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A chi è rivolto
Readers who love American social history, family stories, diplomatic and political gossip, and vivid scenes of New York, Washington, Maryland and China in the nineteenth century, told by someone who was there.
Che cos’è questo libro
As I Remember is the memoir of Marian Gouverneur, born Marian Campbell on Long Island, who spent her life among the families that shaped New York and Washington. She wrote it in her later years, after a Philadelphia physician and author, S. Weir Mitchell, urged her to set down what she knew. The result is a personal record of the people she met, the houses she visited and the stories she heard, from a childhood on the Rockaway Road to the years of the Spanish-American War.
She is a lively guide. Her father was a Scottish-born judge and scholar, her friends were generals, diplomats, ministers and heiresses, and her husband was a grandson of President James Monroe. She dined with Martin Van Buren's circle, stayed with General Winfield Scott's family, sailed to China as a consul's wife and lived through the Civil War in a Maryland farmhouse that armies kept visiting.
This summary follows the book in time, from her grandparents' Long Island farm to her widowhood in Washington. You will meet the schoolrooms, ballrooms, hotels and dinner tables of the nineteenth century, and you will hear her opinions on slavery, opium, politics and fashion. Let us begin where she does, with the shore of Long Island and the family stories that shaped her.
In questo riassunto
- 1A Long Island childhood and Scottish rootsFree
- 2Her father, the judge and scholar
- 3Schooldays and lifelong friendships
- 4New York society, theaters and churches
- 5General Scott's household and Washington in the forties
- 6Diplomats, senators and eccentrics in the capital
- 7Marriage into the Monroe family
- 8Voyage to China and life at Foo Chow
- 9The Civil War in Maryland and the return to Washington
Punto chiave 1 di 9
A Long Island childhood and Scottish roots
Marian Gouverneur opens her book on the southern shore of Long Island, in Queens County, on the old Rockaway Road. As a child she heard the surf of Rockaway Beach in stormy weather. Her home was a big old farmhouse lined with poplars, bought by her mother's father, Captain John Hazard, from the French minister Edmond Charles Genet. Much of the furniture came from Genet too, and she still owned pieces of it when she wrote.
Captain Hazard commanded a privateer in the Revolution and was captured by a British admiral. Family tradition said he overheard his captors discussing whether to hang him, and he carried the scars of the irons to his grave. His brother Jonathan took the British side, changed his name and rose to the rank of captain in the Royal Navy. She notes that the brothers fighting each other foreshadowed the Civil War in her own lifetime.
She does not hide that her grandfather owned enslaved people. She recalls an old couple named Cuff and Sary who lived in a hut on the estate, and she keeps the bill of sale for another man. Her pages show how the households of her youth worked. Her mother had been raised by a stepmother so loving that she learned the truth only from a spiteful schoolmate.
Her father's side came from Scotland. Her great-grandfather fought for Prince Charles Edward at Culloden, and she grew up on the Jacobite songs her father sang. She says these tunes stirred her as the Marseillaise stirs the French. Her grandfather Malcolm Campbell, a graduate of St. Andrews, crossed to New York after the Revolution, opened a classical school near Trinity Church and edited American editions of Cicero and Caesar.
The chapter is full of small, odd treasures. Next door lived a gruff bachelor whose bellowing bull became a family byword for calming noisy children, and the phrase is still used four generations later. A nurse, afraid to disappoint her grandfather, announced her birth as a boy. These tales set the pattern for the whole book, which values a good story about a person as much as a date.
That’s 1 of 9 key points.
The rest of the summary, written and spoken, and the whole book: free to start.
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Questions about Come ricordo
What is As I Remember about?
It is Marian Gouverneur's memoir of her life and the people she knew, from a Long Island childhood and New York society to Washington, a consul's post in China and the Civil War in Maryland.
Who was Marian Gouverneur?
She was born Marian Campbell, the daughter of a New York judge, and married Samuel L. Gouverneur Jr., grandson of President James Monroe. She knew many generals, diplomats and society figures and wrote of them in later life.
Is As I Remember a true story?
Yes, it is a nonfiction memoir based on her own experiences, family papers, letters and stories told to her. It covers events from her grandparents' era to the turn of the twentieth century.
Why did she go to China?
Her husband was appointed United States consul at Foo Chow by President Buchanan before the Civil War. She joined him with two young daughters and describes the voyage, the household, pirates and the opium trade.
Is the book easy to read?
It is told in a warm, chatty voice, with short anecdotes, letters and verses. Each chapter centers on a place or group of friends, so you can enjoy it scene by scene.