Chapter XXXII

Health, pleasure and naivette [_spelling unchanged_]
... the object of its affection!" "I know ...
[_quotation marks unchanged_]
such as appear to lay in wait [_text unchanged_]

List of Subscribers

Lawrence, Mrs. Effingham [_. invisible_]
Weeks, Miss Sarah Elizabeth [_final , missing or invisible_]

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ALIDA: Details

[Transcriber's Note:

The following is a little more personal than the average Transcriber's Note. Given the nature of the book, this may be inescapable.

In classical literature, there is a form called the _cento_. The word does not mean a hundred of anything; it comes from the Greek word for patchwork. In its original form, the cento takes small pieces of familiar works such as the Aeneid and reassembles the segments-- anywhere from a few words to two full lines-- into a new text. As rearranged, the content can be anything from saints' lives to outright obscenity.

With rare exceptions, _Alida_ cannot be called a cento. While some borrowings involve single phrases, most range from to paragraphs to entire chapters. I (the transcriber) first stumbled across the book while searching for the originals of some quoted passages in _Alonzo and Melissa_. This novel turns out to have been one of _Alida_'s favorite sources, contributing a solid six-chapter block as well as many shorter segments. Appropriately, _Alonzo and Melissa_ was itself pirated; its credited author did not actually write the book. Conversely, a number of other sources were formally copyrighted-- sometimes in the same office where the copyright of _Alida_ was filed.

Only about half the sources (by rough word count) have been identified. Isolated phrases-- three or four significant words-- were disregarded unless they were very unusual, or from a source quoted many other times. Unidentified sources include:

-- most of the longer poetry
-- discussions of education (female and general)
-- religious material, probably from a then-new denomination such as
Baptist or Methodist
-- most references to the secondary character Mr. More (apparently
from a single source, possibly a subplot in some other book)

If you come across a long passage that you recognize, e-mail lucy2424 at sbcglobal dot net.]

Alida: The Author

One of the few things definitely known about Amelia Stratton Comfield, the author of _Alida_, is what she looked like in 1852, when her portrait was painted by David Rogers. A smaller form of the painting is included with the HTML version of this file. At time of preparation (mid-2010), the original was online at the Smithsonian collection: http://siris-artinventories.si.edu/

Amelia Stratton Comfield was probably related to Southern writer and educator Catherine Stratton Ladd (1808-1899), who wrote under a number of pseudonyms--including "Alida".

Alida: Chronology

The chronology is internally consistent: that is, the passage of time based on descriptions of seasons agrees with datable external events, even in the part of the story that draws heavily on _Alonzo and Melissa_. The war of 1812 began in mid-1812 and ended in December 1814; evidently the news reached New York before it reached New Orleans.

1811 and earlier
Death of Alida's mother
Alida goes to seminary in New York:
"The season was now far advanced in autumn"

1812
Alida returns home:
"The spring was advancing"
[June 1812: War declared]
Father's birthday; Alida is sixteen
From Alonzo and Melissa:
"It was summer, and towards evening when he arrived."
"It was the beginning of autumn"
"... and sung a requiem to departed summer"
"... the day had been uncommonly sultry for the autumnal season"
"Winter came on; it rapidly passed away."

1813
"Spring advanced, and the marriage day was appointed."
"Nature was adorned with the bridal ornaments of spring"
"Fleecy summer clouds ..."
Theodore has not yet enlisted
"... weary summer had lapsed into the fallow arms of autumn"
After father's remarriage:
"the cool breezes of autumn had changed to the hoarse murmuring
gales of winter"

1814
"the mild and salubrious breezes of spring had succeeded to
the blustering gales of winter"
Father's birthday
[August 1814: burning of Washington]
[December 1814: Treaty of Ghent]
[December 1814-January 1815: Hartford Convention]
"... taken up their residence in the city for the winter"

1815
[January 1815: battle of New Orleans]
War is over; celebration of peace
"winter's snow was passing from the face of nature"
"verdant scenery of spring"
"showers of April had cleared the atmosphere"
Father's birthday
Alida leaves for tour of New York state:
"The summer was past its meridian"
"The number of travellers this summer were unusually great"

1816
After death of Alida's father:
"at the commencement of the ensuing spring"
Theodore returns

Alida: Sources

Abbreviated titles of the most frequently cited works are given here in [brackets]. Unless otherwise noted, the quoted edition was picked simply because it was the most readily available; it may or may not have been the edition used by the author. All [_sic_] notations were added by the transcriber; all brackets in _Alonzo and Melissa_ are in the original.

Sources that are used only once are identified as they occur in the text.

_Non-Fiction_

Karl Bernhard, Duke of Saxe-Weimar-Eisenach: _Travels through North
America, during the years 1825 and 1826_. Translation published
1828. [Abbreviated "Travels"]
Chapters XXIV-XXVII inclusive, except the poetry, are taken from
this book. See beginning of chapter XXIV for more information.

John Warner Barber: _Interesting Events in the History of the United
States ..._ (exact title varies). First edition 1827; later editions
include 1828 and 1834, with reprints of each. Details of wording
point to the 1828 edition as the source.
The segments dealing with the war of 1812 are quoted extensively:
"Second War with Great Britain"; the battles of Queenstown, Lake
Erie, Niagara and Lake Champlain; Death of Tecumseh; the Hartford
Convention; "Piracies in the West Indies".

Nathaniel Dwight: _Sketches of the lives of the Signers of the
Declaration of Independence_. First Edition 1830; quotations from
1840 edition (reprint of 1830). [Abbreviated "Lives of Signers"]
Used primarily for character descriptions. Most are applied to
male characters in the novel, but one passage is inserted into a
description of Dolly Madison. With one exception, all selections
are taken from representatives of Northern states.

