This piece of fiction is something cast off from my third novel The River Gods. I won’t explain its sources, except to say that a good deal of this was not originally my own writing. At this point, it is now much more my own writing than anyone else’s. The Hampshire Gazette this story speaks of is Northampton’s newspaper (once one of several, now its only newspaper), first published in 1787 and a weekly newspaper until the early 20th century.
June 1820
Sylvester Judd II, age 41
In Northampton, Massachusetts, I have heard that to amount to anything socially a man has to own a plot of meadow land, have a pew in the orthodox church, and subscribe to the Hampshire Gazette. The population of the town is 2,854. I recently bought the newspaper, and I am editor of the most influential newspaper in Western Massachusetts. Under my editorship, the paper will become a force of enlightenment, characterized by lofty detachment from political and religious squabbles. I will be conservative enough to win the confidence of my readers, progressive enough to lead them in such matters as temperance reform, astute enough to have occasional tidbits like statistics on crime and prostitution in London for my readers to cluck their tongues over. Each week the Gazette is read aloud in the kitchen, where children creep up around the chair to hear. One of my first issues of the Gazette ran on the front page an article about Sir Walter Scott, but generally novels will receive little treatment. Let me speak my mind: “There is in the works of fiction, as in gaming, a kind of fascination which, where nothing comes in to break the charm, lures on the victim till his mind has become so stupefied and deadened by dissipation, that he can find no enjoyment but in this morbid and feverish excitement.” For years before I purchased the Gazette I gathered miscellaneous knowledge from books, newspapers, and old records. I compiled a kind of encyclopedia for my own use. Now I can publish extracts in the Gazette and be paid for doing what I most enjoy. I am already beginning my antiquarian researches into Northampton history, interviewing elderly townspeople and copying old documents. The result will be a legacy to future historians of about seventy-five manuscript volumes. But for the present, the newspaper is an enterprise in the faith in details. It is a two-man operation. The Gazette does not report stories or gossip. Local incidents of moment do not merit inclusion. The Gazette believes in educating the populace and traveling the country and the globe in type. The feel of the paper, the smell of ink, the texture of lead, brayers, platens, quoins, reglets, and rounces—this is what I live for.
• • •
Beautiful, intellectual, and gracious (although Unitarian), Judge Lyman’s wife played one of Northampton’s two pianos, and the music was not always religious. Every night before putting her children to bed she played the “Copenhagen Waltz” and the “Battle of Prague” with variations. Homes such as hers were carpeted and filled with works of art, tastefully chosen. Carpets were very rare in frugal towns like Westhampton, where my father and mother reared me. I arrived at the door of the Lyman household and eyed the carpet with anxiety. “Come in, come in,” boomed Judge Lyman. “Can’t, without stepping on it,” said I. I entered Judge Lyman’s parlor walking on the floor around the edges of the carpet, and I realized I had nothing for my hands to clutch. How could I talk in this drawing room? My perceptions clouded and my language tripped. My face burnt. I felt unhomed here. Although Unitarian, Judge Lyman’s wife played one of Northampton’s two pianos, and the music was not always religious.
• • •
James Madison said he made about $260 on every Negro in a year and spent about $12 on his keep. Human enfranchisement cannot advance securely but through the people. There had ever been within the Catholic Church men who preferred truth to forms, justice to despotic force. “Dominion,” said Wycliffe, “belongs to grace”; meaning, as I believe, that the feudal government, which rested on the sword, should yield to a government resting on moral principles. And he knew the right method to hasten the coming revolution. “Truth,” he asserted with wisest benevolence, “shines more brightly the more widely it is diffused”; and, catching the plebian language that lived on the lips of the multitude, he gave England the Bible in the vulgar tongue. A timely death alone placed him beyond prosecution for publishing the Bible in English. His bones were disinterred and burnt, and his ashes thrown on the waters of the Avon. But his fame brightens as time advances; when America traces the lineage of her intellectual freedom, she acknowledges the benefactions of Wycliffe.