James Fenimore Cooper

THE  HEADSMAN;
OR, THE  ABBAYE  DES  VIGNERONS
(1833)

    Paperback: 454 pages
    * Publisher: BCR (Bibliographical Center for Research) (March 11, 2010)

    ISBN-10: 1117891895
    ISBN-13: 978-1117891897
   


(1) lunch.com  04/05/2010

HEADLINE: "the fearful admixture of good and evil of which we are composed."

Reviewer's rating of THE HEADSMAN   * * * * *

During his near decade (1826 - 1833) of wanderings through Europe with his wife and children, American author James Fenimore Cooper (1789 -1851) repeatedly tried to explain in print Europe to Americans and Americans to Europeans. Cooper and family had set sail for England immediately after publication of his best known work, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS -- which made him world famous. The author remained in Europe from 1826 to 1833, writing a series of novels, political tracts and five travelogues partially aimed at making Europe better known to his fellow countrymen. In Paris became a friend of the Marquis de Lafayette, George Washington's old companion in arms. THE HEADSMAN was the last novel written by Cooper in Europe.

The novel begins around the year 1730 at 372 meters above sea level on the docks of Geneva  at the southern end of Lake Leman (Lake Geneva) -- Western Europe's largest fresh water lake. A varied cast of passengers takes ship for the normally brief, tranquil sail to the other end of the lake at Vevey. All or some passengers are intending to witness a street festival held there every five or six years called (the novel's subtitle) THE ABBAYE DES VIGNERONS (literally Abbey of the Wine Producers).

One of those passengers is traveling to witness his daughter's wedding. He hopes to remain incognito. But rumor is afoot among the disgusted passangers that the Headsman (public executioner by beheading) of the Swiss Canton of Bern is trying to sail with them. Before novel's end, his child has been publicly revealed as offspring of both a headsman (Balthazar of Bern) and another headsman's daughter.

Her fiance has repudiated her and raced off for Italy over the Great Saint Bernard pass. Near the famous monastery of Saint Bernard the young man is found brutally stabbed to death and the Headsman is discovered seemingly hiding near the corpse. A trial is held at the monastery to discover the murderer.

In the Introduction to THE HEADSMAN, or, THE ABBAYES DES VIGNERONS, James Fenimore Cooper, who was very familiar with the Swiss-Italian setting and the street festival of Vevey, is unusually clear what he had him mind for his book:
"Within this setting (Lake Geneva and the surrounding Alps) is contained one of the most mafnificent pictures that Nature ever drew, and he bethought him of the human actions, passions, and interests, of which it might have been the scene. ... he imagined a fragment of life passed between these grand limits ... within the immediate presence of the majesty of the Creator. He bethought him of the analogies that exist between inanimate nature and our own wayward inequalities; of the fearful admixture of good and evil of which we are composed; of the manner in which the best betray their submission to the devlis ..."

And Fenimore Cooper delivers as promised.

The novel begins in a relative lowland below the high Alps with a fearsome storm on Lake Leman. And it ends with a mid-autumn blizzard at 2469 meters high in the Great Saint Bernard Pass between Switzerland and Italy.

Descriptions of sublime scenery abound. There are hidden identities: of Balthazar's son who loves a Swiss German nobleman's daughter and of a ruler of northern Italy and of another angry young man, Maso, who will claim to be the great Italian's son. There is a colorful street festival, allegedly dating back to Bacchus, celebrating Swiss vintners.

There is vengeance, robbery, smuggling and a murder mystery. The smug, arrogant never changing tiered politics of Switzerland and Italy are contrasted with the simple love of equality in the USA. Catholics debate Lutherans and Calvinists about grace and forgiveness, while bonds of friendship unite men of warring Faiths.

There is even a mystery as to the year in which the novel takes place. Characters are unforgettable and, as Cooper promised, bad men show moments of heroic goodness, while lofty minded Christians wrestle with ignoble prejudices.

