Category: Daily Dispatch

I’d been meaning to read “Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker” for a good 25 years. Introduced to me by a fellow bibliophile who added much to my knowledge and education in the book trade, “Hugh” was the second best-selling novel of 1898, behind Francis Hopkinson Smith’s “Caleb West, Master Diver,” about the dangerous underwater construction of a lighthouse off the coast of New England. Smith, a descendent of the Declaration signer whose name he shares, was an engineer who built New York’s Race Rock Lighthouse, as well as the foundation to the Statue of Liberty.

Essentially, “Hugh Wynne” is a bildungsroman set during the American Revolution and the years preceding, about a young Quaker of Welsh ancestry, who is raised in colonial Philadelphia by a severe father (the author’s preface to the book’s nineteenth edition indicates that this character was the source of some controversy in the Friends community) and a vivacious, indulgent French mother, while also receiving instruction on the side in the ways of society and the wider world by an independent, free-thinking, well-to-do aunt (his father’s sister). In my ideal film adaptation, I imagine Edna May Oliver or perhaps Dame Edith Evans in the role.

Interestingly, Hugh’s best friend is Jack Warder, who is noted throughout for his effeminacy – I mean, nearly every time he appears, in person or in conversation, to the point where how could the reader not wonder if there was something coded going on there. But Mitchell also has him hopelessly in love with a capricious coquette who entrances seemingly every male in the novel, and sets up an interesting rivalry with Hugh, which is never fully exploited.

It’s not the only aspect of the drama Mitchell fails to leverage. The novel’s last act should have been screwed to a fever pitch. Within moments of finishing the book, I thought of at least three elements that, had the author squeezed the tube, would have really heightened the drama. And it’s a great shame that he didn’t, as the book could have been as fondly remembered as any of the historical fiction of James Fennimore Cooper.

Instead, he deflates tension by having Hugh reveal things such as, “On the last occasion I saw so-and-so,” negating all suspense as to whether or not a certain villain is going to come back later to make trouble for the protagonists. At the beginning, he remembers his late friend Jack – the story is told in the first-person, with selections from Jack’s diary filling in details or offering perspectives at the time unknown to Hugh – which, as the novel progresses, makes the reader anticipate Jack’s untimely end – which never comes! And there is the wasted potential of heightened tension between two friends in their love for the same woman. Astonishing, that Mitchell could squander such opportunities! In their place, he settles for drawing room kerfuffle and romantic coda.

That said, the book does have its points, particularly for those familiar with Center City Philadelphia, especially Society Hill and Old City, but also Germantown and Chestnut Hill. It’s interesting to imagine this colonial town of woodlots, woodland from 8th Street to the Schuylkill, and wilderness north of Fairmount Avenue, which, when occupied, is dotted with English forts.

The book is also successful in illustrating just how divided the colonials were in their beliefs and allegiances, even as they were united in their social lives. Tories and Patriots frequently occupy the same drawing rooms, sharing gossip, tea, and cards, united in all, it seems, except politics. In fact, Hugh forms a number of allegiances and friendships with Loyalists and even British soldiers that show that, in some respects, the American Revolution was actually a precursor of the Civil War, in terms of pitting brother against brother. This is something historical fiction can often address more effectively than the bald statistics of straight history.

Naturally, as a Quaker – a member of the Religious Society of Friends – Hugh also struggles to reconcile his pacifist upbringing with a moral duty to fight for American independence. At home, there is further tension in his conflicted relationship with his domineering, disapproving father, who, as the story progresses, also becomes a figure of concern, as he begins to show signs of cognitive decline.

Hugh is less guarded in his emotions when he attempts to save a friend condemned to death for spying. Earlier, another, newfound friend looks out for him while they are incarcerated in a makeshift British prison on what is now Washington Square, of a type, in its squalor and brutality, Alexandre Dumas and Victor Hugo would have recognized.

Hugh’s Philadelphia is a port town of merchants and blacksmiths, taverns and churches, redcoats and Continental Congressmen. In peacetime, mornings are passed in abundant private gardens, lazy afternoons in boating on (and bathing in) the Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers, and free days on horseback excursions to Germantown and Chestnut Hill.

However, there are ominous undercurrents even in Hugh’s largely untroubled youth, as the colonies begin to bristle under English taxation and corruption. The spirit of revolution is intensifying, and Hugh will be a part of the action. Historical figures such as Alexander Hamilton, Benjamin Franklin, Benedict Arnold, and especially George Washington, play supporting, though obviously important, parts in the narrative.

