You Can’t Take it With You

I feel bad that I haven’t been around blogging much lately but I’ve been just slammed in my personal life with things that take away my blogging time. Hopefully October will be better.

On Thursday, in the midst of a very busy day, I saw that the progressive blogosphere was talking about the idea of giving U.S. taxpayers a receipt for their taxes that shows how their tax money is being spent. I didn’t really have time to read all the commentary but I thought it wasn’t a bad idea if it could actually be done (and I had my doubts about that). On the other hand I didn’t really think it would make any difference because Americans are now trained to think that taxes are a bad thing. In my experience, presenting people with facts doesn’t really change most people’s mind. People hear what they want to hear and believe what they are trained to believe.

That same night I went to the production by The Repertory Theatre of St. Louis of You Can’t Take it With You, the comedy classic by George S. Kaufmann and Moss Hart. I’ve seen it many times but I hadn’t seen it in a number of years. (And may I say that this production is the best I’ve ever seen and, if you can catch a performance before it closes, you should see it.)

One of the subplots of the play involves a visit to Grandpa Vanderhof by an Internal Revenue Service Agent named Mr. Henderson who is trying to collect years of back taxes owed by Grandpa. Grandpa was once a successful businessman but one day (apparently years before the play began) he realized that he wasn’t happy so he simply stopped working. Now he catches snakes and watches college commencement exercises and only does what he wants to do. He doesn’t want to pay income tax. This results in a classic scene between Grandpa and Mr. Henderson:

Grandpa: Suppose I pay you this money-mind you, I don't say I'm going to do it-but just for the sake of argument-what's the Government going to do with it?

Henderson: What do you mean?

Grandpa: Well, what do I get for my money? If I go into Macy's and buy something, there it is-I see it. What's the Government give me?

Henderson: Why, the Government gives you everything. It protects you.

Grandpa: What from?

Henderson: Well-invasion. Foreigners that might come over here and take everything you've got.

Grandpa: Oh I don't think they're goin to do that.

Henderson: If you didn't pay an income tax, they would. How do you think the Government keeps up the Army and Navy? All those battleships...

Grandpa: Last time we used battleships was in the Spanish-American War, and what did we get out of it? Cuba-and we gave it back. I wouldn't mind paying if it were something sensible.

Now I’ve seen this play many times and I’ve seen the movie multiple times and each time the audience relates to Grandpa but also realizes that he is eccentric. The very fact that Grandpa is saying this to the IRS agent makes him eccentric.

But how times have changed. Whereas in past productions the audience has laughed through the Mr. Henderson scene, at the production on Thursday night the audience roared with laughter. They laughed so hard it was hard to hear the dialog. I was slightly bothered by that reaction. And I found myself wondering why this time the reaction to the play was different.

For those of you who either have never seen You Can’t Take it With You or need a refresher, it is the story of an extended family who all live in a big old house with Grandpa Vanderhof. They are, to put it very nicely, eccentric. But they are very supportive of each other and of other people in the world who might otherwise be written off as not worth the effort. They are a loveable bunch. The most normal is Alice, one of Grandpa’s granddaughters, who is the only character to work outside the home. She works as a secretary on Wall Street and the dramatic tension of the story results when she begins to date the boss’s son, Tony, and is required to have the boss, his wife and Tony over for dinner. Although she loves her family she foresees difficulties ahead. Tony assures her that all families have their eccentricities. After all, he says, his mother believes in spiritualism. But Alice says:

Your mother believes in spiritualism because it’s fashionable. And your father raises orchids because he can afford to.

My mother writes plays because eight years ago a typewriter was delivered here by accident.

Alice’s sister Essie, who has a home business making and selling candy, took up ballet at about the same time Alice’s mother began writing plays. She is not a good dancer, to say the least, but she flits endlessly around the house practicing and no one seems to mind. Essie’s husband Ed plays the xylophone while Essie dances and delivers her candy for her. He is enamored of a printing press and loves to find interesting sayings to typeset and print off. Alice’s father spends his time in the basement designing fireworks with Mr. De Pinna, the iceman who came one day and never left. Explosions rock the house at all hours. The family does have “help” in the form of Rheba, the black maid, and her boyfriend Donald who is “on relief” and who both seem like part of the family. And Essie’s Russian ballet teacher, Kohlenkov, is there more often than he is not.

One of the great things about the Rep’s production is that Amelia McClain, who plays Alice, invests her with a sort of hyperactivity that makes the audience believe she really is a part of this eccentric family. Too often Alice is played in a way that makes her seem so different from the family that the audience begins to believe that a mistake was made at the hospital and her mother brought home the wrong child. It’s often hard to take Alice seriously when she says that she really loves her family. But Amelia McClain makes this easy for us to believe. Her performance balances perfectly with Joneal Joplin’s interpretation of Grandpa Vanderhof. Joplin plays the character perfectly straight and not for laughs. One can see how sensible Alice, with only a slight change in life direction, could have become Grandpa. Or how Grandpa with only a slight change could have been Alice. And the rest of the cast invests the zany characters with real depth so that they feel like people you might very well meet and not mind being around, eccentric though they are. Jamie LaVerdiere’s portrayal of Ed, the husband of Alice’s sister Essie, may be the best portrayal of that character I’ve ever seen. He invests Ed with a sweetness that is often missing. And rather than make Ed a bumbling nincompoop on the xylophone, he actually plays well and seems to have fun doing it.

By the time Mr. Henderson arrives the audience has completely bought into the idea that the whole household is zany so the fact that the IRS Agent leaves without making any headway in his seemingly reasonable explanations about why Grandpa should be paying income taxes is just part of the fun. But, as I said, in the production I saw on Thursday the audience roared with laughter and most of it wasn’t laughing along with Grandpa it was laughing at Mr. Henderson. Yes, I live here in the midst of Red State Missouri with lots of crazies who don’t want to pay any taxes and don’t seem to care that Missouri’s bridges are all in danger of falling down. (Go see the movie Winter’s Bone if you want to understand how I feel about my state). But audiences at the Rep tend to be a bit more liberal than the average Missourian. So what accounted for my discomfort at the scene and the reaction to it?

I went to youtube and found video of the movie version of the scene. This isn’t completely helpful because for the movie they rewrote the script so that different portions of the act were taking place all at the same time. It is a good way to create the slightly off balance and zany aspect of the household. Tony is, in fact, visiting and his incredulous chuckle when Grandpa says that he doesn’t believe in the income tax is really a stand-in for the audience reaction. (Jimmy Stewart plays Tony in the film). Here it is. You’ll see that the whole household is sort of “off” and while the IRS Agent isn’t likeable he is portrayed as maybe the sanest one in the room other than Tony. A bully, but sane.

