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2014
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Publié par
Date de parution
03 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures
1
EAN13
9781611175585
Langue
English
A cautionary tale of lust, violence, and honor from the award-winning author of The Hard to Catch Mercy
Once deemed "the most powerful man in the South," Charleston newspaper editor Frank Dawson met his violent death on March 12, 1889, at the hands of his neighbor, a disreputable doctor who was attempting to seduce the Dawson family governess. Drawn from events surrounding this infamous episode, the third novel from the Lillian Smith Award-winning William Baldwin pulls back the veil of a genteel society in a fabled southern city and exposes a dark visage of anger and secret pain that no amount of imposed manners could restrain, and only love might eventually heal.
With a southern storyteller's passion for intricate emotional and physical details, Baldwin, through the fictional guise of Capt. David Lawton, chronicles editor Dawson's fated end. Having survived three years of bloody Civil War combat and the decade of violent Reconstruction that followed, the liberal-minded Lawton is now an embattled newspaperman whose national importance is on the wane. Still, he remains a celebrated member of Charleston's elite, while in private life moving amid a pantheon of proud and beautiful women—Sarah, his brilliant wife; Abbie, his sensual sister-in-law; Mary, the all-knowing prostitute; and Hélène, the discontented Swiss governess—each contributing to an unfolding drama of history-haunted turmoil.
Though Lawton loathes the South's cult of personal violence, by the customs of his era and place he is duty-bound to protect his household. Unable to act otherwise, Lawton meets his rival in a brutal physical contest, and in the aftermath, Sarah, Abbie, Mary, and Hélène must make peace with their own turbulent pasts.
War, earthquake, political guile, adultery, illegitimacy, lust, and murder—all the devices of gothic romance—play a role in this tale closely based on the lives of Charlestonians who lived these events over a century ago.
Publié par
Date de parution
03 septembre 2014
Nombre de lectures
1
EAN13
9781611175585
Langue
English
A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death
A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death
WILLIAM BALDWIN
The University of South Carolina Press
2005 William P. Baldwin
Cloth edition published by the University of South Carolina Press, 2005
Ebook edition published in Columbia, South Carolina, by the University of South Carolina Press, 2014
www.sc.edu/uscpress
23 22 21 20 19 18 17 16 15 14 10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Baldwin, William P.
A gentleman in Charleston and the manner of his death : a novel / William Baldwin.
p. cm.
ISBN 1-57003-602-0 (cloth : alk. paper)
1. Dawson, Francis Warrington, 1840-1889-Fiction. 2. Dawson, Sarah Morgan, 1842-1909-Fiction. 3. Journalists-Crimes against-Fiction. 4. Charleston (S.C.)-Fiction. 5. McDow, Thomas B.-Fiction. 6. Murder victims-Fiction. 7. Murderers-Fiction. I. Title.
PS3552.A4518G46 2005
813'.54-dc22
2005014137
ISBN 978-1-61117-558-5 (ebook)
PREFACE
The Dawson murder trial that lies at this novel s core was front-page news across the nation. Charleston newspaperman Frank Dawson had once been the most influential editor in the South, and in 1889 he was still expressing himself with a strong and surprisingly liberal voice. His senseless death at the hands of a neighbor was viewed with outrage, and his contribution to Southern journalism was roundly applauded. Dawson s wife, Sarah, had also written for his paper, but the extent of her literary ability would be known only with the posthumous publication of her diaries. (Literary critic Edmund Wilson considered Sarah one of the best of the Civil War diarists.) There was much to draw on, and, like my fictional narrator, I have made extensive use of Frank and Sarah Dawson s lives and the lives of their friends and of their enemies as well. And, except for shortening, the written record they left behind occasionally finds its way into A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death almost unchanged.
It was difficult to improve on the drama of that turbulent age-on characters that lived so large-but like the narrator I, too, did not hesitate to draw on my own imagination, and at times this was an unreined imagination. For that reason I have changed the names of those involved. Do not let that detract from the fact that what follows is a true story. After all, isn t that the best kind?
A Gentleman in Charleston and the Manner of His Death
Straightway I was ware,
So weeping, how a mystic Shape did move
Behind me, and drew me backward by the hair;
And a voice said in mastery, while I strove . . .
Guess now who holds thee? - Death, I said. But, there,
The silver answer rang . . . Not Death, but Love.
-Sonnets from the Portuguese
Elizabeth Barrett Browning
AN INTRODUCTION
PARIS, AUGUST 1907
I know the power of language to destroy. I have witnessed that, and I have felt anger, loss, and longing. I do know something of love. But not enough. Can one ever know enough of love, love open or illicit, confessed and unconfessed? Twixt Love and Law ? No, that title has been used before, and besides, we have more to contend with than the love of lovers. In what is to come I am certain we will also find the love of husband and wife, the love of parent and child, and of sisters and brothers-all are snared by love. Should I include you? All right, Reader, you as well. All are linked by this devise. You, I, Rebecca . . . especially Rebecca.
