Golden Hill by Francis Spufford

The age of Hamilton (the hit musical, not the man) is spawning a new interest in eighteenth century America, something that seemed impossible just a few years ago.  Characters sporting powdered hair, breeches and tri-corner hats are no longer assumed to be beyond the understanding of today's audiences, but are understood to harbor the same emotions and flaws that one might find among one's own neighbors.  Or at least on any modern cable television drama. 

Francis Spufford sets his novel, Golden Hill:  A Novel of Old New York, thirty years before the infamous declaration written in Philadelphia.  On November 1, 1746, a mysterious traveler from London named Richard Smith arrives in New York harbor bound for the firm of Lovell & Company on Golden Hill Street.  Smith presents a bill of exchange drawn upon Lovell & Company for a thousand pounds sterling payable 60 days after presentment - a fortune in that day and age.  During the 60 days that the mysterious Mr. Smith waits for his money, he refuses to tell a soul why he has come to New York, where he came by this fortune or what he will use the funds for, thus commencing much speculation by the denizens of this small city as to his background and his intentions.  Is he a spy?  Is he a representative of one of the ministries of government?  Is he an actor? A Saracen conjurer?  An agent of the French?  Or is he simply a fraud and a scoundrel?

Solving the mystery of Smith and his fortune is not so much the plot of the novel, as an excuse to give us a picture of colonial New York. Eighteenth century New York is as much a character in this novel as any of the human characters.  This is a New York that no longer exists. Indeed it had disappeared by the early nineteenth century, mostly destroyed by war and fire. Not the metropolis that it is today, it occupies only the lower tip of Manhattan island and was small by world standards.  As Spufford points out in his Author's Note, in 1746 the city of New York had a population of only seven thousand while London, the largest city in Europe, had seven hundred thousand.  It is, in fact, a small town compared to London.  And in a small town it is difficult to keep secrets or, indeed, to have a private life. Mr. Smith finds that, within 24 hours of his arriving, "the news was all around the town that a stranger had arrived with a fortune in his pocket."

The people of this colonial city are familiar and yet foreign to Mr. Smith.  He is astonished to discover on his first day in the city that the faces of women are not marked by the pox as they are in Europe. He also finds that New York does not stink as London does.  "A Scene of City-Life, his eyes reported. A Country-Walk, in a Seaside District, his nostrils counter argued. No smells; also, he realized, no beggars."  And the people were taller than he expected.  "He was used, in the piazza of Covent Garden, to stand taller by a head than the general crowd; but here, in the busy bobbing mass of heads, he was no taller than the average."

We explore the streets of old New York with Smith; they are not only described but they are named. Smith chases a thief from the tip of Manhattan up to the commons; he winds through the streets visiting every tavern and dive looking for a particular kind of investigator.  At one point, suspected of being a papist French spy, he is chased through the town by a drunken mob.  One recommendation to the publishers:  a map of Old New York would have been useful to those of us who are not native and could not follow the street by street descriptions in our minds. 

One of the joys of this novel is its depiction of commerce in eighteenth century America and specifically how the shortage of real money (coin money) made transactions difficult. Mr. Smith discovers this when he tries to convert some gold guineas into smaller change in the local currency:

Lovell accordingly began to count out a pile of creased and folded slips next to the silver, some printed black and some printed red and some brown, like the despoiled pages of a prayerbook, only of varying shapes and sizes; some limp and torn; some leathery with grease; some marked only with dirty letterpress and others bearing coats-of-arms, whales spouting, shooting stars, feathers, leaves, savages; all of which he laid down with the rapidity of a card dealer, licking his fingers for the better passage of it all.

"Wait a minute," said Mr. Smith.  "What's this?"

"You don't know our money, sir?" said the clerk.  "They didn't tell you we use notes, specie being so scarce, this side?"

"No," said Smith.

The pile grew.

"Fourpence Connecticut, eightpence Rhode Island," murmured Lovell. "Two shilling Rhode Island, eighteenpence Jersey, one shilling Jersey, eighteenpence Philadelphia, one shilling Maryland ..."

It makes one appreciate the banking genius of Alexander Hamilton after the revolution. But Alexander Hamilton is not yet born, much less arrived in New York to attend Kings College (Columbia University).  Indeed there is no King's College yet.