My recollection of versions of the play that I’ve seen is that the reaction is the same. Now, in the play, Tony isn’t present for the scene but that’s ok because there is a live audience to chuckle. The IRS Agent is generally played as a typical bullying bureaucrat but the audience recognizes that he is trying to do his job and is astounded at this not-very-normal family he has found. So the laughter is at the fact that a bullying bureaucrat can’t get his way but also an acknowledgement that he has come up against a family that isn’t “quite right”.

Steven Woolf’s direction of this scene at The Rep was interesting. Mr. Henderson enters into a household enmeshed in their typical chaos but as he begins to speak to Grandpa the entire onstage cast (the mother, Essie and Ed) move to chairs and sit quietly like perfectly normal people listening to this encounter and Joneal Joplin as Grandpa plays the scene calmly, almost indifferently. He sees Mr. Henderson as a bit of entertainment to liven up an otherwise normal day. He doesn’t get aggressive at all with the IRS agent and doesn’t overtly bait him, he just states his point and asks questions in a rational tone of voice. And as the scene goes on it is the character of Mr. Henderson who begins to act slightly unhinged as he can’t believe he is having this conversation. It is only at the end as he is shouting at Grandpa about sending him to jail that Ed and Essie begin to act their wacky selves and yet Ed is playing a Sousa march and Essie is marching in mock patriotic way and the staging makes it seem that they aren't so much eccentric as they are a backdrop for Mr. Henderson’s out of control tirade and somehow they make him look like the crazy one.

And as the audience roared through this scene I think what was making me uncomfortable is that this is a completely accurate portrayal of how all conversations go these days in my state. There is no doubt in many people’s minds that they are correct and they shouldn’t have to pay any tax – NOT because they are rebels but because they are the sane ones and the people who believe in taxes are the insane ones. There isn’t any sense in even fighting about it, their demeanor says. If you think taxes are good then there is something wrong with you and we’re sorry for you. And there is a sense that no matter how many facts one might pull from one’s head, it isn’t going to change their minds. And the infuriating thing is that they aren’t evil people. They are people that you otherwise like. They are people you might be related to. Whereas Kaufmann and Hart created an eccentric family that might stymie Mr. Henderson because he hasn’t encountered anything like them before, in 2010 they are the norm here in Missouri.

I don’t think a tax receipt would have convinced Grandpa Vanderhof. And in the end he would still have felt no compunction about committing tax fraud in order to avoid paying his income tax (sorry for the spoiler but I won’t tell you how he does it). And most people around here would applaud him.

Fortunately you don’t have to take my word on the staging for this scene because the Rep has put the end of the “Mr. Henderson” scene on Youtube as part of their advertisement. Compare it to the movie version. I don’t know when it was filmed but imagine a performance where the audience laughter is nonstop and so loud you almost can’t hear the dialog – as you watch the scene you will realize that type of laughter is far out of proportion to what is going on in the scene. If you can imagine that you can imagine my experience on Thursday.

Stargate Universe – Not There Yet

Regular readers will know that I was a big fan of Stargate SG-1 and that I was watching the first season of the new spinoff, Stargate Universe. The next season will be starting soon so I’ve been thinking about whether I want to watch it this season. I think I’ll give it a chance even though I’m somewhat ambivalent.

My take on last season? Lots of potential. Not even close to reaching it. Most of it was a big yawner. Why?

Here are my thoughts in no particular order.

First and foremost, there were way to many “oh my god we’re all going to die!” episodes where no one died. Or at least no one that we’re supposed to care about died. That would be ok if the “we’re all going to die!” part of the episode was just running background for something else (like it did on the original Star Trek) but it isn’t. The theme of the entire season has been “oh my god we’re all going to die!” I regularly found myself wishing that someone would die.

Which leads me to …

Chloe needs to die but the writers refuse to kill her. They must have figured out at some point that the character of Chloe was too stupid for words but instead of doing the right thing and killing her off (thereby solving the “oh we’re all going to die but no one really does” problem at the same time) they decided to have her be captured by experimenting aliens who … did something to her. We don’t know what they did but now she’s smart. Uh huh.

Another big problem with Season One was the lack of a Big Bad. No one wants to watch a ship full of crabby people fighting among themselves week after week. Realistic though that may be.

When they finally met the aliens who were out to get them and do experiments on them I thought .. aha! Finally. A Big Bad. But that didn’t really go anywhere and by the end of the season the writers had imported the Lucien Alliance to be an enemy. The Lucien Alliance? Hello? These people on Destiny are supposed to be in a galaxy far, far away from the galaxy where the Lucien Alliance is and they CAN’T GET BACK and no one from earth CAN GET TO THEM (except virtually but that doesn’t count) but the Lucien Alliance (a leftover from previous Stargate series) manages to figure out how to use a Stargate to get to them? Now, I admit that the episodes with the Lucien Alliance were great. But also frustrating. The writers couldn’t come up with anything new? They had to import an old enemy in order to liven up the show?

Another problem for me is that I dislike the way the women characters on this show are written. I miss Carter. I miss Janet. I miss a show where the women characters are really smart. But I could live with no smart women characters. After all there are few really smart men on this show either – only Eli and Rush. I could live with no smart women if any one of them had a little power. In the end they imported the Lucien Alliance to be the enemy and guess what? It partly worked because the leader was a very VERY strong woman character. An evil woman. But a strong woman. Why are there no strong good women characters on this show? Which leads me to …

T.J. is pregnant. Of course she is. bleh. What I don’t understand is, why isn’t every woman of childbearing age on that ship not pregnant right now? Did I miss the episode where they discovered birth control pills on a planet? Also, I find it interesting that the writers made T.J. a medic and not a doctor. Sure it makes for dramatic tension. But see above. Not a single woman on that ship has any power in the chain of command.

Sigh. Ok. Next.

Rush needs to take more baths. He perpetually looks dirty and smelly.

Too much reliance on the stones.

This show needs more Eli (but not with Chloe). Eli is the best character on the show. MORE ELI, MORE ELI, MORE ELI !!!

