Dear B_:
Tomorrow is the first day of May. O, well.
In April, I was writing a book review-a project fading fast-on a historical fiction based on the Gilded Age. In my opinion, one should include the prop (i.e., the Gilded Age) to support the scenery (i.e., the characters) of this novel. Intentionally or not, the author only implied this momentous epoch in American story. There were no supports or the “whys” in the novel. To me, the “whys” always influenced the character behavior in a story.
Case in point. The opening paragraph in Edith Wharton’s story, The Age of Innocence, she set the tone the “old money” New York folk neither welcome nor want the “new money” (e.g., Vanderbilt, Carnegie, etc.,) into their club, the Acadamy of Music . Not in the story, the “new money” said fine. They built the Met. Metaphorically, the Met killed the Academy of Music. The rest, as they say, is history. Wharton only implied the reader knew or cared about the Gilded Age. The protagonist in the book, Newland Archer was ambiguous throught out the book. He even was to the point of rebellion against the informal rules of the time. The Gilded Age was really the “why” that gave a more in-depth meaning to the Wharton story.
But I digress.
Given the American Civil War was the first industrial war of the world, it was also the first “why” that spawned the Gilded Age. Below, each of the paragraphs or a combination, I could use as a lead-in or part of a critique in my vapor book review.
The word “April” got me started on writing the review (maybe). Why waste the verbiage, as I thought of Victor Hugo’s play, Le roi s’amuse. Anyway, I strung together the italized paragraphs below for your reading and amusement. The paragraphs sort of meshed. Note that each paragraph contains the word “April”.
When the army of the South surrenders to the Union forces of the North on April 9, 1865, a bittersweet closing the four-year American Civil War. At the Appomattox Courthouse, Virginia, in the fourth spring hence 1861, lasting peace is achieved from the internecine carnage.
Metaphorically, “Aprill with his shoures soothe.” Spring rain would bathe and debride the throbbing wounds of the civil bloodshed. The wind which billows the war, its tail transforms into warm April breezes. The season’s warm winds would assuage the inflamed veins of braving the four-year war.
For the Confederacy, “April is the cruellest month.” At Appomattox, the knell peels for King Cotton of the South. Strewn thick on the “all the fertile land within that bound,” are detritus of a once proud civilization. The “road to Tara” is a byword of forgotten grandeurs. Scorned are polite society ascribing to “every gesture dignity and love”. Lying fallow are plantations groaned “underneath a weight of slavish toil.” Trampled underfoot are manicured gardens of yesteryears, “frothing of pink peach blossoms and dogwood dappling with white stars.” Dismissively neglected are carcasses of antebellum estates. All are gone with the wind of war. The memento mori of the South, indeed, does “take all feeling else.”
Pulsing in the bosoms is once shackled, scarred, and bartered frames. All are wearing one heart the insatiable spirit to “be free as is the wind.” Tender leaves of hopes are emerging in the soil of emancipation. At Appomattox, “a day in April never came so sweet.”
The assassination of President Lincoln in April 1865 is the penultimate of the Civil War. His death and burial bring to a close this chapter of horrific upheaval in American history. Unequivocally, the war answers a haunting profundity. Eighty seven year ago, on the last day of the Constitutional Convention in 1787, Benjamin Franklin proffers a challenge. That is, if the Republic of the United States were to abide, the people must accept and defend its governance (i.e., the Constitution). To this end, the death of President Lincoln and many others affirms this Franklin conjecture. The Constitution holds with the Republic stands indivisible.
On a “bright summit of some glory cloud,” the Gilded Age unfurls…
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