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 LIVING EARTH
COMMUNITY
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 Living Earth Community

Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing

Edited by Sam Mickey,

Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 https://www.openbookpublishers.com

© 2020 Sam Mickey, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim. Copyright of individual chapters
is maintained by the chapters’ authors.

This work as a whole is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-

NoDerivs license (CC BY-NC-ND), which allows readers to download parts or all of a
chapter and share it with others as long as they credit the author, but they can’t change
them in any way or use them commercially. Selected chapters are available under a CC BY
4.0 license (the type of license is indicated in the footer of the first page of each chapter).
This license allows you to share, copy, distribute and transmit the text; to adapt the text
and to make commercial use of the text providing attribution is made to the authors (but
not in any way that suggests that they endorse you or your use of the work). Some of
the material in this book has been reproduced according to the fair use principle which
allows use of copyrighted material for scholarly purposes. Attribution should include the
following information:

Sam Mickey, Mary Evelyn Tucker, and John Grim, eds, Living Earth Community: Multiple
Ways of Being and Knowing (Cambridge, UK: Open Book Publishers, 2020), https://doi.
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Every effort has been made to identify and contact copyright holders and any omission or
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ISBN Paperback: 978-1-78374-803-7
ISBN Hardback: 978-1-78374-804-4
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DOI: 10.11647/OBP.0186

Cover image: Feathers and Fins (2014) by Nancy Earle, all rights reserved.
Cover design: Anna Gatti.

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 Contents

Acknowledgments ix
Notes on the Contributors xiii

Preface xxvii
Sam Mickey

Introduction: Ways of Knowing, Ways of Valuing Nature 1

John Grim and Mary Evelyn Tucker

Section I: Presences in the More-Than-Human World 9

1. Creaturely Migrations on a Breathing Planet: Some 11
Reflections
David Abram

2. Learning a Dead Birdsong: Hopes’ echoEscape.1 in ‘The 19

Place Where You Go to Listen’
Julianne Lutz Warren

3. Humilities, Animalities, and Self-Actualizations in a 19

Living Earth Community
Paul Waldau
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Section II: Thinking in Latin American Forests 53

4. Anthropology as Cosmic Diplomacy: Toward 55
an Ecological Ethics for Times of Environmental
Fragmentation
Eduardo Kohn

5. Reanimating the World: Amazonian Shamanism 67

Frédérique Apffel-Marglin

6. The Obligations of a Biologist and Eden No More 75

Thomas E. Lovejoy

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 vi Living Earth Community

Section III: Practices from Contemporary Asian Traditions 83

and Ecology
7. Fluid Histories: Oceans as Metaphor and the Nature of 85
History
Prasenjit Duara

8. Affectual Insight: Love as a Way of Being and Knowing 101

David L. Haberman

9. Confucian Cosmology and Ecological Ethics: Qi, Li, and 109

the Role of the Human
Mary Evelyn Tucker

Section IV: Storytelling: Blending Ecology and Humanities 121

10. Contemplative Studies of the ‘Natural’ World 123
David Haskell

11. Science, Storytelling, and Students: The National 133

Geographic Society’s On Campus Initiative
Timothy Brown

12. Listening for Coastal Futures: The Conservatory Project 141

Willis Jenkins

13. Imaginal Ecology 153

Brooke Williams

Section V: Relationships of Resilience within Indigenous 161

Lands
14. An Okanogan Worldview of Society 163
Jeannette Armstrong

15. Indigenous Language Resurgence and the Living Earth 171

Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Community
Mark Turin

16. Sensing, Minding, and Creating 185

John Grim

17. Unsettling the Land: Indigeneity, Ontology, and Hybridity 193

Samara Brock

Section VI: The Weave of Earth and Cosmos 203

18. Gaia and a Second Axial Age 205
Sean Kelly

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 Contents  vii

19. The Human Quest to Live in a Cosmos 217

Heather Eaton

20. Learning to Weave Earth and Cosmos 229

Mitchell Thomashow

List of Illustrations 235

Index 237
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 Fig. A1 
Garden Aerial. Oak Springs Garden Foundation House, Upperville,
Virgina. Photograph by Max Smith (2018), CC BY.
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 Acknowledgments

This book, like every other book ever written, is dependent in many
ways on the living, breathing Earth. As the editors of this book, we want
to acknowledge the kinship, nourishment, shelter, companionship,
and inspiration provided by the living Earth community. Without that
figurative and quite literal support, this book would not exist. Along
with gratitude for our planetary home, we gratefully acknowledge all
of those who have been part of this book project directly or indirectly.
Many thanks are owed to each of the contributors for their thoughtful
engagement in this collaborative project. It was a privilege and a pleasure
to facilitate the gathering of such profoundly thoughtful, sensitive, and
visionary people in person, and to incorporate their contributions into a
single volume. This book is based on a unique workshop that took place
at the Oak Spring Garden Foundation in Virginia in October of 2018.
In this beautiful setting, between delicious meals and walks on the
grounds, the participants shared their creative ideas in a synergy that
was deeply felt by all. From that beautiful Virginia land, cultivated for
so many decades by Bunny and Paul Mellon, these ideas took different
shapes and forms in lively dialogue. Old friendships were renewed, and
new friendships were formed. The land wove us into itself and held us
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

in a place of awe and wonder.

The workshop was organized by Mary Evelyn Tucker and John Grim
along with Peter Crane, their former Dean at the Yale School of Forestry
and Environmental Studies and the current President of the Oak Spring
Garden Foundation. As a paleobotanist, Peter has done remarkable work
uncovering flower, plant, and seed fossils embedded in deep time. We
were assisted at Oak Spring by Peter’s wife, Elinor Crane, and especially
by the dedicated preparation of program officer, Marguerite Hardin.
Max Smith, the head of communications, filmed the interviews that we
are posting along with this book. The staff at Oak Spring deserve our
gratitude for exquisite meals and care in so many ways.

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 Visit
https://ebookgate.com
today to explore
a vast collection of ebooks across various
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experience and effortlessly download high
quality materials in just a few simple steps.
Plus, don’t miss out on exciting offers that
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best prices!
 x Living Earth Community

Special thanks are owed to Alessandra Tosi, Laura Rodriguez, Adèle

Kreager, Luca Baffa and all those at Open Book Publishers, whose
commitments to rigorous scholarly standards, service to the public
good, and open access publishing fit perfectly with the spirit of this
project. Gratitude to Mark Turin for the introduction.
In turn, Mary Evelyn and John would like to acknowledge the
assistance of Sam Mickey on this project. Sam has been responsible
for bringing the manuscript into being after the workshop, and we
are enormously grateful for this. Likewise, our long-term assistant,
Tara Trapani, was indispensable in the organization of the workshop,
to which she brought her remarkable attention to detail. We were
delighted to have Susan O’Connor with us at Oak Spring, and we further
wish to acknowledge the ongoing assistance of the Charles Engelhard
Foundation for our work. Similarly, we thank Nancy Klavans and the
Germeshausen Foundation for their steadfast support over many years.
We are also grateful to Nancy Earle for her beautiful painting of Feathers
and Fins for the cover of the book.
Sam would like to express deep appreciation for his students
and colleagues at the University of San Francisco and the California
Institute of Integral Studies. He is also grateful for his collaborations
with the Yale Forum on Religion and Ecology as well as the Journey of
the Universe project. He is thankful for friends and family, who have
given encouragement and support far beyond what can be listed here.
Finally, many thanks are owed to Kimberly Carfore for sharing her love,
partnership, and practice of the wild.
On behalf of the editors and all the contributors, with gratitude for
all our relations, this book is dedicated to the living memory of our
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

ancestors and evolutionary pasts, and to the future flourishing of a

vibrant Earth community.