Back in the 200th episode of Stargate SG-1 the writers had a character who was a television producer who played with the idea of making a “Stargate Movie” and who tossed out ideas about what would it be like. One idea was a “Young Stargate“ team full of all the angst of youth, constantly having sex. Carter buries her head in her hands at the idea. Well, that’s Stargate Universe and I find myself burying my head regularly. In the first season I lost interest in seeing episodes immediately and would catch up on hulu later. I can see where I’ll lose interest completely if something isn’t done next season. But I’ll probably give it a chance for a few weeks and see if the writers learned anything from the first season.

I leave you with Young Stargate:

And as a bonus, a youtube in which someone took that soundtrack from Young Stargate and put it to the real Stargate Universe:

New Netherland

They say that the victors always write the history. Over the years of reading French North American colonial history I’ve come more and more to appreciate that fact. When I recently read Fur, Fortune and Empire I mentioned that I enjoyed reading about the Dutch colonization of what is now New York. I knew that the Dutch had a successful fur trade and I knew that many Dutch stayed on after England took over New Amsterdam and renamed it New York. I knew that they helped shaped New York and yet, since they were the losers, their history is not in the forefront of people’s minds. So I was pleased to pick up The Colony of New Netherland: A Dutch Settlement in Seventeenth-Century America by Jaap Jacobs. I thought that understanding the Dutch in New Netherland would help me better understand the French in New France.

Before I talk about it, I want to talk a bit about my view of the Dutch from reading French colonial history. My favorite narrative histories of New France were written by W.J. Eccles and his The Canadian Frontier: 1534-1760 is very informative.

When the French and the Dutch began to settle North America they came during a time when the Iroquois Confederation, a great military power, were engaged in a war with the Huron/Algonquian for control over the St. Lawrence River Valley. Eccles writes about the 1609 clash between the Huron and the Iroquois where the Huron/Algonquian are aided for the first time by the French and their modern weaponry.

It is sometimes asserted that Champlain’s role in this brief clash was the direct cause of the ensuing long struggle between the French and the Iroquois. Although his role on this occasion did nothing to endear him to the Iroquois, too much must not be made of it. The French had established themselves in the St. Lawrence Valley and were allied commercially with the northern tribes, enemies of the Iroquois. Within a few years the Dutch established themselves on the Hudson River and provided the Iroquois with European weapons. Once this occurred the lines were irrevocably drawn, the ancient war between the Algonkin and Iroquois now became a war between two European powers and two economic regions for dominance in North America.

A few pages later, he writes:

The Iroquois, provided with weapons by the recently established Dutch at Fort Orange where Albany stands today, and paid high prices in trade goods for furs, were becoming increasingly bold, ambushing the northern tribes en route to trade at Quebec and pillaging them of their furs or goods.

The Huron/Algonquian knew the French wanted to be trading partners and the price of that partnership was assistance against the Iroquois. This seemed to shift the balance of power at first, when the Iroquois thought the French with their weaponry were invincible. But soon the French proved all too human and that gave the Iroquois new resolve.

If the Iroquois were to obtain supplies of firearms, they could retaliate, perhaps regain the lands they had lost. With the Dutch on the Hudson River willing to give almost anything to trade for furs, arms could be had. After 1615 the Iroquois took the offensive. To the end of the century, the French found themselves engaged in a desperate struggle to defend their fur trade empire against the assaults of the Iroquois, who were seeking to divert the trade from Montreal to Albany, ultimately from Paris to London, thereby making themselves the dominant power in the region.

Eccles goes into more detail later when he explains why, starting about 1625, the stakes began to be higher for the Iroquois:

The Dutch were now well established on the Hudson River. At Fort Orange the Iroquois could obtain European goods, including firearms. In 1626 they had traded over 8,000 beaver and other furs; it is estimated that by 1633 they were bringing nearly 30,000 pelts a year to the Dutch. This exhausted the supply of fur in Iroquois territory. The attempts of the Iroquois to obtain furs through trade with the Huron and Algonkin tribes came to naught. There was, then, no alternative now that they were dependent on European manufactured goods to maintain their recently improved standard of living, but to wage war to divert the flow of north-western furs from the French at Quebec to the Dutch on the Hudson, with themselves reaping the middleman’s profit.

The thing I’ve always liked about Eccles’ narratives is how he explains the motivations of all the parties. It was a complex situation. The French were greatly outnumbered by the Indians along the St. Lawrence. The Dutch were greatly outnumbered by the Iroquois. The Huron, Algonquin and Iroquois were at war before the French and Dutch intervened. The French and the Dutch felt compelled to assist their trading partners. But the mere presence of the French and the Dutch and their supply of European goods, especially weapons, changed the nature of the war. Eccles shows over the course of a couple of books how this adversely affected the French. So I was very interested in hearing about how the Dutch saw things and how they were affected.

Jaap Jacobs’ emphasis is not on the fur trade but on New Netherland as a colony. It is a valid point of view to take but since the entire raison d’etre of the colony was the fur trade I assumed it would be necessary for him to discuss it.

At an early stage, probably within a couple of years after the Mohawk-Mahican War ended in 1628, the area around Fort Orange became the center of the Fur Trade. Little is known about how trade was conducted there in the 1630’s and 1640’s.

Hmmm. Well that wasn’t encouraging. I suppose that means that he believes nothing was known about how the trade was conducted prior to the 1630’s? I found that hard to believe. But I don’t read Dutch so I could be wrong.

I looked in vain for any mention of the conflict between the Huron/Algonquian and the Iroquois in the early years. Finally, Jacobs points out that in 1634 the Dutch tried to discover why the fur trade had recently turned bad. Ah, I thought. It’s because the Iroquois had hunted out their territory and the Huron wouldn’t trade with them because they were mortal enemies. Right? Nope. “The cause turned out to be the competition from the French in Canada, who offered better rates.”

Ok. Maybe. But what about the war with the Huron? What about all the arms that the Dutch traded (and had been trading for 25 years) that were being used by the Iroquois in furtherance of their military and economic goals?

Even more unforgivable in the eyes of the authorities than providing the Indians with alcohol was to supply them with weapons and ammunition. Van den Bogaert reported that he and his companions were repeatedly asked to fire their guns [at their 1634 meeting with the Mohawk], which suggests that the Mohawks were not much acquainted with firearms at the time and did not yet possess them. This started probably to change around 1640, although it is possible that the Algonquian groups acquired firearms earlier. A 1639 ordinance required the death penalty for the sale of weapons and gunpowder and lead to Indians, an indication of how serious the trade in weapons was considered to be.