Mrs. James Madison. Here quoted from _The American Magazine of
Useful and Entertaining Knowledge_; the article was printed in
other publications.
Some parts of this article refer to the period when James Madison
was Secretary of State under Jefferson.
Much of the article quotes from the chapter on Dolly Madison
in a longer work: American Academy of the Fine Arts (James Herring
and James Barton Longacre), _The National Portrait Gallery of
Distinguished Americans_ (no later than 1834).

_A sketch of the life and public services of William H. Harrison,
commander in chief of the North-western army during the War of 1812,
&c._ Many editions from 1835 and later.

Charles Phillips: Speech at Dinas Island on George Washington.
Widely reprinted; the version published in the author's Collected
Speeches is different from earlier published versions quoted here.

Lindley Murray: _The Power of Religion on the Mind_. First edition
1836; many later editions and reprints. Quotations from 1863 (the
only edition available to me).
Not a religious work but a collection of short biographies with
character description. Except for the article on Job, attributions
are too short to be certain; _Alida_ may have found similar
phrases in a different source.

Francis Smith Eastman: _A history of the state of New York ..._
First edition 1828; later edition (with reprints) 1831. Details of
wording identify the 1831 edition (or a later one) as the source.

_Fiction_

Daniel Jackson/Isaac Mitchell: _Alonzo and Melissa_. For details,
see Project Gutenberg e-text 28112. Written 1804 by Mitchell; first
book publication (pirated by Jackson) 1811, with many reprints.
Wording in _Alida_ does not consistently correspond to any of the
editions used for the _Alonzo and Melissa_ e-text. Quotations are
generally from 1811 except where a different edition matches the
wording more closely. [Abbreviated "A&M"]
By word count, _Alida_'s favorite source: chapters VII-XII
inclusive, much of the adjoining chapters VI and XIII, most of
XXXIII-XXXIV (the final two chapters), and many other passages of
varying length. See beginning of chapter VI for more information.

Regina Maria Roche: _The Children of the Abbey_. First published
1796, reprinted throughout the following century. Quotations from
1877.

Mrs. (Mary Martha) Sherwood:
_The Broken Hyacinth_; _The Lady of the Manor_.
_Alida_ may contain other quotations from this author; most
phrases are too short to be unambiguous. Mrs. Sherwood's fiction
has a strong religious element, and she seems the kind of author
Amelia Comfield would have liked.

Robert Folkestone Williams: _Mephistophiles in England, or the
Confessions of a Prime Minister_. 1835.
_Alida_ only quotes one passage from this two-volume novel. The
episode may have been reprinted in some other text, or the novel
itself may have lifted it from an earlier source.

Amelia Stratton Comfield: _Alida_.
When all else fails, the book quotes itself. One passage appears
three times.

_Periodicals and Short Fiction_

_The New-York Weekly Magazine, Or, Miscellaneous Repository_: Volume
II, 1797. Reprinted as a single bound volume containing 52 8-page
issues (July 1796-June 1797). [Abbreviated "NY Weekly"]
Only two volumes of this periodical, and a few issues of the
third, were published; only volume II was available to me. At
least 30 separate pieces are quoted in _Alida_, so it is likely
that some unidentified sources are in volumes I or III.
Most essays were printed with minimal attribution, or none at all;
some can also be found in other sources. "The Nettle and the Rose"
also appears in _The Blossoms of Morality_ (1796) and in _New-York
Magazine_, N.S. II (1797). "On Education" is taken from the
writings of Vicesimus Knox; "Detraction" is by Nathaniel Cotton.

"Amelia, or the Faithless Briton". Here quoted from _The New-York
Magazine, or, Literary Repository_: Vol. VI (1795); the story also
appears in _The Lady's Weekly Miscellany_ (1810).

"The Merchant's Daughter". Here quoted from _The American Monthly
Magazine_, Vol. 3, 1834.

"The Story of an Unfortunate Young Lady". Here quoted from _The
Lady's Miscellany, or, Weekly visitor..._ Vols. 14-15 (1811)

_Poetry_

[Most poems are quoted only once, and will be identified as they appear. The author of _Alida_ was obviously fond of poetry, especially obscure poems found in periodicals or privately published books.]

James Thomson (d. 1748): _The Seasons_. The work was reprinted
many times. Quotations are from the 1829 Hartford edition.
There exists an 1842 edition of _The Seasons_ which also contains
Bloomfield's _Farmer's Boy_ (see chapter XIV). If similar
collections were published earlier, this might be the source for
both poems.
In _Alida_, passages from _The Seasons_ are almost always in
quotation marks.

Mary (Mrs. Henry) Tighe: _Psyche, with Other Poems_. Quoted from
1816 London edition.
Quoted works: _Verses Written at the Commencement of Spring_ (1802);
_Verses Written in Sickness_ (1804); _A Faithful Friend is the
Medicine of Life_.

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ALIDA: parallel version

[The prefatory material and list of subscribers have been omitted. Some long paragraphs have been broken up for easier comparison. In the source text, a set of three dots ... on a line of their own means that one or more complete paragraphs or stanzas have been skipped.]

[Frontispiece Caption:]
"Optimum vitae genus eligito nam consuetudo faciet jucundissimum."

[[Attributed to Pythagoras in Diogenes Laertius viii; cited in
_Spectator_ 447.]]

[Title Page:]
Incidents / During the Late American War. / Founded on Fact.

[[The phrase "founded on fact" appears in the title of several of
_Alida_'s sources, notably _Alonzo and Melissa_. The opening words
of _Alonzo and Melissa_ are "During the late [American]
Revolution..."]]

[Dedication:]
His Excellency, / Charles Collins, Governor of Rhode-Island

[[Charles Collins was never Governor of Rhode Island. He was
Lieutenant Governor from 1824 to 1833.]]