Sam Mickey
Mary Evelyn Tucker
John Grim

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 Fig. A2 M
 orning Garden. Oak Spring Garden Foundation, Upperville, Virginia.
Photograph by Max Smith (2018), CC BY.
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 Notes on the Contributors

David Abram
Dr. David Abram, cultural ecologist and geophilosopher, is the author
of The Spell of the Sensuous: Perception and Language in a More-Than-
Human World (1996) and Becoming Animal: An Earthly Cosmology (2010).
Hailed as ‘revolutionary’ by the Los Angeles Times, and as ‘daring’ and
‘truly original’ by Science, Abram’s work has been catalytic for the
emergence of several new disciplines, including the steadily growing
field of ecopsychology (in both its clinical and its research branches).
His essays on the cultural causes and consequences of environmental
disarray are published in numerous magazines, scholarly journals, and
anthologies. A recipient of the international Lannan Literary Award, as
well as fellowships from the Rockefeller and the Watson Foundations,
in 2014 Abram held the international Arne Næss Chair in Global
Justice and Ecology at the University of Oslo. Abram’s work engages
the ecological depths of the imagination, exploring the ways in which
sensory perception, language, and wonder inform the relation between
the human body and the breathing earth. His philosophical craft is
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

informed by his fieldwork with Indigenous peoples in southeast Asia and

the Americas, as well as by the European tradition of phenomenology.
His ideas are often discussed and debated (sometimes heatedly) within
the pages of various academic journals, including Environmental Ethics
and the Journal of Environmental Philosophy.
Abram was the first contemporary philosopher to advocate for a
reappraisal of ‘animism’ as a complexly nuanced and uniquely viable
worldview, one which roots human cognition in the dynamic sentience
of the body while affirming the ongoing entanglement of our bodily
experience with the uncanny intelligence of other animals, each of whom

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 xiv Living Earth Community

encounters the same world that we perceive yet from an outrageously

different angle and perspective. A close student of the Traditional
Ecological Knowledges (TEK) of diverse Indigenous peoples, Abram’s
work also articulates the entwinement of human subjectivity with the
varied sensitivities of the many plants upon which we depend, as well
as with the agency and dynamism of the particular places, or bioregions,
that surround and sustain our communities. In recent years, Abram’s
work has come to be associated with a broad movement loosely termed
‘New Materialism’, due to his espousal of a radically transformed sense
of matter and materiality. A Distinguished Fellow of Schumacher College
in England, Abram is founder and creative director of the Alliance for
Wild Ethics (AWE), a consortium of individuals and organizations
dedicated to cultural metamorphosis through a rejuvenation of place-
based oral culture. He lives with his two children in the foothills of the
southern Rockies.

Frederique Apffel-Marglin
Frédérique Apffel-Marglin, Emerita Professor in Anthropology, Smith
College, founded the nonprofit organization, Sachamama Center for
Biocultural Regeneration in 2009, dedicated to the regeneration of
both the local forest and of indigenous agriculture and culture in the
Peruvian Upper Amazon. The center is an educational organization that
aims to integrate theory, research, activism, and spirituality. Apffel-
Marglin was a research adviser at the World Institute for Development
Economics Research (WIDER) in Helsinki, an affiliate of the United
Nations University. With the Harvard economist Stephen Marglin,
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

she formed an interdisciplinary and international collaborative team

that produced three books on critical approaches to development
and globalization. Her newest book, co-authored with Robert Tindall
and David Shearer, is titled Sacred Soil: Biochar and the Regeneration
of the Earth (2017). She has published an additional thirteen books,
including (with Tariq Banuri) Who Will Save the Forests?: Knowledge,
Power and Environmental Destruction (1993), and (with Stephen A.
Marglin) Decolonizing Knowledge: From Development to Dialogue; A Study
Prepared for the World Institute for Development Economics Research of the
United Nations University (1996). Her interests cover ritual, gender,

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 Visit
https://ebookgate.com
today to explore
a vast collection of ebooks across various
genres, available in popular formats like
PDF, EPUB, and MOBI, fully compatible
with all devices. Enjoy a seamless reading
experience and effortlessly download high
quality materials in just a few simple steps.
Plus, don’t miss out on exciting offers that
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 Notes on the Contributors  xv

political ecology, critiques of development, science studies, and

Andean-Amazonian shamanism. Her areas of specialization are South
Asia and the Amazonian Andes. She currently resides in Cambridge,
Massachusetts, as well as in Lamas, San Martin, Peru, the field campus
of her nonprofit organization.

Jeannette Armstrong
Jeannette Armstrong is Syilx Okanagan, a fluent speaker and teacher of
the Nsyilxcn Okanagan language and a traditional knowledge keeper
of the Okanagan Nation. She is a founder of En’owkin, the Okanagan
Nsyilxcn language and knowledge institution of higher learning of the
Syilx Okanagan Nation. She currently is Assistant Professor and Canada
Research Chair in Indigenous Okanagan Philosophy at the University of
British Columbia Okanagan. She has a PhD in Environmental Ethics and
Syilx Indigenous Literatures. She is the recipient of the Eco Trust Buffett
Award for Indigenous Leadership and, in 2016, the BC George Woodcock
Lifetime Achievement Award. She is an author whose published works
include poetry, prose, and children’s literary titles, and academic writing
on a wide variety of Indigenous issues. She currently serves on Canada’s
Traditional Knowledge Subcommittee of the Committee on the Status of
Endangered Wildlife in Canada.

Samara Brock
Samara Brock is pursuing her PhD at the Yale School of Forestry and
Environmental Studies. She holds an MA in Community and Regional
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

Planning from the University of British Columbia, and an MA in Food

Culture from the University of Gastronomic Sciences in Italy. She has
worked in international agriculture in Cuba and Argentina, as a food
systems planner for the City of Vancouver, and, more recently, as a
program officer for the Tides Canada Foundation, funding nonprofit
organizations working on complex conservation, climate change,
and food security initiatives. Her current research focuses on the
development of environmental knowledge and expertise through
engaging with organizations that are attempting to transform the future
of the global food system.

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
 xvi Living Earth Community

Timothy Brown
Timothy Brown is Manager of University Initiatives for the National
Geographic Society, a new venture dedicated to building partnerships
with key universities through live student events in science and
storytelling. A conservation biologist by training, he researched Canada
lynx for the United States Fish and Wildlife Service before becoming a
high school environmental science teacher. After eight years as an award-
winning educator, he returned to graduate school at the Yale School of
Forestry and Environmental Studies, where he studied environmental
anthropology and served as Editor of Sage Magazine. He then served
as a communications officer for the School, where he organized the
Science and Storytelling Symposium in 2016. Timothy, who holds a BSc
in conservation biology and a BA in music, was a founding steering
committee member of the Yale Environmental Humanities Initiative.
In addition to his work with National Geographic, he serves as Editor of
Connecticut Woodlands, a quarterly publication of the Connecticut Forest
& Park Association. He lives in New Haven, Connecticut, with his wife
and son.

Prasenjit Duara
Prasenjit Duara is the Oscar Tang Chair of East Asian Studies at Duke
University. He was born and educated in India, and received his PhD in
Chinese History from Harvard University. He was previously Professor
and Chair of the Department of History and Chair of the Committee on
Chinese Studies at the University of Chicago (1991–2008). Subsequently,
Copyright © 2020. Open Book Publishers. All rights reserved.

he became Raffles Professor of Humanities and Director, Asia Research

Institute at National University of Singapore (2008–2015). Duara is also
the President of the American Association for Asian Studies (2019–2020).
In 1988, Duara published Culture, Power and the State: Rural North
China, 1900–42, which won the Fairbank Prize of the American Historical
Association (AHA) and the Levenson Prize of the Association for Asian
Studies (AAS), USA. Among his other books are Rescuing History
from the Nation (1995), Sovereignty and Authenticity: Manchukuo and
the East Asian Modern (2003), and, most recently, The Crisis of Global
Modernity: Asian Traditions and a Sustainable Future (2014). He has edited