As the title states, this is a novel of "Old New York" not a novel about the thirteen colonies or even about North America.  Except for one short errand up the Hudson, the action all takes place in lower Manhattan.  There are no visits to the larger city of Philadelphia or up to Boston.  There is almost no discussion of the other colonies.  There is, in fact, little discussion of the vast continent that lies across the Hudson River. At one point someone points out to Smith that New York is crowded with transient persons - they disembark from ships and then leave, the continent "devouring" them.  But Smith is remarkably incurious about the continent, only once or twice reflecting on its vastness. When native Americans are mentioned, it is generally in connection with the war with the French.  And not one native American seems to be residing in New York during Mr. Smith's time there; or at least he never encounters one. 

 

This is a novel about how normal New York would seem to a Londoner, while at the same time remaining foreign. The people are in some ways more patriotic than Londoners.  Smith is constantly surprised by the fervor with which the people support, and toast, King George II.  But at the same time they are obsessed with the idea of liberty.  The City is in the midst of an ideological battle between adherents of the Assembly, led by chief judge DeLancey ("a massive and statuesque Roman head, finely modeled at ear and nose, like a slightly depraved but very intelligent emperor"), and Governor Clinton ("with a peanut-shaped brow and an anxious expression letting down the blue and gold of his coat").  The Assembly adherents are strongly protective of their sole right over the purse strings; the Governor is desperate for a budget.

War with France is on the minds of the people of New York.  They are bothered by the idea that they are alone on the other side of the Atlantic to fight the French (and papist) enemy on their border. But they are also outraged that the Governor has sent a regiment into upstate New York and expects New York to support them.  In fact the Assembly has not deigned to vote any money for support.  

But this political background is not really the point.  The point is that, while it is a British colony, New York is also different than Britain.  News from Europe about the waging of the war in Europe arrives slowly and late.  Even the name of the war is foreign to Mr. Smith.  King George's war, the local people call it. "We call all our wars, here, by the names of monarchs; as, King William's War, Queen Anne's War, King George's."  Smith again remarks that they are quite the royalists in New York.  It  turns out that Smith's assumption that New York does not have its own dangers, political and otherwise, is what gets him into trouble time and again.

For all the New Yorkers' talk of liberty, Smith is constantly aware that some in the City are not at liberty.  Enslaved black people populate the City.  They seem to be almost invisible to the white population and yet they are everywhere, carrying on the work that the upper classes don't want to do.  Smith and the narrator are always aware of them, whether they have names like Achilles, a slave of the Governor's staff, and Zephyra, who acts as a sort of chaperone and maid for the Lovell daughters, or the unnamed black musician who plays at a dinner party given by the Lovells. 

And others, while more at liberty than slaves, still find themselves fettered by society.  This is not a society in which open homosexuality is tolerated.  And women are not as free as men to follow their desires.  When women do act on their impulses, society spurns them.

 

For a time it isn't clear whether Spufford is simply trying to do a better job than most white male writers at accurately representing the diversity of a society or whether there is a method to this inclusiveness.  Eventually it becomes clear that all of this diversity is a necessary component of his plot, which is both a delight and a relief.  

In form, this novel walks a line between imitating the style of an eighteenth century author and making it readable to modern eyes.  Not being well versed in the novels of Fielding and other novelists of the time, I can't say if he successfully captures their style.  It was a relief that after the first few paragraphs, he seemed to move into a more modern mode.  A small part of the novel is epistolary and while I generally love epistolary novels, I thought that was the weakest part of the novel although it became clear why the author felt it was necessary.

Most of the novel uses an omniscient narrator who does sometimes break the fourth wall and address the audience in humorous ways.  At one point the narrator admits that the description of a duel had to be researched in a book as the author had no experience of sword fighting and another time the narrator simply gives up on the attempt to describe the rules of a card game.  One of the best moments in the novel is when the omniscient narrator grows bored (or embarrassed) describing a sex scene from the point of view of a male character and suddenly suggests that we look at it from the point of view of the woman, going on to give a perceptive but humorous description. 

There is a romance of sorts in the novel.  The characters, familiar with Shakespeare, compare themselves to Beatrice and Benedick but allow that they aren't really very much like them.  In fact, the play that is never mentioned but seems to be the model for part of the novel is The Taming of the Shrew.  A wealthy man with two daughters.  One, the younger, is lovely and docile and has suitors.  The older may be lovely but is a shrew that no one wants to marry.  Perhaps the newly arrived stranger in town will take her off their hands?  

