Crevecoeur on women and opium

Crevecoeur on women and opium ( Wed, 7 Aug 1996 08:21:11 EDT)

Do anyone know of any scholarly discussion of the following statement by Crevecoeur on women's use of opium in Nantucket (from Letters from an American Farmer of 1782)or, for that matter, on drugs generally in early America?

Jon Butler
jon.butler@yale.edu

I wrote a paper a few years ago on opium in 18th century America, and at that time no recently published scholarly discussions existed. Two points which I deduced and which may be helpful to you were first, that opium was easily available throughout the colonies and was used by or administered to all types and all ages of people for a variety of reasons, not dissimilar to the use of cordials. Second, that the French regarded opium very differently. Although it was a known anodyne, French surgeons stationed here during the Revolutionary War refused to use it on their patients.

If you would like sources or more detail, I'd be happy to share what I found with you. Contact me directly at teden@welchlink.welch.jhu.edu.

Trudy Eden

I hadn't intended that remark to be diminishing. I just meant that it's generally accepted (isn't it?) that Crevecoeur had some messages to deliver, and that in the course of his most effective delivery of those messages he sometimes gave hearsay the status of direct evidence. The slave in the cage is the example I've seen cited most often in support of that.

On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, Everett Emerson wrote:
> I'm curious to know what is meant by Crevecoeur's making it up as he goes
> along. My ten plus years of work on the text of LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
> FARMER have given me much admiration for the man and the writer.
>
> Everett Emerson
>
> On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, David Sloan wrote: >
> >
> > This has been a most informative exchange, and not only on the
<snippet>
> > well. One last point: opportunistic coyotes have now eaten just about
> > every small domesticated animal in my native Topanga Canyon, CA. Animals
> > will go to the food supply.

I don't claim to know other Crevecoeur writings, so perhaps my sample is uncharacteristic, but I find at least the oft-quoted "What is an American" section of #3 of the LETTERS to be readable only as one of the series of fantastic utopian visions that punctuate the history of American political culture--indeed, to say he "made it up" is praise, because it can hardly be taken as empirical description of the society in which he claimed to live. I'd have a hard time attributing even minimal powers of basic perception to a man who could write that European migrants to America had been "so many useless plants," essentially denuded of all culture ("What attachment can a poor European emigrant have for a country where he had nothing?"). (He must be exempting himself, because he was not impoverished back home, for certainly he brings a head-ful of European culture with him!) I suppose the degree to which frontier settlers descend into savagery could be regarded as a legitimate eye-of-the-beholder issue (even if Crevecoeur lies in order to say that HIS father came to the American interior and was somehow safe from that terrible environmental determinism). But can we be expected to take seriously as a cultural reporter a man who thinks that American settlers' attitude toward religious sectarianism was one of utter and universal "indifference" and the cool acceptance of total separation of religion from public life ("each of these people instruct their children as well as they can, but these instructions are feeble" compared to those in Europe. . . .)? (Explain "indifference" to the dissenters who were forced to pay taxes to established churches in many of the colonies!) I'm sure there were many other admirable qualities in the man beyond these astounding blinders, and his writing seems lovely in the translations I've seen. Perhaps I'm being very old-fashioned in assuming that anyone still uses Crevecoeur as a credible observer of British-colonial society. (Sloan finds him "perceptive" about certain issues regarding which I can't judge--I do know farmers who kill wildlife who prey on their domestic animals and don't then in consequence get "ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable"--but maybe they did in the 18th century.)

Patricia Tracy
Williams College

On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, Everett Emerson wrote:
> I'm curious to know what is meant by Crevecoeur's making it up as he goes
> along. My ten plus years of work on the text of LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
> FARMER have given me much admiration for the man and the writer.
>
> Everett Emerson
>
> On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, David Sloan wrote:
>
> >
> > This has been a most informative exchange, and not only on the
> > wolf question: from Stephen Grossbart's response ("Because colonial New
<snippet>,br> > > well. One last point: opportunistic coyotes have now eaten just about
> > every small domesticated animal in my native Topanga Canyon, CA. Animals
> > will go to the food supply.