Living Earth Community : Multiple Ways of Being and Knowing, edited by Sam Mickey, et al., Open Book Publishers, 2020. ProQuest
matter how high his social position might be. I was astonished that
anybody could consider that a revolutionary idea. Among other
things, M. Brodard was what people would call now-a-days a
feminist, expounding hotly his conviction that women should be
trusted with the responsibility for the conduct of their own lives, and
the earning of their own livings. These opinions found no echo at all
in the serious-minded middle-class families of his town, nor indeed
in his family, but they were an old story to me. I told him as much,
informing him confidently from my wide experience as a child in the
impecunious faculty of a western State-University, that everybody in
America expected as a matter of course to earn his and her own
living—everybody! He accepted this as unquestioningly as I
advanced it, with the fresh faith and enthusiasm which upheld him in
all the generous quixotism of his life. I believe, indeed, that on the
strength of my testimony he actually wrote some editorials about
America in his furiously convinced style.
Of course he was the champion of the working classes as against
the bourgeoisie, adored by the first and hated by the second. It was
an adventure to walk with him along the narrow, cobbled streets of
the musty little town. Everywhere the lean, sinewy men in working
clothes and the thin women in aprons and without hats, had a quick,
flashing look of pleasure to see his great frame come striding
vigorously along. Everywhere the artisans stopped their work to call
a hearty greeting to him, or to step quickly to meet him, full of some
grievance, sure of his sympathy, and comforted by the quick flame
of his indignation. And everywhere the very sight of him put a taste
of green apples into the mouths of all the well-dressed people. You
could see that by the sour expression of their broad, florid faces.
The prosperous merchant at the door of his shop frowned, cleared
his throat, and turned hastily within doors, as he saw M. Brodard
come marching along, humming a tune, his hat cocked light-
heartedly over one ear. The lawyer in his black broadcloth coat
passed us hurriedly; the women in expensive furs stepped high,
drew their long skirts about them, and looked him straight in the
eye, with an expression half fear, half horror. This last made him
break out into the hearty, full-throated laugh, always close to the
surface with him—the laugh that was as characteristic a part of him
as the shape of his nose.
I understood now why Mme. Brodard sent the girls away to school.
They would have been outcasts in any bourgeoise school in their
own town. Yet M. Brodard was a great champion of the public
schools and never lost an opportunity of defending against their
bitter critics the public lycées for girls, then just struggling into being
in France. I wondered a little that he should allow his daughters to
go to such a boarding-school as ours. But it seemed that the angry
resistance of the moneyed and pious families of Morvilliers had up to
that time prevented the establishment of a public lycée for girls
there. This enabled Mme. Brodard to steer past another dangerous
headland in the complicated course of her life. Perhaps, also, warm-
hearted M. Brodard was not inclined to be too hard on his girls,
whom he fondly loved, after the adoring manner of French fathers,
nor to expect too much from his devoted wife in the way of
conforming to his ideas.
Even at that time, poor Mme. Brodard’s life was all one miracle of
adroit achievement in reconciling irreconcilable elements and
effecting impossible compromises. She had married her husband
when they were both young (he must have been an irresistible
suitor), and before his hot-headed sympathies for the under-dog had
absorbed him. Like a good and devoted French wife, she never
admitted that anything her Bernard did was other than what she
would wish. But she remained exactly what she had been at the
time of her marriage, and although she was deeply attached to her
kind and faithful husband and made the best of homes for him, she
had not the slightest intention of changing a hair or becoming
anything but a good bourgeoise, a devoted believer in social
distinctions, in the Church, in the laboring classes as such and in
their places, and above all in the excellence of owning property and
inheriting money.
On this last point M. Brodard went much further than anything I had
heard discussed at home, and poured out incessantly in brilliant
editorials a torrent of scorn, laughter, hatred, and denunciation,
upon the sacred institution of inheritance, the very keystone of the
French social edifice. “How ridiculous,” he used to write on mornings
when no other forlorn hope stood in special need of a harebrained
charge, “that the mere chance of birth, or a personal caprice, should
put vast sums of unearned wealth into the hands of a man who has
not had the slightest connection with its production. Property, the
amassing of wealth by a man who has had the acumen and force to
produce it ... we may have two opinions about that, about whether
he should be allowed to keep for himself all he can lay his hands on.
But there can be no two opinions about the hilarious idiocy of the
theory that his grown-up son has any inherent right to possess that
wealth, his son who has no more to do with it than the Emperor of
China, save by a physiological accident. A hundred years from now,
people will be laughing at our imbecile acquiescence in such a
theory, as we now laugh at the imbecile acquiescence of whole
provinces and kingdoms in the Middle Ages, passed from the hand of
one master to another, because somebody had married somebody
else.”
Mme. Brodard used to say resignedly, that she minded such
editorials least of all. “That is a principle that will never touch our
lives!” she said with melancholy conviction, for her modest dowry
was the extent of their fortune and of their expectations. She herself
had been an orphan and all the Brodard elders were dead, having
left nothing to the family of such an enemy to society as they
considered Bernard to be.
She did not complain; she never complained of anything her
husband did; but it was plain to see that she thought it her obvious
duty to protect her daughters from the consequences of their dear
father’s ideas. The income from her dowry kept them at school and
dressed them at home, and as the oldest began to approach the
marriageable age Mme. Brodard cast about her with silent intensity
for some possible means for stretching that dowry to enable
Madeleine to make the right sort of match. She knew of course that
this was an impossible undertaking; but all her married life had been
an impossible undertaking carried through to success, and she did
not despair, although there were times when she looked white and
anxious.
But this was never when M. Brodard was at home. Indeed it was
impossible for any one to be tense or distraught in the sunny gaiety
of M. Brodard’s presence. His entrance into that neat, hushed,
narrow, waxed, and polished interior was like the entrance of a
military band playing a quick-step. He was always full of his latest
crusade, fired with enthusiasms, hope, and certainty of success. He
made you feel that he was the commanding officer of a devoted
force, besieging an iniquitous old enemy, and every day advancing
further toward victory. Yet another blast, down would tumble the
flimsy walls of cowardly traditional injustice, and sunshine would
stream into the dark places!
Full of faith in what he was doing, he was as light-hearted as a boy,
electrifying the most stagnant air with the vibrant current of his
conviction that life is highly worth the trouble it costs. Big girls as we
were, he swept us off into hilarious games of hide-and-seek; and
never in any later evenings of my life have I rocked in such gales of
fun as on the evenings when we played charades. An impersonation
of a fussy, clucking setting hen which he gave as part of the word,
“ampoule” has remained with me as a high-water mark of sheer
glorious foolery never surpassed by the highest-salaried clown. In
the following charade we laughed so at his “creation” of a fateful
Napoleon that we could not sit on our chairs; and after that, carried
away by his own high spirits, he did the “strong man” at the village
fair (he was a prodigiously powerful athlete) lifting a feather with a
grotesque display of swelling muscles, clenched jaws, and
widespread legs which all but finished me. The tears of mirth used
to come to my eyes as I recalled that evening, and many a taut,
high-strung moment of my adolescence in after years relaxed into
healthy amusement at the remembered roar of M. Brodard’s
laughter.
M. Brodard’s laughter ... alas!
And yet at the very time when his care-free, fearless laughter so
filled my ears, he was standing out single-handed against the most
poisonous hostility, to force an investigation of a framed-up law
case, in which a workingman had been defrauded of his rights.
Apparently there was always some such windmill against which he
thought it necessary to charge. Apparently his zeal for forlorn hopes
never diminished. We went back to school after that vacation leaving
him the center of a pack of yelling vituperations from all the staid
and solid citizens of the region ... “poor, dear Papa,” as the Brodard
girls always said, imitating their mother’s accent.
To me, school and lessons in deportment seemed queerer than ever,
after that great gust of stormy, ruffling wind, but the Brodard girls
were used to such contrasts. They but plunged themselves deeper
than ever, up to their very necks, into the atmosphere of gentility.
They had caught more than their mother’s accent, they had caught
her deep anxiety about their future, her passionate determination
that the ideas of their father should not drag them into that
impossible world of workingmen, radicals and badly dressed
outcasts, which was the singular choice of their excellent poor dear
Papa.
When Mme. Brodard came to Paris, in the well-cut tailored dress
which I now knew to be the only one she possessed, she reported
that Papa, by sheer capacity for shouting unpleasant truths at the
top of his great voice, had obtained a re-trial and acquittal of that
tiresome workingman, and was now off on a new tack, was
antagonizing all the merchants of town by an exposé of their
