THE UNPUBLISHED MANUSCRIPTS OF CRÈVECOEUR BY H. L. BOURDIN and S. T. WILLIAMS. 1 On November 10, 1805 Charles Lamb wrote: "Oh! tell Hazlitt not to forget to send the American Farmer. I dare say it is not so good as he fancies; but a book's a book." In October, 1829, Hazlitt was still fond of the Farmer, for he spoke of him as one who "gives not only the objects, but the feelings of a new country." Hazlitt's experience in the discovery of J. Hector St. John de Crèvecoeur has been the experience of many a literary explorer; the Letters from an American Farmer are frequently re-discovered. The authors of this paper would hardly venture to recall the story of the Farmer and of his letters, if they were not able also to submit other chapters from his book,-chapters new yet old; chapters which have rested undisturbed in a trunk of the de Crèvecoeur family for a century and a half. We remember that the Farmer introduced himself to London in 1782. Letters from an American Farmer were but the first words in his elaborate title. In the same year appeared an imprint in Dublin, and by 1784 there were four editions of his book. In 1785 he brought out in Paris his Lettres d'un Cultivateur Américain. In this he translated and expanded the same essays with a few original additions. In 1787 he published a second and enlarged edition of the Lettres. Sixteen years later, in 1801, even his Voyage dans la Haute Pennsylvanie echoed faintly the old stories 1 Letters of Charles Lamb, edited by Alfred Ainger, New York, A. C. Armstrong and Son, 1888. Vol. I, p. 221. The Edinburgh Review, October, 1829. (Unsigned article attributed to Hazlitt by Rich.) › Letters from An American Farmer describing certain provincial situations, manners, and customs, not generally known; and conveying some idea of the late and present interior circumstances of the British colonies in North America.—Written for the information of a friend in England by J. Hector St. John a farmer in Pennsylvania. London, printed for Thomas Davies in Russell Street Covent Garden, and Lockyer Davis in Holborn. 1782. 8°, 318 pages. 4 • London. Thomas Davies and Lockyer Davis. 1782. 8°, 318 pp.; Dublin. John Enshaw, 1782. 12°, 256 pp.; Belfast. 1783. 12°.; London. Thomas Davies and Lockyer Davis, 1783, with an index. of the early volume (For the Farmer had been popular; his writings had been translated into German and Dutch, and in Paris, in 1785, another hand had contributed a so-called "sequel"). Meanwhile in America Mathew Carey had sponsored, in 1793, the first American edition. The letters may now be read in such texts as that of Lewisohn and Trent (New York, 1904), that of Barton-Blake in the Everyman Library (1910), and in the recent reprint published by Albert and Charles Boni (1925). Criticism of Crèvecoeur, relatively slight, includes a life by his grandson, Robert de Crèvecoeur (Paris, 1883); a study by Fourier de Bacourt presumably in 1908; essays by his editors and by S. L. Whitcomb, F. B. Sanborn, and P. H. Boynton. Crèvecoeur is also the subject of a thesis by Miss Julia Post Mitchell (1916). Such facts and allusions, even those of Lamb and Hazlitt, attest that the Farmer has never been entirely forgotten. From this chronology of texts and criticisms might be made, if space permitted, interesting deductions. Some students of American literature have been less concerned with the facts of the Farmer's life than with its romance. They put him on the shelves beside Benjamin Franklin and refer to "another great eighteenth century biography." They christen him "an eighteenth century Thoreau." They dispose of him as "Rousseauistic." His life and writings, both so picturesque, betray them into generalizations. As to his life, we must remember that he was born in France; that he was educated in England; and that he left the latter country, in 1754, at the age of nineteen, in love with adventure. In Canada, contrary to the assertions of Miss Mitchell, he spent some years in military service." By December 1759 he was in New York. For twenty years he wandered, though he paused in 1764 to become a citizen; and in 1769 to marry Mahetable Tippet of Yonkers. In the same year he settled on his farm at "Pine Hill," Orange County, New York. Ten years later he arrived in New York City on his way to France. He was poor, yet rich, for among his possessions were the manuscript Letters from an American Farmer. We must not dwell on his later life: the shipwreck on the way home in 1780; his friendships in the cultivated society of Paris with Madame d'Houdetot; and his consulship at See last paragraph of this article. New York; his last years in Paris, London, and Munich. On the basis of this life and his writings the world has decided about Crèvecoeur. Such decisions must be reconsidered. In the summer of 1922 one of the present writers (H. L. Bourdin) discovered in Paris a large number of unpublished manuscripts by Crèvecoeur. In the possession of the Crèvecoeur family were found three volumes of manuscripts, comprising three hundred and thirty-three folios, and six hundred and seventeen pages of text. Apart from the Introductory Letter the first volume is the manuscript of the letters published in the first English edition. The second and third volumes are unprinted, though Crèvecoeur has reproduced some letters in translation. These, however, altered and polished, cannot supplant the originals in their native charm. All the newly discovered letters must be published to ensure a final judgment concerning Crèvecoeur. The manuscripts reveal that they were designed like the others for publication. Among