Because I have grown stout and bearded, she did not know me, nor did her son. And having gone undiscovered, I am now entrusted with a great task. It seems they require a biographer, and having served both Poe and Lanier in that capacity, I am the one chosen. And because I once lived in Charleston I am the one chosen. They, too, are exiles. Like me, Rebecca and her son have abandoned Charleston and come to Paris, where the wisteria blooms late in the spring and confines itself with Old World propriety. In Charleston those vines grow thick as arms and twist with wild abandon to the very roofs. Isn t America still the land of opportunity? Odd then that Paris should remain their city of dreams, their receptacle of shimmering promise. Should I say mine as well?
They assume that the story is to be of the man-her husband, his father. The most powerful man in the South! That was said of him on more than one occasion. Yet seventeen years have passed since his death and no monument to him stands in Charleston. An insult! He had enemies. He has them still. So says the wife, the small woman with rich auburn hair now silvered- but whose violet eyes still gleam with a challenging intensity. A vain and silly child her son calls her, and he means this. But he dotes on her. And together they tend the memory of the man. Or rather they have passed that burden on to me. Yes, what monument there is to David Lawton can only be found in Paris, and it was entrusted to me. What have I been given? The family s papers. No more, no less. A small mountain of letters, diaries, and memoirs both published and unpublished. The relevant newspaper articles, the essays and editorials have already been clipped and pasted. I have both his views and those of his opponents. I am assured that all is included. I have before me both the censored and uncensored. All will be revealed.
Private matters? Yes, they are. For this reason and because I will, when necessary, fall back on imagination, I have decided to change the names. Still, these people of whom you will read did and even do exist. Rebecca is not Rebecca, nor is Abbie Abbie, but flesh and blood goes on unchanged. Rebecca did marry David, who was also called by another name-two other names, in fact. And he was, in fact, the editor of a Charleston paper-but not one called the News and Independent. And he was killed. In the course of this story he will die. That we can be sure of. Am I responsible for his death? I wonder this myself.
But again, enough. I have read, sifted, stacked, read, sifted, and stacked again. I will start with Abbie. In the late summer of 1886 she wrote a lengthy letter to her sister Rebecca and described in detail the great events that had just enfolded the Southern city of Charleston. Of course, she does not tell all. The truth is for us alone to know.
CONTENTS
Chapter One
Chapter Two
Chapter Three
Chapter Four
Chapter Five
Chapter Six
Chapter Seven
Chapter Eight
Chapter Nine
Chapter Ten
Chapter Eleven
Chapter Twelve
Chapter Thirteen
Chapter Fourteen
Chapter Fifteen
Chapter Sixteen
Chapter Seventeen
Chapter Eighteen
Chapter Nineteen
Chapter Twenty
Chapter Twenty-One
CHAPTER ONE
CHARLESTON, S.C., AUGUST 1886
Awake. Abbie Dubose lay abed and watched the odd patch of sunlight broaden across the bleached pine floor. Like a crooked finger, it seemed to beckon, to nudge at languor, for Abbie s day was filled with promise. Her daughter Catherine would be up by now, dressed and gone off down the beach to see Mrs. Griffen or find a companion her own age. And Abbie was left behind to lounge away another morning, to lie on the soft down mattress and speculate on what a certain man might be doing at that very moment.
David. David in Charleston. She imagined him across the harbor-in the city. She saw him journey towards his business. At that very moment he was stepping from the trolley. She saw how he dressed in soft gray linens and how he raised his cane and tipped his boater, for he had reached such and such a corner and stopped to greet a strolling couple. They parted with smiles, and then he went two doors further and entered the stately building with the broad cornices. She imagined him speaking to people in his office. Then he would have his lunch and continue to do his work, bend across his desk, and call out for such and such to be done, and then he would come across on the ferry to the island-to her-well, not that very afternoon but soon. And then he would invite the two of them, mother and daughter, to his nearby house. At fourteen Catherine had interests of her own and would make her excuse, and Abbie and this man would go on alone to the dwelling. He would sit with her while they waited for that boiling August sun to set, and they would drink iced juleps. He would roll a cigarette for himself and another for her. Here on the island a woman might smoke a cigarette if she stayed well back in the shadows of the porch and made sure that her daughter was not about. And then they would talk and talk and talk. They would have supper, her daughter now arriving and helping to prepare and serve the meal and taking part in the conversation-as if this were the familiar order of their lives and not the feeding of a drunken, sad, and unemployed husband, a husband who let his ravings pass for conversation. Then her daughter would be off to nap in some higher recess of the house, and this woman and this man could split a second bottle of wine and talk until midnight. She would wake Catherine and they would walk to the boardinghouse-after both receiving from him a chaste hug and the promise of a swim in the morning, and with the implied promise of more talk and more wine and more of . . . what should she call it?
Love! How long had it been since Abbie had felt this way about a man? Since before she was married? Yes, perhaps so. Well, here she was separated at last from Mr. Andr Dubose, free thanks entirely to the generosity of this man, her brother-in-law, David Lawton. Yes, David had taken on the support of both her and her daughter. He had moved them from New Orleans to Ohio and enrolled Catherine in