grinding meanness to their hapless employees. It seemed that libel-
suits were thick in the air, and the influential members of society
crossed to the other side of the street when they met M. Brodard.
“But you know how poor dear Papa seems to thrive on all that!”
Well, he might thrive on all that, but Madeleine, Lucie, and Clotilde
knew very well that nothing they wanted would thrive on “all that.”
Their only salvation was in escape from it. In the effort to prepare
themselves for that escape, they smeared themselves, poor things,
from head to foot with good breeding. They had nothing but
themselves, Maman, and her little dowry to count on; but at least no
one should be able to guess from their manners that their home life
had not been conventional. Mme. Brodard went on, that day, to
consult with her banker about re-investing some of her little fortune,
so that it would mean more income. When Madeleine left school,
they would need more, Heaven knew, to piece out the plain living
furnished by the head of the house. What could they do to rise to
that crisis? When Madeleine left school ... an abyss before their feet!
Could they perhaps go south, to a winter resort for a few months
every year, where there were no Morvilliers people, where there
might be eligible young men ... or even some not so young? They all
looked anxious and stern, when they thought of it, for after
Madeleine, there were Lucie and Clotilde!
I was sent home to America in June that year, before the end of the
school-term. The good-bys were said at lunch-time, before my
schoolmates went off to the lesson in deportment. The last I saw of
the Brodards at the time, was through the door of the salon as I
passed on my way to the street. They were learning how to handle a
fan, how to open it—“not tearing it open with both hands like a
peasant girl, but flirting it open with a sinuous bend of the wrist of
one hand ... not so abrupt!... smooth, suave, with an aristocratic....”
As I went down the hall, the voice of Professor Delacour died away
on these words. I wondered what poor dear Papa was up to now.
Two years later when I was taken back to France and went to visit
the Brodards, I found that he was still up to the same sort of thing.
Just then he was making the echoes yell in the defense of a
singularly unattractive, snuffy old man, who lived in a village six or
seven kilometers away from Morvilliers. Old M. Duval, it seemed, had
gone to South America in his youth, had accumulated some property
there, and had lost his religion. Now, at sixty-nine, with so it was
said, enough money to live on, he had come back to Fressy, had
bought a comfortable little home there, and settled down to end his
days in his birthplace. But Fressy, as it happened, had always been
and still was noted for its piety and conservatism. The curé of the
parish was a man of flaming zeal, and the Mayor was also a very
devout ultramontane. Till then their influence had been
unquestioned in the town. They had boasted that there was one
loyal village left in France where none of the poisonous new ideas
had come in to corrupt the working classes, and to wean them from
their dutiful submission to the rule of their spiritual and secular
betters. Apparently till then, M. Brodard had overlooked the
existence of such a village near him.
His attention was now very much called to it by the persecution of
old M. Duval. The persistent and ostentatious absence from Mass of
the returned traveler was followed by a shower of stones which
broke most of his windows. His easy-going advice given publicly in a
café to some young workmen of the town to follow his example, to
stand up for themselves, get higher wages or strike, was answered
by the poisoning of his dog. The old fellow became indignant, and
never dreaming of the heat of the feeling against him, walked
straight up to M. le Curé one day in the street, and asked him—as if
the priest had anything to do with what was happening!—whether
the laws of France did or did not permit a man to live quietly in his
own house, no matter what his opinions were! That night some
anonymous defender of the status quo set fire to his chicken-house.
It was at this time that M. Brodard began to be aware of the
existence of Fressy.
Old M. Duval called on the police for protection. “The police.” That
sounds very fine, but the police of Fressy meant a solitary old garde-
champêtre whose wife was the most pious woman in town, and
whose only daughter was the cook in the house of the fiercely
legitimatist Mayor. It is not surprising that the next morning, the
scoffing unbeliever from overseas found that somehow marauders
had eluded “the police,” and laid waste his promising kitchen-garden.
They intended (they proclaimed it openly) to drive out from their
sanctified midst, the man who flaunted his prosperity as the result of
a wicked and godless life.
But they had not counted on M. Brodard and on his unparalleled
capacity for making a noise. He stormed out to Fressy to see the old
man, thoroughly frightened by this time; heard his story, exploding
at intervals into fiery rockets of indignation; clasped him in his arms,
as though M. Duval had been his own kin; and swore that he would
prove to him that justice and freedom existed in France to-day as
always. The old man’s nerves were shaken by his troubled nights
and his harried sense of invisible enemies all about him. Until that
moment it had seemed to him that all the world was against him.
His relief was immense. He returned M. Brodard’s embrace
emotionally, his trembling old arms clasped hard about M. Brodard’s
great neck, the tears in his scared old eyes.
Then M. Brodard hurried back to Morvilliers, tore the throttle open,
and let her go ... to the great discomfort of Mme. Brodard and the
girls, the two elder of whom were now very reluctantly preparing
themselves to teach, for they had not been able to organize the
longed-for escape. That was the situation when I visited them.
Of course in due time the intemperate publicity about the matter put
an end to the attacks on M. Duval. The rattling crackle of M.
Brodard’s quick-fire protests rose in the air, till they reached the ears
of the Sous-Prefect, from whose exalted office orders to “see to that
matter” were issued, and came with imperative urgence even to the
royalist Mayor of Fressy. He very grudgingly issued certain unofficial
orders, which meant quiet in old M. Duval’s life. There was even a
victim sacrificed to shut M. Brodard’s too-articulate mouth. The
garde-champêtre lost his position and his chance for a pension,
which was very hard on an excellent, honest man whose only
intention had been to do his duty as he saw it.
By the time that I was back in America in college, Clotilde wrote me
that all that disturbance had died down, that M. Duval, horrid old
thing, had come on his shaking old legs to make a visit to Papa, to
thank him with deep emotion for the intense peace and comfort of
his present life. I could read between the lines that Clotilde thought
they might very well have a little more of those commodities in their
own life.
After that I heard from some one else (for M. Brodard and his ideas
were becoming famous) that the opposition had finally caught him in
a legal technicality, something connected with his campaign for
tearing down the miserable old disease-soaked medieval hovels
where many poor people lived in Morvilliers. The proprietors of the
threatened rookeries chipped in together, hired expensive expert
legal advice, and finally, to their immense satisfaction, succeeded in
getting a tiny sentence of imprisonment, for defamation of their
characters, inflicted on M. Brodard. He was kept in jail for two
weeks, I believe, which was a fortnight of pure glory. All his humble
adherents, hundreds of them, came tramping in to see him from all
the region round, bringing tribute. His “cell” was heaped with
flowers, he fared on the finest game and fattest poultry, and ... what
pleased him vastly more ... the fiery editorials which he sent out
from his prison about the infamy of wretched lodgings for poor
families were noticed and reprinted everywhere in France, where the
circumstances of his grotesque imprisonment were known.
The condemnation which his opponents meant to be a crushing
disgrace turned out an apotheosis. He enjoyed every moment of it
and emerged from his two weeks vacation, ruddier, stronger, in
higher spirits than ever, his name shining with the praise of
generous-hearted men all over the country. He cocked his hat
further over one ear than ever and strode off home. You could fairly
see the sparks fly from beneath his feet.
* * * * * * *
The morning after his release from prison, news came from Fressy
that old M. Duval had died of apoplexy.
Well, what of that? Ah, what of that ...?
He had willed his whole fortune to M. Brodard, and it seemed he
was frightfully rich: it came to more than three million francs.
* * * * * * *
Oh, yes, he took it. Of course he did. You knew he would. What else
would you have had him do? It’s all very well to have abstract ideas
about the absurdity and iniquity of inheritance; but when your own
daughters ... and your own wife ... expect so confidently....
Mme. Brodard, you see ... he was devoted to his wife who had so
faithfully made the best of homes for him; and to his daughters
whom he loved so dearly....
Can’t you see the astounded radiance of their faces at the news?
And they’d already been sacrificed so many years for his ideas....
Ideas!
What do you suppose he could do but accept it?
* * * * * * *
I don’t know one thing about the inner history of this period when
M. Brodard was bringing himself to a decision, and in the light of a
glimpse, just one glimpse which I had later, I think the less I know
about it the better for my peace of mind. The only information I had
was contained in a very nice, conventional note from Mme. Brodard,
giving me, in the pleasantly formal, well-turned phrases of French
epistolatory style, the news of their great good fortune which, she
said, was certainly sent by Providence to protect her dear husband
from the suffering and hardship which would have been his without
it; for M. Brodard was very ill, she wrote, oh, very ill indeed! He had
gone through a phase of strange mental excitement; from that he
had sunk into melancholia which had frightened them, and in the
end had succumbed to a mysterious malady of the nervous system