Wait. Was he trying to tell me that the Dutch never traded arms? I was beginning to lose faith in Jacobs. But then, a paragraph later, he wrote:

But once the Indians had discovered the advantages of firearms it was impossible to stop the trade. To keep the situation under control, the arms trade in New Netherland was the monopoly of the government. The directors in patria ordered director general and council not to risk war with the Indians by bluntly refusing to sell them arms and ammunition and ensuring that such trade took place as little as possible. But if the Mohawks would acquire their gunpowder and lead from the English, the beaver trade might be diverted. The authorities had to walk a fine line.

Right. There we go. They traded arms because their Indian fur trading partners demanded it. And they darn well knew that it was drawing them into a war with the French and their allies, right? Well, no. The above was pretty much all Jacobs says.

The French are almost never mentioned in this book. The Iroquois/Huron wars in which the Iroquois would eventually decimate the Huron are no more than a mention. There is no mention of the effect of the war on the French. But most importantly, there is no mention of the affect of the war on the Dutch. And, maybe, there lies the key. As far as Jacobs is concerned, there was no war with the French. And the Huron/Algonquian were certainly not at war with the Dutch. Why does he seem to conclude this? Because no real mention of it shows up in the Dutch records?

Maybe the French made the whole thing up. Or, maybe the Dutch didn’t write about it because they weren’t directly affected by the wars. They traded arms to the Iroquois and the Iroquois in turn traded them furs. It all worked out, no need to ask why the Iroquois tribes wanted the guns and ammunition. The fact that the Iroquois were arming themselves to make war on the Huron/Algonquians and French in pursuit of the fur trade was just not something the Dutch worried about. They themselves weren’t attacked so it didn’t affect them. Why should they think about it?

So, from their point of view if there was a war it was an “Indian” war. From the French point of view (and the point of view of the many French colonists who were being attacked by the Iroquois for being allies of the Huron/Algonquian) it was a real war, they new darn well that the arms were coming from the Dutch and that those arms were killing them.

Of course this is one man’s take on the Dutch colony. He makes the point that most of the leading Dutch citizens stayed on after the English took over and helped shaped the attitude of the commercial center that would become New York. And I have to say that once I got over my initial surprise at the lack of mention of the war, I thought this seems fairly typical of the American mindset about selling arms.

[Update: In the course of discussion in the comments I realized that there is one brief paragraph in which he dismisses the theory of overhunting and the tribal wars as the cause of the shortage of beaver. This conclusion is based on the 1997 work of Jose Antonio Brandao and reference to Brandao's work was relegated to a footnote in the book I read. It was given a paragraph in the earlier version of the book. Of course now I want to read Brandao. But whether the cause of the wars is disputed or not, it doesn't change the fact that from his point of view they didn't seem to directly affect the Dutch colonists. "

What I Read Over the Summer

This summer I gave myself a break from blogging about books, I only wrote about ones that I felt like writing about. But I read quite a few books and since I partly use this blog to keep track of what I read I thought I’d share my list.

I never did pick up a new mystery series but I did catch up on a few ongoing series that I’ve been reading over the years. Elizabeth George’s new Inspector Lynley novel, This Body of Death, came out and I read it in June. When I first started reading this series, years ago, I was indifferent to it. But now I’m completely caught up in the story of the people, mostly Havers who is simultaneously endearing and annoying. Then I caught up with the last two Steven Saylor mysteries: The Judgment of Caesar and The Triumph of Caesar. At least, I think they are the latest two in his series. For some reason, I have trouble keeping track of that series. I liked both of them and the second one didn’t end with the assassination of Caesar so I was surprised. They were all very fun. I also listened to the audiobook version of Laura Lippman’s novel What the Dead Know. It was different than her Tess Monaghan mysteries but I did like it.

Speaking of audio books, I started listening to Dear American Airlines by Jonathan Miles last year during my trip up to Minnesota. Then I got sick and never finished. So I started listening again on my way up to Minnesota this year, but it brought back too many memories of being sick. So I stopped. But I did finish it in September. Maybe because I took such a long break in the middle of it, I thought it was only ok. The author’s ongoing one way dialog with American Airlines was very funny at times but I found I didn’t really care much what happened to him. And the sections in which he was translating a Polish novel just put me to sleep.

I read The Angels Game by Carlos Ruiz Zafron and I enjoyed it but found it harder to suspend disbelief than I did with his earlier novel, The Shadow of the Wind. Also, I read the first novel a few years ago so it took me a while to figure out that this second novel ties in with the first. I understand there will be a third and I figure at that point I’ll have to go back and re-read all three.

I finally read The Help, by Kathryn Stocket, after practically the whole universe told me I had to. It was an easy read but I found it completely unbelievable that the black maids in the story would have told their story to that white woman. It isn’t that I didn’t enjoy the book, but I wonder what all the fuss was about. Of course it seemed designed for women’s book club reading.

On vacation I caught up with a few books that people lent me a long time ago. First, The Girls from Ames: The Story of Women and a 40 Year Friendship, by Jeffrey Zaslo. This group of high school friends were about my age and most of the novel I was fairly sure they wouldn’t have given me the time of day in high school. It was an interesting project but I was glad to leave them behind. The Water Horse by Julia Grigson (which AndiF lent me last year) gave me a whole different look at Florence Nightengale, not to mention the Crimean War. I was disappointed that the story just .. ended, though. The heroine finds her man and … the end. I also read The Tales of Beedle the Bard, which was lent to me two years ago during my Harry Potter phase. At last I can return it.

One of the novels I enjoyed most this summer (and would have written about if I hadn’t read it in Minnesota where I have no internet connection) was Jonathan Safron Foer’s Everything is Illuminated. At times it was “laugh out loud” funny and yet the story at the center of the novel is very sad, as all holocaust stories are sad. Creating the stumbling English in the letters of Alex, a young Ukranian with a basic grasp of English and access to a Thesaurus is a tour de force for Safron Foer. It must have been very rigid to do, as Alex would have said. I know that Safron Foer gets picked on a lot by some critics and I really don’t know why. Based on this novel and his Extremely Loud and Incredibly Close I would read anything he wrote. Well, that’s not true. I have no interest in reading his latest paeon to vegetarianism. But I probably would read any novel he published.

I read it just after reading The Zookeepers Wife by Diane Ackerman which is the true story of zookeepers Jan and Antonina Zabinski who sheltered Polish Jews in the empty Warsaw Zoo during World War II. When I picked it up I thought it was a novel but was pleased to discover it was a true story and one that I’d never heard.

