Silverwood, the South, and What’s Normal Anyway?

We live in a day and a time when nearly every Christian norm once taken for granted has come under withering attack, whether the family, sexuality, hierarchy, or what have you.  This was amply illustrated earlier in the year by Coach McGraw of Notre Dame and here recently by Megan Rapinoe of u. S. soccer fame.  But we in the South do have a source of strength and guidance to help us navigate through this murky miasmal time, to remind us of what it means to be a normal human being:  our literature.  It has within it the sort of down-to-earth spirit that is necessary to help us live good lives in a world that has lost its moorings. 
 
One such book from the Southern literary canon is the novel Silverwood: A Book of Memories by Mrs Margaret Junkin Preston (1820-97).  Even in its opening pages, we find a very important means of keeping our wits about us:  holding on to our connections with the past.  The South is not trying to create a utopia based on new principles uncovered in theoretical speculation.  Rather, she has always tried to remain faithful to the old ways of her ancestors, to carry them over and adapt them here in her new homeland in North America as best she can.  Speaking about a painting in the house to her son Lawrence, Mrs Irvine, the matriarch of the story whose husband had died some years before, gives voice to this, saying,

​“ . . . It was always full of interest for me, principally, perhaps, from home associations. One of the earliest memories of my childhood is, being held up before it by my father, while he told me the sad story it delineates, with all the touches of pathos which Chaucer introduces into his version of it. I can recall even yet," continued Mrs. Irvine, musingly, “the very tones in which he used to recite some of the lines:
 
--'Father, why do ye weep?
Is there no morsel bread that ye do keep?
I am so hungry that I cannot sleep!'
 
As I grew older, I was, perhaps, more interested in it from the fact that it used to hang on the wall in the old ancestral home of our family, on the southern border of Scotland. Your great grandfather, ‘the Laird of Newton,' as he was called, looked on that picture many a time as you do now, no doubt; so that the associations it furnishes, make me prize it more than its own intrinsic merit as a work of art.  . . .”

--Silverwood, Derby & Jackson, New York, 1856, pgs. 10-11, available online
​

​Developing an identity fixed in the history of one’s forefathers is a guard against the anxiety and despair caused by a lack of roots in anything other than the shallow, toxic, never-settled culture of Modernity.
 
One of the virtues that grew out of this veneration of the past in Dixie was the centrality of the family in her life, and the great affection of the members for one another - in particular, the love of sons for mothers, part of the code of chivalry held dear by Southrons.  Mrs Preston illustrates:

​A laughing group entering the parlor, interrupted the conversation. Josepha, a child not much over ten, installed herself upon her brother's knee; Eunice, the next older sister, couched herself upon the rug, and took the head of the little grey-hound into her lap; Zilpha sat on a low seat beside her mother: and to the cheerful voices that floated through the twilight room, the music, tender and soft, which Edith's fingers awakened, formed a subdued accompaniment, as she played and listened.
 
 . . .
 
There was something very beautiful in his [Lawrence’s] manner towards his mother. He loved to choose his seat near her; he addressed to her the most of his conversation; he anticipated her minute wants,—the stool for her feet,—the cushion for her head,—the books she liked best near her,—the first flower of Spring,—the first tinged leaf of Autumn: there was no limit to the unobtrusive manifestations of his thoughtful love. He never overlooked her presence in a room; and many a time would he leave the group of interested talkers, if he chanced to observe her sitting apart, and address himself to her entertainment. His attentions were more than the dictates of filial devotion,—more than the simple homage of graceful youth to riper age. Had she been a young beauty, whose fascinations had enthralled him, there could not have been a more delicate mingling of what might be termed the chivalry of the heart with the tenderness of his love. The language of look and action was,—"others may do much for me,—but no suffering in my behalf,—no ministrations,— no devotedness, can be like a mother's!" And as he now sat with his arm over the back of her chair, talking with her of his plans and prospects, and the eyes of each strayed to the circle about the table, animatedly discussing what particular thing they would like best to have brought them from abroad,—the gaze of the mother and son was simultaneously raised to the grim canvas on the wall, with an inward ''thank God," that, as yet, the home-picture was shadowless.
 
--pgs. 14, 16-7

​Yet shadows do come for the family, some very dark ones in fact, but those events serve to bring out one of the main themes in the story, which is also another one of those Southern virtues that can help us much in life:  a deep trust in God’s providence to direct our lives to good ends, no matter how bad the present looks.  A conversation between Edith and Dr Dubois brings this theme into the open for the reader at one point:

​"Still, you are not answering my question. Why does Providence thus deal with those who live so as to please him best? Why stint and treat them so harshly, if he has the world at his command, for their necessities, and lavish luxuries on those who scorn him? Surely, there is no bribe held out to induce people to become Christians."
 
"This is part of the discipline, by means of which they come to be 'put among the children.' Trial may have been—must have been needed, to bring this sick girl to her present submissive state. It is hardly wrong to exalt suffering to the utmost—to call it divine, if it works out the result which He who sends it, intends that it should."
 
"You surely don't think there is anything meritorious in mere suffering?"
 
"By no means. So much do I object to the Popish idea of it, that I would not have that expression—'perfect through suffering'—used as it often is used now-a-days, without a special limit of it to the results of the thing, not the thing itself; and is there not some such law as this, underlying all the order of nature? The ore must be passed through the furnace, before we have the gold; the rough stone must be filed, before we see the sparkle of the gem; the gums must be bruised, or they will not give out their precious odor; the roses must be crushed, that we may have the fragrant oil; the soil must be torn up by the plow-share, before there can be any harvest; and through such a process must the soul receive its strength."
 