Is there much point in dissenting from a dismissal of Crevecoeur based only upon an "oft-quoted . . . section of #3 of the LETTERS"? Probably not, but at Scarborough College of the University of Toronto, Arthur Sheps and William Dick assigned a paperback edition of Crevecoeur as one of the required readings for their year-long American history survey. My first year as a T.A., it was a baffling text for novice teacher to discuss with 1st-year students, but soon I found it could be a rewarding text (especially appreciated by the more advanced students with some sophistication in their reading of literature, and those Canadians who were familiar with things French.) I'm glad that my 3 years as a T.A. forced me to read and re-read Crevecoeur's Letters in their entirety (at least in the entirety of the paperback edition we were using -- better ones are now available I think). I learned a great deal while trying to help students grapple with the insights, predispositions, narrative strategems of a literate and sophisticated writer -- and my respect for Crevecoeur has only grown in the ensuing decades. The Letters are not a transparently simple primary source -- but then a historian would have to be careful quoting Faulkner about Mississippi, too.

Jon Kukla

Crevecoeur, like many of his aristocratic French readers, was consumed with Utopian visions about the fulfillment of Republican, enlightened ideals in America. And this, no doubt, led to a certain amount of exaggeration or myopia. Even Crevecoeur's contemporaries recognized this. One of them, the Italian Filippo Mazzei, neighbor and correspondent of Jefferson in Paris, wrote his RECHERCHES HISTORIQUES(1788) with the direct aim--applauded by Jefferson--of correcting the various conjectural histories of America with a more accurate depiction wrote, "I ought to warn the readers of the LETTRES D'UN CULTIVATEUR AMERICAIN to be careful not to imagine that the manners and customs described in that book are general in America." But this does not mean that Crevecoeur knowingly "made up" his facts. Nor does it mean that for a person who grew up in an absolutist monarchy America did not in fact look like a "fantastic utopian vision." It no doubt did, and it did even to Crevecoeur who was one of the few French to write on America who actually visited the country before the Terror. All of this is discussed in Durand Echeverria's MIGAGE IN THE WEST: A HISTORY OF THE FRENCH IMAGE OF AMERICAN SOCIETY TO 1815.

Ed Gray
Chicago, Il.

At 01:35 PM 3/10/97 +0000, you wrote:
>I don't claim to know other Crevecoeur writings, so perhaps my sample is
>uncharacteristic, but I find at least the oft-quoted "What is an American"
<snippet>
>translations I've seen. Perhaps I'm being very old-fashioned in assuming
>that anyone still uses Crevecoeur as a credible observer of
>British-colonial society. (Sloan finds him "perceptive" about certain
>issues regarding which I can't judge--I do know farmers who kill wildlife
>who prey on their domestic animals and don't then in consequence get
>"ferocious, gloomy, and unsociable"--but maybe they did in the 18th
>century.)
>
>Patricia Tracy
>Williams College
>
> On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, Everett
>Emerson wrote:
>
>> I'm curious to know what is meant by Crevecoeur's making it up as he goes
>> along. My ten plus years of work on the text of LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN
>> FARMER have given me much admiration for the man and the writer.
>>
>> On Wed, 5 Mar 1997, David Sloan wrote: >>
>> >
>> > This has been a most informative exchange, and not only on the
>> > wolf question: from Stephen Grossbart's response ("Because colonial New
<snippet>
>> > well. One last point: opportunistic coyotes have now eaten just about
>> > every small domesticated animal in my native Topanga Canyon, CA. Animals
>> > will go to the food supply.

Crevecoeur's comments about religious indifference in colonial and revolutionary America are not as idiosyncratic as they might seem. In Letter III, Crevecoeur discusses "indifference" at some length, and concludes by arguing: "Thus all sects are mixed, as well as all nations; thus religious indifference is imperceptibly disseminated from one end of the continent to the other, which is at present one of the strongest characteristics of the Americans. Where this will reach no one can tell; perhaps it may leave a vacuum fit to receive other systems."