I unintentionally spent some time with France this summer. First I read Edith Wharton’s Fighting France: From Dunkirk to Belport, I like books about World War I but this series of essays that were published in magazines during the war seemed mostly like propaganda to me. Then I read My Life in France by Julia Child and Alex Prud’homme, which was wonderful. And I read The Elegance of the Hedgehog by Muriel Barbary. I had avoided reading this one because I thought it was yet another novel marketed at women’s book clubs, but I was surprised by how much I liked it.

I finished off the summer with Fool by Christopher Moore which is King Lear re-told as only Christopher Moore can. Not quite as humorous as his re-telling of the life of Jesus in Lamb, but quite entertaining.

Oh, and I did read Cognitive Surplus by Clay Shirky as I said I would. Not quite as thought provoking as Here Comes Everybody but maybe that is because I heard his talks so many times before the book was released that I basically knew what was going to be in it.

Ouaouaboukoue or Ouaouagoukoue? Whatever.

In reviewing some of my family history information recently in connection with my LeBeau family research, a question was raised regarding the grandparents of Marie Louise Jourdain, the wife of Jean Baptiste/Jacques LeBeau.  My dad and I list her maternal grandparents as Jean Baptiste Reaume and Symphorose Ouaouagoukoue.  Or sometimes it is spelled Ouaouaboukoue. And sometimes, believe it or not, it is spelled 8a8ab8k8e.

I think it is pronounced something like  wah-wah-goo-kway.   Anyone who has ever traveled through Wisconsin will see many places containing a syllable sounding like “wah”.   Wausau. Waukesha.  Milwaukee.  Waushara.  Kewaunee. Once you start seeing it, you see it everywhere.  And you realize it must mean something in one of the Indian languages.  Of course, when I ask non-Indian Wisconsinites they just shrug and say they don’t know.  But someday I’ll find out.  

Anyway, as I’ve said before, Symphorose Ouaouagoukoue is something of a mystery and I wish I knew more about her. 

I know a lot about her husband.  Jean Baptiste Reaume was born September 24, 1675 in Petite Riviere St. Charles, just outside Quebec. He was the son of Rene Reaume and Marie Chevreau, both of whom immigrated to New France separately. They married in 1665 and had quite an extensive family – thirteen children, out of which eleven were boys. 

Jean Baptiste was only one of the many Reaume brothers to leave Quebec and head west.  References to his brothers, Robert, Pierre, Charles and Simon, show up in multiple French records of the time as voyageurs.  Robert Reaume was, in fact, hired to escort Madame Cadillac, the wife of the founder of Detroit, to join her husband at that new post.  Simon Reaume was a very well known fur trader, perhaps the most successful of the brothers, and at one point the temporary commander of the French post at Ouiatenon.

Jean Baptiste joined (or succeeded) Pierre Reaume in the La Baye (Green Bay WI) area as a scout and interpreter and trader.  There is some confusion over whether Pierre Reaume was the son of Rene Reaume, and a brother to Jean Baptiste, or was a son of Robert Reaume and a nephew to Jean Baptiste.  Also, some historians believe that some references to “Reaume” the interpreter in the La Baye area that have been identified as Pierre Reaume should really be Jean Baptiste Reaume.   In any event, according to a voyageur contract transcribed by Peter Scanlan in his excellent resource Prairie du Chien: French, British, American,  by 1718 the 42 year old Jean Baptiste Reaume was officially in La Baye having been licensed to take a canoe there for the well known Montreal merchant Pierre de Lestage. 

By at least 1725 he was an interpreter at the post and was trading for himself (and possibly Pierre).  That year Robert Reaume, “representing Jean Baptiste Reaume, voyageur and interpreter”, bought merchandise valued at 4821 livres  on credit from the Montreal merchant Charles Nolan Lamarque.  We are all indebted to whoever took the time to list many of Jean Baptiste Reaume’s  (and other voyageur’s) contracts on a very useful website.  I encourage anyone interested to click through and read them (warning: they are in French).

In 1725, a daughter of Jean Baptiste Reaume was baptized at Michillimackinac.  Her name was Marie-Judith but the name of her mother is not disclosed.  I can find no mention of Marie-Judith ever again.  I do not know if she was legitimate or illegitimate.

By 1728 the French decided to abandon the military post at La Baye due to fighting with the Fox Indians.  Reaume moved down to the post at the River St. Joseph (present day Niles Michigan) to serve as interpreter to the post commander there.  He continued to trade there as can be seen from his contracts.

More importantly for us, it is only when Jean Baptiste Reaume transfers to the post at the River St. Joseph that we discover he has a wife and that she is an Indian.  And we discover that they have have at least one child, named Marie.  We discover this because Marie Reaume acts as godmother at a baptism and the names of her parents are listed in the entry in the church register: 

In the year 1729 the 7th of March I J. Bap. Chardon priest and missionary of the society of Jesus at the river St. Joseph baptized Joseph son of Jean Baptiste Baron voyageur from the parish of Boucherville at present settled in this post and of Marie Catherine 8ekioukoue married in the eye of the church, baptized the 8th of March the day following his birth. The godfather was Mr. Louis-Coulon de Villiers junior and the Godmother Marie Rheaume daughter of Sieur Jean Baptiste Rheaume interpreter and of Simphorose ouaouagoukoue married in the eyes of the church.

J. B. Chardon M. of the soc. of Jesus

Louis de villier

marie reaume

It is unlikely that this “Marie Rheaume” was the four year old Marie Judith Reaume.  Most people assume that the Marie Reaume in this record is Marie Madeleine Reaume who, within 2 years, would be married to Augustin L’Archeveque, a prominent St. Joseph fur trader.  Madeleine was probably not very old when she married.  She might have been as young as 12, which would account for the guess of many that the Reaumes were married about 1720..  Madeleine spent most of the rest of her life in St. Joseph and was a leading citizen.  After L’Archeveque died she married another prominent trader named Louis Chevalier.  Marie Madeleine Reaume has been the subject of some interesting historical research into the role that women played in the French fur trade.  I recommend Susan Sleeper-Smith’s book, Indian Women and French Men: Rethinking Cultural Encounters in the Western Great Lakes.  Many of Madeleine’s descendents moved to Cahokia and St. Louis.  When Toussaint Jacques LeBeau married Marie Le Fernet in 1795, one of the witnesses to his marriage contract was “L. Chevalier, cousin” and this was probably one of the grandchildren of Madeleine Reaume.