-OOO-

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(2) biblio.com

Recommend to a friend?  YES  * * * * *

When a book is reprinted as often in recent years as is James Fenimore Cooper's THE HEADSMAN, someone in readerland is finding it a good read. Certainly that is true in my case. The book's title, THE HEADSMAN, refers to the public executioner (decapitator) of Bern, Switzerland. The story is set within a hundred mlles of Bern around the year 1730.

Bern, at that time, was nominally democratic but ruled by aristocrats. The job of Headsman was not only a government -- sort of civil service -- position. It was hereditary. Hundreds of years earlier, it is argued in the novel, a notably cruel person must have volunteered for the job and a grateful city allowed him to pass the function down to his oldest son. Over time, as the mores of Bern mellowed, the position became odious and its incumbents publicly loathed. For the past several generations incumbents have petitioned to  give up this obligation, but city fathers have regularly denied the request.

The current headsman of Bern, Balthazar, is married to the daughter of the headsman of another community. Pariahs to the max! They disguise the identities of an infant son and daughter and hope the authorities will never discover them.

That son falls in love with the beautiful daughter of an immensely wealthy Swiss. It helps that he has saved the life of the daughter before the novel begins and early in the novel rescues the father from drowning. But the story of his ignoble parentage comes out and is an obstacle to love and marriage.

The parentage of the headsman's daughter is revealed during the Abbaye  des Vignerons (novel's subtitle), a street festival held every six years in Vevey on the shores of Lake Geneva, well known to author James Fenimore Cooper. Her fiance breaks the engagement and is later found murdered in the Great Saint Bernard Pass! The headsman is suspected of taking revenge.   

This novel is very rich: romantic, gothic (monks, hidden identities, terror), a ferocious storm on Lake Geneva, a murder mystery, nagging clues as to what is the year in which the tale is set, European inegalitarian politics v. the USA's more leveling social values, arguments among characters about Calvinism, Lutheranism and Catholicism, psychological differences between Germanic Swiss and hot-blooded Italians. This one is a keeper.
-OOO-

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(3) epinions.com 

Title of review:  "A headsman's child is not to be hunted like the young of a wolf."

Reviewer's rating of THE HEADSMAN  * * * * *

Apr 07 '10

If ever there were a novel with something for everyone, for every taste in fiction and descriptive writing, it is James Fenimore Cooper's THE HEADSMAN, or, THE ABBAYE DES VIGNERONS.

Allow me first to explain the title and subtitle. I then parcel out the contents of the 1833 masterpiece among several structural pigeonholes.

TITLE AND SUBTITLE

A "headsman" is a decapitator with sword or axe. For centuries before the late 1720s, when the novel opens, the office of headsman in Swiss Bern had been hereditary and compulsory. The headsman of Bern was a public official. His office passed from father to son. There was no avoiding the duty. And yet the officeholder was uniformly despised. No one wanted to marry into a headsman's family.

Abbaye des Vignerons (literally, "abbey of the wine producers") is an ancient street festival of the town of Vevey on the upper reaches of Lake Leman (Geneva). Held every five or six years, the Abbaye des Vignerons featured pagan gods like Bacchus and Silvanus and celebrated local agricultural crafts, especially viniculture. Its ceremonies culminated in the public civil wedding of a specially selected young couple.

Cast an eye rapidly down the list below of a dozen aspects of THE HEADSMAN that struck me. All are masterfully handled by Cooper. Should you find a slant or two that captures your fancy, feel free to read the entire book. It is available in three or four recent reprints (not critical editions) to match every taste and budget. 

STRUCTURAL ASPECTS OF THE NOVEL

SALUTES TO EARLIER GENRES

-- Romance:

Two young women are in love. One, Christine, is a commoner engaged to Jacques, a trader of trinkets to and from Italy from Vevey. He is reluctant to marry Christine, but her father's generous dowry and a certain promise tips the scales. They are the couple selected to crown the public ceremonies of the Abbaye des Vignerons. 

Future baroness Adelheid de Willading loves a young Swiss commoner named Sigismund Steinbach. He had saved her life and will soon rescue her father Melchior from drowning. Generally, nobles do not marry commoners and Sigismund will soon reveal something about his origins that make a wedding socially unthinkable.

