which he moved, and the more enduring heritage of ideals which his books embody for the generations of the future.

A SCHOOLBOY’S GLIMPSE OF DR. MITCHELL

1 ‘ When we first visited Dr. Mitchell at his home on Walnut Street (Number 1524) it was our misfortune to find him not at home, but on explaining to his secretary the purpose of our visit, she assured us that he would be delighted to see us as he had always shown a cordiality to boys.

“When we next came her words were verified, for the Doctor himself met us at his office door, and on being informed that we were boys from the Northeast High School, he brightened up with a sudden interest and ushered us into his study. As he sat before his desk we caught a glimpse of his face, thinned and somewhat wrinkled, but strongset and with a certain alert, good-humored expression.

“He immediately expressed a desire to hear all about our school and asked us many questions concerning the character of the work and the purpose in combining manual with scholastic training. The conversation turned to his books and stories of the old historic days in Philadelphia, and immediately he was immersed in historic romantic associations and brought forth from the corners of his desk documents of Revolutionary times and xxi xxii Hugh Wynne: Free Quaker

pictures of old Philadelphia. He showed us the originals of the pictures in Hugh Wynne, his famous Revolutionary novel, and mentioned several spots in Philadelphia which are rich with remembrances of Revolutionary days and told us of the events which happened there. He also showed us some relics of those days which had come into his possession together with numerous specimens of art and sculpture of both Europe and America.

“When we were about to leave, he promised to give us his own portrait and autograph. After hunting around for a while he procured three different styles of portrait and told us to take our choice, which we did. As he was quite busy he said we should come the following day and he would then have time to write his autograph on it for us.

“When we called the next day he had the picture with his autograph (‘I was much refreshed by your visit, S. Weir Mitchell’) and a small poem ( A Prayer after Santiago |) wrapped up and ready. Although he was very busy he took time to thank us ..courteously for the interest we had afforded him. We thought this a mistake, as we had been the ones interested and felt highly honored to be the guest of such a distinguished scholar.

“Those pleasant hours will always be remembered and treasured by us.”

( The above is an account written at the time, May, 1904, by one of my students after a visifi made to Dr. Mitchell.)

APPRECIATIONS OF HUGH WYNNE.

Dr. Mitchell speaks of real people by their real names, and of real places in such number that on more than one occasion college professors of history have set their students at work to find out more about and to write of the scenes and men mentioned in his pages. So far as I know not one very material error was ever discovered in Hugh Wynne, from the historical standpoint. Dr. Mitchell, with a view to accuracy, even included a map in the book to show the position of the British troops during the occupation of the city, with relation to the roads and ferries. The investigations were carefully made in the Library of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

Wynne, himself a scion of Thomas Wynne, the Welsh Quaker physician who accompanied Penn in The Welcome, was an ancestor of many Philadelphians, among the number Francis Howard Williams who a few years ago founded the Welcome Society (our Mayflower Society). Indeed, the name itself survives, and a direct descendant bearing it still sits in the old Merion Meeting House where the Wynnes worshiped and were buried in the day that Dr. Mitchell tells of. The xxiii xxiv Hugh Wynne: Free Quaker

author always steeped himself in a subject before writing of it and reflected his interest in it in the presence of his friends in inquiry and anecdote while his work was in progress. For Hugh Wynne he read such old documents as Sally Wister’s and Elizabeth Drinker’s Journals and Charles Biddle’s Autobiography. The great local antiquarian knowledge of the late Librarian Stone of the Historical Society was drawn upon, and the result must be counted noteworthy to a degree.

It has been said that Dr. Mitchell found some suggestions for Hugh Wynne in Jones’s old book The Quaker Soldier and in Henry Peterson’s Pemberton, but I think he was a borrower to no great extent. At any rate historical incident is no man’s possession and the dress which was given it under his hand is his very own.

In Hugh Wynne, without disparagement of that which he had earlier used, he came into a style which was at once elegant, as one time was said of style, and distinguished. The motion is soft and dignified. Wynne tells his own story like one of the old diarists, but with a temper and in an English which they did not know, or, knowing it, certainly could not put to any sustained or regular use.

