The Memoirs of John Andrews, Part 1

I inherited a typescript of the following memoirs written by my great-great grandfather at the request of one of his sons about 1920. John Andrews was born 1 April 1831 near what came to be known as Farmersville, Posey County, Indiana. He lived until 1922, dying at the age of 91 with a clear mind. His memory is remarkable and the details of his early life quite interesting to anyone who is interested in folk history. In transcribing the typescript, I changed punctuation and added words marked with square brackets. I also decided to put notes in square brackets where explanation might be helpful. Here is his story.
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School Days, 1835 to 1850

Procrastination is one of my sins. Had I commenced this memoir when my hand was steady, my eyes clear, and brain active, it is possible I could have made it interesting to those who desire to read it, and surely it would have been more pleasant to write it.

Folk portrait of sister and brother in 1840

I was born on the first day of April 1831. My sister Harriet was born some 19 months later. An older sister had passed away before or soon after my birth. My sister [Harriet] was afflicted with some trouble pertaining to female childhood, I know not what, and Father had a little wagon made, and a maid in Mother’s employ was accustomed to pull her about in it, and my first distinct memory was accompanying [them], trudging along beside. I was probably between three and four years old.

[John’s sister Ann was 20 months old when John was born and nearly 3 when she died 17 July 1832. Harriet was 18 months younger than John. Brother Seth was born when John was a month shy of 6 years old. The family lived in Posey County, at the southern tip of Indiana.]

I have no memory when I learned to read or when I first went to school, but it was surely long before a child would be enrolled as a scholar now. But I have a distinct memory of my first school and of some incidents that occurred there, and of my first teacher. I was perhaps between four or five years; the school house was heated by a large open stove. A lot of the little fellows like myself sitting around it dangling our feet from backless benches, when one day the teacher called me out and with a flat ruler in his hand took one of my hands and gave me three spats in my palm, the only time I was ever chastised in school. Why he did it, I never knew, some boyish squabble perhaps. I was too spunky to cry but turned with a smile to my grinning companions.

After two years this teacher, whose name was Felsch, left, [and] another took his place. This was many years before free schools came; the county was divided into districts with trustees to employ teachers and see to other necessary details. Often it would be only for three months. That was a term and sometimes that was the limit for school that year. If the teacher gave satisfaction he would be retained longer. Parents or guardians paid a stipulated price for each scholar enrolled. Thus my schooling went on until I was nine years old, except what Father and Mother taught me in the meantime. About this time my sister had fully regained her health, and having an active mind, our study in some branches was the same in after years. Father had taught me English grammar and I never studied it in school. In fact some of my early teachers could teach only reading, writing, and spelling.

In my sixth year Father became guardian to a cousin, Clark Butler, 4 years my senior, and after a few years we pursued the same studies together.

When I was nine years old we had a teacher for two or three terms who apparently found it necessary to instill knowledge into our youthful brains by the application of long hickory switches to wake up our dullard minds, and there were some who often felt its tingling over their shoulders. Whether it was that I was smarter than some of those who quite often had a taste of the gad, it never fell on me, but an occasional twist of the ears was the extent of my punishment.

One of the duties of the teachers in those days was to convert goose quills into pens and keep them in repair until worn out and exchanged. It is likely that the Declaration of Independence was written with the quill and perhaps also the Constitution was thus transcribed, and would it not be in harmony and justly so if the emancipation of four million slaves accomplished by the pen of Abe Lincoln, had been written by this agency? But this is perhaps a vain hope as metallic pens had then taken the place in the march of progress of the feathery quill. It is said that the cackling of geese once saved Rome. So the goose has played its part in human progress. This is wandering, yet sometimes it is pleasant to step aside from the main line and cull a flower from the fragrant bloom by the roadside.

An incident during this term of school that likely, subconsciously at least, had quite an influence on my life—in the study of arithmetic I had reached vulgar fractions and a problem soon appeared that at first appeared beyond my ability to solve. After some effort to do so I sought the aid of the teacher. Whether he would not or could not explain it I do not know. He had a key—a duplicate of the arithmetic with the examples explained—and probably this one was not included. Anyway after several attempts failed to get help, I determined myself to solve it. I worked at it for one week, and behold it was accomplished. Fractions had no more terrors for me.

This teacher was sued by the father of one of the boys he had severely thrashed and was fined one cent. Soon after that a school meeting was called and it proved a stormy one, and that night the school house burned down, whether by accident or design was not known.

After the burning of the school house, school was kept for a while in a vacant house on our farm and later in a church nearby. But conditions did not suit Father and soon after the fiasco, he took my cousin Clark and me to a school in Mount Vernon. It was several years before we attended the home school again. It was now 1841, I was ten years old. We found the school in Mount Vernon on our advent there kept in an old one room building packed full of scholars, but room was made for us. The first day was an epoch in my life—everyone but Clark perfect strangers, as was the teacher. Our studies were designated and no doubt we “Country Jakes” had the benefit of many sinister smiles and whispered jibes. The day passed. Just as the sun was preparing to don his night robes I was called up and given an example to demonstrate on the black board. It was my first appearance before that august body and my futile attempt to erase an example with my hand raised a snicker. That put the “ginger” in me. I found the sponge, cleared the board and my example soon took the place of the one obliterated. Soon school was dismissed. Darkness was stealing over the earth, and we had 3½ miles to foot it home.

Clark and I soon got in the stride and nervousness soon wore off in school, and on the playground we were accepted as good fellows.

Our teacher here was a well-educated man and as Father wished us to take Latin as one of our studies, soon we were conjugating amo and declining penna through its alternating changes from nominative to ablative. In addition we had geometry hitched on to our arithmetic. As we were put in classes we were behind in some of them and it was hard to catch up.

When we entered this school the town was building a brick two story house which they called “The Seminary,” and as soon as it was finished we moved from our crowded room to a commodious one on the second floor of this building. The Seminary was situated on rising ground on the northern end of the town which shortened our daily walk one-half mile each way. The school room was a fine one, fitted up with seats and desks for two, and heated in winter by a fireplace in one end and a stove in the middle. There was a small recitation room that was used also for storing our wraps, etc. The morning session commenced with reading by turns a chapter in the Bible and prayer by the teacher.