which made him half-blind and almost helpless. Helpless ... her
wonderful, strong husband! What could she have done to care for
him if it had not been for this financial windfall coming just when it
was most needed?
You can imagine my stupefaction on reading this letter. It was
caused as much by learning that M. Brodard was a hopeless invalid
as by learning about that odd business of the fortune left them. How
strange! M. Brodard with a nervous affection which left him in a
wheel chair! It was incredible. I reread the beautifully written letter,
trying hard to see if anything lay between the lines. But there was
nothing more in it than I had already found. It was evidently written
in the utmost good faith. Everything Mme. Brodard did was done
with the utmost good faith.
Some years later I was in France again and found myself near the
address on the Riviera where the Brodards had purchased an estate.
I had not heard from them in some months, but on the chance that
they might be there, I went over from Mentone on a slow way-train
which, returning three hours later, would give me time to pay my call
and get back the same afternoon. Everybody at the little white-
stuccoed station knew where the Brodard villa was, and when he
knew where I was going, the driver of the shabby cab tucked me
into it with a respect for my destiny he had noticeably not shown to
my very plain and rather dusty traveling-dress. We climbed a long
hill-road to a high point, commanding a glorious view of the brilliant
sea and yet more brilliant coast, and turned into a long manorial
allée of fine cypress trees.
The house was as manorial and imposing as the avenue leading to it
and I began to be uneasily aware of my plain garb. As I went up the
steps to the great door I could feel the house thrilling rhythmically to
excellent music, and to the delicate gliding of many finely-shod feet.
A servant led me to a small round salon hung with blue brocade, and
in a moment Mme. Brodard came hurrying to meet me. She had
bloomed herself luxuriantly open like a late rose, and from head to
foot was a delight to the eye. Of course she was very much
surprised to see me, but with never a glance at my garb she gave
me the cordial welcome of an old friend. Her perfect good faith and
good breeding still governed her life, it was plain to see. She was
giving a thé dansant for the younger girls, she told me, adding that
Madeleine had been married two months before to a silk
manufacturer of Lyons. She was evidently glad to see me, but
naturally enough, just for the moment, a little puzzled what to do
with me! I suggested to her relief that I make a visit to M. Brodard
first of all and wait to see the others till their guests had gone.
“Yes, that’s the very thing,” she said, ringing for a servant to show
me the way, “he’ll remember you, of course. He will be so glad to
see you. He always liked you so much.”
As the servant came to the door, she added with a note of caution.
“But you must expect to find him sadly changed. His health does not
improve, although we have a resident physician for him, and
everything is done for him, poor dear Bernard!”
The servant in a quiet livery of the finest materials, led me upstairs
over velvet carpets, and then upstairs again, to a superb room at the
top of the house. It was all glass towards the miraculous living blue
of the Mediterranean, and full of flowers, books, and harmoniously
designed modern furniture. M. Brodard, clad in a picturesque, furred
dressing-gown sat in a wheel chair, his bald head sunk on his breast,
his eyes fixed and wide-open, lowered towards his great, wasted
white hands lying empty on his knees. Until he raised his eyes to
look at me, I could not believe that it was he ... no, it was not
possible!
He remembered me, as Mme. Brodard had predicted, but the rest of
her simple-hearted prophecy did not come true. He was not in the
least glad to see me and made not the slightest pretense that he
was. A look that was intolerable to see, had come into his eyes as he
recognized me, and he had instantly turned his head as though he
hated the sight of me.
I knew at once that I ought to get out of the room, no matter how;
but I was so stricken with horror and pity that for a moment I could
not collect myself, and stood there stupidly.
A faint distant sound of gay music hummed rhythmically in the
silence. A professional-looking man who had been sitting with a
book on the other side of the room got up now and, with the bored
air of a man doing his duty, took hold of M. Brodard’s thin wrist to
feel the pulse.
M. Brodard snatched away his hand and said to me over the doctor’s
head, “Well, you see how it is with us now.” He corrected himself.
“You see how it is with me.”
His accent, his aspect, his eyes added what he did not say. He had
been trembling with impatience because I was there at all. Now he
was trembling with impatience because I did not answer him! His
terrible eyes dared me to answer.
I would have done better to hold my tongue altogether, but my
agitation was so great that I lost my head. I felt that I was called
upon to bring out something consoling, and heard myself murmuring
in a foolish babble something or other about possible compensations
for his illness, about his still being able to go on with his work, to
write, to publish, in that way to propagate his ideas....
At that he burst into a laugh I would give anything in the world not
to have heard.
“My ideas ... ha! ha! ha!” he cried.
Oh, I got myself out of the room then! I ran down the velvet carpets
of the stairs, my hands over my ears.
As I hurried along to the outside door I passed the salon. I saw,
across the bare, gleaming desert of its waxed floor, Clotilde standing
with a well-dressed man. She had a fan in her hand, and, as I
looked, she opened it deftly, with a sinuous bend of her flexible wrist
... “smoothly, suavely ... with an aristocratic ...”
 FAIRFAX HUNTER
The erratic philanthropist of our family arrived from New York one
spring day with a thin, sickly-looking, middle-aged, colored man,
almost in rags. “This is Fairfax Hunter,” he announced with the
professional cheeriness of the doer of good. “He’s pretty badly run
down and needs country air. I thought maybe you could let him
sleep in the barn, and work around enough for his board.”
There was nothing professionally or in any other way cheery about
the colored man, who stood waiting indifferently for my decision, his
knees sagging, his hollow chest sunken. As I glanced at him he
raised his dark, blood-shot eyes and met my look. I decided hastily,
on impulse, from something in the expression of his eyes, that we
could not send him away.
I led him off to the barn and showed him the corner of the hay-mow
where the children sometimes sleep when our tiny house overflows
with guests. He sank down on it and closed his eyes. The lids were
blue and livid as though bruised. He had nothing with him except
the ragged clothes on his back.
When I returned to the house, the philanthropist explained that
Fairfax was a Virginia negro—“You could tell that from his name, of
course”—who had come to New York and fallen into bad ways,
“drink, etc.... But there’s something about him....”
Yes, I agreed to that. There was something about him....
Fairfax lived with us after this for more than four years, the last
years of his life. He was really very ill at first, the merest little flicker
of life puffing uncertainly in and out of the bag of skin and bones
which was his body. The doctor said that rest and food were the only
medicines for him. He lay like a piece of sodden driftwood for long
hours on the edge of the hay where the sun caught it.
The good-natured old Yankee woman who was cooking for me then,
used to take him out big bowls of fresh milk, and slices of her home-
baked bread, and stand chatting with him while he sat up listlessly
and ate. At least, she being a great gossip, did the chattering, and
Fairfax listened, once in a while murmuring the soft, slow, “Ye-e-
s’m,” which came to be the speech he was known by, in our valley.
He seemed to have no interest in getting well, but little by little the
sunshine, the quiet, the mountain air, and something else of which
we did not dream till later, lifted him slowly up to health. He began
to work a little in the garden, occasionally cut the grass around the
house and, borrowing the carpentering tools, built himself a little
room in the corner of the barn. One day I paid him a small sum for
his services about the place, and my husband gave him some old
clothes. The next afternoon he took his first walk to the village, and
came back with a pipe and a bag of tobacco. That evening Nancy,
our “help,” called me to the kitchen window and pointed out towards
the barn. On a bench before the barn door sat Fairfax, smoking, his
head tipped back, watching the moon sink behind the mountain. We
agreed that it looked as though he were getting well.
Nancy had to go home to a sick sister that Fall, and Fairfax moved
into the kitchen to occupy her place. It came out that he had once
worked in a hotel kitchen in Virginia, so that thereafter our Vermont
cookstove turned out Southern food, from hot biscuit to fried
chicken.
There is very little caste feeling in our valley, and not a bit of color
prejudice. Many of our people had never even seen a negro to speak
to before they knew Fairfax, and they liked him very much.
He always was very thin, but he had filled out a little by this time;
had gone to a dentist by my advice and had the blackened stumps
of his teeth replaced by shining new ivories; had bought with his
first wages a new suit of clothes, and was considered by our farmer
families to be “quite a good-looking fellow.” He kept his curling gray
hair cut short to his head, his thin cheeks scrupulously shaven, and
was always presentable.
As a matter of course he was invited to all the country gatherings,
like other people’s “hired help,” along with the rest of us. I
remember the first of these invitations: some one telephoned from
the village to announce a church supper, and I was urged, “Do bring
down a good crowd. We’ve got a lot of food to dispose of.”
I stepped back into the kitchen and told Fairfax not to get supper
that night, as we were all going to the village to a church supper.
“Yes’m,” said Fairfax.
“I want you to be ready to start at a quarter to six,” I added,
glancing at the clock.
“Who, me?” said Fairfax, with a little start.