Shakespeare's Kate is a fascinating and yet frustrating character.  Each actress must make her own artistic decisions about Kate's motivation as Shakespeare never really explains her . And of course she is cured or "tamed"in the end,  the moral seemingly being that whether you are a shrew or not is a choice made solely by the individual.  The cage is of your own making.  Spufford makes it more interesting.  Is the cage of your own making?  Or is it made by society?  Or does it exist because of a part of your nature you can't change?  Or is it some combination? In the end, this is the question that readers will be debating in their own minds (or with friends) after they put down this novel.  

Spufford has now won the Desmond Elliott prize for debut novels as well as the Costa award for first novels (he has written other nonfiction books, but never a novel) as well as the Ondaatje award for books with a sense of place.  With such a striking debut, I look forward to more from his pen in the future.

August Reading

Looking back at August, I almost can't believe how many books I read.  Of course part of the time I was on vacation with lots of time to read.  The sad thing is that, years ago, I always read at this pace.  But the last few years my reading pace has slowed considerably.  But this year, once I got on a roll on vacation, I kept going.  Of course, a lot of my reading was genre (mystery) reading which I enjoy but find easy to fly through.  I can finish a book in a night if it is genre.

Here goes:

Phryne Fisher Mysteries by Kerry Greenwood.  Yes, this series was on my list for July but I finished the rest of the series in August.  I really enjoy these mysteries.  Phryne doesn't take crap from anyone and is a thoroughly modern woman (for the 1920s and even for today).  In the later books I found some of the "skills" that Phryne has a little eye-rolling - it's almost like she is a female James Bond.  But it wasn't enough to stop me from enjoying them.  I look forward to her next adventure.   Recommended

Four Tana French Books:   The Secret Place; Faithful Place; Broken Harbor and The Likeness.   I began reading Tana French last month, starting with her first novel In the Woods.   The books are a series but unlike other crime novel series, she hasn't created a detective who solves all the crimes.   In the first novel our point of view character was a homicide detective in Dublin and we met his partner and other homicide cops.  The second novel is from the point of view of the partner, who is approached by her former boss from the undercover division for a job.  The third novel is from the point of view of the undercover detective and the fourth novel is from the point of view of a homicide detective we met in the third novel.  Her mysteries are good but it really her character development that makes these novels so wonderful.  These aren't light reading and yet they are page turners.  Highly Recommended.

Four Francis Brody Novels:  Dying in the Wool; A Medal for Murder; Murder in the Afternoon; and Woman Unknown.    After finishing Phryne Fisher I decided to look for another series set in the 1920's Post Great-War world.  Brody created an amateur detective, Kate Shackleton, whose husband was declared missing in action in the Great War.  A suburban widow who doesn't want to admit she is a widow, she assists people in finding loved ones lost in the War.  Then someone asks her to solve a real mystery and things get interesting.  I enjoyed these books. Recommended

Deadly Election by Lindsey Davis.   Lindsey Davis is one of my favorite mystery writers.  Her novels are set during the first century AD in Ancient Rome.  This new series features a woman detective, Flavia Albia, the adopted daughter of long-time Davis detective Marcus Didius Falco.  These days Flavia is all grown up and a widow.  I always like Davis' depiction of the Rome of yesterday and I've always liked her characters.  It took a couple of novels for her to settle in with Flavia Albia as her main character but with this novel she hit her stride.  Recommended. 

A God in Ruins by Kate Atkinson.  A "companion novel" to her wonderful novel Life After Life, this is the story of Ursula's brother Teddy who died (or not) in the first novel.  In this novel, he survives World War II - not an easy feat for a flyer.  The story moves back and forth in time between Teddy as a post-war survivor trying to figure out what to do now that he's survived and Teddy during the war when he was sure that he was going to eventually die.  I really liked this novel - although not as much as Life After Life.  Mostly because Life After Life was so unique.  My book club read this book and no one else liked it.  So maybe I'm an outlier.  Highly Recommended.