Original Mount Vernon Seminary, 204 F Street, NW

It was the winter term of 1841 that we entered there. It was the boys’ job to sweep, make fires, etc. in turn. In winter Clark and I had to be on the road by seven o’clock, and when our turn came to sweep and fire up, we had to start earlier, and after reaching the building one of us had to go one-half mile to get the key. In the short days of winter the stars would be showing, but if it were not raining a short hour would bring us home to a glorious feast of rich corn bread that Mother knew well how to make, baked in a skillet before the open fire, covered with a lid and red hot coals raked out from a generous fire on top, and underneath. When we reached home wet to the skin, as sometimes we did, that corn bread and a rich bowl of milk made a feast for the gods. This was before the advent of the cook stove. There was a large oven built at the side of the large fire place that Mother used for white bread, pastry, etc.

The teacher here was named Knap. A part of the routine of school work was declamation and composition on alternate Friday afternoons. The boys had to go up on the elevated stand, face the audience and deliver an oration. This at first was a fearful experience, but I soon got so that I enjoyed the situation. The girls as well as boys had to hand in compositions for correction.

Winter passed, spring and summer came and went once, twice, and a new teacher named Collins was installed with his wife as assistant. I turned 14 in 1845. This year sister Harriet was taken out of the home school and went with us to Mount Vernon during summer. We all rode back and forth in a buggy, and after that Harriet and a cousin named Sophronia Phillips (an aunt of Flora) who had lived with us for some time were boarded near the school.

Having now reached the age to help on the farm my studies through the summer were much broken up.

Schoolhouse in Farmersville, sketch by Anne Doane

In the meantime a new schoolhouse was built on the site of the burned one in Farmersville, and fitted with seats and desks, it was a great improvement over the old arrangement. Having secured the services of Mr. Welche for the new school, we never returned to Mount Vernon.

In 1846 the war with Mexico began and a number of my acquaintances volunteered and went, but all of them that I knew except one, who died there, returned. The organizing of a company and a regiment in Mt. Vernon made quite a stir. I do not know that this regiment ever was in battle, but the second in command, Alvin P. Hovey, was afterwards made Brigadier General under Grant at Vicksburg, and afterwards he was Governor of Indiana. He was a native of Posey County. [More information about Posey County military matters and Alvin P. Hovey can be found at this website.]

I was 16 now—I worked on the farm summers and went to school in winter.

This fall we had a new teacher by the name of P.K. Dibbler, and in one respect he was the best I ever had—and he had a crowded school. Quite a number of pupils from a distance took advantage of the opportunity as it was better than they could get at home, although they had to pay extra. He was also a preacher. His salary of 400 dollars was considerably increased by his preaching and outside students. He was an athlete and enjoyed the playground as much as the boys, and this added to his favor with most of the boys. But there was always carping then, and before his time expired there was trouble. He was accused of partiality by some and a hot fight—verbal—took place. As a result, at the end of his second term he quit teaching and went into other business.

Yet there was an episode in this last term perhaps worth recording. The schoolhouse was on a large corner lot and as the national holiday was near at hand, it was decided to have a celebration. The house had two front doors, one for the boys and one for the girls, and in front we built a stage, and with a bolt of domestic [a length of cotton cloth] we made a large awning, and in front we arranged tables and prepared eatables. After some songs by Clark, who was a good singer, I was called on to read the immortal Declaration, and then Mr. Dibbler gave a patriotic address. We enjoyed the feast. The platform in front was for staging a play at night. The house doors behind made a convenient dressing and retiring room. I do not remember what the play was, but we had to have a darky [a common term then that we do not endorse now] and we had a good substitute in one of the boys, and a few girls were included. A number of my old schoolmates from the Mt. Vernon school came out, and as the patriotic fever increased some were induced to declaim their former school orations.

On the whole it was a success and well done. This ended Mr. Dibbler’s term, but he was followed by another well-educated man, by name Murry, and I passed the next winter in school attending two terms of three months each.

About this time, 1848, the discovery of gold in California became for a time the absorbing topic, and in the following year the gold fever raged all over the land, as bad as the late epidemic of flu—a very poor comparison. [He was writing this just after the 1918 influenza pandemic.] A company was organized at Farmersville and some others in the county. Ox and mule teams were secured, large wagons prepared and in due time joined the long trail across the plains. Six months passed ere they reached the gold mines. Many of the animals died, and on the whole not a few of the men and women. A sad ending to many.

A few months later quite a large company went via Panama and were becalmed at Acapulco for several months, but they reached the end after five months. Many were financed, the option a divide of one half of the proceeds. Generally they secured enough to pay expenses and some over, but very few made any very rich strikes. Some returned after two or three years, others made California their home. In another place some of the gold digging will be specialized.

In 1850 a Mr. Howard, a highly educated man, found his way to Farmersville. He had a wife and 10 year old boy. He bought a large lot on which was a very nice cottage and a large shop. But all his life he had been a scholar and a teacher, with an intimate knowledge of Latin and Greek. He was as ignorant of the proper application of labor to get results from either land or machines. They brought all the way from England a lot of tools where better could have been had here. I helped him some in his planting, his little haying, etc. He had a horse that had not been used much and I think he had never graduated in horse handling as there is no doubt he had in Greek. In the fall of 1850 he was hired to teach the winter school, and that was a job he was surely able to do. He was a scholar, an expert in many branches, a wonderful penman, and in drawing, the picture of any article in view came out at the end of his pencil.

One bright winter morning soon after school opening, a girl came in with a bright smile and elastic step and seated herself by my sister Harriet. I was soon attracted by her handsome appearance, the bright eyes illuminating a very intelligent countenance. At the time I thought her to be some fifteen or sixteen years old, but long years after that I found out she had outstripped her age by several years in height. [The girl was just 10 years old at the time.] After a while I became interested in and inquired her name and obtained it from my seat mate. I also noticed that Mr. Howard was soon attracted to her, giving especial attention that looked very much like partiality. One of the studies she essayed as well as some of the rest of us was drawing. I do not think any of us would ever have produced or created any remarkable result in that direction, but from opportunity to see some of her work afterwards, I am very sure she would never have been able to astound the world with any artistic delineation, and would say here that none of the rest of us would have achieved immortality in that line and for that matter in any other.

What was the attraction that led Mr. Howard from London to Indiana I never knew. He seemed very satisfied with the change and cheerfully accepted the conditions he encountered. He and Father were congenial and often met in social intercourse. He taught but one term there but in the fall following he secured a situation in a military school in Kentucky and soon after left for that purpose. Some correspondence was kept up for a time but afterwards he was changed from the Kentucky Academy to Washington, and now we will bid him good-bye. We heard of him quite often for some time.

