The gap this time ...

... is purely from frustration and my reluctance to swear on line.

The problem with Henry is that I never know how far he's bending reality to his own whim (I can't say purpose since it seems unlikely that some of these lies serve no purpose at all) or if it is faulty memory or general cussedness.

Now I have another factor to deal with. It seems that his original ghost writer may have been an active participant (collaborator, victim, or dupe) in some of these events. I was curious the first time his unusual surname cropped up in the book, but it now appears that he must have been well acquainted with Henry and his friends over a long period. This makes me wonder if there is an additional agenda. Is Tash lying about Henry's lies? Is he providing further complexity to obscure other events?

Perhaps that will become more clear as I plow ahead through Tash's turgid text.

In the meantime, the problem I face is trying to find out when or if Henry married Sally Judd. All the records that I've seen suggest that Henry has her father's name wrong, her brother-in-law's name wrong, and the date wrong (child brides were not uncommon and Henry is a reprehensible person, but I still have a hard time believing that he would have married a 12-year-old or that her father would have offered her younger sister in marriage).

Another explanation for my tardy posting is that I have been getting ready for winter. I've stacked a half cord of wood, harvested from the garden ... all those little chores that come with the season.

I've also done quite a bit of reading and have a couple of recommendations for anyone interested in colonial and revolutionary history. Both of these books are surprising since they provide a significantly different view of the period. I spent much of my time going "WHAT!!", "WAITAMINNIT!", and "NO ... Really?".

The first is Eric Burns' "Infamous Scribblers". Burns explains how the lies and misrepresentations of the highly partisan colonial newspapers were just as excessive as the British government's errors in judgment and mistreatment of the colonies. It is a thick read but fascinating, witty, and delightful.

The other book is Sarah Vowell's "The Wordy Shipmates", a cheerful and nicely irreverent view of the puritan settlers. The material is based on their own writings, but Sarah does a bit of interpretation and extrapolation.

As usual there are whiny reviewers on Amazon  kvetching about both of the above books, but there complaints can be summed up as "this book isn't boring enough to be history".

I recommend both of them.

OH! A word to the wise. Amazon sells a number of books that look like paperback reprints of old books but aren't. They are distinguished by their plain black and white covers and low price. In many cases there is no publisher listed.

What you get if you buy these books , at least in my experience, is a book that has been scanned in using OCR but without any quality checking or editing. This results in such horrors as

"COURTSHIP AND MARRIAGE CUSTOMS"

being rendered as

"COUKTSHIP AND MAEEIAGE CUSTOMS".

Other travesties include: "An Extraordinary Cold Storm of TVind and Snow", "alchymyloralcamyne, oca- my", "New England Earities" ... but then there's my favorite:

"Dr.  Uriah Rogers, Jr., of Norwalk County of Fair- field takes this method to acquaint the Publick & particularly such as are desirous of taking the Small Pox by way of Innoculation, that having had Considerable Experience in that Branch of Practice and carried on the same bet season with great Success : has lately a cited a er.$TT::eTit Hospital for thai r:tos just wtxin the Jurisdiction Ioe of the Protinee of Xew York about sine mOes distant from X. T. Harbour where he intends to ... "

Obviously the problem is enhanced by the fact that the books I use often quote heavily from colonial sources with the usual pre-Websterian ingenuity in spelling. Frustrating and irritating as these badly published books are, it is good that most of them are already properly digitized and on line.

So don't waste your money.

Small Clues

Sometimes you just need to let your curiosity loose. I'm working away at Chapter 5 when I find an assumption in the text that a person mentioned got his "just deserts" and that his comeuppance is known well enough not to be further identified. Well ... not to me.

A few minutes of research and I had my answer, and a footnote that will take up 80% of a page. A wonderful and tragic story hidden in an off-hand comment, and, if I hadn't been puzzled enough to do a tiny bit of research, I'd have missed it completely.

Further research to get a few more details revealed an odd knot of interrelationships which caught me completely by surprise. I know these communities were small, but frankly the constant reappearance of certain people is really discombobulating. The name Tash pops up far too often.

Henry's about to marry his second wife without the knowledge of, or divorce from, his first..

Sackcloth and Ashes

I can't believe that I've let the blog lie fallow for so long. I had promised myself to update it daily, and I will try to do so from now on.

My only excuse is that I was over on the other coast for two weeks enjoying the company of children and grandchildren, telling them stories and playing while pretty much ignoring Henry. One of the stories I told will need to be written down soon, since it is entirely my own and it was quite popular with the kids.

Be that as it may, I have grown lax and must reinspire myself.

I am in the middle of Chapter 5 of the narrative and I am delighting in the fact that Henry is failing to recognize an opportunity to go straight with the assistance of a powerful businessman who thinks that Henry, the consummate liar, might make a good salesman.

I'm also in the process of writing a letter of intent that I hope will open the doors of rare book rooms, historical societies, and special collections. There is a meeting of the Salem Historical Society next week and I hope to meet some fanatics there, but most of my hopes are pinned to my requests for access to the American Antiquarian Society, the Boston Public Library's Rare Book Room and a couple of other sun-sources.

As a final note tonight, someone suggested recently that I was doing a disservice to the writing since "back then everybody wrote like that". But that is not true. The florid prose of Henry's narrative was NOT common to the time. One book that is a particular favorite of mine is "The Itinerarium of Doctor Alexander Hamilton". It is the journal of his travels (1624 miles) from May to September of 1744. It is witty and intelligent but it is also simple and clear with none of the ornamentations and complications of the prose used in Henry's tome.

I stand my ground.