The author, S. Weir Mitchell (1829-1914), was a prominent Philadelphia doctor and Civil War surgeon. His observations of nerve trauma and “phantom limb” syndrome launched him on a career as a pioneer in the field of neurology.

Some of his theories and treatments were not uncontroversial. Charlotte Perkins Gilman claimed to have written her famous short story, “The Yellow Wallpaper,” as a repost to Mitchell’s “rest cure” – which prescribed bed rest, seclusion, electrotherapy, and overfeeding on a protein diet (including a lot of milk), primarily for “nervous” women, who were also instructed not to engage in intellectual activity, such as study, writing, or any kind of creative work. Anxious men were sent West to rope, hunt, and roughride.

Mitchell wrote broadly on science and medical matters, but at midlife, he was also took an interest in literary fiction. “Hugh Wynne” proved to be his greatest success. It’s an absorbing read, I would even say a page-turner, by my standards, but I understand I am a peculiar person, often older than my years, perhaps even born too late. I always kept a selection of Mitchell’s novels in my Philadelphia bookshops, and they invariably sold. So there are still other people out there who know their local history – or perhaps medical history – and are interested in reading him.

Of his other titles, Mitchell’s “The Red City” is also set in Philadelphia, during the time of Washington’s second administration and the Yellow Fever epidemic of 1793 (during which many were buried in Washington Square – then Southeast Square – since 1706 a potter’s field and final resting place of African Americans, Native Americans, and Revolutionary War soldiers).

It’s also mindblowing to contemplate a time when the City of Brotherly Love really was an extension of Penn’s Woods, with abundant tree cover and even forest over most of Center City. My thoughts travel to a print I once saw of a view from the old Fairmount Prison (also instituted by Quakers), with Penn’s “green country town” so seemingly distant. From as recently as the 1920s and ‘30s, there are black and white photographs of livestock being driven down Broad Street. How quickly it all changed, how Penn’s vision devolved into a modern urban nightmare. I am reminded of Wilde’s quip, “Nowadays people know the price of everything and the value of nothing.”

Attentive Philadelphians will still find evidence of Weir’s life and accomplishments around town. There’s an historical marker, a frieze with his likeness, on a building at 1528 Walnut Street (the site of his former residence), not far from Rittenhouse Square. There’s Mitchell Elementary School in southwest Philly. There’s Mitchell Hall in the College of Physicians on 22nd Street (in the same structure that houses the notorious Mütter Museum of medical oddities). And of course there’s his final resting place in Woodlands Cemetery. Interestingly, I only just learned of a contemporary actor and producer, Silas Weir Mitchell – a distant relative – born in Philadelphia in 1969.

Early editions of “Hugh Wynne” (including my copy) contain black and white plates by Howard Pyle, which, to be honest, lack the dynamism of his famous pirate illustrations and are actually kind of blah. The cover is great, though, with gold cloth embossed with black lettering and ornate design, and a color paste-down plate of Hugh in a tricorn.

It’s fascinating to consider that at the time “Hugh” was written, it would be the equivalent of someone today writing an historical novel about the turn of last century – the time when ”Hugh” was actually written! The novel is equidistant between us and the events of the nation’s founding. Mitchell might very well have encountered veterans of the Revolution. (It’s thought that the last of these, Daniel Frederick Bakeman, died in 1869 at the age of 109.) He certainly grew up surrounded by the living memory of the Revolutionary generation. It is yet another example of what we all take for granted as the comparative youth of the United States, but being made to focus on it, its brevity still boggles the mind.

———-

A fairly thorough overview of Mitchell

https://www.med.upenn.edu/neurology/silas-weir-mitchell.html

His “Rest” and “West” cures

https://www.apa.org/monitor/2012/01/go-rest

Charlotte Perkins Gilman, “The Yellow Wallpaper”

https://www.nlm.nih.gov/exhibition/theliteratureofprescription/exhibitionAssets/digitalDocs/The-Yellow-Wall-Paper.pdf

Gilman, “Why I Wrote ‘The Yellow Wallpaper’”

https://www.americanyawp.com/reader/18-industrial-america/charlotte-perkins-gilman-why-i-wrote-the-yellow-wallpaper-1913/

S. Weir Mitchell historical marker

https://www.hmdb.org/m.asp?m=232078