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Title: Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker
Author: S. Weir Mitchell
Release Date: September, 2004 [EBook #6485]
[Yes, we are more than one year ahead of schedule]
[This file was first posted on December 20, 2002]
Edition: 10
Language: English
Character set encoding: ASCII
*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK HUGH WYNNE, FREE QUAKER ***
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HUGH WYNNE
FREE QUAKER
Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff
of his Excellency General Washington.
By S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D.
WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
By HOWARD PYLE
[Frontispiece Illustration: "IS IT YES OR NO, DARTHEA?"]
[Transcriber's Note: The drawing depicts a man and woman riding on
horseback side-by-side.]
PREFACE TO NINETEENTH EDITION
Since Hugh Wynne was published in book form in 1896, it has been many times
reprinted, and now that again there is need for a new edition, I use a
desired opportunity to rectify some mistakes in names, dates, and
localities. These errors were of such a character as to pass unnoticed by
the ordinary reader and disturb no one except the local archaeologist or
those who propose to the novelist that he shall combine the accuracy of the
historical scholar with the creative imagination of the writer of what,
after all, is fiction.
Nevertheless, the desire of the scientific mind even in the novel is for
all reasonable accuracy, and to attain it I used for six years such winter
leisures as the exacting duties of a busy professional life permitted, to
collect notes of the dress, hours, sports, habits and talk of the various
types of men and women I meant to delineate. I burned a hundred pages of
these carefully gathered materials soon after I had found time, in a summer
holiday, to write the book for which these notes were so industriously
gathered.
It is probable that no historical novel was ever paid the compliment of the close criticism of details which greeted Hugh Wynne. I was most largely in debt for the pointing out of errors in names and localities to a review of my book in a journal devoted to the interest of one of the two divisions of the Society of Friends.
I deeply regretted at the time that my useful critic should have considered
my novel as a deliberately planned attack on the views entertained by
Friends. It was once again an example of the assumption that the characters
of a novel in their opinions and talk represent the author's personal
beliefs. I was told by my critic that John Wynne is presented as "the type
of the typical character of the Friends." As well might Bishop Proudie be
considered as representative of the members and views of the Church of
England or Mr. Tulkinghorn of the English lawyer.
A man's course in life does not always represent simple obedience to the
counsels of perfection implied in an accepted creed of conduct, but is
modified by his own nature. He may therefore quite fail to secure from his
beliefs that which they produce in more assimilative natures. Age softens
some hard characters, but in John Wynne the early development of senile
dementia deprived him of this chance. I drew a peculiar and happily a rare type of man who might have illustrated failure to get the best out of any creed.
The course of this great revolutionary struggle made or marred many men,
and the way in which such a time affects character affords to the novel of
history its most interesting material.
Erroneous statements in regard to the time and place of Friends' Meetings
have been pointed out. As concerns these and the like, I may here state
that the manuscript of my novel was read with care by a gentleman who was a
birthright member of the Society and both by age and knowledge competent to
speak. He remarked upon some of my technical errors in regard to the
meetings and discipline of Friends, but advised against change and said
that it was traditionally well known that at the time of the Revolution
there was much confusion in their assemblies and great bitterness of
feeling when so many like Wetherill chose to revolt against the doctrine of
absolute obedience to what, whether rightfully or not, they regarded as
oppression. Needless to say that I meant no more than to delineate a great
spiritual conflict in a very interesting body of men who, professing
neutrality, were, if we may trust Washington, anything but neutral.
The amount of accuracy to be allowed in historic fiction aroused fresh
interest when Hugh Wynne first appeared. In romances like Quentin Durward
and Ivanhoe the question need not be considered. What may annoy the
historian in the more serious novel of history does not trouble the
ordinary reader nor does it detract from the interest of the story. How
little the grossest errors in biography and history affect the opinions of
the public concerning a novel long popular may be illustrated by the fact
that one of my critics referred me to Henry Esmond for an example of
desirable accuracy. It was an unfortunate choice, for in Esmond there is
hardly a correct historical statement. The Duke of Hamilton described as
about to marry Beatrix was the husband of a second living wife and the
father of seven children--an example of contemplated literary bigamy which
does not distress the happily ignorant, nor are they at all troubled by the
many other and even more singular errors in statement, some of them plainly
the result of carelessness. A novel, it seems, may sin sadly as concerns
historic facts and yet survive.
The purpose of the novel is, after all, to be acceptably interesting. If it
be historical, the historic people should not be the constantly present
heroes of the book. The novelist's proper use of them is to influence the
fates of lesser people and to give the reader such sense of their reality
as in the delineation of characters, is rarely possible for the historian.
With these long intended comments, I leave this book to the many readers
whose wants a new edition is meant to supply. I may say in conclusion that
I should have been less eager to alter, correct, and explain if it were not
that in schools and colleges Hugh Wynne has been and is still used in a
variety of ways so that the example of accuracy and a definition of its
desirable extent in historic fiction becomes in some sense a literary duty.
S. WEIR MITCHELL.
August, 1908.
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Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker by Mitchell, S. Weir (Silas Weir), 1829-1914
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