In Swallow Barn, Kennedy depicts life at a tobacco plantation in Virginia on the James River as seen through the eyes of a New York visitor, Mark Littleton. Swallow Barn, probably the first important fictional treatment of Virginia life, was so well acclaimed by its readers that its popularity helped to make Virginia a favorite fictional background with later novelists.138 Critics themselves have praised this charming little romance for its nostalgic painting of a lost and gone society. As ―the type of the good-natured, appreciative nineteenth century traveler who comes into the locus amoenus to comment on life outside,‖ (44) Mark describes the characters he meets with sympathetic good-humor. In his preface to the 1832 edition, Kennedy himself apologized for the ―mirthful mood‖ of his narrative by explaining that ―the ordinary actions of men, in their household intercourse, have naturally a humorous or comic character‖ (vii). The names of the characters, ―in the way of the nineteenth century romance,‖ Bakker remarks, ―[also] reveal their personalities and functions in the story.
137 John Pendleton Kennedy [Paul Ambrose, pseudonym]. The Slave Question: A Pretext to Lead the Masses on
to Revolution (Washington, DC: 1863, rpt. from National Intelligencer, March 1863).
138 John Pendleton Kennedy, Swallow Barn; or, A Sojourn in The Old Dominion (Philadelphia: J.B.Lippincott,
Frank‘s surname [Meriwether], for instance, suggests a phase of good times in fair weather‖ (44). There is also Chub, the pedantic parson-teacher; the dreamy and irresponsible Ned Hazard who is heir to the plantation; and his equally impractical belle, Bel Tracy, daughter of Isaac Tracy, the owner of a neighboring plantation, The Brakes.
The novel opens with the chapter ―A Word in Advance‖ in which the narrator describes his story as ―a picture of country life in Virginia as it existed in the first quarter of the present century‖ (8). His travel account (presented as a ―romance,‖ a pastoral idealization of the southern plantation and its peaceful family life) will be concerned with the domestic affairs, political beliefs, and economic habits of Virginia planters. Author James Kirke Paulding, who was greatly impressed by the descriptions of rural Virginia, wrote to his own publisher, Henry C. Carey, that Swallow Barn offered a picture of country life in the South ―drawn from nature‖ (Paulding 122, qtd. in Bakker 42).139
William Wirt, in receiving the book, probably best summarizes life at Swallow Barn. He notes: ―it is a sort of novel of which the scene is laid in Virginia – but it is a non descript sort of novel - very little incident - & a great deal of what is called sketches of characters‖ (qtd. in Hubbell 492).140
The narrator of the novel seems to concur with Wirt‘s reading, as he introduces himself as a picturesque tourist, ―a man of mark and authentic as a witness‖ (16) who ―travels pen in hand,‖ showing how impressions are much more distinct ―than those of a business voyager‖ (16). This light- hearted voyager is going to be a painter (picturesque) rather than a reporter, a sentimentalist rather than a sociologist. The subtitle of the narrative, ―A Sojourn in the Old Dominion,‖ indicates that the ―journey is a casual and self-indulgent undertaking‖ (Ackermann 52).141
Like Irving did for the Hudson Valley or the Catskill Mountains, Kennedy intends to use the
139 Jan Bakker, Pastoral in Antebellum Southern Romance (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1989).
140 Jay B. Hubell, The South in American Literature, 1607-1900 (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1954).
141
Zeno Ackermann, ―Working at Romance. Poetics and Ideology in Novels of the Antebellum American South, 1824-1854.‖ (Diss. Universitat Regensburg, 2004).
―Old Dominion‖ as a picturesque counterpoint to ubiquitous change, a poetical rather than a political phenomenon.142 Mark Littleton, the narrator, transforms the landscape into mental
paintings and the effect is a fictionalization of landscape, which comes to occupy an intermediary zone between the actual and the pictorial.
In particular, the buddy bond that develops between Ned Hazard, the Southerner, and Mark Littleton, the Northerner, serves a purpose that is bigger than the bond between these two men, for Littleton endeavours to take a holiday in the South in order to correct his ―unseemly prejudices against the Old Dominion.‖143
Male friendship will also provide for the peaceful resolution of thorny political or social issues. In the midst of historical moments of socio-economic transformation, the detached version of a Northern visitor provides here a useful narrative tool. As Zeno Ackermann explains:
The device of using the persona of an outside visitor who explains the American South to another outsider allows for a detached investigation of southern life and institutions. At the same time, the format of the epistolary travel account is a potent tool for assimilation. Littleton's letters traverse the boundary between the sections. They domesticate the political, social and moral strangeness of Virginia by confidentially relating a series of intimate encounters with the southern way of life as it supposedly offers a detached investigation of Southern life and institutions (52).144
The use of the pastoral is not particularly surprising, since as Taylor describes, ―the uncertainty that Americans began to feel in the first half of the century about the general drift
142
Kennedy not only sent a copy of the book to Irving but he also dedicated his second novel, Horse-Shoe Robinson, to the famous writer.
143 An interesting development of the buddy bond in Southern culture is developed by Claire Dutriaux, ―White
Buddy Politics: Interrogating Performances of American Masculinity through Male Bonding in Mississippi Burning (Parker, 1989) and Forrest Gump (Zemeckis, 1994),‖ Proc. of Paper for Performing the Invisible: Masculinities in the English-Speaking World, Université Sorbonne Nouvelle, Paris.
of their civilization led them to attach greater significance to their pastoral setting [. . .] stable and untouched by progress‖ (186). In terms of ideological functions, the pastoral is a tool for suspending or for sublimating history. It produces a representation of the ―country,‖ the longing for a state of perfect harmony which is situated beyond the beginning of history as a process of alienation. Virginia, in this portrayal, is a nation within a nation, a territory that nursed ―four Presidents‖ (70) and that is protected from modernization as it ―has no large towns where men may meet and devise improvements or changes in the arts of life‖ (71). In addition, ―her laws and habits, in consequence, have a certain fixedness, which even reject many of the valuable improvements of the day‖ (71).