The Daisy Dalrymple Series by Carola Dunn.   After finishing Brody's Kate Shackleton series I again decided to look for a series set in the 1920's.  The Honorable Daisy Dalrymple has a title but no money.  Her father's estate was entailed.  With the death of her brother during the War followed by the death of her father in the influenza epidemic, a distant cousin inherited the title and the estate.  Rather than live with her mother in the Dower House (and listen to her mother complain about everything) Daisy decides to support herself.  She moves into a house with a school friend/photographer and convinces a magazine that her title will gain her entree into great country houses so that she can then write articles about them.  Unfortunately for Daisy, everywhere she goes she finds a dead body.  Carola Dunn has a sense of humor about this and how unlikely this would be.  In the first novel Daisy meets Detective Chief Inspector Alec Fletcher and the two team up to solve mysteries - somewhat reluctantly on Alec's part.  I'm almost finished with this 22 book series - which seems hard to believe but the first 15 novels or so are pretty short, less than 200 pages each.  I'm enjoying them.   Recommended

July Reading

June was a very light month for reading - in July I couldn't stop reading.

A Dead Man in Instanbul by Michael Pearce.  The second in the series of mysteries I started last month, this time the hero is sent to Istanbul.  It's a nice view of pre-World War I Turkey but the mystery is a little weak.  I'm not sure I'll go further with this series.  Can't really recommend.

Phryne Fisher Mysteries by Kerry Greenwood.   I've really been enjoying the television series on Netflix so I thought I'd go back to the original mysteries.  I started at the first and am working my way through them - I won't list them all.  The plots are different than the TV series and there is no sexual tension between Phryne and the police inspector.  Instead she has multiple lovers but her main squeeze is a Chinese importer, Lin Chung.  I am enjoying these very much and will probably finish the entire 20 volume series next month. Recommended.

In the Woods by Tana French   The first in Tana French's series of mysteries set in Dublin.  This was a very good novel although it was somewhat frustrating that one of the mysteries was never solved.  The novel is written from the point of view of the detective investigating the murder who is slowly falling apart.  When characters do things that I think are stupid, I prefer not to be in their minds.  I'd rather read about it in third person.  But it was not enough to stop me enjoying the novel. Recommended.

The Art Forger by B.A. Shapiro.   Another novel written in the first person.  For plot purposes she needs to be naive and a little bit stupid.  Again, I prefer that if the protagonist is not smart that I not be in their head.  There were interesting facts about forgeries but not nearly as good as the robertson Davies novel What's Bred in the Bone.  Not particularly recommended but would make a decent beach read.

The Prisoner of Heaven by Carlos Ruiz Zafon.   Parts of this novel are written in the first person and parts are written in the third person. The narrator is not stupid which is a relief.  This novel is the third in the series. Truthfully I don't remember all the characters of the other two novels but that didn't matter. It was a compelling read.  Some day I'm going to read all three again, closer in time to each other.  Recommended.

The Story of a New Name by Elena Ferrante.   This is the second volume of the Neapolitan Series.  About halfway through this novel I found myself exasperated and thinking that the characters were all acting like a bunch of teenagers.  And then I realized that they were a bunch of teenagers.  Again, this is a novel written in the first person and again the narrator, for plot purposes, seems to be be required to not really be able to figure out what is going on.  Probably I was just tired of first person narrative, but I didn't really enjoy this volume as much as the first one.  I already have the third volume so I'll read it but I am still at a loss as to why people are raving about the style of the writer.  Recommended with reservations.

Before She Met Me by Julian Barnes.  This was an interesting novel - the story of a man who slowly drives himself crazy by being jealous of men that his wife slept with before she met him.  The ending did totally surprise me.  It was well written but sometimes I get tired of those 20th century novels written by men who are obsessed with sex.  But at least it was written in the third person.  Recommended with reservations.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline.   The whole time I was reading this novel I kept wishing that I was seeing it as a movie instead.  Then, right after I finished this novel, I read that Steven Spielberg would be directing a move version.  This novel, set in a dystopian near-future, is about a society obsessed with 1980s culture.   There were so many references that it was almost overwhelming.  Many of them I didn't get since I never played video or arcade games.  I'm also bad at identifying songs by titles or artists - I have to hear them.  But despite that, I did really enjoy this novel.  It was clever.   And, even though it was a first person narrator, he wasn't stupid - at all.   Recommended.

Miss Peregrine's Home for Peculiar Children by Ransom Riggs.  This was an odd book. Again written in the first person but not a stupid narrator.  it kept my attention but I didn't really like it.   I never felt invested in the characters.  Recommended.