As an interesting aside, the godfather in that baptism at St. Joseph was Louis Coulon de Villiers, the son of the military commander of Post St. Joseph.  Young Louis would grow up to enter the military like his father and, as his wikipedia entry notes, he is the “only military opponent to force George Washington to surrender”.   

But I digress.  In the late 1720's the war was between the French, their Indian allies and the Fox Indians.  While serving at St. Joseph, Jean Baptiste Reaume acted as an agent and spy for the post commander to try to learn what the Fox were planning.  He and his brother Simon played a large role in the defeat (and massacre) of a large party of Fox in 1730. 

By 1732 Jean Baptiste Reaume seems to have returned to La Baye with Commander de Villiers, who was ordered to re-open that post.  De Villiers was killed not long after that in an Indian battle and references to Reaume cease.  I’ve always wondered if he was at that battle.  He worked so closely with de Villiers that I feel he would have been there if he was not away at the time for some reason.  I’ve wondered if he was wounded, I’ve even sometimes wondered if he died.  But he was a well enough known figure at the time that I think his death would have been reported.  In the website that lists his contracts, the contracts cease for a long period and then begin again in the 1740s, but I think it is possible that by that time his son, the younger Jean Baptiste Reaume, was already acting as official interpreter at the post and those contracts could be his.  Or they could be our Jean Baptiste Reaume’s and there was a reason we do not know as to why there was such a long period between contracts.

We do know that in 1746 he is not listed as “deceased” at the marriage of his daughter, but he also was not listed as present at the wedding:  

1746, I received the mutual [marriage] consent of B. Jourdain, son of Guillaume [Jourdain and of] Angelique la Reine, and _______ Reaume, daughter of J.B. Reaume, residing at la Baye … P. DU JAUNAY, miss. of the Society of Jesus. Louis Pascale Chevalier.

Although the name of the daughter is blank in the marriage record, we know that this is Josephe Reaume because she and JB Jourdain are listed as parents at the baptism of a daughter the following summer of 1747.  The summer of 1747 also saw the marriage of another daughter of JB Reaume and, again, he is not listed as deceased as the parents of the groom are: .

July 1, 1747, I received the mutual marriage consent of Charles Personne de la Fond, son of the late Nicolas Personne de la Fond and of the late Madeline la Suse, of the parish of Montreal; and of Susanne Reaume, daughter of Jean Baptiste Reaume and of Symphorose Ouaouaboukoue, residing at La Baye, after one publication of Bans instead of three, having granted dispensation from the other two publications.

P. du Jaunay, miss. of the society of Jesus

Amiot; Baptiste Le Beaux; Coulonge, witnesses

(Did you LeBeau fans notice who the witness was at that wedding?)  So, we have church records that confirm that both Josephe and Susanne are daughters of Jean Baptiste Reaume.  The church records also confirm that Susanne is the daughter of Symphorose Ouaouaboukoue.  Assuming that the older sister would marry first, that makes Susanne the younger sister.  Jean Baptiste Reaume and Symphorose Ouaouaboukoue were married in the eyes of the church according the the St. Joseph church record. And if the Jesuits said you were married, you were married.  So it seems unlikely that Josephe would have a different mother than her younger sister Susanne.   From this evidence most of us have decided it is more likely than not that the mother of Josephe was also Symphorose Ouaouaboukoue.  If we guess that both daughters were probably about 15 years old when they married, they would have been born in the early 1730’s, perhaps even after the Reaumes returned to La Baye.

When did Jean Baptiste Reaume die?  By September of 1747 his son Jean Baptiste Reaume is entering into a marriage contract with Felicite Chavillon and he is described as the son of the deceased Jean Baptiste Reaume, .  It does not appear that this marriage of the younger Reaume ever occurred though.  The younger Jean Baptiste Reaume married a woman of the Folle Avoine tribe a few years later at Michilimackinac.  He and his wife already had a child, who had been born “at the wintering grounds” and who was brought to Michillimackinac for baptism.  (I’ve seen some researchers who think it was the older Jean Baptiste Reaume who married the Folle Avoine woman, but I feel fairly certain it is the son since the older Jean Baptiste Reaume would have been about 80 at this time – plus that marriage contract says he was dead by the time of that marriage.).

But this marriage contract of the younger Jean Baptiste Reaume also causes confusion because it lists his mother as Marie-Anne Thomas.  Who is Marie-Anne Thomas?   I don’t believe there is a baptismal record for the younger Jean Baptiste Reaume so I suppose it is possible that he is younger than Suzanne and had a different mother.  Some family researchers seem to have assumed that Marie Anne Thomas was a dit name for Symphorose Ouaouagoukoue.  I wonder why?  Symphorose is an unusual name but it is the name of a Christian saint.  Why would she go by Marie Anne?  On the other hand why would her granddaughter Marie Josephe go by Marie Louise?  And why would Baptiste LeBeau go by Jacques LeBeau?  The French never seemed very attached to their given names.  Since the mother of the bride-to-be was also named Marie-Anne it is possible that the notary just messed up and entered Marie-Anne twice.   But what about the last name Thomas?  It is very confusing.

In any event, that’s all we know.  I’d love to know more about Symphorose Ouaouaboukoue, as would the many people who post messages on the various genealogy message boards.  But so far no one has come up with any definitive information.  I’ve seen people state that she “must” be from such and such tribe, but I’ve never seen documentation.  Personally, I’ve always suspected she was Pottawatomie.  But that’s just a hunch, not real information. There are many people who think she belonged to the Illinois.   Hopefully someday we’ll find out more about her.

As usual, if anyone has anything to add, make a comment or drop me an email.

More Than You Ever Wanted to Know About the LeBeau Family

St. Charles Borromeo Church, in St. Charles, Missouri, is the third oldest Catholic parish in the State of Missouri.  It was dedicated in 1791:

… Don Manuel Perez visited the village of Les Petites Cotes, or the "Little Hills." As the Spanish lieutenant governor of Upper Louisiana, Perez signed a petition granting inhabitants of the village permission to build a church. According to area historical records, the meeting took place at the home of French Canadian fur trapper Louis Blanchette, who founded the village in 1769. The church Perez authorized was San Carlos Borromeo, later anglicized to St. Charles Borromeo. When Perez dedicated the church on November 7, 1791, he named it after the Cardinal of Milan, Charles Borromeo. At the same time, he changed the name of the village to San Carlos, which then became St. Charles in 1803.

