A Letter From America #36
A Visit to Natchez
From
the Rare Book Review
A few months ago I found myself (terribly
absent-minded these days, lose anything I put down) in Natchez, Mississippi.
This is a state of our union better known for blues than books, since it
steadily comes in as 50th in rankings of literacy or just about
anything else one cares to measure. Indeed the citizens of Arkansas across the
river, perennially 49th, profess to thank God for Mississippi, as it
keeps them out of last place. Indeed times are tough in much of the state –
the closure of several factories has left Natchez with a 30% unemployment rate
and not much to bank on except its past.
Indeed, the past is the one business that is booming in Natchez. The town is
positively loaded up with stately mansions that evoke moonlight and magnolias
and the brief florescence of the Cotton Kingdom before the damn Yankees came
down and ruined it all. These days, the owners of those mansions, under the
auspices of two sparring garden clubs, bring revenue into the town by dressing
up in antebellum garb and opening their homes to tours eight weeks out of the
year. The clubs started as one in the 1930s when the tours began (the economy
was depressed back then too because…it was the Depression), and then split
over some procedural dispute, provoking the War of the Hoops, named for the
skirt bustles. Nowadays there is an armed peace between the clubs, and a central
ticket agency will get you on a tour into many of the homes.
The visitor soon discovers some surprising things. First, Natchez is a very old
town by middle-American standards, and houses survive from the Spanish era in
the 1770s. Second, most of the big mansions were built by northerners, who had
major investments in the slave South. The town escaped destruction by Gen. Grant
in the Civil War because of its well-known northern sympathies. Nowadays the
descendants who own the mansions are more Southern than the Southerners, and
nobody seems to see any irony in the great-grandchildren of pro-Union builders
dressing up in Confederate uniforms for the annual garden club ball. Thirdly,
for the book person, Natchez was an extraordinary center of printing in the
beginning of the 19th century. Most of the imprints are very rare
these days, the bulk of the editions having been consumed by bugs the size of
mice which frequent these parts.
Printing started in Natchez in 1799. The first printer, Andrew Marschalk, was an
American army officer who brought a small English printing press with him to
Mississippi Territory in 1798. It was first situated at Walnut Hills
(present-day Vicksburg), where the Army had established a fort while settling
the issue of who owned Natchez with the Spanish colonial government. Marschalk
later recalled that he printed one piece, a broadside ballad entitled “The
Galley Slave” of which no copy now exists. Shortly thereafter the Americans
took over Natchez and Marschalk moved there. His first imprint was an attack, by
a planter named John Henderson, on Paine’s Age of Reason. This too is a bibliographical puzzle, because the
pamphlet was known to exist (although without a titlepage) and a photocopy
supplied to the Library of Congress in 1934, according to McMurtrie. The
original has not surfaced since – it may be sitting in a pile of imperfects
somewhere. The first Marschalk imprint to survive is the 1799 Laws
of Mississippi, printed half in Natchez and half back at Walnut Hills; still
in the Army, he was reassigned to that post, and dragged his press back with him
to finish the job. Only four copies are located of this fairly substantial,
209-page book. Besides those, I owned a copy once, almost thirty years ago, and
cannot remember who I sold it to. Please write in and I will buy it back.
My favorite of the Natchez ghosts is a supposed work by Philip Nolan – the
“Man Without a Country” of E.E. Hale’s novel –
who perhaps wrote a description of his trip to Texas and published it in Natchez
in 1799. The first reference to
this book appeared in a U.S. Geological Survey report in 1887, and was repeated
by C.W. Raines in his 1899 bibliography of Texas, where it was confidently
described as “18mo.” Texas collectors have tormented themselves with
thoughts of this book ever since, and Thomas Streeter in his Texas bibliography
wistfully remarks that “this would be one of the great Texas books.” It,
too, could be lurking out there.
So it’s back to the house tour circuit. “Of course I think your garden
club’s the best one, ma’am. Do you have any old books stuck away in the
attic?"
–
William S. Reese