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Hugh Henry Brackenridge, “Provincial Honors to an Exciseman” (1807)

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Hugh Henry Brackenridge, “Provincial Honors to an Exciseman” (1807) HUGH HENRY BRACKENRIDGE, “PROVINCIAL HONORS TO AN EXCISEMAN” (1807) ALEX MORRIS, EARLY AMERICAN LITERATURE, DR. JON MILLER, SPRING 2006 “Provincial Honors to an Excise- the same year. Brackenridge went on to result was the first installment of his man.” From Modern Chivalry. be a chaplain in Washington’s army, most famous work, Modern Chivalry. though his sermons were more about Modern Chivalry is a novel in the Introduction patriotism than spirituality. In 1778 he picaresque tradition depicting the started The United States Magazine, wanderings of the aristocratic Captain Eccentric crank, passionate revolution- again working with Freneau. The mag- Farrago and his ambitious but incom- ary, and unpopular politician are all azine, which published everything from petent and uneducated servant, Teague terms that could be applied to Hugh current events to belles lettres, was con- O’Regan. Brackenridge named Cer- Henry Brackenridge (1748–1816), but ceived as a way of educating Americans vantes, Fielding, and Swift as major none of them adequately encapsulate in republicanism. It ultimately failed. influences on this work. Don Quixote the mixture of achievement and dis- Disappointed in his literary aspira- is particularly striking as an apparent appointment that characterized his tions, Brackenridge studied law under model for Modern Chivalry. Much of life. Brackenridge was born in Kintyre, Samuel Chase before moving to the the work’s episodic plot is devoted to Scotland. His father William moved the Pennsylvania frontier in 1781. He estab- Teague’s search for an office and Cap- family to York, Pennsylvania in 1753, lished a law practice in Pittsburgh and tain Farrago’s various attempts to de- beginning what would for Hugh be a helped to found the Pittsburgh Gazette. prive him of those offices (ostensibly life of vocational and ideological as well In 1786 he won a seat in the state assem- for the good of the republic), though in as physical wandering. bly, where he advocated for the found- the latter part of the work he begins at- As Claude M. Newlin writes in The ing of the Pittsburgh Academy (now the tempting to educate Teague for public Life and Writings of Hugh Henry Brack- University of Pittsburgh). Brackenridge service. enridge, Brackenridge was a poor farm- lost re-election after making a number Modern Chivalry has often been re- er’s son, but his parents nonetheless of unpopular decisions that were re- garded as a part of the neoclassical tra- made sure that he received an educa- garded by his constituents as betrayals, dition, and Brackenridge made it clear tion. He was well read in the classics, not the least of which was his support that it was a work intended for the in- and he could read Latin as well as a little of the new Constitution. He only ex- struction of the masses. While it is re- Greek. By fifteen he was a teacher at a acerbated the problem when he tried plete with moral instruction, modern free school in Maryland, where New- to explain his reasons for acting inde- critics like William Hoffa and Emory lin describes him enforcing discipline pendently of the public will in the Pitts- Elliott, among others, have recognized on the older boys with a firebrand (7). burgh Gazette. Responding to resent- that Brackenridge’s didacticism is of- Brackenridge went to Princeton in ment over his voting against a popular ten subtle and complex, satirizing the 1768, where he collaborated with Phil- land bill, Brackenridge argued that the aristocratic Farrago even as he appears lip Freneau to write Father Bombo’s people did not necessarily know what to use Farrago to instruct the reader. Pilgrimage to Mecca (1770), a satirical was in their best interests and should Modern Chivalry’s satire is wide-rang- prose work that foreshadows his later rely on their representatives, a position ing, directing barbs at the wealthy elite satires. Brackenridge would collabo- that had “sown the seeds of his own of Philadelphia as well as the common rate with Freneau again in composing eventual political failure” (Newlin 86). people of the frontier. the prophetic poem The Rising Glory Brackenridge subsequently lost his seat Modern Chivalry is a difficult work to of America (1771), which envisioned a in the state assembly as well as his bid categorize, in part because it was pub- united America as the new seat of west- for a place in the state’s constitutional lished in a number of installments and ern civilization. ratifying convention. critics have disagreed over whether to In 1772 Brackenridge became the In the wake of his political defeats regard it as a single work or as a series. schoolmaster of an academy in Back and the death of his first wife in 1787, According to Newlin’s account of the