Although Perez represented the Spanish government in Upper Louisiana, most of the residents of San Carlos del Missuri were of French Canadian ancestry and spoke French.  The district of St. Charles extended from the Missouri River north to …. well, no one knew.  At least as far as Dubuque, where Julien Dubuque was granted land by the governor of Upper Louisiana (or Ylinoa, as it was known in Spanish records).  And it extended west as far as … well, no one knew.  It was a Big Country.  And although the principal settlement was San Carlos, its population was less than 100 families prior to the cession of Louisiana to the United States.

The first survey of the town of St. Charles was ostensibly made by Auguste Chouteau, one of the founders of St. Louis, although no copy of the survey has ever been found.  He was assisted in this endeavor by Louis Barada, from whom I am descended. Louis had moved, with his family, from St. Louis to St. Charles and his daughter Marguerite had, by 1800, married Jean Baptiste LeBeau, the son of Bapt. LeBeau and Marie Louise Jourdain. 

Although the original survey does not exist, the church records of St. Charles Borromeo Church do exist.  They are written in French (mostly) by hand and are difficult to interpret.  At some point, some industrious souls translated them into English and typed up the translated transcriptions.  Then more industrious souls indexed the transcriptions.   So, today, if you are looking to find one of your Lebeau ancestors (or any ancestor who lived in St. Charles who might have been Catholic, which was most residents at the time) you would first consult the index of Baptisms (1792-1851). 

After my writings this summer about the LeBeau Family I was contacted by two people who turned out to be distant relatives.  That was quite exciting!  Yes, we are about 6 generations removed but we are related.  One of them was descended from a sister of Marie Louise LeBeau but the other was unsure exactly how we were related (if it turned out we were related).  He had traced his line back to a woman baptised at St. Charles Borromeo Church in 1837. 

Rosalie Corbeille

1837, the 30th of December, I have supplied the ceremonies of baptism to Rosalie Corbeille, daughter of J.B. Corbeille and Louise Toussaint LeBeau, born the 5th of the current month. 

J.B. Bourdeaux
Lucille Pequin

J.B. Smedts

Who, he wondered, was Marie Louise Toussaint LeBeau?  The St. Charles County Historical Society had done some research for him and sent him the pages from the  index to baptisms of St. Charles Borromeo Church, 1792-1851 that listed the persons baptized by the name of LeBeau.  Among the 32 LeBeau baptisms that were listed were the following:

Name		Birth	Baptism	Father	Mother
Le Beau	Louise	10/23/1806	11/30/1806	Jean Baptiste	Marguerite Barada
Le Beau	Louise	2/20/1808	6/10/1808	Toussaint	Marie Le Frenet
Le Beau	Marie Louise	6/13/1811	7/31/1811	Jean Baptiste	Marguerite Barada

By virtue of his ancestress’s marriage date he had eliminated Marie Louise as being too young.  But which of the other two was “his” Louise Lebeau.  Or was she someone else?

Of course, logic dictated that the name “Toussaint” in Louise Toussaint LeBeau’s name probably meant that she was the daughter of Toussaint LeBeau.  But logic is not proof.  I knew I was descended from Marie Louise LeBeau, born in 1811, the daughter of Marguerite Barada and I knew that Toussaint and Jean Baptiste were brothers.  I also knew that they were both children of Marie Louise Jourdain and the mysterious Jean Baptiste/Jacques LeBeau.  I could document those facts.  So whether or not he could ever prove the name of the mother he would know from whom he was descended on the father’s side. 

But of course he wanted to know which Louise was “his” Louise.  Was she the daughter of Jean Baptiste and Marguerite or was she the daughter of Toussaint and Marie Le Frenet?   This was the mystery.

I looked through all of my papers and could find nothing helpful. And of course I enlisted my dad’s help.  He looked through all of his papers and could find nothing helpful.  We both felt sure that we had eliminated the Louise LeBeau born in 1806 from contention of being “our” Louise when we did our history and were positive “our” Louise was the Marie Louise born in 1811.  But we couldn’t remember why we had concluded that or find any documentation.  Maybe the first Louise had died prior to 1811?  That would provide an answer to the mystery of Louise Lebeau the mother of Rosalie Corbeille. 

So my dad, the intrepid researcher, said he’d look into it the next time he was at a library with records from St. Charles Borromeo.   A few days later he called me with a hint of glee in his voice.  He had an answer.  Or at least he had one answer. 

The Louise LeBeau born in 1806 to Jean Baptiste LeBeau and Marguerite Barada hadn’t died before her sister Marie Louise was born in 1811.  She had never been born!   Or at least, “she” had never been born.   In the fully transcribed records of St. Charles Borromeo baptisms my dad found a heading for Louise LeBeau.   The birth date was 1806.  He copied it.  He then found a heading for Louise LeBeau.  The birth date was 1808.  He copied it.  He found some other things he was looking for, copied them, and headed home.  Then he started to look closely at what he had copied.

Louise Lebeau

The year 1806, the 30th of November, I baptized Louis LeBeau, legitimate son of Jean Baptiste LeBeau and Marguerite Barrada, born the 23d day of October. The godfather was Etienne Quenel and the godmother Eulalie Barrada, in the faith of which I have signed presently after the godfather and godmother have made their ordinary mark.

his mark  Etienne Quenel
her mark  Eulalie Barrada

Thomas Flynn      cure

Louise LeBeau

The year 1808, the 10th day of June, I baptized Louise, born the 20th of February of the legitimate marriage of Toussaint LeBeau and Marie LeFrenet, his wife.  The godfather and godmother were Jacques Filtou (Filteau) and Marie Royou, in the faith of which I have signed with the godfather.

Jacques Filteau
Marie Royou

J. Maxwell    cure

Eureka!   The first Louise wasn’t a Louise.  The header was wrong.  And then the index transcriber had transcribed the incorrect header and not checked the name in the record, just looked for the dates and names of parents.  These things happen.  Transcribing is a hard lot and the people who do it are volunteers. 

But Louise was Louis and she wasn’t a daughter, she was a son.   Probably named after his grandfather, Louis Barada.  So, by process of elimination that left the only available Louise LeBeau as the daughter of Toussaint LeBeau and Marie LeFrenet.

Of course it isn’t definitive  proof but it is very good evidence.   I looked in the records of the other local church – St. Louis King of France - because I knew there was another, apparently unrelated, LeBeau family in the area at the time.  But they had baptized no “Louise” in that time period.  So unless Louise Toussaint LeBeau, the mother of Rosalie Corbeille, had arrived out of the blue from somewhere else with no family, she was the same Louise LeBeau who was baptized on June 10, 1808, the daughter of Toussaint LeBeau and Marie LeFernet.