By this time I had learned [that] the name of the young miss specialized was Mirinda Piper and that her father was a Baptist minister who I had heard a number of times. He had a circle of churches in his charge, visiting each monthly with two day services Saturday and Sunday. Here I will note what will seem odd, especially in the cities—that the country churches then had two front doors and one back door, and as the congregation arrived, the men entered one door and women the other and took seats apart. In case one wished to leave, as was often the case in the prolonged service, they had the back door by which to escape without disturbing the audience. About the time referred to, Mr. Piper’s congregation, through his supervision, built quite a large building for that time and fashioned as above specified.

The interest Mirinda had aroused in my mind continued, and in later years continued in a union of interests via marriage, and for more than sixty years through sunshine and storm, we have happily passed. We have been blessed with three noble boys, two of whom now minister to our wants and comforts.

Here is Part 2 of the Memoirs of John Andrews.

The Clues to The Murder of Roger Ackroyd

Agatha Christie’s tour de force The Murder of Roger Ackroyd has been acclaimed since its 1926 publication for its ingenious way of concealing the criminal while laying every single obvious clue out on the table for the reader to consider, and if as ingenious as the author, to interpret rightly to identify the killer. That most readers fail to do so is a testament to her skill.

If you have not read the book, you might not want to spoil it by reading this essay. The book really is a gauntlet thrown down to all readers who think they are clever, to ask them to behave with honesty and read without peeking, without looking anything up, without doing anything but considering the clues in the text of the novel as the author meant them to be seen, and to figure everything out before the end of the novel.

I did not figure it out until nearly the end, but in rereading the novel lately, I discovered to my chagrin that everything I needed to know was given me as early as chapter 4, when the murder actually occurs. Here’s what I thought were the telling clues.

In chapter 1, Dr. Sheppard and his sister Caroline discuss the death of Mrs. Ferrars. Caroline is introduced disparagingly as an unregenerate snoop, in terms that immediately seek to engage the sympathy of the reader against her as a reliable witness. The doctor is given the sympathetic treatment, narrating in the first person, but a curious pattern emerges from their interchange. Dr. Sheppard says, “I have got into the habit of continually withholding all information possible from my sister,” a statement we should immediately consider carefully as we should notice when they have finished their conversation that he has told us nothing but what Caroline has forced him to tell. He tries to convince us that Caroline is wrong about Mrs. Ferrars poisoning her husband before he reveals to us that Mrs. Ferrars died of an overdose of veronel, which she possibly took on purpose. He either counters or disparages all of Caroline’s statements of fact or deductions from the facts. The first four pages of the novel consist of one narrative being denied credibility by the second narrative, and astonishingly the narrator admits at the end of the chapter that the unreliable witness is likely telling the truth, but he has done his work so well that we don’t even notice his concession by that point. We feel that Caroline’s words are questionable at best. If we had read more carefully, we would know at the end of chapter 1 that the doctor is an unreliable narrator who seeks to withhold the truth from everyone, not just Caroline. But we are flattered into thinking we are in the doctor’s confidence.

During chapter 2 the doctor reveals something that will be very important shortly: “I had no cases of special interest to attend, which was, perhaps, as well . . . .” This means he was free to come and go as he chose, and that’s an important consideration when he uses the excuse of a tricky confinement coming up to explain why in chapter 4 he took his black bag to the dinner at the Ackroyd’s. From those two little statements we learn that the doctor is not above lying, perhaps telling the little white lies, but lying to cover up his true motives. We ought to be very much on our guard and suspicious of everything he says. In chapter 7 he again reiterates that he had no pressing cases—so we learn that the confinement was definitely a lie.

Also in chapter 2, there’s an important syntactical clue. In discussing Mrs. Ferrars, he says, “When had I last seen her? Not for over a week. Her manner then had been normal enough considering—well considering everything.” That dash. The repetition of “considering.” The vague and tantalizing word “everything.” This is a huge clue that the doctor is hiding very significant pieces of information from us as well as from Caroline. As the doctor of the woman who just died, he is the one person who could have been expected to know for certain what the woman died of, how she possibly took the drug, and should have been able to guess why if he didn’t actually know already.

Chapter 3 introduces Hercule Poirot to the cast of characters of this novel. It’s a comic presentation, with Poirot angrily throwing a vegetable marrow [a zucchini squash to those in the U.S.] over the fence and nearly hitting the doctor, and the subsequent scene highlighting Poirot’s comic idiosyncrasies. It has the effect of mitigating the mass of important information we should have been analyzing in the first two chapters. It’s a masterful distraction in the hands of a master at sleight-of-hand. And it includes a very important clue to the doctor’s motivation. He says he received a legacy about a year ago and that he lost it in financial speculation of a type that Poirot associates with his gullible friend Hastings. We don’t see any other evidence of the doctor’s character flaw except this—his confession that he is greedy. The reference to Captain Hastings is another distraction from the point. We think fondly of Hastings and fail to consider that this Dr. Sheppard could be badly greedy, not comically gullible.

Had we not been so easily distracted, when in chapter 4 Roger Ackroyd reveals to Dr. Sheppard that Mrs. Ferrars was being blackmailed by someone close by, we might have wondered about Dr. Sheppard’s “legacy” and greed. We might have wondered about his grudging admission that Caroline was right about most things, including that Mrs. Ferrars poisoned her husband and then committed suicide because of it. We might have realized that if he had been holding back vital information from us, why wouldn’t he hold it back from Roger Ackroyd? We might have realized that the most logical person to be in the position to blackmail Mrs. Ferrars was the doctor himself.

And then we might have wondered about the clever omission the doctor practices in chapter 4: “The letter had been brought in at twenty minutes to nine. It was just on ten minutes to nine when I left him, the letter still unread. I hesitated with my hand on the door handle, looking back and wondering if there was anything I had left undone. I could think of nothing. With a shake of the head I passed out and closed the door behind me.” Not only does he pass over how he left Roger Ackroyd, he provides a subtle clue by changing from active voice to passive and back to active again when the dangerous part has been described in vague terms. In addition, he should have been using the subjunctive mood for his wonder, but he uses the indicative instead. Is this another clue that what happened was something not in the realms of the subjunctive, but of deadly reality? I think we can take it as fact.

The next number of chapters expand all the red herrings to full size and obscure our views of what occurred.

