Letter 1: Introduction
Who would have thought that simply because I welcomed you with hospitality and warmth, you would conclude I was capable of writing with clarity and skill? Your gratitude has clouded your judgment. The knowledge I gained from our conversations more than repaid me for five weeks of hosting you. I gave you nothing beyond what basic hospitality required; but could any other guest have taught me what you did? You walked me across the map of Europe, country by country; you told me remarkable things about our celebrated mother country, of which I knew very little: its inland waterways, its agriculture, its arts, its manufacturing, its trade. You guided me through an enormous maze, and I came out richer for the journey. If anything, the debt of gratitude runs in my direction, not yours. The welcome you received at my home came from genuine warmth of heart, mine and my wife’s alike; but what you are now asking of me requires something I’m not sure I have. This task demands careful reflection and a range of abilities I simply don’t possess. I can describe American farming practices, our customs, and our particular way of life with some confidence, because I have always paid close attention to them; but my knowledge doesn’t reach much further than that. And is this narrow, unpolished information really enough to meet your expectations and satisfy your curiosity? I’m genuinely surprised that in all your travels through America, you didn’t come across people far more learned and better educated than I am. Your preference for me puzzles me far more than it flatters me; what little vanity I have is reserved entirely for the tidiness of my farm work.
My father left me a small collection of musty books, which his father had brought over from England; but what use is a library made up mostly of Scottish theology, the voyages of Sir Francis Drake, the history of Queen Elizabeth, and a handful of miscellaneous volumes?
Our minister visits me often, though he lives more than twenty miles away. I showed him your letter, asked his advice, and requested his help. He tells me he has no time to spare, since like the rest of us he must work his farm, and on top of that must prepare what he intends to say on the Sabbath. My wife (and I never do anything without consulting her) laughs and tells me you cannot possibly be serious. “What!” she says, “James, would you presume to send letters to a great European gentleman who has spent so much of his life in that grand place called Cambridge, where they say worldly learning is so plentiful that people absorb it simply by breathing the air? Would you not be ashamed to write to a man who has never in his life done a single day’s work, never even felled a tree; who has spent the Lord knows how many years studying stars, geometry, rocks, and insects, and reading enormous books? Who has traveled, as he told us, to the city of Rome itself! Just imagine a London man going to Rome! Where will these English people not go? A man who has seen the sulfur works at Vesuvius and the buried town of Pompeii! Would you presume to correspond with someone who has been to Paris, to the Alps, to Petersburg, and who has seen so many remarkable things all across the old countries; who has crossed the great ocean to reach us, and has journeyed from our New Hampshire in the north all the way to Charleston in the south; who has visited all our great cities, knows most of our famous lawyers and clever people; who has spoken with so many of the king’s men, governors, and counselors, and yet settles on you as his correspondent, as you call it? Surely he means to mock you! I am certain of it. He cannot be genuinely serious. James, you must read this letter again, paragraph by paragraph, and look carefully to see whether you can detect some trace of humor, something with more than one meaning. And now that I think of it, husband, I wish you would let me see his letter. Though I am only a woman, as you might say, I understand the meaning of words well enough, for when I was a girl, my father sent us to the very best schoolmaster in the district.” She then read it herself, very carefully. Our minister was present, and we listened closely, weighing every word. We all agreed without hesitation that you must have been entirely sincere, as my wife puts it, and your request seemed genuine and straightforward. Then, reflecting again on the distance between your station in life and mine, a fresh wave of astonishment came over us all.