Charles Woodmason, the Anglican itinerant who worked in the Carolina backcountry in the late 1760s, wrote similarly, if scarcely exactly, in commenting on settlers as Lynch's Creek: "They complain'd of being eaten up by Itinerant Teachers, Preachers, and Imposters from New England and Pensylvania--Baptists, New Lights, Presbyterians, Independants, and an hundred other Sects--So that one day you might hear this System of Doctrine--the next day another--next day another, retrograde to both--Thus by the Variety of Taylors who would pretend to know the best fashion in which Christs Coast is to be worn none will put it on--And among the Various Plans of Religion, they are at a Loss which to adapt, and consequently are without any Religion at all." [The Carolina Backcountry on the Eve of the Revolution: The Journal and Other Writings of Charles Woodmason, Anglican Itinerant, ed. Richard J. Hooker (Chapel Hill, 1953), 13.

Jon Butler
American Studies, History, Religious Studies
Yale University

I'm a little slow to respond to Patricia Tracy's comments on Crevecoeur, in part because I could not help supposing believe that some of her comments were so obtuse in order to arouse responses.

In what language does she suppose Crevecoeur wrote when composing LETTERS FROM AN AMERICAN FARMER?

My wife and I are preparing an edition based on the holographs now at the Library of Congress. YES, they were written in English. (To my knowledge there is no English translation of Crevecoeur's FRENCH letters, LETTRES d'un CUTIVATEUR AMERICAIN.) Is she unfamiliar with the familiar fiction of "Letter from," such as Oliver Goldsmith's letters fictionally written by a Chinese visitor? AND there are other rather damning misconceptions among her observations.

Everett Emerson
130 Lake Ellen Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1937
(919) 967-2652

Since I inadvertently set up Crevecoeur for Patricia Tracy's pounding (not, perhaps, as bad as that given by Achilles to the original dead Hector, but bad enough), I'd like to offer a defense of him. The key to his usefulness as a source for the eighteenth century, I think, lies within what Tracy sees as the "astonishing blinders" he seems to be wearing when looking at America. That can be understood in two ways. It is, in part, a gentle yet deliberate chiding of those among his contemporaries who countered the notion of Buffon, et.al., that everything in the New World was fundamentally inferior by making an equally flawed claim: that it was an almost magical environment where all things, even human perfection, were possible. He does this, for example, when he passes on the news that in America there are rattlesnakes that hypnotize their victims from a distance, then strike them at their leisure. I may be wrong (I never saw a Western rattler do that; maybe Eastern rattlers can), but I think that here he is being a French Ben Franklin, assuring Londoners that this unlikely business of whales leaping up Niagara Falls is indeed the truth.

But Crevecoeur is most interesting, and most useful as a window into the world of the eighteenth century cosmopolitans, when he is presenting without any comic intent his American "new man". Unlike so many of the Europeans who used America as a seat for utopias, Crevecoeur had actually been there, and not just on a flying visit. He had lived there a long time. More than that, he'd actually been run out (for suspected Loyalist sympathies) by the very people whom he would persist in idealizing. This is, at the least, evidence of the power of the hope that a person like Crevecoeur could have in the possibility of building the world anew, and as such a valuable glimpse into his mental world. Yet it is more than that as well: that Crevecoeur could hold so firmly to his sense of the difference between what he knew in the Old World and what he encountered in the New--between the French peasant and the America farmer--may show us how hard it is for a resident of the late twentieth century to truly understand the nature of hierarchical deference in the eighteenth.

This discussion has been quite interesting and, I think, illustrative of the perils of interdisciplinary forums! From my seat here in an "English" department, I feel surprised, but intrigued that historians might consider "Letters" a source for the eighteenth century. As Everett Emerson points out, to literary scholars "Letters from" are familiar fictions and some consider Letters itself an epistolary novel.