“Yes,” I answered, a little surprised. “Didn’t you hear me say I
wanted us all to go?”
Fairfax looked at me searchingly, “Where’ll I get my supper?”
“Why, they usually have the church suppers out on the church green
unless it rains, and then they go down to the basement rooms.”
Fairfax said apathetically, “No’m, they don’t want me.”
I saw now what was in his mind, and said, to set him right, “Oh,
yes, they do. You know the people around here haven’t any of those
notions. Come on.”
“No’m, they don’t want me,” he repeated.
I beckoned him to follow me, went back to the telephone and rang
up the woman who was arranging for the supper. “Do you want me
to bring Fairfax Hunter with us?” I asked her explicitly.
“Why, of course,” she said surprised. “I told you we want a crowd.”
After this Fairfax stood undecided, his sensitive face clouded and
anxious. I had a glimpse then of the long years of brutal
discrimination through which he had lived, and said, feeling very
much ashamed of my civilization, “Now, Fairfax, don’t be so foolish.
We want you to go. Get on your best clothes, so’s to do honor to the
Ladies Aid.”
He went back to the room in the corner of the barn, and half an
hour later came out, fresh and neat in his new suit, closely shaven,
his slim yellow hands clean, his gray hair smooth. He looked almost
eager, with a light in his eyes that was like a distant reflection of
gaiety. But when we cranked up the Ford to go he was not in sight.
We called him, and he answered from the barn that he was not
ready, and would walk in. I was vexed, and shouted back as we
rolled down the hill, “Now don’t fail to come.”
It rained on the way in, and the supper was served in the basement,
with all the neighbors spruced up and fresh, while the busy women
of the Ladies Aid rushed back and forth bringing us salmon loaf,
pickles, Boston brown bread, creamed potatoes, and coffee and ice-
cream as from the beginning of time they always have; but though I
kept a chair at our table empty for Fairfax, and sat where I could
watch the door, he did not appear.
After the supper I went across the street to see my aunt, house-
ridden with a hard cold. She told me that from her windows she had
seen Fairfax come down to the village street, halt in front of the
church, go on, turn back, halt again. She said he had paced back
and forth in this way for half an hour, and finally had gone home.
When we reached the house we found Fairfax there, his good
clothes put away, his cook’s white apron tied around him, eating
bread and butter and cold meat.
I sat down to scold him for not doing as I had said. When I had
finished Fairfax looked at me, hesitated, and said, “If it had been out
of doors, maybe I’d have tried it.” There was an expression on his
thin somber face, which made me get up and go away without
venturing any more comment.
As his health increased, his spirits rose somewhat. My little son was
born that winter, and Fairfax was very fond of the baby, who soon
developed the most extravagant fondness for his company. When
spring came on, and gardening arrived, Fairfax took over a part of
that work, and had a long-running feud with the woodchucks who
live in the edge of the woods beyond our garden patch. It was a
quaint sight to see Fairfax in his white jacket and apron, sitting
outside the kitchen door, peeling potatoes, a rifle across his knees,
or to see him emerge in a stealthy run from the kitchen door, gun in
hand, and dart across the road to get a better sight on the little
brown garden thieves. It did me good to see him stirred up enough
to care about anything.
He turned out to be a great reader and worked his way through
most of our library. I know you will not believe me when I tell you
who his favorite author was. But I am not concerned with seeming
probable, only with telling the truth. It was Thomas Hardy, whose
philosophy of life fitted in exactly with Fairfax’s views and
experience. He was no talker and rarely said anything to me beyond
the gentle “no’m” and “yes’m” with which he received orders. But
once he remarked to my husband that Thomas Hardy certainly did
know what life was like. He went straight through that entire set of
novels, once he had found them on the shelves, and all that winter
my life was tinged with the consciousness of Fairfax sitting in the
kitchen after his work was done, deep in communion with Hardy.
Our visiting friends used to find the sight so curious as to be
amusing. I did not find it so.
The neighbors grew very used to him, and being sociable, friendly
people, with a great deal of Yankee curiosity about the rest of the
world, they often tried to get Fairfax to tell about life in the south.
When he went out for a stroll in the evening, they would call to him,
from where they were weeding a bed in the garden, or giving the
pigs their last meal, “Hello, there, Fairfax, come on in for a minute.”
If they were in the yard, or on the porch, Fairfax often accepted the
invitation. As we went by in the car we used to see him leaning up
against the porch-railing, talking, or helping some busy woman set
out her cabbage plants. But he never went indoors.
Our corner of the valley is a very cheerful one with a number of
lively children to keep us from “shucking over” into middle age too
soon, and the school-house is often the place where we gather for
good times. The school-benches are pushed back, the lamps lighted,
the fiddler tunes up, and we all dance, young and old, children and
grown-ups. Fairfax was invited as a matter of course to these
informal affairs, and some of the children who were very fond of the
kind, gentle, silent man, used to pull at his coat, and say, “Do come
on in, Mr. Hunter! Dance with me!” But Fairfax only grinned uneasily
and shook his head. He used to stand outside, smoking his pipe and
looking in wistfully at the brightly lighted room. As we skipped back
and forth in the lively old-fashioned dances, we could see him, a dim
shape outside the window, the little red glow of his pipe reflected
once in a while from his dark, liquid eyes. Sometimes when the
window was open, he came and leaned his elbows on the sill,
nodding his head with the music, and beating time lightly with his
fingers, his eyes following us about as we stepped back and forth in
the complicated figures.
When we were ready to serve the “refreshments,” some of us went
out into the entry-way, and Fairfax came in to help us with the
uncomfortable work of digging out the ice and salt from the top of
the freezers, and opening the cans. I used to say at first, “Fairfax,
why don’t you go in and dance, too? Anybody can see you know just
how to.” But his invariable answer, “No’m, I guess I won’t,” had in it
a quality which ended by silencing me.
The older people called him Fairfax, as we did, but because he was a
grown man, and a middle-aged man, they thought it not good
manners for the children to call him by his first name, and taught
the boys and girls to call him Mr. Hunter. We thought this perfectly
natural, and none of us, entirely ignorant of Southern ways, had the
slightest idea of what this meant to him.
Once a year, Fairfax took a two weeks’ vacation, and all his earnings
for the year. He went off to the city, clean, and strong, and well-
dressed; and he always came back without a cent, sick, and
coughing, and shabby, with a strong smell of whiskey all over him.
Of course, we took him severely to task for this inexcusable
behavior, getting out for his benefit all the accepted axioms of
conduct, prudence, ambition, self-interest, and so on, showing him
how he could save his money, and put it in the bank, and be
prosperous.
He always answered with his invariable soft, “Yes’m,” except on one
occasion, the last year of his life, when he said somberly, with his
soft, Southern accent, “I’ve got no use for money. I can’t buy what I
want. I’m a colored man.”
We learned more about him ... a little ... that he had a sister now
married to a sober, hard-working carpenter, living in Buffalo, that he
had lived at home with his mother till long after he was grown up,
working in the hotel, and supporting them both with his wages. That
was the only time I ever saw him show emotion. His thin face
suddenly twisted like a child’s, and tears shone in his eyes. “She was
an awful good woman, my mother was. She had a terrible time to
get along when my sister and I were little. She never had a husband
to help her. My father was a white man.”
“Fairfax, why don’t you think of marrying and having a home of your
own?” I said impulsively.
“To bring up children to be Jim-Crowed?” he asked, shortly.
On another occasion, when I was commenting on the singular
excellence of his writing and figuring, I heard about his school
taught by a northern Negro, who had gone down south as a
volunteer teacher after the war. It was from him that Fairfax had
learned his correct speech, without a trace of what we call the Negro
dialect.
When the war in Europe came, and we decided to take the children
and go to France we were confronted with the question of what to
do with Fairfax. He wanted to go with us, and asked for it with more
insistence than he ever showed, and I often now regret that I did
not try to take him. But it seemed impossible to add to the
responsibility of little children in a war-ridden country, the heavier
responsibility in a country flowing with alcohol, for a man with a
weakness for drink. Besides, we could not afford the extra expense.
There was no place for him in our region, where few people keep
help in the kitchen. In the hurry and confusion of our preparations
for departure I simply could not think of anything satisfactory to do
in the United States of America for a proud sensitive colored man.
The best I could devise was to find him a place with a friend,
unfortunately in a city where there were plenty of saloons and plenty
of race prejudice. I can’t see now why I did not think of Canada. But
we knew no one in Canada.
When we separated, he kissed the children good-by, seriously, and
shook the hand which I held heartily out to him. After our last
words, I said, making a great effort to break through the wall of
dignified reserve which his silence built around him, “Fairfax, do
keep straight, won’t you?”
He looked at me with that passive, neutral look of his, which had to
my eye an ironical color, and made a little gesture with his shoulders
and eyebrows that might mean anything.