June Reading and Watching

I've gotten behind in posting what I've read.  For some reason I thought I had done a post for June, but now I realize I never pushed "publish".  In June I finished only three books:

My Brilliant Friend by Elena Ferrante.   Lila has gone missing but Elena is not about to let her disappear without a trace.  Instead she embarks on this memoir which takes the relationship between the two women from the time they were small girls until they are about sixteen.  Lila isn't a particularly nice friend. She isn't particularly lucky in life but she is smart.  Elena constantly feels inferior and tries to live up to Lila.  It's a story that kept my interest and I enjoyed it.  But I don't really see why the critics find her writing so compelling.

A Dead Man in Trieste by Michael Pearce.   I'm not sure where I heard of Michael Pearce or why I decided to try this book.  Maybe because I didn't really know where Trieste is and wanted to.  The style is very old fashioned and the story is not particularly complicated.  But he did paint a vivid picture of Trieste and the Balkins in the early 1900's. 

Citizen: an American Lyric by Claudia Rankine.  The winner of the National Book Critics Circle Award for poetry, this isn't your typical book of poetry.  Most of it, in fact, isn't poetry in the traditional sense.  Her theme is the lived life of a black woman, of feeling invisible, or not belonging even in relationships with white friends.  I appreciated the perspective but as a work of literature it didn't speak to me.

The reason I didn't finish many books in June is that I was spending a lot of time at the theatre:

Antony and Cleopatra at St. Louis Shakespeare in the Park

The Barber of Seville at Opera Theatre of St. Louis

La Rondine at Opera Theatre of St. Louis

Richard the Lionheart at Opera Theatre of St. Louis

 Emmeline at Opera Theatre of St. Louis

My Fair Lady at the Muny 

The Barber of Seville - A Visual Treat

As part of Opera Theatre of St. Louis' 40th anniversary season, it commissioned a new translation of Rossini's The Barber of Seville  from Kelley Rourke.  Of course the story is still the same:  Count Almaviva is still in love (from afar) with Rosina, the ward of prominent Doctor Bartolo and he still asks the local barber and busybody, Figaro, to help him win Rosina.  But the action is now specifically set in Seville during the April Fair and the time period is updated to, perhaps, the 1960's.  It's hard to tell.  The production notes tell us that during the April Fair people dress in costume - including historical costume.  Figaro wears a costume that might not look out of place during the original time period but Dr. Bartolo is in the short sleeves and tie that men wore when I was a child.   Parts of the chorus look like circus performers (including a person on stilts).  While a bit confusing from a historical perspective, it still worked well (far better than many of OTSL's attempts to update operas, especially Mozart operas).

Rosina (Emily Fons) is now the Doctor's assistant, working in his office (he is now an optometrist) and is no longer quite as passive as she has been in past productions.  Fons is making her OTSL main stage debut and has a lovely mezzo-soprano voice with pure diction.  She was a joy to listen to.  Christopher Tiesi, also making his OTSL main stage debut, started out somewhat weakly as Almaviva but as his voice warmed up he proved up to the role.  Both are good actors as well as singers and handled the comedy ably.  The true comedian turned out to be Dale Travis in the role of Dr. Bartolo, a role that I remember in the past as being nothing other than an annoyance.  Here, Bartolo, still schemes to marry his ward while at the same time being obsessed with chickens. 

Yes, that's right.  Chickens.   The production design, which is meant to evoke the films of Pedro Almodovar, is infused with images of chickens as well as chicken props.   The colors are vivid and it took me a while to notice the chicken design at the bottom of the semi-sheer curtain that is occasionally drawn across the back of the stage. 

But it is Benjamin Taylor who stands out as the self-confidant and funny Figaro.  He is unafraid to play the role broadly, which is exactly what it needs amidst all the color and confetti on stage.  And his voice was a delight.   Conductor Ryan McAdams did not let the tempos lag and some of the music is tricky to sing (much less enunciate) in the original Italian far less in the clunkier English.  But he handled it brilliantly.

In fact all of the enunciation was terrific - a far cry from some productions where they might as well be singing in Polish.  I wondered if it might have seemed better to me because we changed our season tickets and are sitting further back this year.   For the last 28 years we sat on the lower level, but on the side.  Last year we tired of regularly not being able to see.  Rather than cancel our subscription, we changed our seats.