In case we have been confused, in chapter 17 Agatha Christie clearly has Poirot answer Caroline Sheppard’s assertion that her brother James is fundamentally a weak person with a complete summary of the case for James being the murderer. Most readers have by this time been blinded by the Ralph Paton red herring and think that Poirot is talking about Ralph. But here is what Poirot proposes to the siblings:

“Let us take a man—a very ordinary man. A man with no idea of murder in his heart. There is in him somewhere a strain of weakness—deep down. It has so far never been called into play. Perhaps it never will be—and if so he will go to his grave honored and respected by every one. But let us suppose that something occurs. He is in difficulties—or perhaps not that even. He may stumble by accident on a secret—a secret involving life or death to some one. And his first impulse will be to speak out—to do his duty as an honest citizen. And then the strain of weakness tells. Here is a chance of money—a great amount of money. He wants money—he desires it—and it is so easy. He has to do nothing for it—just keep silence. That is the beginning. The desire for money grows. He must have more—and more! He is intoxicated by the gold mine which has opened at his feet. He becomes greedy. And in his greed he overreaches himself. One can press a man as far as one likes—but with a woman one must not press too far. . . . . And so there came your proverb, the death of the goose that laid the golden eggs. But that is not the end. Exposure faced the man of whom we are speaking. And he is not the same man he was—say, a year ago. His moral fiber is blunted. He is desperate. He is fighting a losing battle, and he is prepared to take any means that come to his hand, for exposure means ruin to him. And so—the dagger strikes!”

Finally, if we still have been blinded by all the subterfuge in the masterful organization and power of language of the great mystery author, she gives us a conclusive clue before Poirot convenes all the suspects. In chapter 23 when he tells Caroline and James that he knows who did the deed, he refuses to allow Caroline to come to his house to see him unmask the killer. He gives the clumsy excuse that the killer will be there, and he does not want her to see—but he allows many other innocent people to come too. The only possible reason for excluding Caroline is that Poirot mercifully does not want her to have to find out about her brother that way. Meanwhile, in James Sheppard’s cruel style, he compares his sister standing on the doorstep watching them go to a dog that has been denied a walk. If we ever felt sympathy for him, we should have stopped at last at that sentence.

These clues presented to us by the novelist create a much different line of logical deduction than that presented by Hercule Poirot in chapters 25 and 26 when he explains how he figured things out. He targets the time difference in James Sheppard’s narrative as being his first solid clue. Dr. Sheppard said that he left the Ackroyd house at exactly 9, hearing the church clock strike. But then he took a full ten minutes to walk a distance that could be covered in two or three minutes easily. From that discrepancy, Poirot notes that two facts contain the key to the identity of the murderer: the fact that there was a telephone call to the doctor to tell him of the death of Roger Ackroyd, and the fact that the high-backed grandfather chair had been pulled out from the wall to obscure the table by the window in the study where Roger Ackroyd died, and nobody confessed to moving it out or moving it back in place.

Putting those facts together with the knowledge that Dr. Sheppard visited Ralph Paton twice, that Ralph Paton turned out to be married to the parlor maid Ursula Bourne, that Flora Ackroyd never entered the study, and that a salesman offered a dictaphone to Roger Ackroyd recently, Poirot puts together the complete puzzle.

But did we readers get it before he presents it to us? We might have “got it” within the final three chapters. But I wonder how many readers honestly saw the light long before poor Caroline was left on that doorstep.

Mr Newel’s House, or Turn Off Your Spell Check—It’s 1745!

I found among my father’s papers a typed transcript my great-grandfather financed of a very old book of records of the proceedings of the town of New Cambridge, Connecticut, from the 1740s through the 1820s. Transcribing the typed transcript for the internet appealed to me, but it is proving to be more challenging than I thought since of course spelling was not standardized until almost a hundred years later, and the different town clerks were creative to say the least.

There are several entertaining vignettes here. One of the first things they did after breaking away from Farmington was to debate and vote again and again on hiring a minister for their “society” as they called the town. A Mr. Samuel Newell was chosen, but the protests of the minority of voting members stalled the conclusion of this matter for several years. Finally, after a number of the dissenters formally declared their allegiance to the Church of England, the matter seemed settled. Here is part of what they contracted with Mr. Newell after he had accepted the job.
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We the subscribers ebnezer hamblin leu sam^ll gaylord ens edward gaylord being inhabitants of new Cambridge the fourth sosiaty of the Town of farmington and being chosen and impowrd by an act and vote of the inhabitants of new Cambridge at an ajornd meeting holden in new Cambridge above s^d on the 20 day of July Ad 1747 do? for and in the behalf of such inhabitants of s^d sosiaty as are lawful voters and have power and authority to make such contracts and agreements joynety and severelly Bind and oblige ourselves our executors administors and assigns to pay and satisfie to mr sam^ll Newel to his executors &c the ful and just sum of one thousand pound in Bills of Credit of this Coleny in old tener at or before the first day of october A d 1749 for and in consideration of his contracting with us to be and his becoming our gospel minister & the duty and respect due to him as such and for his setelment amongst us
N. B. The Condishon of this obligation is such that if the above s^d ebnezer hamblin leu sam^ll gaylord edward gaylord shall within the space of one year and two Monuth from the day above of these presnce in good workman like maner erect build and set up one new tenement and dwelling house for the s^d mr sam^ll newel upon his land in new Cambridge whare he shall direct of thirty eight feet long and 23 feet wide and sixteen feet and half between joynts with a lintow ajoyning the back side 20 feet long and six feet wide containing five rooms below and shall workmanlike finish the lower rooms in the maner following viz well ceil the dwelling room and make sutiabel cobard and shelves for such rooms and lath plaster and whitewash the paler and bed rooms side and over head makeing all sutiabl convenant good and work manlike doors and partions suler? and chamber stars and dig and stone and a proper celler at lest sevin feet deep from the lower floor and the bignes of one end of the house from the chimny and in good and workman like maner Build and paint a stack of chimnys consisting of 3 funels from the botom and 2 more begining at the chambers making at least 2 brick ovens of a sutiabel bigness and in workmanlike maner make the window frams and shashes and glass for the whole house viz nine windows? consisting of 24 squairs of glass 6 and 8 size and one of eighteen squairs and seven with 12 of the same size and this is to be done by the later end of September A d 1749 and that they the s^d Ebnezer hamblin sam^ll gaylord edward gaylord thir excrs adm’r and asigns shall find and provide at thir own cost and charge all and all maner of timber stone brick laths Nails Iron glass lime clay sand and all other Materials whatsoever shall be fit and nesesery to be usd in and about s^d Building and they so doing in maner and by the time above s^d shall be quit of the above s^d writen bond and oblygation otherwise it is to stand in ful force and Vertue & signed deliverd this 20 day of July A d 1747

                             hez Rew                    ebnezer hamblin

                             gershan tuttel          sam^ll gaylord

                                                                 edward gaylord

Probably leu means Samuel Gaylord was a lieutenant, and for his brother Edward, ens probably means Ensign. Remember that in those days the only lawful voters were men over age 21 who owned land.