Our minister took the letter from my wife and read it to himself. He pointed out the last two phrases, and we all weighed the contents as carefully as we could. The conclusion we reached together finally convinced me to write. You say you want nothing from me beyond what falls within my own experience and knowledge; I understand that well enough. The difficulty is figuring out how to gather, organize, and arrange what I know. You also suggest that writing letters is nothing more than talking on paper, which, I must admit, struck me as a genuinely fresh idea. “Well then,” our minister observed, “neighbor James, since you can talk well, I’m sure you can write tolerably well too. Imagine that Mr. F. B. is still here with you, and simply write down what you would say to him. Treat the questions he’ll put to you in his future letters as if he were asking them aloud, as we used to say at college (viva voce); then let your answers come in exactly the same language you’d use if he were sitting across from you. That’s all he’s asking, and I’m certain the task isn’t difficult. He’s your friend: who would be embarrassed to write to such a person? He may be a man of learning and taste, but I’m sure he’ll read your letters with genuine pleasure. If they aren’t elegant, they’ll smell of the woods and carry a little wildness about them. I know your nature; they’ll contain things he’s never encountered before. Some people are so drawn to novelty that they’ll forgive many errors of language for the sake of real information. We’re all inclined to love and admire what’s foreign, even when it’s often inferior to what we already have at home, and I imagine that’s precisely why so many people keep making their way to Italy. That country has become the constant destination of modern travelers.”
James. I’d like to know what there is to see in Italy that’s so worthwhile and rewarding, that so many people wish to visit nowhere else.
Minister. I’m not entirely sure, to be honest. I imagine their goal is to trace the remnants of a once-flourishing civilization that has since vanished. They entertain themselves by studying the ruins of temples and other structures that have almost nothing in common with anything built today, and so they gain a kind of knowledge that strikes me as largely useless and trivial. I’ve often wondered why no skilled botanists or serious scholars ever come here instead. It seems to me there would be far more genuine satisfaction in observing, right among us, the humble beginnings and early stirrings of societies taking shape everywhere: the freshly laid foundations of our towns, the settlements spreading across so many rural districts. I’m quite certain that watching the speed of their growth would be far more rewarding than staring at the ruins of old towers, crumbling aqueducts, or crumbling battlements.
James. What you say, Minister, strikes me as very true. Please, keep going. I never tire of listening to you.
Minister. Don’t you think, neighbor James, that a thoughtful and well-informed Englishman would come away far richer in understanding by studying, across these provinces, the conditions that make so many people genuinely happy? By tracing the quiet, unremarkable ways in which we push our settlements further every day? How we turn vast forests into welcoming fields, and show, across these thirteen provinces, such a remarkable picture of comfortable living and political well-being?
In Italy, every object worth contemplating and every reverie a traveler might entertain must refer back to ancient civilizations and distant eras, all of it obscured by the fog of time. Here, by contrast, everything is modern, peaceful, and full of promise. We have had no war to devastate our fields; our religion does not burden those who work the land; and we are strangers to the feudal systems that have kept so many people in bondage. Here, nature opens her broad lap to welcome a constant stream of newcomers and provide them with sustenance. I don’t think anyone could accuse me of bias when I say that the spectacle offered by these living, breathing landscapes is far more engaging and far more instructive than the sight of Rome’s crumbling ruins. Everything here would fill a thoughtful traveler with the most generous and humane ideas. Rather than surrendering to the painful and ultimately pointless exercise of dwelling on past revolutions, devastations, and plagues, his imagination would wisely leap forward to the fields yet to be cultivated, the improvements yet to be made, and the generations yet to come who will populate and enrich this vast continent. In Italy, by contrast, half-collapsed amphitheaters and the foul fevers of the Campagna weigh the mind down with melancholy, as the traveler searches for the original purpose of the crumbling structures surrounding him and tries to account for such profound decay. Here, a traveler might witness the very earliest outlines of human society taking shape, something that can now be observed nowhere else on earth. The rest of the world, as I understand it, is in some places dangerously overcrowded and in others nearly emptied of people. Misguided religion, tyranny, and senseless laws oppress and diminish humanity nearly everywhere. Here, we have to some meaningful degree recovered the ancient dignity of our species. Our laws are simple and fair; we are a people of cultivators; our farming is unhindered; and as a result, everything around us thrives and flourishes. For my own part, I would rather admire the spacious barn of one of our prosperous farmers, a man who himself felled the first tree on his land and laid the first foundations of his settlement, than study the dimensions of the Temple of Ceres. I would rather trace the steady, step-by-step progress of that industrious farmer through every stage of his labor than puzzle over how modern Italian convents manage to sustain themselves by doing nothing more than singing and praying.