Since Tim O'Leary took the reins as the artistic director he hasn't seemed to have made an effort to require his directors and set designers to direct and design for the 3 quarter stage at the Loretto Hilton Theater.  Regularly cast members and often scenery is put at the side of the stage blocking the view of those who sit on the side.  And in fact, this production has a large piece set on one side of the stage during the first scene, filled with sitting singers, blocking the view over there.  This is just laziness on the part of Opera Theatre - certainly the Rep, which stages many more productions in that same theater each year, never has that problem.   And OTSL never had that problem under Charles McKay.

But since O'Leary clearly isn't going to change his ways, we eventually decided to change ours and move our seats.  We also decided to sit center for the first time.  I'd like to be able to tell you it made a difference, but alas I can't.  When we arrived in our seats on Thursday we found ourselves surrounded by 20-25 small children who are part of OTSL's summer camp.  We asked for our seats to be changed and were moved to one of the sides.   After a long day at work when all I wanted to do was sit back and enjoy the music, the last thing I wanted was to be surrounded by other people's children.  Children, no matter how well behaved, are still children.   While I applaud OTSLs efforts to build a young audience, children belong at matinees, not evening performances.  And if they will insist on giving them tickets to an evening performance, season ticket holders should be warned in advance.

Other than having to change our seats, however, the evening was enjoyable and the production was a visual treat.  I can only imagine what it looks like when not looking at it from an angle. 

May Reading

 Here is what I read in May:

Mr. Mac and Me by Esther Freud.   Real life Scottish architect Charles Rennie MacIntosh and his artist wife Margaret MacDonald have retreated to a village on the Suffolk coast to recuperate and paint.  An unlikely friendship arises between them and a local (fictional) boy named Thomas Maggs, son of an alcoholic pub keeper.  When World War I breaks out, life changes for the village and strangers are viewed with suspicion.  Even Mr. Mac.  A lovely portrait of a coastal village at war, Freud also vividly portrays the artistic process as Mr. Mac and Margaret work on their studies of local plant life.  This novel sent me to Google to look at some of their work and once again despair that I arrived in Glasgow the day after the School of Art (MacIntosh's masterpiece) burned and, thus, never had a chance to see it. 

Faithful and Virtuous Night by Louise Gluck.    The latest collection of poetry by Louise Gluck is concerned with death, aging and the act of dying.   Parents die in a sudden collision with a tree, leaving two children to be brought up by an Aunt.  A painter is dying and can no longer use his arm to paint - it seems the painter is one of the children all grown up.  At some point the Aunt dies.  But each poem could also stand on its own.  Is the voice female or male?   Is the voice the poet's or her creation's?  Sometimes it is hard to tell - and really, what does it matter?  Time itself seems mutable - the present and the past confused in the way that they often are for old people.  Is the poem representing reality or a dream?  Again, hard to say.

The Paying Guests by Sarah Waters.  With the end of World War I many formerly upper middle class women found themselves in straightened circumstances.  The men in the family were dead, money was often tight and good help was hard to find.  The Wrays are just such a family of women, living in a fine old house in a genteel suburb of London - a house that they can no longer afford.  They are forced to take in lodgers, or "paying guests" as Mrs. Wray would prefer to call them.  In the first third of this novel, Sarah Waters creates the world of 1922 in great detail with appropriate atmosphere.  If you, like I, have little interest in novels about obsessive love or criminal trials you might find the last two-thirds of the novel somewhat hard going.   The twist here is that the love affair is between two women, but otherwise it reads something like an early Alfred Hitchcock thriller.  I truly love the way that Sarah Waters strings together her sentences, but the plot of this novel just did not grab me.



 The Chimney Sweepers Come to Dust by Alan Bradley.  Flavia de Luce has been shipped off to boarding school in Toronto, Canada, a foreign land that uses dimes and nickels rather than good old English money.  Of course the first night she arrives a body is discovered in the bedroom to which she has been assigned.  In addition, the school is not all that it seems.  More strange is the fact that she misses Feely and Daffy back at home.  This particular mystery suffered from the need to introduce a new country, a new school and an entirely new cast of characters.   This is a story that seems meant to take Flavia to the next level.  Flavia is as enjoyable as ever but I hope she can return to Buckshaw and her friends in England.