-- Landscape and storms, Travelogue:

In the footsteps of his master Sir Walter Scott, James Fenimore Cooper develops his eye for grand Alpine landscapes, sometimes green, sometimes austere. A passenger ship struggles in a sudden storm on Lake Geneva. Three parties ascending the Great Saint Bernard Pass into Italy are trapped in a mid-autumn blizzard. The dangers are real and vividly presented. The climb up from Lake Geneva to the Saint Bernard Pass (altitude 2469 meters) allows Cooper to sketch the headwaters of the Rhone River and the varying forms of agriculture and animal husbandry practiced in Alpine Switzerland.

-- Gothic fiction:

Having begun in 1764  with THE CASTLE OF OTRANTO by Horace Walpole and having  reached its peak in Mary Shelley's 1818 FRANKENSTEIN, gothic fiction had already seen its best days when THE HEADSMAN appeared in 1833.

Nonetheless, its afterglow is still gloriously there. There are the monks of Saint Bernard's priory. There is mention of the Inquisition. There is a bonehouse maintained by the monks for the remains of those who perished nearby in avalanches or snows. There are hidden identities, dubious parentages, mighty lineages needing to be kept alive by outside blood. There is a mysterious murder.

-- Religion and mores:

Among the leading characters and little people of this Alpine border area of Switzerland and Italy there are Catholics and heirs of the Protestant Reformation, mainly Calvinists, but some Lutherans, too. The Thirty Years War between the Sects is 70 or 80 years in the past. And it is finally possible for Christians of various persuasions to be friends and to intermarry.
 
Thus decades earlier the Baron Melchior de Willading and the great Genoese nobleman Gaetano Grimaldi had been young warriors and friends together in Italy. The Baron is traveling up from Geneva to Vevey en route to Italy for his daughter's health. The Signore is traveling to Vevey to enjoy the festivities and in the hope of renewing acquaintance with his old comrade in arms. They discuss their differing faiths at length, calmly, sensibly and realistically.

Similarly the monks of Saint Bernard provide food and shelter and save lives of all who travel through the Pass with no questions asked about religion. In that part of Europe a modus vivendi now exists between Papists and sons of the Reformation.

-- Obscure or Mistaken Identities:

Mistaken identities and misunderstood meanings are, of course as old in Western literature as Greek and Roman comedy and the plays of Shakespeare. The Gothic gravitated to this device because of its ability to create an atmosphere of mystery, suspense and intrigue.
In this respect, keep an eye on Signor Gaetano Grimaldi, Balthazar of Bern, the Swiss mercenary Sigismund Steinbach, the bride to be Christine and a young mariner no better than he ought to be named Maso.

In at least the five features just sketched, THE HEADSMAN salutes past literary preferences.


HINTS OF FUTURE TRENDS IN LITERATURE

-- Passengers on a ship as miniature cosmos:

Scholars credit Cooper's 1838 HOMEWARD BOUND as the first modern fiction to present passengers aboard a ship as representatives of larger society. Five years earlier, in 1833, the author gave a short foretaste of this motif when he assembled on the docks of Geneva passengers bound for the far end of the lake.

Most of the novel's major players are then and there introduced and begin days of continuous interacting: an hypocritical sins-bearing pilgrim bound for Rome, along with Father Xavier, the gatekeeper of the monastery of Saint Bernard, Bartolomeo Contini (Maso], Adelheid de Willading, Melchior de Willading,  Signor Gaetano Grimaldi, Sigismund Steinbach, Enrico Marcelli, and Pippo, a wandering entertainer.
 
-- Animal adventure tale:

Saint Bernard's Monastery is famous for its rescue dogs. From the beginning those noble beasts are represented by Father Xavier's companion, the peaceable Uberto. After a preliminary test of strength with Genoan sailor Maso's giant very hairy Nettuno, the two dogs become friends and play vital roles in the advancement of the plot both on the lake and in the Saint Bernard Pass. 