other details are the author's sketches and directions for plates which were evidently intended to be illustrations. Unobtrusive notes in the early English editions now assume their full meaning. "Should our Farmer's Letters," says Crèvecoeur, in his Advertisement to the first edition, "be found to afford matter of useful entertainment to an intelligent and candid public, a second volume, equally interesting with those now published, may soon be expected." The second and third volumes were already written. And in the Advertisement to the second edition a publishers' note hints at the truth: Since the publication of this volume, we hear that Mr. St. John has accepted a public employment at New York. It is therefore, perhaps, doubtful whether he will soon be at leisure to revise his papers," and give the world a second collection of the American Farmer's Letters. Once these volumes come to light, we wonder at their long concealment. Yet we wonder more about another question. Why were the second and third volumes not published? Was it because the prudent publishers, Thomas Davies and Lockyer Davis, were not sure that these other, ardent loyalist papers would be grateful to a The italics are the editors'. public partly hostile to the Crown's American policy? Or was it that Crèvecoeur hesitated to print Tory literature of a far warmer temper than that of What is an American? Or had he suffered a change of heart about loyalty to the King? All this is conjecture, and the letters may have been suppressed because of that venerable situation between author and publisher: the inability to strike a bargain. We might divide artificially the contents of the new letters into four or five classes representing: Crèvecoeur's descriptions of the American farm; the romance and realism of the frontier; natural history; essays of travel; society and customs during the Revolution. It is better to glance at them in the order in which their author arranged them. The second volume of his essays begins with four matter-of-fact letters on farm life. Next is a flamboyant description of Lisbon, where he stopped, supposedly, on his way to America; then a discussion of the Spanish and English colonies; and passages on Jamaica and the Bermudas. The familiar observations on bees and birds are recalled by an essay on ants. Of some historical interest are the papers on military hospitals and liberty of worship. Then comes Crèvecoeur's beautiful description of a snow storm with its tranquil picture of a winter life on an American farm. A sub-title for The Frontier Woman is A Moving Scene. This the author follows with a description of the country between the Delaware and the Susquehanna." The volume ends with a vignette of the frontier, the History of Mrs. B., "An Epitome," so runs the caption, "of all the misfortunes which can possibly overtake a New Settler, as related by herself." The second volume contains The American Belisarius, a tale of the sufferings of a loyalist; Landscapes; The Grotto, the story of a secret Tory refuge; the Commissioners, a Revolutionary episode; The Man of Sorrows. With the notation of an inferior essay entitled Ingratitude Rewarded our inadequate summary ends.8 A portion of this essay appeared in the Yale Review for April, 1925. 8 There follows a list of the titles of the essays in the unpublished manuscripts: First volume: Thoughts of an American Farmer on various Rural subjects-3d Letter (14 pages). 5th Letter (14 pages). Inadequate, for it cannot indicate how much these manuscripts may teach us of the Farmer. As one instance, we may now study for the first time Crèvecoeur's handwriting, his orthography (rather cacography) and his punctuation." Vanish now the platitudes on his eighteenth century style! This diffuse and repetitious manner, which the manuscripts reveal, has been repeatedly misjudged. There has been hitherto no original to show the corrections made in the first edition. For the manuscript of the first 6th Letter, Various Customs and Methods. (9 pages.) 7th Letter, Description of Various implements. (9 pages.) Rock of Lisbon. (23 pages.) Sketch of a contrast between the Spanish and the English Colonies. (12 pages.) Reflections on the Manners of the Americans, 1774. (27 pages.) Ant Hill Town-Virginia, 1769. (12 pages.) Hospitals. (8 pages.) Liberty of Worship. (15 pages.) Description of a snow storm in Canada. (18 pages.) A Snow Storm as it affects the American Farmer. Frontier Woman. (10 pages.) Susquehanna. (47 pages.) History of Mrs. B. (9 pages.) Second Volume: The American Belisarius. (22 pages.) Landscapes. (79 pages.) The Grotto. (14 pages.) The Commissioners. (23 pages.) Ingratitude Rewarded. (14 pages.) The Man of Sorrows. (12 pages.) In a loose quire: (6 pages.) An Happy Family disunited by the Spirit of Civil War. (16 pages). Here is a sample of the American Farmer's spelling and use of capitals: "It is in the Art of our Simple Cooking that our Wifes all aim at distinguishing themselves this is famous for one thing that for the othershe Who has not fresh comb Honney Some Sweat Meats of her own composing and smoke beef at Tea wou'd be Looked upon as very Inexpert Indeed; thus those Light repasts become on Every account the most Expensive of any and as We dine Early and work untill Tea Time they often are Very Serious Meals at which aboundance of biskuit and Short Cakes are allways eat some People wou'd think it a disgrace to have bred brought on these Round Tables-our Beef by Smoaking become so compact that we commonly shave it with a Plain. . . . . . 6th Letter. Various Customs and Methods. |