One of Cre'vecoeur's other French works may be of interest those looking at "Letters" as an eighteenth century source. The preface to "Voyage dans la Haute Pensylvanie et dans l'Etat de New-York" (Paris, 1801) claims that the text is the French translation of an English manuscript found after a shipwreck. Supposed missing pages and illegibilities are noted by the "translator." Nevertheless, "Voyage," like "Letters," contains many autobiographical elements.

Like "Letters", "Voyage" purports to recount the narrator's travels in the colonies. Rather than being epistolary, however, "Voyage" takes the form of a straight travel narrative. See Clarissa Spencer Bostelmann's English translation (U of Michigan P, 1964).

Just a side note: My French is not advanced enough to help me with the later version of "Lettres d'un Cultivatuer Americain", but I understand that it is less hopeful about America. I'd love to hear any thoughts comparing the two versions from those who have read both.

Suzanne R. Begnoche
Department of English
The Pennsylvania State University
University Park, PA 16802
(814) 865-9005

Thank you for the support. There is a French dissertation that presents the English and French texts on facing pages, but only those French letters that correspond to the English are provided. The whole work is splendid. The author is preparing a bibliography of Crevecoeur's PERSONAL letters, to appear in the not distant future in EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE. The edition my wife and I are preparing makes extensive use of the French, which beautifully supplements the English at many points.

Everett Emerson
130 Lake Ellen Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1937
(919) 967-2652

On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Suzanne Begnoche wrote:
> This discussion has been quite interesting and, I think, illustrative of
> the perils of interdisciplinary forums! From my seat here in an "English"
> department, I feel surprised, but intrigued that historians might consider
> "Letters" a source for the eighteenth century. As Everett Emerson points
<snippet>
> Just a side note: My French is not advanced enough to help me with the
> later version of "Lettres d'un Cultivatuer Americain", but I understand
> that it is less hopeful about America. I'd love to hear any thoughts
> comparing the two versions from those who have read both.
>
> Suzanne R. Begnoche

Yes, the framework of Crevecoeur's LETTERS is fictional, but the letters are far more autobiographical than such literary scholars as Larzer Ziff have argued.

In addition, I would draw attention to the great importance of the Nantucket letters, used extensively by historians, and also to Crevecoeur's travels. He prepared a long (extant) "memoire" of a trip he made to the Mississippi (what corresponds to present Missouri) and with his return via Detroit and across upstate New York.

Everett Emerson
130 Lake Ellen Drive
Chapel Hill, NC 27514-1937
(919) 967-2652

On Mon, 17 Mar 1997, Suzanne Begnoche wrote: > This discussion has been quite interesting and, I think, illustrative of
> the perils of interdisciplinary forums! From my seat here in an "English"
> department, I feel surprised, but intrigued that historians might consider
> "Letters" a source for the eighteenth century. As Everett Emerson points
<snippet>
> Just a side note: My French is not advanced enough to help me with the
> later version of "Lettres d'un Cultivatuer Americain", but I understand
> that it is less hopeful about America. I'd love to hear any thoughts
> comparing the two versions from those who have read both.
>
> Suzanne R. Begnoche

To Suzanne Begnoche and others on the Crevecoeur thread:

I've read nearly all of the three-volume 1787 _Lettres d'un Cultivateur Americain_, and can report that it's a fascinating contrast to the better-known English version of the letters. The French version is not simply a translation, for nearly half the material has no equivalent in English and many letters/sketches which are translated have interesting additions and alterations. These changes reveal how astute a manipulator of American dreams and ideologies Crevecoeur was. For example, the sketch "The Frontier Woman" is told by an soldier who restrained other troops from robbing the woman, whose "husband had been a rebel," and taking away her children. The soldier has become contrite, and, like the narrator, deplores the atrocities of the Revolutionary War. But in the French version, an opening paragraph exclaims, as I translate, "What terrible destruction has been caused by the army of General Burgoyne, since his arrival at Ticonderoga...have you heard of the murder of Mademoiselle Macrea?" The general tendancy of the Letters is to sympathize with suspected loyalists who were persecuted by revolutionary commissions. The french Lettres more explicitly invites the reader to sympathize with rebel victims of the English army. Crevecoeur knew how to cater to his readers' most likely sympathies and ideology. The Macrea story (which deserves a thread of its own) is most likely entirely fictional, yet it dramatizes the political conflicts of loyalty and rebellion, and how they were reconfigured in family and romantic affections, better than real events could have.