Bills of credit of this colony remind us that every colony in America issued its own currency, although they all followed the basic English system of pounds, shillings, and pence (not the modern decimal system though). Some further research turns up the possibility that these bills of credit were not worth the same face value as actual money. They may be worth up to a third less.

The meaning of old tener referred to the fact that English money had recently (in 1717) been revalued and put on a gold standard after international trade imbalances and problems with the Royal Mint had resulted in low levels of sterling silver in the country. Apparently the colony of Connecticut was resisting the change to some degree. Were the colonies always somewhat in revolt? Probably!

Consider Mr. Newell and his compensation for the job of preaching. He gets a nice little five-room house with a lean-to on the back, a stone-lined cellar, staircases to the upper floor and to the cellar, and chimneys with fireplaces large enough for cooking in, let alone those nine glass windows, something of a luxury. Besides the house, he gets grain to sell or consume and firewood to heat his house (those details are in the meeting minutes, not in this letter of contract; I’m not sure why, or whether there was another contract they didn’t copy into the book). Additionally, Mr. Newell gets a thousand pounds for the next couple of years’ worth of other expenses. In today’s money, that’d be somewhere around $200,000, but these are bills of credit, which probably reduces the value by as much as two thirds, to between $65,000 and $70,000. Still, not a bad pay package!

But considering that he had to deliver those good old hellfire-and-damnation sermons that seemed to be the popular thing in 18th-century America every Sunday of the year, I don’t envy him the house and grain and firewood and money . . .

Not to mention that I get spell check.

House built in then-New Cambridge for my distant kinsman Thomas Barnes, 1748

How Did the Barnes and Bedell Families Cross Again?

A few years ago I ran across a letter written to my 3rd-great grandmother about a scandal in the Barnes family, the family my grandmother was going to marry into. What happened was that one of the younger Barnes sisters, Eliza, had a fling with an older sister’s husband, a man named Henry Bedell, and a daughter was born to Eliza in October 1848. The older sister, Harriet, died four years after the scandal, still childless, and valiantly endeavoring in her letters to sound full of forgiveness and love and perseverance. I hope she had some happiness in her life!

Eliza married when her daughter was 15 years old. The husband gave his surname to the young girl, but the girl put Barnes down for her own maiden name when she herself married seven years after that.

Henry Bedell, meanwhile, had paid off Eliza and had nothing to do with his daughter, ever. After his wife died, Henry married again the next year and had a son named Henry Luzerne Bedell in 1855, and a daughter named Mary Eloise Bedell in 1862.

Fine. But in researching the rest of the Barnes siblings and what happened to them, I found that one of the Barnes brothers had a daughter whose death certificate was signed by “Mrs. Seth Bedell” of the same little town in Ohio as the Bedells almost a hundred years before. Were they related? Did they remember the scandal between the Bedells and Barnes families? How did this come about?

Back to that original Barnes family. Besides Harriet and Eliza, there were five other sisters and three brothers. One brother, Nathaniel Alverson Barnes, married a woman named Rosina Howard in early January 1843. Their first child, Martha, was born in early December of the same year. Their second child, Byron Johnson Barnes, was born in the spring of 1846, and then they didn’t have another child for fifteen years. Their two younger daughters were born in January 1861 and July 1863—they were Elizabeth Jane, called Lizzie, and Harriet Mary, called Hattie.

The eldest, Martha, married Andrew J Hatch in early May 1862, which at that time was considered late since a daughter was born four months later.

The 1870 Census shows the Barnes family living in Orwell township, out in the country where Nathaniel was farming. A family of Bedells were their neighbors—Martin and Amanda and their young children. Ten years later the Bedells had a “caboose”—a five-year-old son named Seth. In 1880 Lizzie was 19 and Hattie was 16. They and their older brother Byron, a carpenter, were still living with their parents.

The Martha Barnes Hatch family grew and grew. They had Lottie in 1862, Clara in 1864, Allen in 1868, Howard Andrew (or vice versa, as he changed his name) in 1870, Roy in 1874, Cornelia in 1879, and Rosina Susan (who also switched her name around to Susan Rosina) in 1882.

The 20th century censuses of 1900 through 1940 show the two single Barnes sisters living together in a house on North Maple Street, but not one with a house number, so it’s probably still considered to be out in the country. They are employed as dressmakers at a shop in town until they are too old to work any longer. Hattie died in November 1939, and Lizzie three years later.

Martha’s daughter Cornelia married that young Bedell neighbor, Seth, on June 28, 1900. She must have been close to her maiden aunties, Lizzie and Hattie. She is the one who signed Lizzie’s death certificate, and it is interesting how carefully she supplied every piece of information about Lizzie’s life and family and heritage. That’s why I think she loved her auntie.

Too bad she had only sons and couldn’t name a daughter after Lizzie or Hattie.

It is worth noting that there were no Henrys in this Bedell family branch. The two Bedell families came from New York and were living in the same little town in Ohio from the 1830s onward, so probably they were related. Seth’s great-uncle is mentioned in several of the letters that I inherited from that 3rd-great grandmother who became Julia Barnes. Uncle Lepper Bedell was one of Julia’s suitors until Truman Barnes won out.

What goes around comes around—in family names too, it seems.

Here is a letter written by Caroline Jane Palmer Alderman to her sister Julia Esalina Palmer (later Barnes) on April 2, 1848. Lepper Bedell is mentioned on the last line of the first page continuing to the first couple lines on the second page. If you’re on a computer, click to make the letter big enough to read it.

Dismay at Cards on the Table

I have not been able to write for a few weeks due to the illness of one of my household members; but things are looking up and I am anxious to get back to writing!

I was going to watch Agatha Christie’s Poirot: Cards on the Table again, but I made the mistake of rereading the book, and remembering some of the changes the screenwriter had made, I looked up several reviews. Nope. Can’t watch this again after all, at least not yet.