-- Murder mystery and courtroom trial:

The Neapolitan entertainer Pippo reveals during the street festival at Vevey that the bride to be publicly wed is the daughter of the hated hereditary headsman/executioner of Bern. That causes her bridegroom to renounce the wedding.

He, Jacques Colis, then speeds up the Saint Bernard Pass to escape ridicule and to sell cheap jewelry in Italy. After a terrible snowstorm he is found stabbed to death. A trial is held at the Monastery to find the guilty. Two officials of nearby towns are summoned to officiate. Questioning of witnesses is shrewd. Even the dog Nettuno plays a role. The outcome is always in doubt.

-- A minor mystery as to when the story took place:

I have come to the conclusion that the novel is set /- 1728. There are hints scattered throughout as to the date: it is nearly 200 years after nailed up his theses in Wittenberg, not many decades before the upheavals of the French Revolution and Napoleon, less than 30 years after the dated kidnapping of the legitimate heir to Signor Gaetano Grimaldi, etc.

Scholars have admired such elements of suspense regarding texts and their dating in the writings of both the founder of the historical novel genre, Sir Walter Scott, and his great disciple, "the American Scott," James Fenimore Cooper. Before you know it you are into framing, metalinguistics and such other topics beloved of post-modernist critics.

-- The politics of hereditary injustice:

A constant message of Cooper to his fellow Americans on the other side of the Atlantic is that European governments, no matter whether styled monarchies, oligarchies, aristocracies or even republics, are very inferior to the United States of America when it comes to personal liberties, human rights and elementary justice.

Cooper investigates this theme even more bitterly in another novel, THE BRAVO (1831) about the Republic of Venice. Balthazar, THE HEADSMAN, for whom this novel is named, is a victim of a very bad decision by a remote ancestor to apply for the position of public executioner of Bern. Probably poverty drove him to it. But sheer injustice then impelled the city of Bern to make the position rigidly hereditary. No one loves an executioner or  is willing to marry into his family. Equally unjust, Cooper's characters argue, is society's insistence that nobles not marry commoners. 

After she is jilted at the signing of the public marriage contract in Vevey, young Christine is befriended by the noble Adelheid de Willading and made her companion on the journey up over the Pass to Italy.

By this time in the story, Adelheid knows that Christine is the sister of her beloved Sigismund. She also knows that the siblings are the disguised children of the pacifistic but despised Balthazar, headsman of Bern. Christine's grateful mother, Marguerite, who knows that her son loves the future baroness, tells Adelheid:

"'Thou hast a consciousness of our wrongs,' she said, when the first burst of emotion had a little subsided. 'Thou canst then believe that a headsman's child is like the offspring of another, and is not to be hunted of men like the young of a wolf'" (Ch. XIX).

-- Revenge for structural injustice:

The novel hints from time to time of the coming European revolutions which alone are powerful enough to sweep away both  hereditary privilege and hereditary injustice.

Structural injustice embedded within the law and within society is a frequent topic of conversation among the priests, nobles and other characters. The meek headsman himself is tempted to defy authority. Indeed, he has done so by hiding his children's existence from knowledge of government officials. The young Genoese Maso was intended for the priesthood till the age of 15, then rebelled against authority and became a smuggler by sea.

-- Introducing Europe to America:

In 1826, immediately after publishing THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS, the novel that brought him world fame, James Fenimore Cooper packed up wife and children and sailed off for an eight year stay in Europe. He found that most Europeans, even the English, misunderstood and greatly underestimated America's contributions to civilization and the politics of freedom.
 
* * * * *

BOTTOM LINE: This jewel of a novel breaks new ground for the author. It is not about a "world historical turning point" as was Walter Scott's pioneering historical novel, WAVERLEY. It could also use a bit more humor -- though it is far from humorless.

THE HEADSMAN ably probes human and social psychology, the limits of Christianity as a persuader to personal and civic morality and much else.
Its characters are three-dimensional. Good, decent nobles have to wrestle with their prejudices against commoners. Even the worst people display their decencies.