He drank himself to death inside six months. I read the news in a

letter from his sister, the first and only letter I ever had from her. I
had hurried back to the apartment in Paris one evening to be with
the children during an air-raid, found the American mail arrived, and
read it to the accompaniment of that anti-aircraft bombardment
which was so familiar a part of the war to make the world safe for
democracy. My letter from the country of democracy informed me
that Fairfax had died, alone, before his sister could reach him. “He
had been drinking again, I am afraid, from what they told me. I
always felt so bad about Fairfax drinking, but he wouldn’t stop—he
was just plain discouraged of life. He never touched a drop as long
as our mother was living. He was always so sorry for our mother,
and so good to her, though she was only a poor ignorant woman,
who couldn’t read or write, and Fairfax was so smart. The teacher in
our school wanted Fairfax to study to be a minister or a doctor, but
he never would. He said he thought the more colored people try to
raise themselves, the worse they get treated. He felt so bad, always,
about the way colored people were treated. He said white folks
wanted them to be low-down, so he was going to be. I used to tell
him how wrong this was, and how the good white people weren’t
like that, but he didn’t have any patience. Colored people have got
to have patience. Our mother was always patient. And my husband
and I manage pretty well. But Fairfax was proud. And colored people
can’t be proud. I don’t believe he ever let you-all know how he liked
the way the folks up your way treated him. He said their folks taught
the white children to call him mister just like a white man, and that
the white people used to ask him to parties and dances. He tried to
go, he said, but at the door, he’d remember all the times when white
people made a scene and called him a nigger and got mad if he
even stood near them on the street, and looked at him that way
white people do ... if you were colored you’d know what I mean.
And then he just didn’t dare risk it. When he was a boy and
something like that happened, it used to make him down sick so he
couldn’t eat for days. And when he got up to where you live, it was
too late. My husband and I had Fairfax taken to our old home town
in Virginia and buried there beside our mother.”

The air-raid was over when I finished that letter. The noisy
bombardment of hate and revenge was quiet. The night was as still
there in France as in the graveyard in Virginia. I was very thankful to
know that Fairfax was sleeping beside his mother.