If this were another group of characters, if there were no Poirot involved, it might have worked. The movie isn’t bad as a piece of modern cinema. But this is Agatha Christie, and this is her oddball detective whose passion is for order, symmetry, and method of using those little grey cells. This is the Christie world. The movie doesn’t quite create the right atmosphere.

It is supposed to be the ultimate locked room mystery, with perfect symmetry as a feature that honors one of Poirot’s major idiosyncrasies. There is a party with eight guests. Four are detectives; four are probable murderers. Mr. Shaitana, the rich and eccentric host, hopes to be the catalyst for catching at least one of the murderers and bringing the recreant to justice.

In the novel, he is not expecting to be murdered. In the movie, he is, which is an okay change, just a little odd. His character doesn’t seem to be suicidal to me.

Symmetry is important to the story as Agatha Christie envisioned it, as I said. Her initial opposition has four sleuths against four suspects. She twists and turns the story so that symmetry is intact throughout, from the roles the characters play to the justice they mete or meet.

By the end of the book, the four suspects are revealed as three villains and one victimized romantic hero. The sleuths are revealed as three detectives and one satiric fraud of a sleuth. The three villains all meet justice in the form of death for committing murder. One suspect turns out to be other than a villain, with light satire involved.

The movie alters the symmetry by altering the characters’ story lines.

Superintendent Battle becomes Superintendent Wheeler, and furthermore he becomes a homosexual who has been photographed in compromising positions. Mr Shaitana has the photographs; thus Wheeler is a suspect himself. Given that the setting is the 1930s, homosexuality was not only outlawed in Britain, but if it became known, it would definitely end Wheeler’s career, as at this period of time there were highly conflicting attitudes toward gays. Rich aristocrats could just barely afford to be known or suspected of being gay, as long as they did not make a spectacle about it. Avant garde artists and theatrical types could get away with it. Not so a police superintendent who was expected to uphold the law. This change in the character of one of the sleuths destroys the initial symmetry of having four law-abiding detectives in opposition to four suspects. It also alters the later symmetry.

Anne Meredith in the movie becomes an innocent woman whose roommate Rhoda committed the murder of a former employer, of which Anne was suspected. Anne survives a drowning attack by Rhoda whose homosexual attraction to Anne is the motive. This is nearly opposite of what was true in the book. Agatha Christie wrote Anne as a murderer who tries to drown Rhoda due to jealousy over Major Despard, to whom both young women are attracted. Murderer Anne in the book gets the justice due her by drowning in her attempt to kill Rhoda. But in the movie it is Rhoda who dies in the drowning incident, and Anne is saved by Major Despard. Thus the movie has Anne being completely innocent. But with Anne being the character at the original card party and Rhoda offstage until later, the symmetry is hugely altered in the movie.

Before we analyze the results to the symmetry, we need to look at more changes.

Mrs. Lorrimer, another of the suspects at the card party, in both book and movie is a murderer of her husband. In the book she is found out by Poirot only because she confesses before she herself is killed by Dr. Roberts. Thus justice catches up with her. In the movie she is made out to be the mother of Anne Meredith who wants her daughter’s life not to be ruined, so she confesses to the murder of Mr. Shaitana to save Anne, whom she thinks guilty. She is supposed to be suffering from a fatal illness in the book before she was killed; I can’t remember whether the movie had her be fatally ill. But in the movie she seems to be excused for killing her husband.

Dr. Roberts of the book is a womanizer. He has had an affair with one of his patients, Mrs. Craddock, and this leads to him killing her husband and then her to avoid a nasty scandal. In the movie this is changed to his having had an affair with Mr. Craddock, but the effect is the same.

I wonder why the screenwriter chose to put so many homosexual affairs in one movie among so few people. I don’t care particularly if characters are gay or not, but this is Agatha Christie, and it feels out of place. Of course this was not unknown at the time, but she didn’t write these characters this way and I can’t see what the point was to make all the villains into gay people. It certainly doesn’t do a thing toward advancing the cause of acceptance for gay people to make them all twisted villains.

Roberts is the murderer of Shaitana in both the book and the movie, but the weapon is changed, again, seemingly pointlessly. What was the purpose? And Roberts does not kill Mrs. Lorrimer in the movie. Why not?

Only Major Despard of the suspects turns out to be totally innocent in both book and movie. You could argue that changing one of the sleuths in the movie to a suspect (Supt. Wheeler) actually preserved the symmetry, but this is not so, because two suspects are innocent in the movie: Major Despard and Anne Meredith.

But here is another element: this is the book in which Ariadne Oliver is introduced, the murder mystery author who is included as one of the sleuths. But is she really a sleuth? Agatha Christie, creating her own alter ego, ruthlessly skewers Mrs. Oliver with the ironic characteristic that she operates not on logical principles, but on intuition. However does she write successful murder mysteries? It doesn’t matter; she is essentially a comic character and we love her eccentricities. But she is not really a sleuth—she is a fraud, shown ruthlessly by Poirot to be entirely wrong in all her deductions. Nevertheless, like the lovable Captain Hastings, she uncovers essential clues. In the movie she uncovers the clues and is not nearly as silly as in the book, though she does go with her wrong intuition and changes her mind a lot. Somehow she is more admirable than in the book.

Major Despard as a suspected murderer turns out to be a fraud too, so Agatha Christie neatly undercuts the suspect-sleuth roles for this pair, keeping the symmetry as she reduces the number of her suspects and sleuths by one each.

The truth about the murder Major Despard was suspected of committing actually reveals him to be a comically uncooperative romantic hero. To further the stereotype, he gets to save the girl he loves (Rhoda) from drowning, and the end of the book suggests that they will ride off into the sunset together. It is a brilliant way to present his story.

The movie presents him in so many action scenes that the Romantic Hero idea is pretty heavily obvious. He and Anne Meredith are the pair who will ride off into the sunset in the movie, uniting two suspects in total innocence.

The movie furthermore ruins the entire symmetry of the book. At the end of the book we have three detectives and one comical satire—an author of murder mysteries classed with the detectives; and we have three murderers who face death for their crimes, and one comical satire—the unwilling romantic hero whose actions made him a suspect in a murder.

By contrast, at the end of the movie we have two detectives and the author-detective, a disgraced detective who is cleared of murder, one murderer (Roberts) who was at the original party and is faced with death for his crimes, one murderer who was at the original party who does not face death for her crime, one murderer who was not at the party who dies in trying to commit another murder, one suspect at the party who is innocent of murder, and one suspect at the party who is innocent of everything shady except being somewhat an idiotic Romantic Hero.