As the plot develops, the narrative‘s focus becomes the ancestral home presented in all the traditional imagery of isolation, tranquility, and gracious entertainment, as if nothing else of large historical portent could happen. The Old Dominion is seen as a place that has somehow managed to remain exempt from the divisive powers of modern history.145 The plantation, for instance, described as an ―aristocratical old edifice which sits like a brooding hen on the southern bank of the James River‖ (27) seemingly managed to pass through history untouched: ―the parlour was one of those specimens of architecture of which there are not many survivors, and in another half century, they will, perhaps, be extinct‖ (24). This ―time- honoured mansion‖ (27) does bear the traces of the ancestors, as it is ―more than a century old‖ (27) and it is also ―a secluded spot, cut off from much of that sort of commerce with the world which is almost essential to enliven and mature the sympathies of young persons‖ (64). The plantation is definitely a self-contained system, a rural haven with an organic, stable social order peacefully secluded from the urban environment of Virginia. The description of
144 Bakker notes: ―[Kennedy] wanted his romance of American life to be read, enjoyed, and approved in the South as well as the North. He wanted to make an impact without putting himself on the spot as another harping Yankee critic of southern ways‖ (42).
the school that is located on the plantation grounds calls to mind a beehive, which reinforces the idea of an organic society: ―as we approach, the murmur becomes more distinct, until, reaching the door, we find the whole swarm running over their long, tough syllables, in a high concert pitch, with their elbows upon the decks [. . .] this little empire is under the dominion of Parson Chub‖ (64).
In such an environment featuring ―dilapidated buildings in view‖ (158) giving it ―an air of additional desolation‖ (159) and which also includes an ―extensive swamp,‖ civilization does not have a chance to grow vigorous.146 The Tracys seem fairly confident that the world
outside the plantation will never really intrude; they appear quite reluctant to acknowledge the outside world and are equally certain that their domestic sphere is immune to change. ―The uneventful lawsuit about the ―Old Mill‖ for instance illustrates very well the difficulty of economic and political improvements in Virginia. Our young hero‘s grandfather dammed a small stream that constituted the border between Swallow Barn and the neighbouring estate of the Tracys and built a mill. However, fed by an insufficient supply of water, the mill soon had to be closed down. To gain space for the reservoir created by the damming up of Apple-pie Branch, Old Ned Hazard had bought ground from the neighbouring Tracy Family. For decades, this land has been the object of legal contentions between Isaac Tracy and the owners of Swallow Barn. Frank Meriwether is eager to terminate the conflict, but does not know how to do so ―without wounding the feelings of his neighbour‖ (151). The final victory of the small brook over the attempt to convert it into a source of progress is rendered as a ―fable on the resilience of the pastoral order. The intrusion of the machine into the garden has
145 William Wirt (1832), in receiving the book, said, ―it is a sort of novel of which the scene is laid in Virginia – but it is a non descript sort of novel - very little incident - & a great deal of what is called sketches of characters‖ (qtd. in Hubbell‘s The South in American Literature, 1607-1900, 492)
146
For many critics, the swamp itself is a metaphor for the denial of history. See, Anthony Wilson, Shadow and Shelter: The Swamp in Southern Culture (Jackson: Univ. Press of Mississippi, 2006).
been repelled‖ and the pastoral urge to suspend history results in the absence of any serious action in the novel (Ackermann 61).
The containing function of the plantation actually seems to reach far beyond the sole limits of the dominion. The celebration of the 4th of July, for instance, is held at a decaying
trading station—The Landing—and the scenery shows traces of abandoned efforts at economic activity, which are reminiscent of the dilapidated mill. Having ―originally been used for ... foreign trade,‖ The Landing has now become ―nothing more than the place of resort for a few river craft, used in carrying the country produce to market‖ (158) Again, nature preveails over the threatening market. Bakker remarks in particular the noiseless imagery of a scene ―suspended in air,‖ movements of those ghostly, dehumanized ―beings,‖ the sailors aboard the little schooner‖ (47). As a consequence, ―The National Anniversary‖ chapter reads as a portrait of Virginian society insulated against history and commerce or rather of a society from which the noisier part of nineteenth-century history has been erased. To see the river as simply the servant of foreign trade, industry, and military strategy would be to admit the merits of civilization but also to admit the fast-vanishing wilderness. Understandably, with humorous grace, the narrator portrays the sketch of the river‘s deserted splendor, dwelling at length on the ―voluptuous landscape‖ (160) surrounding the landing where the ―national anniversary‖ is held. The narrator suggests ―a picture of that striking repose, which is peculiar to the tide-water views; soft, indolent and clear, as if nature had retreated into this drowsy nook, and fallen asleep over her own image, as it was reflected from this beautiful mirror [i.e. the river]‖ (160). Also, in its description of the river‘s ―smooth surface [. . .] only ruffled by the frequent but lonely leap of some small fish above the water‖ (160), Kennedy not only recalls Twain's way of immortalising the Mississippi river in the minds of most Americans, but also evokes the impression that Virginian society is approaching what Ackermann names ―an entropic standstill‖ (61). The picturesque reaches its
climax in the description of ―the country,‖ where everything ―wears a Sunday look, the skies have a deeper blue, the clouds rest upon them like painting‖ (307). These paintings—both celebrating wilderness and reclaiming nature from the divisive dynamics of development— epitomize Kennedy‘s longing to privilege the natural over the industrialized world, the past over the commercial present or future, even if reality dictates otherwise.