Even if the scope for intellectual inquiry here is limited, English travelers would not find their time entirely wasted. The new and unexpected character of our vast settlements, our great rivers, and that sense of energy and possibility visible everywhere would captivate any thoughtful observer. Whatever difficulties they might encounter in their research, the hospitality that extends from one end of this continent to the other would ease their travels at every turn. Since it is from the surface of the land we cultivate that we have drawn our wealth, that surface is all we have truly come to know. It will take the labor of future generations and the energy of ages yet to come before people here have the leisure and the means to dig deeper, to search the interior of this continent for the underground riches it surely holds. Neighbor James, we are greatly in need of men with learning and time to spare. We need skilled chemists to advise our ironworkers and to teach us how to produce most of the dyes and pigments we rely on. We have no one here equal to that task. If any useful discoveries are made among us, they come about either by chance or through that restless industriousness which is the defining quality of these colonies.
James. Oh, if only I could express myself as you do, my friend, I would not hesitate for a single moment. I would be eager to begin a correspondence that would do me real credit.
Minister. You write well enough for your purposes, and you’ll improve quickly. Trust my prediction: your letters will have the merit of coming from the edge of the great wilderness, three hundred miles from the sea and three thousand miles across it. That will only work in their favor, take my word for it. You plan to put one of your children into the clergy, and who knows but Mr. F. B. might offer some help when the boy has dealings with the bishop. It’s good for American farmers to have friends in England. What he asks of you is simple: what we say freely among ourselves we call conversation, and a letter is nothing more than conversation written down on paper.
James: You’ve quite convinced me. If he laughs at my clumsiness, he will surely be pleased by my willingness to try. Whatever the result, my intentions will be good. I’ll write plenty and let him do the work of sorting the worthwhile from the worthless, the useful from the trivial. Let him take what he needs and set aside the rest. When all is said and done, it’s simply treating Mr. F. B. now that he’s in London the same way I treated him when he was here in America under my roof: with the best I had to offer, given in good faith and in the best manner I could manage.
“Very different, James, very different indeed,” said my wife. “I don’t care for that comparison. Our little house and cellar, our orchard and garden gave him what he needed. Half the time, poor Mr. F. B. lived on nothing but fruit pies, or peaches and milk. Those things came from God; my girl and I did the rest. We didn’t create the food, we only cooked it as well and as neatly as we could. The first question, James, is knowing what sort of material you have inside yourself, and then whether you can serve it up properly. Well, wife, you’re wrong for once. If I were full of worldly vanity, your rebuke would be well-timed, but you know I have little enough of that. How will I know what I’m capable of until I try? If you had never worked in your father’s house learning and practicing all the branches of housekeeping your parents were known for, you would have made a sorry wife for an American farmer, and you never would have been mine. I married you not for what you had, but for what you knew. And don’t you notice what Mr. F. B. says besides? He tells me that the art of writing is just like every other skill a man can learn: it’s built through habit and perseverance.”
“That is singularly true,” said our minister. “A man who writes a letter every day of the week will find on Saturday that the sixth flows from his pen far more easily than the first. When I first entered the ministry and began to preach, I felt confused and dry. My mind was like parched soil that produced nothing, not even weeds. By the blessing of heaven and my perseverance in study, I grew richer in thoughts, phrases, and words. I felt abundant, and now I can preach freely from any text that comes to mind. It will be the same for you, neighbor James. Begin without delay, and Mr. F. B.’s letters may be of great service to you. He will no doubt inform you of many things, for correspondence is built on letters going both ways. Set aside your hesitation, and I will do my best to help you whenever I have the time.”