Where is the beautiful balance that Poirot would have approved? It is not in the cards on this table.

Revenge Is the Dish Best Served Cold

When I told my friends that I was finally reading Alexandre Dumas’ novel The Count of Monte Cristo, a number of people told me Edmond Dantès is redeemed at the end, but somehow I don’t think so. I don’t think this qualifies as a book about Christian forgiveness and redemption.

When Edmond Dantès is wrongfully imprisoned for fourteen years, he and his fellow inmate, Abbé Feria, plan to escape, and the good Abbé tries to get Edmond to forsake his revenge plans. But the Abbé dies, and Edmond has no intention of giving up any part of his plans after he escapes and discovers the Abbé’s fantastic tale of untold and unclaimed riches is true. Dantès believes that his good fortune is a sign that God approves of all his plans.

Dantès plans to pursue his vengeance as soon as he has done good to people who were good to him. He finds that his father has actually died of starvation, but his former master, Pierre Morrel, is on the verge of financial ruin, so he saves him and helps his children. He gives a ship and captaincy to the sailor/smuggler who befriended him after his escape from prison. He is generous to various people who can be useful to him, from the Nubian, Ali, to the Italian bandit Luigi Vampa, to the wrongfully enslaved Albanian princess Haydée.

He has a five-part revenge plan, one for each person who has wronged him:

1. Fernand Mondego—the man who wrote the damaging and essentially false accusation of treason about him is to be the subject of a most cruel revenge. As soon as Dantès learns Fernand married Mercédès, he plans to kill their son and expose all other crimes he has found out against Fernand, especially Fernand’s treason towards, murder and enslavement of the Pasha Ali Tebelen and his wife and daughter. 
2. Mercédès Mondego, née Herrera—his erstwhile fiancée did not stay true to him but married his rival, Fernand. Dantès plans to kill her son, and she will be implicated in the ruin and shame Dantès can bring upon her husband. 
3. M. Danglars—the mastermind behind the treasonous accusation, Danglars was once under Dantès’ command aboard M. Morrel’s ship and hated him unreasonably. Dantès plans to ruin him financially since he has become a rich and comfortable banker. When he learns the Danglars family situation, Dantès plans to use that in his revenge as well. Finally, he makes use of the Italian bandit, Vampa, to starve Danglars into using up his last bit of money for food. 
4. M. Gérard de Villefort was the prosecutor who could have thrown out Dantès’ case, but because that would have implicated Villefort as being in sympathy with his Bonapartist father, Noirtier de Villefort, the prosecutor sends Dantès to prison uncharged with no trial. Dantès plans to ruin him in any way he can and uses his family against him as well. 
5. Gaspard Caderousse—formerly a tailor and neighbor of the Dantès family, he was present when Fernand Mondego and Danglars concocted their plot against Edmond Dantès, and although Caderousse was too drunk to participate or even to realize fully what they were doing, he did not speak up later when he could have saved Dantès. Greedy and uncharitable, he additionally nearly let Edmond’s father starve to death before Dantès returned from his voyage at the beginning of the novel. Dantès is curiously of two minds about what to do with him. He seemingly does him good by giving him a large diamond, but Dantès’ knowledge of Caderousse’s greedy nature makes him pretty sure that Caderousse will not use the fortune for a good cause, and indeed, Caderousse turns to crime.

That this is unchristian is unquestionable. What did Christ do with criminals? He got them to realize exactly what they were doing that was wrong, and confess. Then he charged them to repent, or “sin no more.” He forgave them. He did not punish them; unless they persisted in their crimes and punished themselves. He never took revenge on anyone.

Is Edmond Dantès an agent of God in wreaking vengeance against his enemies? These are not explicitly the enemies of God we are talking about. But they certainly are a collection of very unpleasant people at the least, criminal and immoral, and murderous at the worst. In the sense that people who break God’s laws are God’s enemies, this might work. But the Old Testament “eye for an eye” laws of God were replaced by Christ’s merciful laws in the New Testament: compassion, kindness, meekness, charity, forgiveness—these are the mandates Christ laid down. He taught that it is easy to love those who love you, but His higher law was to love those who use you, abuse you, betray you—those who are your enemies.

What did Edmond Dantès do to his enemies?

1. Fernand Mondego, Count de Morcerf. Dantès decides not to kill Fernand’s son because he came to like Albert, the Viscount Morcerf. But Dantès publishes Fernand’s betrayal of Ali Tebelen, the Pasha of Janina (part of Albania), which got the Pasha killed and his wife and daughter sold into slavery. Dantès engineers things so that Fernand’s wife and son renounce him and leave him. He forces Fernand into a corner as regards honor in those days, ensuring that Fernand’s only recourse is to commit suicide. Had he not killed himself, we are left wondering if Edmond Dantès would have engineered someone else taking the life of Fernand Mondego, if Dantès didn’t do it himself.
2. Mercédès Mondego, Countess de Morcerf. When Dantès learns that she never knew her husband’s part in framing Dantès and that she still loves Dantès himself, Dantès relents and ensures that she can escape Paris with a fortune if she so desires. This is simply Edmond’s usual practice of doing a good deed for one done to him. She sinned against him in ignorance, so she is given a partial pass. But he will not return her love, nor does he explicitly forgive her for the past.
3. Baron Danglars is manipulated by Edmond Dantès to lose his entire fortune bit by bit. Dantès makes use of Danglars’ wife to help along the financial ruin. He uses Mme. Danglars’ illegitimate son (the result of her affair with Villefort), the son whom even she does not know is living, to become engaged to the Danglars’ daughter—with the implication of incest as the young man is half-brother to his erstwhile fiancée—and then uses the young man’s criminal background to ruin the social prospects of the family. Young Eugénie Danglars runs away; her mother runs another way, and Danglars thinks he has escaped to Italy. But Dantès has him kidnapped by Luigi Vampa, the Italian bandit who is in Dantès’ control, and Danglars is starved until he gives up the rest of his fortune for food. It is a slow and cruel torture.
4. Gérard de Villefort is tortured by Dantès, who suggests to Villefort’s wife Héloïse that she could murder the people who stood between her and her greedy, ambitious plans for her unpleasant son. Héloïse accordingly murders Villefort’s first wife’s parents, then his father’s servant. She attempts to murder Villefort’s daughter, Valentine, and his father, Noirtier de Villefort. Villefort himself comes to know pretty much who is responsible for these crimes, but he refuses to prosecute a member of his own household until Héloïse reaches the end of her crimes and kills herself and her son. Finally, Dantès exposes Villefort’s long-past affair with the present Mme. Danglars and his attempted murder of their illegitimate infant son, effectively ruining all Villefort reputations in society and ensuring that Villefort will lose his livelihood as well. Had Villefort not gone mad, perhaps Dantès would have ensured that he either committed suicide or was murdered. It seems Dantès would have been satisfied with no less.
5. When Caderousse turns to crime, Dantès finds and makes use of him, manipulating events so that Benedetto, the illegitimate son of Villefort and Hermine Danglars, becomes his accomplice and kills him.