We are back in Vermont now, the curtain lowered over air-raids and
barrages. Everything goes on as before.
The other evening we were all down at the school-house for an
entertainment. The children spoke pieces, and then we had a dance.
About eleven o’clock some of us went out to the entry-room and
began to serve the ice-cream. One of my neighbors said, after a
while, “Do you remember how Fairfax used to get all dressed up so
nice, and then always stayed around outside to watch?”
“Yes,” I remembered.
“Sometimes,” said another one of the women, “sometimes when
we’re out here like this, it seems to me when I look up quick and
glance out there in the dark, as though I could almost see him there
now.”
After a time, some one else said, “’Twas a pity he never would come
in.”
 PROFESSOR PAUL MEYER
“Master of the Word.” I never could remember where I had read that
phrase—perhaps as a child in an old story-book about enchanters;
but I knew whom it described when I first saw Professor Meyer
speaking to his class in the École des Chartes. Not in any
metaphorical sense, but in the plain literal meaning of the phrase,
was he Master of the Word. He made the title “Philologist” put on
purple and gold.
The sallow young seminarists in their scant black gowns, keen, pale,
young students who had come from Russia, Italy, Roumania, and
Finland, sat motionless and intent, their eyes fixed on him
unwaveringly for the two long hours of these daily lectures. Words
were the living creatures in that room. They were born before our
eyes in the remote childhood of the race, and swept down through
the ages till there they were in our own language, issuing every day
from our own lips, an ironic reminder that all the days of our lives
were no more than an hour in the existence of those disembodied
and deathless sounds.
From his youth the vigorous old man had transferred all his life to
the world of words—and had found it an enchanted kingdom,
something sure and lasting in the quicksands of human existence.
From inside the walls of his safe refuge he watched the world
outside suffer and despair and cry out and die. And he marveled at
its folly. He himself knew none of these fitful moods. He was always
of a steady, kind, and humorous cheerfulness, and always the most
compelling of talkers. No impassioned orator declaiming on an
emotional theme could hold more breathlessly attentive his listeners
than this tall, stooping, plain old Jew, when in his rapid
conversational staccato he traced out the life of a word, told the
Odyssey of its wanderings in the mouths of men, so much less able
to withstand death and time than this mere breath from out their
mouths. He did this not with the straining effort of the orator, but as
naturally as he breathed or thought. His mind was constantly
revolving such cycles, and when he spoke he was but thinking aloud,
always with the same zest, day after day, always alert, with never a
flagging of interest, with never a moment of treacherous wonder
about the value of anything. I knew him when I was passing through
one of those passions of doubt which mark one’s entry into adult
life, and I never could be done with marveling at him. I was grateful
to him, too, for he showed the most amused sympathetic kindliness
to the foreign girl, groping her way forward.
I think he was sorry for me, for any one tempted to step into human
and prosaic life. He stood at the door of his ordered, settled,
established life, and called to me to construct one like it, to do as he
had done, to turn away from the sordid comedy of personality, and
step into the blessed country of impersonal intellectual activity. Many
things turned me toward his path: the great weight of his mature
personality (he was over seventy then and I was twenty), my
immense admiration for his learning, my interest in his subject, my
intuitive dread of the guessed-at strain of human emotions. You
must not think that his world was austere or rarefied. He had found
there, with no penalties to pay, all the amusement, the drama, the
struggle, the rewards, the entertainment, which men find in the
human world, and pay for so dearly. He never knew a bored or
listless moment in his life, nor did any one in his company.
Every Tuesday and Thursday, after that two-hour lecture to the
seminarists, there was a half hour intermission before the next class
—eight or ten advanced students—met in his oak-paneled, half-
basement office, rich with precious books, to discuss with him a
curious Old-French manuscript which he had discovered in the
library at Cassel.
I have never in my life known anything more sparkling and
stimulating than those half-hour intermissions. The old man always
clapped on his hat, talking incessantly as usual, and, stretching his
long legs to a stride which kept me trotting like a little dog at his
side, started up the Boulevard St. Michel towards the Odéon, to the
pastry-shop which calls itself “of the Medicis.” As soon as his tall
form showed in the distance, and the inimitable, high, never-to-be-
forgotten squeak of his voice could be heard, one of the elegant
young-lady waitresses bestirred herself—for the pastry-shop was
proud of its famous patron. She always had babas au rhum waiting
for us, as this was the only pastry Professor Meyer considered worth
eating. I do not like babas au rhum myself, but who was I to set up
my insignificant opinion against so great a man? So I ate the wet
sop docilely, considering it a small price to pay for the stories that
went with it, stories that blew the walls away from around us, and
spread there the rich darkness of the Middle Ages. There were
stories out of medieval manuscripts as yet unattributed and
unedited, heaped in the upper rooms of the Ambrosiana at Milan, of
the untold riches, unclassified and unarranged of the Bodleian,
which Paul Meyer described with apostolic fervor; of priceless scripts
discovered in impossible places, by incredible coincidences; of years
of fruitless work on an obscure passage in the Grail-cycle, suddenly
cleared up because a Greek priest in Siberia had discovered a
manuscript bound in with an old Bible.
Or if he were in a playful mood, the mood the waitresses adored and
hoped for, he would begin juggling with the names of things about
us, the trim shoes on their feet, the brooches at their throats, the
ribbon in their well-kept hair; and with a pyrotechnic display of
laughing erudition, would hunt those words around and around
through all the languages where they had tarried for a time, back
through history—the Renaissance, the Middle Ages, the Dark Ages,
Late Latin, the Empire—till they ended in the long-drawn sonorous
Sanscrit chant of an early Aryan dialect, which Professor Meyer
rendered with a total disregard of onlookers.
After one of these flights, we came to ourselves with a start, looking
around with astonishment at our everyday dress and surroundings
and bodies.
Or perhaps it was a story out of his life, his long, long life, of which
not a day had been lost from his work. My favorites, I remember,
were the Tarascon stories. Ages and ages ago, when Paul Meyer was
a very young man, one of the brilliant pioneers in the study of Old
French, the municipal authorities of Tarascon employed him to come
and decipher the Town records, faithfully kept from the beginning of
time, but in their strange medieval scripts, with the abbreviations,
conventional signs, and handwritings of the past centuries, wholly
unintelligible to the modern Tarasconians. The young savant spent a
whole winter there, studying and copying out these manuscripts, a
first experience of the intense, bright pleasure such work was to give
him all his life long. The quick-hearted southerners in the town,
loving change and novelty, delighted to see the young, new face
among them, welcomed him with meridional hospitality, and filled his
leisure hours with the noisy, boisterous fun of Provence. He made
friends there whom he never forgot, and every year after that he
made the long trip to Tarascon to have a reunion with those
comrades of his youth. But he lived long, much longer than the
quickly-consumed southerners, and one by one, the friends of
Tarascon were absent from the annual reunion. They were fewer
and fewer, older and older, those men used up by the fever of living,
and they fell away from the side of the vigorous man who had
chosen for his own the unchanging world of the intellect. “And
finally, last year,” said Professor Meyer on one occasion, “when I
went back, they were all gone. Every one! I had to go to the
cemetery to have a visit with them.”
As I gazed at him, astounded by the unbroken matter-of-factness of
his tone, no self-pity in it, he went on, his voice brightening into
enthusiasm, “So I went and had another look at the town records.
Such a glorious collection of scripts. Not one known style missing!”
He regretted deeply the death of the much-loved Gaston Paris, his
great colleague at the Collège de France, whose name was always
linked with his in the glory of the renaissance of Old-French studies,
but his lamentations were over the work unfinished, the priceless
manuscripts yet unedited. When the news came of the tragic family
disgrace of one of the greatest of German editors of Old-French
texts, Paul Meyer was moved almost to tears. They were not of
sympathy with the sorrow of the other scholar, but of exasperation
that any man, especially one filled with irreplaceable knowledge of
his subject, could let so ephemeral a thing as human relations
distract him from the rich fields to be tilled in the kingdom of words.
During the second trial of Dreyfus, Paul Meyer was called to testify
as a handwriting expert and gave his testimony in favor of Dreyfus,
the evidence, he said, being unmistakable. It was at the height of
the Dreyfus re-trial, when all France was throbbing with hate and
suspicion like an ulcer throbbing with fever. Professor Meyer was
abominably treated by the opposition, attacked in the streets,
insulted, boycotted, his classes filled with jeering young men who
yelled him down when he tried to speak. His bearing through this
trial is one of the momentous impressions of my life. He did not
resent it, he made no effort to resist it, he struck no melodramatic
attitude, as did many of the fine men then fighting for justice in
France. He smothered the flame out, down to the last spark by his
total disregard of it. What did he care for howling fanatics in one
camp or another? Nothing! He had been asked to pass judgment on
a piece of handwriting and he had done it. There was nothing more
to be said.
I cannot forget the slightest shade of his expression as he stood one
day, on the platform of his classroom, chalk in hand, ready to write
out an outline on the blackboard, waiting, while the yelling crowd of
“manifestants,” mostly young men in flowing black neckties, with
straggling attempts at beards on their pimply faces, stamped and
hooted and shrieked out, “Dirty Jew! What were you paid? Shut up!
Shut up! What was your price, dirty Jew?” and other things less
printable. And yet, although I can shut my eyes now and see that
harsh, big-nosed, deeply-lined old face, with the small, bright eyes
under the bristling white eyebrows, I can not think of any words to
describe its expression—not scornful, not actively courageous, not
resentful, not defiant; rather the quiet, unexcited, waiting look of a
man in ordinary talk who waits to go on with what he has to say
until a pounding truck of iron rails has time to pass the windows. He
stood looking at his assailants, the chalk ready in his bony fingers,
and from him emanated so profound a sense of their entire
unimportance, of the utterly ephemeral quality of their emotion
compared to the life of the consonant he was about to discuss, that
little by little they were silenced. Their furious voices flattened out to
an occasional scream which sounded foolish even to their own ears.
They looked at each other, got up in a disorderly body and stamped
out of the room. The last one might have heard Professor Meyer’s
high, squeaky voice stating, “Thus in Picardy and in the north of
Normandy, Latin C before a did not undergo the change noted in
other provinces, and we still find it pronounced....”
The pale, keen seminarists in their long, black gowns, and the
American girl, whipped out their notebooks and were at once caught
up into the Paul-Meyer world where no storms blew.
When, three or four years after the beginning of this friendship—it
was not precisely that, but I cannot think of another name to call it
—I made my final choice and stepped out of his safe, windless realm
into human life, it was with some apprehension that I went to tell
him that I was engaged to be married and would study Philology no
more. I might have known better than to be apprehensive. What did
he care? What was one more or less among the disciples of
Philology, as long as the words were there? Also, he laughingly
refused to consider my decision as final. He seemed to stand at the
door of Philology, calling after me with perfect good humor, as I
walked away, “When you’re tired of all that, come back. I’m always
here.”
In the years after this, whenever we passed through Paris I went to
see him, stepping back into my girlhood as I stepped over the
threshold of the École des Chartes. Professor Meyer was very old
now, but showed not the slightest sign of weakness or infirmity. One
evening when I went hurriedly to say good-by before we sailed for