St. Louis Rising:  The French Regime of Louis de St. Ange de Bellerive, by Carl J. Ekberg and Sharon K. Person.   A book about the founding of St. Louis that focuses on the first Commandant of Upper Louisiana to live here.  Louis de St. Ange de Bellerive lived a fascinating life.  Born in Canada, he came from a military family and followed his father and brother to the new colony of Louisiana.  They were the first French to try to permanently settle the Missouri River Valley.  After the death of his brother, Louis was put in charge of the post at Vincennes.  After the end of the French and Indian War he was moved to Fort de Chartres and made Commandant of Upper Louisiana where one of his principal jobs was to hand over the fort to the British.  After the handover he moved his command to the west side of the river to the new settlement of St. Louis.  I reviewed this book here.

St. Louis Rising: The French Regime of Louis St. Ange de Bellerive

When the history of St. Louis is written, historians inevitably begin with the "journal" of Auguste Chouteau.  Not really a journal but a memoir written many years after the event, Chouteau gives a version of the founding of St. Louis in which he and Pierre LaClede are the major players.  And why not?   Chouteau would become one of the most important businessmen in the young town of St. Louis, his family becoming very rich in the fur trade.  The Chouteau family were definite "winners" in the economic race run by the first founders of the City.   And, as we know, history is written by the winners.

But there are always, of course, others who were important in history.  Perhaps those who do not have descendents to write about them.  Or those for whom the written records is scattered.  If those records can be gathered they often document lives of great interest.

Carl J. Ekburg and Sharon K. Person have written about such a life in this book. Louis St. Ange de Bellerive led one of the most interesting lives in French colonial history - and possibly in all North American colonial history.  The Groston de St. Ange family came from Canada where the father, Robert, had immigrated in 1685.  Robert was a member of the French Marines.  (Despite most of the French North American colony being landlocked, the area was under the jurisdiction of the Marines.   This probably made sense as supplies needed to be sent by ship.)  He would spend his entire career in service to the French crown and his career would take him and his family all over what is today the American midwest.

In 1720, Robert, his second wife and two adult male children, Pierre and Louis, were at Post St. Joseph at the bottom of Lake Michigan near present-day Niles Michigan.  From that posting, Robert (and presumably his sons) accompanied the Jesuit Father Charles Charlevoix down the Mississippi to Kaskaskia and Fort de Chartres.   The St. Ange family were now a part of the colony of Louisiana.  In 1723, Robert and his son Pierre were ordered to accompany a man named Bourgmont who was tasked with setting up a post on the Missouri River  - Fort d'Orleans.   Louis St. Ange eventually joined the family there and remained as commandant of Fort d'Orleans in the 1730's while his father returned to Fort de Chartres and became commander there. 

When Louis' brother Pierre was killed in action against the Chickasaw, his now retired father requested that Louis be given command of the post at Vincennes.  Louis St. Ange remained as the commandant at Vincennes from 1736-1764 when the end of the Seven Years War resulted in the transition of all the land east of the Mississippi to the English.  St. Ange was then moved from Vincennes to Fort de Chartres and was made commandant of all of Upper Louisiana.  It was he who eventually handed over the fort to the English and moved his troops across the river to the new settlement established on the west bank where he remained commandant of "Spanish Illinois" until an actual Spaniard could show up to take over.  An old man, he died a few years later in St. Louis in the home of Madame Chouteau.

As a genealogical researcher with family living in Upper Louisiana during that time, including in Vincennes, I've been well aware of St. Ange's history.  Ekburg and Person are to be commended in putting the history of the St. Ange family into one place where it can be easily accessed by the general public and where Louis de St. Ange might finally get his due. 

In addition to the history of the St. Ange family, Eckburg and Person have also spent time researching the written records of the village of St. Louis in the years leading up to 1770 when Pedro Piernas finally arrived in St. Louis to institute Spanish governance.  They write a fascinating social history of the village, examing births, deaths and marriages.   They discuss the architecture of the village and include a creditable discussion of the law of the land:  the Coutume de Paris.  They include a full chapter on slavery in early St. Louis and describe the foundations of the fur trade. 

For anyone interested in the founding of St. Louis this book is a must-read.  My only complaint is that, in their zeal to show that the story of Laclede and Chouteau are not the only important, or even the most important, story to know about the founding of St. Louis, they sometimes get a little petty. Every book has a point of view - even history books.  But far better to show that St. Ange was more important than Laclede by writing about St. Ange than by editorial comments about Laclede.  If you can ignore that editorializing, this is a book well worth reading.