“Well then, I am resolved,” I said, “to follow your counsel. I won’t send any letters, nor will I receive any, without reading them to you and my wife. Women are curious; they love to know their husband’s secrets. This won’t be the first matter I’ve put before your joint judgment. Whenever you come to dine with us, these letters will be the last dish on the table.”
“And they won’t be the least appetizing,” answered the good man. “Nature has given you a reasonable share of sense, and that is one of her finest gifts, let me tell you. She has also given you a certain clarity of perception that allows you to recognize what is interesting; a warmth of imagination that lets you think quickly. You often draw useful reflections from things that suggested nothing to me. You have a tender and well-meaning heart, you love description, and your pen, I assure you, is no poor one for a farmer’s pen. It seems to move without effort. Your mind is what we called at Yale College a blank slate (tabula rasa), where strong impressions are recorded with ease and spontaneity. Ah, neighbor, had you received even half the education of Mr. F. B., you would have been a truly worthy correspondent. But perhaps you will be a more entertaining one dressed in your plain American garb than if you were wrapped in all the academic gowns of Cambridge. You will appear to him something like one of our wild American plants, growing freely and irregularly in all its branches, which a European scholar might consider poorly arranged and impractical. If our soil is not yet remarkable for the quality of its fruits, that very abundance is strong proof of a fertility that needs nothing but the knowledge that comes with time to refine and correct it. It is easier to trim back than to add. I don’t mean to flatter you, neighbor James; flattery would ill suit my character, so you may take your pastor at his word. Were I in Europe, I would grow weary of endlessly seeing trained espaliers, clipped hedges, and trees pruned down to dwarfs. Let Mr. F. B. see on paper a few American wild cherry trees, such as nature shapes them here, in all her unrestrained vigor, in the full spread of their extended limbs and wide-reaching branches. Let him see that we possess strong and vital growing things. After all, why should a farmer not be allowed to use his mind as freely as anyone else? Because a man works with his hands, must he not think? And if he thinks usefully, why should he not, in his leisure hours, set down his thoughts? I have composed many a good sermon while following my plough. When the eyes are not fixed on any particular object, the mind is free to receive many useful ideas. It is not in the noisy shop of a blacksmith or a carpenter that such reflective moments can be found. It is as we quietly till the ground and move along the fragrant furrows of our lowlands, uninterrupted by stones or stumps, that the wholesome breath of the earth lifts our spirits and stirs something in us. Every other task on the farm is hard labor compared to this pleasant work. Of all the duties my farm places on me, ploughing is the most agreeable, because I can think while I work. My mind is free; my labor flows from instinct, as does that of my horses. There is no real difference between us in our respective parts of the operation: one horse keeps the furrow, the other avoids it; at the end of the field they turn right or left as directed, while I hold and guide the plough without much thought at all. So begin this correspondence, neighbor, and keep at it. Difficulties will fade as you move toward them. You’ll surprise yourself before long. When you look back, you’ll say what I have often said to myself: had I been too timid, I never would have come this far. Would you painfully work your stony upland and ignore the rich bottomland lying right at your door? Had you never tried, you never would have learned how to repair and improve your ploughs. It will be no small pleasure for your children to say one day that their father was not only one of the most industrious farmers in the county, but one of the best writers. Once you’ve begun, do as you do when you start breaking up your summer fallow: you don’t think about what remains to be done, you look only at what you’ve already ploughed. So take my advice, neighbor James. It will go well with you. I am sure of it.”
“And do you really think so, sir? Your counsel, which I have long followed, carries great weight with me. I truly believe I must write to Mr. F. B. by the first vessel.”