Give this one a fair reading.

-OOO- 

Pros:
Salutes the past: gothic, romantic. Looks to the future: murder mystery, politics of structural violence.

Cons:
Slow start. Long sentences sometimes best read aloud. No maps. Argumentative. Could have more humor.

The Bottom Line:
A great, off-beat novel. Embraces great complexity with mastery. Salutes the past, anticipates the future of the novel. But needs map(s) of Swiss-Italian border area. Slow start.


http://www.epinions.com/review/James_Fenimore_Cooper_The_Headsman
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(4) bn.com

title of the review: "the uncertain lottery of wedlock

rating of THE HEADSMAN  * * * * *

Posted 4/6/2010:

In the late 1720s two old friends reunite by chance on the docks of Geneva, Switzerland. One is Signor Gaetano Grimaldi, a high nobleman of Genoa traveling under an assumed name. The other is Baron Melchior de Willading, whose ancestors were ennobled by a Holy Roman Emperor, but who now is a subject of Swiss Bern. The baron is traveling with his ailing daughter Adelheid. In their youth, the two old men had been companions in arms and best friends in wars in Italy. And this despite the Calvinism of the Baron and the Catholicism of the Signor. 

Thus begins James Fenimore Cooper's novel of 1833, THE HEADSMAN. Its subtitle, THE ABBAYE DES VIGNERONS ("The Abbey of Wine Producers") points to the town of Vevey at the other end of Lake Leman from Geneva. In Vevey every six years or so is held an ancient, secular, almost pagan street festival celebrating the agricultural arts of the community. There will also be a public wedding as part of the festival. And yet another traveler by boat from the docks of Geneva, Balthazar of Bern, is going in disguise to witness the marriage of the bride, his daughter Christine.

Much of the novel is about the future (including marriage prospects) of the surviving children of the Swiss-German Baron Willading, of the Italian Grimaldi and of the Bernese Balthazar. Or as Cooper puts it, this is a tale of "the uncertain lottery of wedlock" (Ch IX).

On his brief voyage up Lake Geneva, the Baron is accompanied by Adelheid his only surviving child and heiress, a beautiful girl wasting away in love for a young Swiss soldier, Sigismund Steinbach, who has saved her life and will soon save her father's in a storm on the lake. For Adelheid is noble and Sigismund is not. Their marriage is on the face of it unthinkable. Their union will soon become even more unlikely when Sigismund reveals that he is the secret son of the Headsman of Bern -- the hereditary public executioner. If Sigismund is ever found out, he too must become the official axeman.

As for the nobleman of Genoa, we learn that he travels in disguise and is of truly exalted, if deliberately hidden, rank. He grieves for a son kidnapped in infancy by a rival and raised as a criminal seaman -- one Maso. Maso, also sailing for Vevey, takes charge of the passenger boat during a storm on Lake Geneva and saves the lives of all aboard. But is Maso really the Signor's son? If so: legitimate or illegitimate? Might the Italian have had two sons? What if Sigismund is really not the son of the Headsman of Bern? Who, by the way, is the disguised Balthazar?

THE HEADSMAN is full of wild scenery, a wind storm on Lake Geneva, a blizzard in the Great Saint Bernard Pass and the austere beauty of the Alps. Christine, the Headsman's daughter, is jilted during the Abbaye des Vignerons in Vevey when her ignoble ancestry is proven. Her fiance is murdered near the abbey of Saint Bernard. Is Balthazar, Christine's father, the avenger? A trial is held in the abbey to determine the facts. The true identities of the Signore, of Maso and of Sigismund are revealed. Young love finds its own way. Catholicism and Calvinism are compared. The cruelty of hereditary office (Headsman) are laid bare. There are even ample clues for readers curious to puzzle out the precise year in which the tale takes place. A surprisingly great novel, with elements of romance, the gothic, the historical, religious and political. -OOO-

Related recommended books:

James Fenimore Cooper: THE BRAVO, THE PRAIRIE.