Creek, with Freneau as his assistant. Brackenridge composed The Modern work’s complex textual history, Brack- Freneau found the work intolerable, Chevalier, a Hudibrastic poem depict- enridge published the first two volumes comparing the children to leeches ing the travels of a modern knight. The in Philadelphia in 1792 and volume (Newlin 25), but Brackenridge stayed poem satirized Brackenridge’s former three the following year in Pittsburgh on until 1774, when he appears, accord- political opponents and the people of (319). The events of the Whiskey Rebel- ing to Newlin, to have had a nervous the frontier, but he did not publish The lion seemed to interfere with his liter- breakdown. He returned to Princeton Modern Chevalier, instead seeking to ary aims. Newlin writes that the fourth to pursue his master’s degree the fall of improve it by rendering it in prose. The installment of Modern Chivalry was 2 THE AKRON HERON: MATERIALS OF AMERICAN LITERATURE, No. 6 not published until 1797. In 1804 the was a tax collector. Wilson was “seared Elliott, Emory. Revolutionary Writ- first two volumes were republished as in several places with a hot iron, then ers: Literature and Authority in the Modern Chivalry and a new installment tarred and feathered” (Baldwin 83). New Republic, 1725-1810. New York: of the tale was written, called Modern Brackenridge later attempted to medi- Oxford University Press, 1982. One Chivalry Part II. The following year ate between the rebels and the govern- of the most cited works in Bracken- Part II was accompanied by Part II, ment during the insurrection. On one ridge scholarship; deals with the bio- Volume II. Modern Chivalry, Vol. II, hand, he had long opposed the excise graphical context of his writings as which contained the original volumes tax on alcohol. On the other, he also well many other topics, such as tex- III and IV, was published in 1807 along opposed armed rebellion against the tual issues with Modern Chivalry, use with reprints of both volumes of Part government. His attempts to prevent of irony and satire, and the place of II. The first four volumes of Part I were the hostilities earned him the status authors in the new republic. reprinted in 1808 as Modern Chivalry, of traitor among both groups, and he Vol. I. Finally, in 1815 Modern Chivalry expected to be hanged with the other Brackenridge, Hugh H. and Leary, was republished in its entirety, with rebels when the militia seized the terri- Lewis, ed. Modern Chivalry: Con- some additional material. Bracken- tory. Though subject to suspicion and taining the Adventures of Captain ridge’s work would continue to be re- resentment from members of both par- John Farrago and Teague O’Reagan, printed in a variety of forms during the ties, Brackenridge was eventually ex- His Servant. Rowman & Littlefield nineteenth century, and it appeared in onerated. Brackenridge went on to be Masterworks of American Litera- a few editions in the twentieth. a justice of the Pennsylvania Supreme ture. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, Modern Chivalry does not appear to Court known for his eccentricity and 2003. Only complete edition of Mod- have received much critical attention in defense of the law. He died in Carlisle, ern Chivalry still in print. its own time, a fact that Brackenridge Pennsylvania in 1816. mentioned ironically at the conclusion Ellis, Joseph J. After the Revolution: of his third volume, in which he won- Note on the Text Profiles of Early American Culture. ders why no one has attacked his work. New York: Norton, 1979. Provides a Despite its obviously republican aims, The text of this edition is taken from broad political and cultural context Modern Chivalry depicts an America Edmund Clarence Stedman and El- for Brackenridge’s life and works. of contradiction, diversity, and conflict len Mackay Hutchinson, A Library of during a time when many desperately American Literature, vol. 3 (New York: Hoffa, William. “The Language of longed for unity and stability. Joseph Charles L. Webster, 1891) 392-96. The Rogues and Fools in Brackenridge’s J. Ellis goes so far as to characterize spelling and punctuation of the original Modern Chivalry.” Studies in the Modern Chivalry as “the first distinctly have been maintained throughout. Novel 12.4 (1980): 289-300. Deals with American novel” for its depiction of the The source for this edition contains Brackenridge’s treatment of language contradictions that shape the American some inconsistencies with the first edi- and rhetoric, as well as aspects of his character (102). tions of Brackenridge’s work as it ap- narration and use of irony. The passage reproduced in this edi- pears in the Leary edition, though it is tion closely parallels the harassment of unclear if these inconsistencies arise as Newlin, Claude M. The Life and Writ- revenue officers that occurred leading a result of Brackenridge’s numerous re- ings of Hugh Henry Brackenridge.
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