I sent all my information on Toussaint’s family to my new long-lost-relative.  But now he has to figure out the history of Marie LeFernet.   But that’s the fun of genealogy, figuring things out.

And I remind you of the advice I gave in my post, Investigating Mr. LeBeau:  records aren’t always correct.  Never assume. 

Parrot and Olivier in America by Peter Carey

I seem to be on a kick of reading historical novels this past month. I picked up two relatively new historical novels at the beginning of the month and I chose to read The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet first because I knew nothing about the subject matter. Peter Carey’s Parrot & Olivier in America, on the other hand, was set in early 19th century America and “starred” a character loosely based on Alexis de Toqueville. Part of me thought it would be the more uninteresting read because I would already know the basic story.

Part of me also worried whether Carey could pull that off. Hillary Mantel pulled off writing yet another Tudor novel by choosing Cromwell, usually a villain, to be her hero. Carey does pull it off because he makes Olivier (who is based on Toqueville) more of an arrogant, snobbish twit than Toqueville was (or at least that the Toqueville who has come down to us was). He also introduces a completely fictional English character in John Larrit a/k/a Parrot who is forced to accompany Olivier to America as his servant and secretaire.

In general it works. Carey switches between the voices of Olivier and Parrot and we see the differing views on America and Democracy. Although, I should say that it takes Olivier and Parrot almost 150 pages to get to America. But the 150 pages are, I think, essential because they represent to the reader what the “old Europe” is like and offer a good comparison to the “new” America.

Carey’s purpose is to represent a funny, entertaining and, ultimately, enlightening argument about America. In the end we might say that both Parrot and Olivier are right. Olivier is disturbed (as was Toqueville) by the idea of the tyranny of the masses. Olivier is looking at society as a whole. Parrot is fascinated by the idea of what a man (or woman) might make of himself in America. Parrot is an individualist.

Olivier, thinking about the difference between France and America, says about what he has learned:

Yet all I had learned was that when the mob was allowed to rule a second mob sprang up to rule beneath them, and the difference between the Americans and the French is that Americans do not need to steal from their fellows when they can roam the countryside in bands, cutting trees and taking wealth. Anyone can claim a site for his chateau, whether he be a night soil man or a portraitist.

But although the subject matter is serious and historical, Carey is, of course, Carey and is very funny. He creates a Parrot who is the Figaro to Olivier’s Duke (if Figaro were twice the age of the Duke and eventually went to America with him). There is a great deal of humor at the expense of the French: “He exhibited such magnificent ugliness you might assume him to be French”.

But Carey mocks the Americans too. Olivier encounters over and over again the irritating type of American who cannot help but expound on its exceptionalism and perceived perfection. Here Olivier reacts to Mr. Peeks, a banker, who informs of his high regard for law, but not just any law, American law.

“An American law, sir,” he said steadily, and I saw he would no more query its justice than he would admit that the coast of Connecticut was the most shocking monument to avarice one could have ever witnessed, its ancient forests gone, smashed down and carted off for profit.

Unlike Toqueville, Olivier is not a willing traveller to America and writing any kind of book is not, initially, his own idea. His overprotective maman, who has lived through the revolution and whose father was guillotined, is worried that her son could end up target of the mob during one of France’s many uprisings:

“You wish me to flee to America like Chateaubriand”, I said while thinking, She is calling the doctor for me once again.

“”My dear Olivier, he did not flee. He went to write a book!”

And so Olivier is sent off to write a report: On the Penitentiary System in the United States and its Application in France (Toqueville also went to America to write about the prison system). But eventually Olivier decides to write an additional, broader treatise on America itself, an endeavor that Parrot is only slightly interested in.

Although Carey pulls off Olivier, it is Parrot who makes the novel come alive. Olivier is a brilliant observer (perhaps because Carey, by his own admission, pinched many of his observations from Toqueville) but Parrot is in the thick of things. In a series of flashbacks we learn of Parrot’s almost Dickensian (although years before Dickens) childhood as he is orphaned at a young age and that he spent years in the British penal colony in Australia. His benefactor, usually called “Monsieur” “rescued” him from Australia and made him a servant and a spy. But all his life Parrot wanted to be an artist and there is a certain poignancy to his discovery that, at the age of almost 50, he is surrounding himself with artists while he himself creates nothing and knows he has not the talent to truly be an artist. (Parrot has a mistress, Mathilde, who represents all the women artists over the ages who have been better than the men who take credit for much of their work. He also creates a character who produces James Audubon-style bird studies.)

In the end it is art that is the key to the argument in this novel. Parrot recognizes the commercial viability of the bird prints and is in love with Mathilde and her paintings. Olivier consistently refers to Mathilde’s work as mediocre and turns his nose up at the artistic venture. By the end Olivier tells Parrot that when he looks on Mathilde’s paintings hanging on the wall he sees “the awful tyranny of the majority” but as Parrot remembers, Olivier is near sighted and myopic. He thinks:

… I frankly loathed the certainty of his judgment. he might go away and write a book about this, but what could he know from so short a visit? The time it would take to make this nation would be put into centuries and it did not do to come prancing around in your embroidered vests and buckled shoes and even if the New York Sentinel reported what you said, it did not mean you knew.

“These people are not the same as the people you distrust in France,. they will be educated.”

“Oh dear,” he said, and held his head in his hands and i could not tell if this was because he thought it a very bad idea or if he considered education impossible and expected our people would all grow up ignorant and their children after them.

“From what will they get their culture?” he cried, “the newspapers? God help you all.”

As a reader, we cannot see Mathilde’s paintings so we cannot judge Olivier’s artistic judgment but his warnings ring true (as do Toqueville’s). I won’t quote the end of the novel in which Olivier warns of the kind of country that many people today still worry the United States is or will become. Nor will I quote from Parrot’s counterargument in the “Dedication” that he is wrong. You can see the same debates among political pundits today, although the language of Parrot and Olivier is finer.

On the whole I enjoyed this novel. I was disappointed that Carey chose not to travel the trail of Toqueville through Wisconsin and up to Montreal. I wondered if he intended to but then deleted those portions since many of Olivier’s warnings were that the country would be run by not only “woodsmen” but also by “fur traders” and yet he met no fur traders in the novel. But that is a minor disappointment.