The pleasure principle

Why New Englanders can't relax

by Sally Cragin

Hollis the Mountain Man sits on his front stoop with a cup of cooling black coffee surveying his tiny empire. He's planted corn in the sunniest section of his front yard, and the stalks are doing well -- knee high by the Fourth of July, and Hollis is not a small man. He's planted marigolds around the cornfield and let the remainder of the yard stay meadow -- so much the better for encouraging the fireflies and flying insects, which attract the swallows and bats, keeping the ecosystem in order.

"Sometimes the best thing you can do is just to do nothing," Hollis thinks to himself. Yet, he has a disquieting sense of duty left undone, some chore half-completed.

After wrestling with his conscience, he finally gives in. After all, it's Sunday, he might as well relax. He grabs this week's edition of the Want-ADvertiser and walks down to his rubber dinghy moored at the edge of Picture Pond nestled in the flanks of Mount Magoonamitichusimog (an amalgam of Algonquin, French, and English which means "my idiot friend who lives by the bog -- he likes it"). Kicking off his boots, he climbs in and releases the line. As he drifts toward the still center of the pond, he settles in for a pensive afternoon comparing prices of dirt-bikes.

WAS IT COTTON MATHER'S fault? Should we blame the Puritans? Perhaps a combination of factors like Calvinism and the Protestant work ethic makes New Englanders so unwilling to relax. When the skies are blue and the air is balmy, you're more likely to find the typical householder knee-deep in a garden with a fistful of weeds than sprawled in a hammock.

Every summer, it seems that New Englanders face a pleasure crisis. Sure, the kids are screaming on Whalom Park's roller coaster or frolicking in backyard pools, but the grown-ups are busy priming the house for a fresh coat of paint or installing a new septic tank (thanks Title V). Or, better still, engrossed in a never-ending cycle of yardwork. Wasn't it always thus? Weren't the Puritans and colonial settlers thin-lipped, hard-working ascetics who sat bolt upright in church and relaxed only when recumbent?

Recent scholarship suggests that our standard view of the Puritans as crabby, duty-bound conservatives might be somewhat overstated. Bruce Daniels in Puritans at Play (St. Martins) finds plenty of evidence that our colonial forebears socialized, danced, drank, and even made merry despite the stern imprecations from the pulpit. Reading was a popular pastime. Captivity narratives and adventure stories (albeit with unmistakable morals) sold briskly, though during the latter half of the 17th-century the most popular texts included Thomas Vincent's God's Terrible Voice and Michael Wigglesworth's The Day of Doom.

Polls show that Americans believe that there's too much government regulation, yet we live in an era of almost unprecedented license were we to be judged by the Puritans. Take the laws governing the taverns, or "ordinaries," from the 1630s and 1640s, for example. According to Daniels, "dancing, singing, bowls, and shuffleboard were prohibited, strangers frequenting ordinaries had to be reported to the magistrate, and prices for food, drink, and lodging were set by the General Court and had to be prominently displayed. The court, of course, outlawed drunkenness and made both the tipsy patron and the ordinary-keeper who served him liable to prosecution. Local residents could not spend more than half an hour a day in an ordinary; travelers could exceed this limit since they lodged on the premises for the night."

Yet virtually every settled community had a tavern, and there were plenty on the roads. If you wanted to travel between Boston and New York before 1700, Daniels estimates, you'd come across food, drink, and lodging just about every 10 miles. And by the middle of the 18th-century, when the population of Boston was around 16,000, there were 36 taverns (one tavern for every 444 people). Yet in tiny Princeton, Mass, where the population was just 701, there were nearly a half-dozen to choose from (one tavern for every 140 people).

Quite a discrepancy, and is this hypocrisy? Or just evidence of how canny colonials, beyond the reach of the central government, quietly sought their diversions.

DELIA ELLIS BELL the Partial Yankee (there was a questionable great-great-grandmother) finds that the gentle days of summer bring a corresponding rise in the number of car alarms, blaring radios, and cursing on the street. "When will the tenant upstairs get better taste in music," she sighs. "Or a hearing aid."

As for Felix the Urban Naturalist, he finds an oasis of tranquillity at Tritown Public Library, where Ozzie the Wiz directs him to the stacks of Colonial History.

A couple of hours of reading about Cotton Mather (1663-1728) makes Felix a new man, he tells Delia. "Refreshed and relaxed," he says.

"Yeah, they finally got air-conditioning," says Delia. "And subscriptions to Handcrafts, an excellent new crafting magazine."

"Don't know about that," says Felix. "I just know that I feel grateful for the small duties and modest pleasures of my own life, after reading of the tumult that surrounded the life of Cotton Mather. He was a complete ayatollah of social theory and the most prolific author in the New World."

"No surprise, considering the background," says Ozzie, whose areas of special interest are always more specialized than Delia or Felix can imagine. "Cotton Mather's father, Increase, entered Harvard at 12, and as an adult, he got into trouble in England for remaining a Puritan after the Restoration."

"The apple doesn't fall too far from the tree?" asks Delia.

"The apple doesn't fall off the tree," laughs Felix. "Cotton became an ubër-Puritan minister who encouraged the Salem witch trials and was fond of barbed encomiums like: `There is not any revenge more heroic than that which torments envy by doing of good.' Yet he's multi-layered and completely fascinating."

"The Fitchburg Art Museum had a show sponsored by Fitchburg Historical Society a few years back," offers Delia. "Among the exhibits was a chair owned by the Mather family. It was very low, narrow, and uncomfortable-looking. Every piece was a turned-newel post, and it made a lobster trap look like a chaise longue."

"A perfect paradox," says Felix. "Mather was a member of the Royal Society, the leading scientific organization of the day, yet quailed at the idea of a mechanical universe."

"He also quarrelled bitterly with Governor Dudley, President Leverett of Harvard, and various ministers," adds Ozzie. "And regarded his children as `the olive plants around the table' who needed to be nourished."

"Sounds like a pip," says Delia. "So, if he was living in Tritown now, and had this perfect day at his disposal . . . "

"He'd be studying scripture in a dark room," says Felix, "and writing long harangues for Sunday."

"Given that comparison," Delia says. "Perhaps painting the house or replacing the septic system is a perfectly admirable way to spend a summer day."

Sally Cragin teaches "Make Your Own Dollhouse Furniture" at Fitchburg Art Museum on July 19.

---

The Tales From Tritown archive

---