http://search.barnesandnoble.com/The-Headsman/James-Fenimore
-Cooper/e/9781144654854/?itm=3&USRI=The+Headsman
+by+Cooper+James+Fenimore

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(5) amazon.com

Title of this review:  "Signore, it should not be thus -- God never intended it should be so!", April 6, 2010

reviewer's rating of THE HEADSMAN  * * * * *

As thematically varied and rich a work of fiction as I have ever read is James Fenimore Cooper's novel of 1833, THE HEADSMAN, or, THE ABBAYE DES VIGNERONS. I have counted a dozen aspects of this masterpiece, each of which is worth its own review:

-- Introducing Europe to America

-- Romance

-- Obscure or Mistaken Identities

-- Landscape and storms. Travelogue

-- Murder mystery and courtroom trial

-- A Mystery of dating the year in which the story took place

-- Gothic fiction

-- Religion and mores

-- The politics of hereditary injustice

-- Passengers on a ship as miniature cosmos

-- Dog adventure tale

-- Revenge for hereditary injustice.

Let me begin and end this review with a few comments on merely the first element: Introducing Europe to Americans.

In 1826, James Fenimore Cooper published the book that made him world famous, THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS. He left days later with wife and children for a stay in Europe that lasted until 1833. Nominally, he was the U.S. Consul in Lyon, a political post created for him by the Secretary of State and the President for his family's contributions to the Federalist Party. It required no work, not even his presence in the French city of Lyon. During his stay in England, France, Germany, Switerland and Italy, Cooper poured out books and letters: five travelogues, novels, political views. He met Sir Walter Scott and befriended Scott's French wife, who had been born in Lyon. In Paris Cooper became a close friend of George Washington's comrade in arms during the American revolution -- the Marquis de Lafayette.

Cooper found Europeans, even the English, remarkably ignorant of America. But he also knew that few people born in the USA had since visited Europe. Many tended to magnify Europe's superiorities and downplay America's virtues. Cooper soon developed a keen sense of the structural evils across Europe of monarchs and aristocrats holding down by force masses of politically insignificant "subjects." Americans, by contrast, were not subjects but citizens, free men. They needed to stop romanticizing Britain, France and Italy and assert their own strengths.

In that spirit Cooper penned THE HEADSMAN. The title figure, Balthazar of Bern, is that city's public executioner by the sword, or "headsman." The office is hereditary and may not be declined. It passes from father to son in unbroken line. It is a governmental office but everyone despises the office holder. Balthazar himself is a gentle pacifist, who hates his job. He successfully pretends that his son and daughter have died. He has them raised in secret by others so that they may avoid becoming either a headsman, as his son Sigismund must, or the mother of a headsman, the fate of his beautiful daughter Christine if her identity is sniffed out.

Yet wealthy noblewoman Adelheid de Willading loves Sigismund, the reviled headsman's son. He has saved her life once already and will soon save her ancient father, a baron, in a storm on Lake Geneva. A noblewoman can marry a commoner like Sigismund only if the latter is enobled. And Christine's father the Baron can conceivably persuade the Holy Roman Emperor to enoble the young man who saved his life.

But that the noble Adelheid should marry the son of a public excutioner? No way! Yet the Baron, and a noble Italian friend, agree in lengthy arguments that both Christianity and reason are against blaming sons for the acts of their fathers and is also against the city of Bern compelling one family to be its executioners. As the German Baron says to the Italian noble: "Signore, it should not be thus -- God never intended it should be so!" (Ch XII). And yet, it is virtually impossible for the Baron to consent to his daughter's choice of a husband. So, Cooper in effect says to his fellow Americans; thank God you make your own laws and do not simply have them imposed on you by monarchs, aristocrats and oligarchs.

THE HEADSMAN is a strong reminder to Americans to be proud that they are free men and to condemn Europe for his social stratifications kept in place by structural violence. -OOO-

Your Tags: james fenimore cooper, lake geneva, city of vevey, street festival of abbaye des vignerons, great saint bernard pass, rescue dog

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