--pgs. 213-4

​There are strong echoes here of one of the Church’s greatest theologians, St Maximus the Confessor (+662), who teaches,

The person who truly wishes to be healed is he who does not refuse treatment. This treatment consists of the pain and distress brought on by various misfortunes. He who refuses them does not realize what they accomplish in this world or what he will gain from them when he departs this life.--Four Hundred Texts on Love 3.82 ​

​That’s good company for a people told over and over again for hundreds of years by Yankee-minded folks that they are nothing but a wagonload of ignoramuses.
 
In contrast with this trust in Divine providence, Mrs Preston warns us not to trust the self-interested businessman, ever the hero of those same Yankees (Carnegie, Rockefeller, Gates, etc.).  Edith eventually goes to plead the cause of her family’s finances to a well-to-do merchant, Mr Bryson.  Part of their exchange goes as follows:

​"You are hurried, no doubt," continued Edith, "and greatly annoyed, and I don't wish, to intrude farther upon you. Here is pen and paper: sign me a written pledge that you will get Mrs. Bryson's consent to the adjustment I desire; for, if it is your wish to settle the matter thus, she will surely comply."
​
"Suppose every other creditor should make a similar demand, how long would my wife and children be out of the alms-house? But, I really am earnestly desirous to do what I can for you. Let me see," he mused, counting the fingers of his left hand, ''in five; no, in seven days hence, I may be able to make a disposition of matters that shall satisfy you. . . ."
 
--pgs. 226-7

​​And then we see how the matter is resolved by Mr Bryson:

​"News for you!" exclaimed Jacqueline the next morning, as for a moment she picked up the fresh paper that had just been laid on the breakfast table, and she read the paragraph:
 
"Mr. Thomas Bryson, one of the largest shipping merchants of our city, who has been so unfortunate as to be compelled to wind up business, in consequence, we believe, of the failure of a foreign house, sailed on Saturday, with his family, in the ---, for Liverpool. He expects to reside abroad for some years; as in Germany he can educate his sons at less expense than here. Our old friend bears our sympathies with him in his misfortunes, and constrained expatriation."
 
Edith dropped her fork with a pang.
 
"The hypocrite!" ejaculated Mr. Dubois, energetically.
 
"No such thing as the failure of a foreign house. That's a story of his own getting up, to cover his villainous speculations. I don't believe a word of it—"
 
"Or rather his wife's heartless extravagance," interrupted the doctor.
 
"Both—both, Edith; I feared some ruse, my dear. It is too bad—too bad!"
 
--pgs. 259-60

​With the businessman, profit comes before honor.  It is the duty of society not to uphold such men as praiseworthy examples to imitate.  Mrs Preston, however, shows us elsewhere what is honorable for men and women:  to understand and appreciate the bounds God has placed upon the two sexes, their differences and their natural affections toward one another.  This is a very important witness for today’s world, which has lost a great deal of its sanity about sexual matters.  Mrs Preston writes at different places,

​" . . . I'm perfectly content to have the barriers just where they are, since I believe Providence designed this circumscription. I firmly believe our sex was commanded to be 'under obedience,' as part of the primal curse. Our regeneration is being worked out as Christianity makes progress; and who knows but that the balances may be even, by the time we have reached the edge of the millenium," added Edith, with a smile.
 
--p. 175

​Edith sat up, and looked into her sister's eyes.
 
"Zilpha, I must surrender into the hands of him whom I would love, my very self—my heart of hearts—my whole being. I must obey him—not because it is the requirement, but because I feel such obedience to be the sweetest thing in the world. I hardly quarrel with Milton's assertion--
 
" 'He for God only, she for God in him'--
 
as derogatory to woman, for there would be no humiliation—at least, I should be conscious of none—in the willing deference rendered to a man I owned to be intellectually, intelligently, physically, morally, my superior. What humiliation does the loving, all-confiding child feel in leaning for everything, venturing everything, upon the father she doats on? I am disgusted with this rant about the servility of a wife's obedience, on which some of the sensible women even of this generation have gone mad. As if 'perfect love' did not 'cast out fear!' They who talk and feel this way, have not yet learned the alphabet of love, human or divine. They forget that God's absolute sovereignty is the true Christian's ground of serenest confidence, because he unites with it the thought of His absolute love, and 'there is no fear in love.' "
 
"But you would not have the wife the mere passive recipient—the wax to the seal—without tastes, and opinions, and emotions of her own?"
 
"By no means! no more than I would have every branch, and tendril, and curl of the vine wound rigidly round the supporting oak, thereby spoiling all the grace fulness of its appropriate proportions, and the oneness of its identity. But the faith of love, in its object, must be kindred to the Christian's faith in God—unquestioning, immovable. When it is so, willing obedience must be a heart-delight—a very blessedness."
 
--pgs. 347-9

​More could be said, but we do not want to detain the reader any longer than necessary.  It would be better for him to go and read Silverwood for himself and explore all the good things it has to offer the modern world.  Being a romance novel at its core, it will appeal more to women than men, but there is more than enough masculinity through Lawrence, Cousin Barry, Uncle Felix, and other man-characters to hold the attention of the male reader as well.  Git ye gone, then, men and maidens!

Silverwood : A Book of Memories by Margaret Junkin Preston, 1820-1897 is available for download here.