These revenge plans are all extreme. They are not meant to bring any of the criminals to a state of repentance or redemption. They are meant to kill, or at least to completely ruin, each person. When Dantès finds that one or another of his victims “deserves” a measure of mercy, he carefully applies only so much as he judges that person merits in their treatment of him. In no case is anyone restored to his good graces, not even Mercédès, who still loves him and who has suffered the loss of him all those years, ending in a knowledge of her betrayal by the man she accepted as second best, as her husband. Even she is relegated to a sorry state of comparative poverty and endless regret.

What about all the innocent victims of Edmond Dantès? His plans for ruining his enemies necessarily involved their family members, some of whom are completely innocent, some of whom are pretty much as bad as the ones who originally harmed Dantès.

Albert de Morcerf, son of Fernand and Mercédès, certainly did not deserve the disgrace of his father and the loss of his position. But of course the families of criminals who are caught must necessarily suffer for the crimes their kin commit, even though they are innocent. Albert handles his position with grace, but it’s a little hard on him that Dantès made his father suffer so public a revenge plot.

Eugénie Danglars, the daughter of Baron Danglars and Hermine Danglars, has wanted to escape from her life and destiny for some time so that she could live the free-spirited life of an artist, so she does not suffer too much in losing her societal position and her family’s fortune. She will probably do just fine on her own. Still, she is part of the collateral damage, and she represents another of the innocent bystanders whom Dantès does not care about when he plans to take revenge on his enemies.

Hermine Danglars seems to deserve all that she gets, because she conducts illicit affairs, manipulates the stock markets and her husband’s investments to her own benefit, and seems to have a history of coming out on top of whatever dicey situations her immoral nature gets her into. Nevertheless, she does not deserve the full weight of the wrath of Edmond Dantès, which hits her almost as hard as it does her husband and former lover, Villefort. Had she been a virtuous wife and devoted mother, Dantès would not have cared any further what became of her and her daughter. He did ensure that she knew enough to enrich herself against a coming, vague catastrophe, but that is all he did.

Valentine de Villefort is the epitome of the innocent victim of Dantès and his plans. She has done nothing wrong but be born to Gérard de Villefort. Yet Dantès unleashes a poisoner in her house, where she is obviously one of the targets. He only belatedly realizes that she does not “deserve” to die and saves her life.

What was Dantès thinking when he tempted Héloïse de Villefort to poison anybody who was in her way? Did he think, Of course she will poison only the man I want revenge on, her husband, Gérard de Villefort. No! He had spoken with her enough to know that the totally innocent Marquis and Marquise de Saint-Méran would be her first targets. And if he did not fully realize that, he simply wasn’t thinking at all, but soon enough he knew it anyway. He should have realized at that moment that he himself was complicit in their murders. But it went on. She murdered Noirtier de Villefort’s servant, and then attempted to kill Noirtier and Valentine. She killed herself and her young son, Édouard. Morally, Dantès should have had all these murders on his own conscience. But he never even thinks of them. He finally regrets that Valentine was a victim, and he strains himself to save her.

(This crime, urging another person to murder, is what Agatha Christie made Poirot die for in his final case!)

Dantès seems to me to be a pretty amoral character after all. When it suits him, he does good, but generally only if doing so is going to benefit himself, or if it is in payment of some good deed someone did to him. What is scary about him is that he uses and abets criminals in both revenge and reward schemes.

Besides Mme. de Villefort, think of Caderousse and that diamond, and how Dantès uses him to get Benedetto involved in the scheme to ruin the Danglars family. Think of how Dantès uses Major Cavalcanti to pose as a nobleman with Benedetto as his son, in order to ruin Danglars and Villefort both. Think of how he encourages Mme. Danglars to embezzle from her husband. Think of how he uses Benedetto to kill Caderousse and to ruin the Danglars and Villefort families. Think of how he uses the bandit, Luigi Vampa, to kidnap Albert de Morcerf before he realized he was going to save him and use him in a different way. Then he uses Vampa again to effect the final financial ruin and torture of Danglars. Before all of that, think of how he falls in with the smugglers and helps them, and then rewards Jacobo Manfredi with his own ship and crew.

Finally, what was the purpose of his engineering that terrible month of suffering for his friend Maximilien Morrel, when the poor young man is led to believe that his fiancée, Valentine de Villefort, is dead? How easy it would have been for Dantès to tell him immediately, “Don’t worry, I have made sure Mlle. de Villefort was given a drug that simulates death. She will awaken and be fine.” But instead he thinks he has to make him suffer, that he might “deserve” happiness! And he even judges how much suffering might be enough—as if Morrel, should he not suffer enough, might be allowed to commit suicide after all! Why this revenge on a friend?

I can just barely see how someone, stretching for an atonement metaphor, could put Valentine in the position of a Christ figure, an innocent victim put to death because of others’ sins, who comes back from the grave to rescue the dying (Morrel, who was going to commit suicide). But it is a huge stretch, and it doesn’t serve the purpose of redeeming Dantès, who engineered the whole thing. Dantès is not God, or if he is, the god he represents is certainly not the loving Christian God of the New Testament, even if he does endow the couple with all his worldly wealth. Or most of it. Or maybe just a portion.

Our last view of Dantès is as he heads east with his now-lover Haydée, whom we are meant to assume will be wed to him soon. It’s a strange affair, to switch Dantès from being a father figure toward her, to being a husband. This ending smarts when I think of Mercédès.

It doesn’t convince me one whit that he “deserves” his happy ending after all the crimes he committed. His regrets are few considering the long list of innocent victims. The scene in the now-defunct prison where he reflects on his role in inflicting punishment on his enemies is a paltry attempt at repentance, and more than that, an unsatisfying leap of logic to justify him if Christian values are the major premise. But I do not believe they are. At heart, this is a good old revenge tale, fully carried out.

The dish best served cold is unsatisfying to my taste.