“If you persist in being such a reckless man,” said my wife, “then for God’s sake let it be kept a deep secret among us. If it were once known abroad that you were writing to a great and wealthy man over in London, the talk would never end. Some would swear you were turning into an author; others would claim to foresee great changes in your family’s fortunes. Some would say this, some would say that. Who would want to become the subject of public gossip? Think carefully before you begin, James. A great deal of your time and your reputation is at stake, as I see it. Even if you were to write as well as friend Edmund, whose speeches I often see in our papers, it would be the very same thing: you would be equally accused of idleness and vain notions unbecoming your station. Our colonel would be coming around constantly wanting to know what you could possibly have so much to write about. Some would imagine you were trying to become an assemblyman or a magistrate, God forbid, and that you were telling the king’s men all manner of things. Instead of being well regarded as you are now, and living in peace with everyone, our neighbors would be making all sorts of strange guesses. I would rather stay as we are, neither better nor worse than the rest of our country people. You know what I mean, though I would be sorry to take from you any honest recreation. So as I said before, let it be as closely guarded as if it were some serious crime. The minister, I am sure, will not breathe a word of it. As for me, though I am only a woman, I know what it means to be a wife. I would not have you pass for what the world calls a writer, James, not for a peck of gold, as the saying goes. Your father before you was a plain-dealing, honest man, punctual in all things. He was a man of few words, of yes and no; all he cared about was his farm and his work. I wonder where you got this love of the pen. Had he spent his time sending letters back and forth, he never would have left you this fine plantation, free from debt. Everything I say is in good faith. Great people overseas may write to our townspeople because they have nothing else to do. These Englishmen are strange; because they can live on what they call bank notes without working, they think the whole world can do the same. This fine country never would have been cleared and tilled with those notes. I’m sure when Mr. F. B. was here, he saw you sweat and labor hard. He often told me how Americans worked far harder than the English at home, because there, he said, they have no trees to cut down, no fences to build, no enslaved people to buy and clothe. And now that I think of it, when will you send him those trees he asked for? But if they have no trees to cut down, they have gold in abundance, they say, for they scrape it together from every corner near and far. I have often heard my grandfather tell how they live there by writing: they send this cargo here, that one to the West, and another to the East Indies. But James, you know it is not by writing that we will pay the blacksmith, the minister, the weaver, the tailor, and the English shop. Still, as you are an early riser, follow your own inclinations. You need some rest, I’m sure, and why shouldn’t you spend it as seems right to you. Only let it be a great secret. How would you bear to be called, at our country meetings, the man of the pen? If this scheme of yours were ever known, travelers passing by would point to our house and say, ‘Here lives the scribbling farmer.’ Better to have them say, as they do now, ‘Here lives the warm and prosperous family that never begrudges a meal or a measure of oats to anyone who steps in. Look how well-fed and well-clothed their people are.’”
So, Sir, I have given you an honest and straightforward account of the conversation that led me to accept your invitation. I felt it was necessary to begin this way, to let you in on these foundational details, so that you cannot later accuse me of any presumption. You will see clearly the motives that led me to begin writing, the anxieties I carried, and the reasons for my hesitation. Now I have nothing left to do but get on with the work. Remember, you are to give me my subjects, and I will write on no others, so that you cannot blame me for poor choices. However rough my style, however clumsy my methods, however trivial my observations may later seem to you, I assure you they will all be the genuine expressions of my mind, and I hope that will count for something. Remember that you laid the foundation for this correspondence. You know well that I am neither a philosopher, a politician, a clergyman, nor a naturalist, but simply a farmer. I like to think, therefore, that you will receive my letters as they were conceived: not according to the scientific standards I know nothing about, but in keeping with the natural impressions each subject stirs in me. This is the only approach I am capable of following, the path that nature herself has traced for me. This was the agreement I made with you, and one you seemed genuinely pleased with. If you had wanted the polished style of the learned, the reflections of the patriot, the arguments of the politician, the careful observations of the naturalist, or the refined sensibility of a man of taste, you surely would have turned to one of the many men of letters our cities have in abundance. But since, for whatever reason, you wish to correspond with a tiller of the soil, with an ordinary citizen, you must take my letters as they come.