— From “An Appreciation of S. Weir Mitchell as a Novelist,” by Dr. Ellis Paxson Oberholtzer, author of “A Literary History of Philadelphia,” etc.

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In Hugh Wynne , Dr. Mitchell reached highwater mark. It is no common book/ but a real romance which holds the attention of the young, and in the work of attempting to Americanize the Americans, going on to-day, much good would result if every boy of foreign parentage were given the book to read. Every youth would read it with pleasure and get the profit unconsciously. Such reading would teach true patriotism and would overcome much unwise psychology imbibed from the silly people who call themselves the intellectuals.

— From “The S. Weir Mitchell Memorial Orar tion delivered before the College of Physicians of Philadelphia, November 19, 1919,” by Dr. Charles W. Burr.

Good historical novels are so rare that the appearance of one becomes an event of importance. Hugh Wynne is wholly simple and unexaggerated in language. It flows lucidly and agreeably. But it may be added that it has that indefinable thing called charm.

— Charles Dudley Warner in Harperys Mag a - zine.

Hugh Wynne has the distinction of belonging with the few great historical novels of American'-’ life produced by American writers. No finer and more highly executed presentation of the War of the Revolution has ever been focused in fiction. It is full of characters, real and imaginative, which xxvi Hugh Wynne: Free Quaker one and all clamor for honorable mention. It approximates more nearly than any novel we know to what may be regarded as the only great novel of early American life and history.

— The Bookman.

Hugh Wynne was the proof of his change from the novel of apothegm to romance. Our Revolution, the change in it from English tradition to American spirit, our social life, our mingling of democratic institutions and aristocratic instincts, have here their complete canvass. It is written with amazing care. Care alone will not bring style, but it spares the reader the slovenly sentence to which the fiction of our tongue is prone even from hands whose fame screens criticism, and in these pages and others it has given that sense of the personal which is the very soul of style. The structure of this romance follows tradition. Novels did not begin yesterday. But I am sorry for the man who is not a better American after reading Hugh Wynne. The root of the matter is not in him.

— Dr. Talcott Williams in The Book News Monthly.

His narrative prose often resembles the prose of the essay, rather than that of fiction ; yet in spite of this and the usually quiet action of his novels, their success increased until with Hugh Wynne it became a popular triumph and was heard of in

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.Wales, where many real original Wynnes are buried. There once in a graveyard the sexton pointed out their tombs to Dr. Mitchell, not knowing who he was, and said that the present head of the family now lived in America and his name was Hugh Wynne.

No other tale of the Revolution has approached it, or is so well remembered, and therefore a wide audience waited for every new novel by Dr. Mitchell.

Where do Hugh Wynne and Westways go? Though written by a poet at heart, they stand with Trollope and Fielding because they are friendly to mankind. They belong to what I call the Literature of Encouragement ; they are written with sympathy not with misanthropy.

— Owen Wister, in “S. Weir Mitchell: Man

of Letters.”

LIST OF WORKS OF S. WEIR MITCHELL

Hephzibah Guinness, 1880

In War Time, 1884

Roland Blake, 1887

Far in the Forest, 1889

Characteristics, 1892

When All the Woods Are Green, 1894

The Adventures of Francois, 1898

Dr. North and His Friends, 1900

Circumstance, 1901

A Comedy of Conscience, 1903

The Youth of Washington, 1904

Constance Trescott, 1905

A Diplomatic Adventure, 1906

The Red City, 1908

John Sherwood: Ironmaster, 1911

Westways, 1913

The Autobiography of a Quack, 1990 A Madeira Party, 1895 The Guillotine Club, 1910 Little Stories, 1913 Mr. Kris Kringle, 1904

New Samaria and Summer of St. Martin, 1904 Prince Little Boy, 1898 A Venture in 1777, 1908 Pearl

The Wager and Other Poems, 1900

The Comfort of the Hills, 1910