I would stress that Crevecoeur wrote primarily for a European audience, one which was familiar with literary traditions such as the "Letters from..." genre, the empirical travel narrative, and the colonial promotional tract, but which still read him as we do, ambivalently, neither as factual or fictional. Some reviewers in England of the 1782 Letters expressed anxiety that such books would entice too many commoners to leave England in search of a better life in America! The Lettres contains a series of sketches on most of the thirteen colonies, plus Nova Scotia, Newfoundland, Canada, and Ohio and Kentucky, yet the biographies I have read cannot determine for sure which of these places Crevecoeur actually visited and which he did not. If Crevecoeur couldn't report first hand on places or events, he knew how to write of what people wanted to believe was there, or what they imagined had happened.

I hope that many historians do and will continue to teach Crevecoeur, not as a document on what colonial life was like, but as an instance of how immigration and war are driven by people's imaginations as much as by reality.

Gordon Sayre
Asst. Prof. of English
University of Oregon

To Gordon Sayre and other Crevecoeurians:

I was startled to read in Gordon Sayre's posting that the story of the death of Jane McCrea "is most likely entirely fictional." My understanding -- based almost entirely on discussion of the painting of the subject by John Vanderlyn -- was that many of the specific details were unclear, but that it was based on an actual incident. Is there revisionist literature on this of which I am not aware?

Ken Hafertepe
Historic Deerfield, Inc.
hdacadem@external.umass.edu

>
> To Suzanne Begnoche and others on the Crevecoeur thread:
>
> I've read nearly all of the three-volume 1787 _Lettres d'un Cultivateur
> Americain_, and can report that it's a fascinating contrast to the
> better-known English version of the letters. The French version is terrible
<snippet>
The
> french Lettres more explicitly invites the reader to sympathize with rebel
> victims of the English army. Crevecoeur knew how to cater to his readers'
<snippet>
> I hope that many historians do and will continue to teach
> Crevecoeur, not as a document on what colonial life was like, but as an
> instance of how immigration and war are driven by people's imaginations as
> much as by reality.
>
> Gordon Sayre
> Asst. Prof. of English
> University of Oregon

Just a note to Gordon Sayre and Ken Hafertepe. If you would be interested, I'll search my notes on the matter, though my notes (taken while writing a dissertation related to Barlow back in 81-83) might be, by now, dated. Perhaps my notice here will assist someone else on the list in providing more accurate details.

Regarding the Jane McCrea incident, if I recollect properly, it was indeed an "actual" attack, although it was fictionally revised by many people (both "patriot" and "loyalist") for different reasons. Just for the record--and pardon my working from memory, but my books on these matters are not in the office, where I'm sitting, Joel Barlow treats the incident in _The Vision of

Columbus and The Columbiad. John Vanderlyn's painting of the Death of Jane McCrea_ was originally commissioned while Barlow was abroad, and it was intended to be the illustration from which an engraving would be drawn for The Columbiad, when it was printed (which took much longer than Barlow'd expected). Vanderlyn exhibited the painting, which was well-received, and Barlow ended up dismissing him because he thought Vanderlyn was charging too much for the paintings (four had been commissioned). My recollection is that Barlow included the McCrea episode in a section of the poem dealing with loyalists, but I might be mistaken. It was, if recollection serves, an event that took place in what is now northern New Jersey.

Carla Mulford, English, PennState