Pyncheon family

“ Being better (which I insist it is) than 'The Scarlet Letter,' I have never expected it to be so popular (this steel pen makes me write awfully) . —— —— Esq., of Boston, has written to me, complaining that I have made his grandfather infamous! It seems there was actually a Pyncheon (or Pynchon, as he spells it) family resident in Salem, and that their representative, at the period of the Revolution, was a certain Judge Pynchon, a Tory and a refugee. This was Mr. ——'s grandfather, and (at least, so he dutifully describes him) the most exemplary old gentleman in the world. ”

“ Though looked upon as a weighty man, among his contemporaries, in respect of animal substance, and as favored with a remarkable degree of fundamental development, well adapting him for the judicial bench, we conceive that the modern Judge Pyncheon, if weighed in the same balance with his ancestor, would have required at least an old-fashioned fifty-six to keep the scale in equilibrio. ”

“ The truth is, that, once in every half century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors. Human blood, in order to keep its freshness, should run in hidden streams, as the water of an aqueduct is conveyed in subterranean pipes. In the family existence of these Pyncheons, for instance,—forgive me, Phœbe; but I cannot think of you as one of them,—in their brief New England pedigree, there has been time enough to infect them all with one kind of lunacy or another! ”

“ Its master is coming."
"Do you mean Judge Pyncheon?" asked Phoebe, in surprise.
"Judge Pyncheon!" answered her cousin angrily. "He will hardly cross the threshold while I live. You shall see the face of him I speak of."
She went in quest of a miniature, and returned and placed it in Phoebe's hand.
"How do you like the face?" asked Hepzibah.
"It is handsome; it is very beautiful!" said Phoebe admiringly. "It is as sweet a face as a man's can be or ought to be. Who is it, Cousin Hepzibah?"
"Did you never hear of Clifford Pyncheon?" ”

“ The people are apt to be merged into the dense shadows that lurk in the gloomy passages, but when the sun shines on them they stand out with arresting distinctness. The heroic figure of Hepzibah Pyncheon, a little ridiculous and a little forbidding of aspect, but cherishing through weary years a passionate devotion to her brother, is described with a gentle blending of humour and pathos. Clifford Pyncheon—the sybarite made for happiness and hideously cheated of his destiny—is delineated with curious insight and sympathy. ”

“ Pyncheon's full-dress sword of that gentleman's aristocratic pretensions. A glow of artistic approval brightened over Alice Pyncheon's face; she was struck with admiration—which she made no attempt to conceal—of the remarkable comeliness, strength, and energy of Maule's figure. But that admiring glance (which most other men, perhaps, would have cherished as a sweet recollection, all through life) the carpenter never forgave. ”

“ What is to be done now?" thought the country girl to herself. "He looks as if there were nothing softer in him than a rock, nor milder than the east wind."
Then all at once it struck Phoebe that this very Judge Pyncheon was the original of a miniature which Mr. Holgrave--who took portraits, and whose acquaintance she had made within a few hours of her arrival--had shown her yesterday. There was the same hard, stern, relentless look on the face. In reality, the miniature was copied from an old portrait of Colonel Pyncheon which hung within the house. ”

“ Mostyn is settled at her husband's old Family Seat at Segroid, near Denbigh; his Mama lives with her husband, Major Wynne, at Llewesog Lodge, about four miles from them,—I think we at Brinbella measure eight or nine. Mr. Mostyn means to build another summer, but resides in the old Mansion while that work is going on. I hear no talk of any young ones coming as yet, but we need not despair. Harriet Lee's hour of felicity will come to me, I doubt not; she says, you know, that no human being is truly happy but a Grandmother. ”

“ If she thought that lady’s eyes suspicious it must be confessed that her hostess felt much on her guard in presence of so unexpected and undesired a reminder of one of the least honourable episodes in the annals of Lomax Place. Miss Pynsent esteemed people in proportion to their success in constituting a family circle—in cases, that is, when the materials were under their hand. ”

“ Not only is the mother the head and source and only bond of union of the family, in the most primitive part of the hills, the Synteng country, she is the only owner of real property, and through her alone is inheritance transmitted. The father has no kinship with his children, who belong to their mother’s clan; what he earns goes to his own matriarchal stock, and at his death his bones are deposited in the cromlech of his mother’s kin. ”

“ The Pennington family is remarkable in that there were just 412eleven children and they are all living and enjoying good health, although the youngest is now fifty years of age, the eldest being a little past seventy. These family reunions, which are an annual event, prove that the family tree, nourished by the good old warm Southern blood, is still bearing the fruits of hospitality and good cheer. Once a year they get together, parents, children and grand children, and the ties of family, of kinship, and affection are drawn a little closer. ”

“ She looked haughtily towards Sir Foster, who sat within hearing. "There sits my animal: shall we decide upon the species?"
"Hush, Clara, hush!" softly whispered Mrs. Tom Pynsent.
"My dear Lady Kerrison!" burst from the lips of Miss Wycherly.
"Every one has a name and a place," continued Lady Kerrison, heedless of all caution and counsel. "Pray, Tom Pynsent, assert your opinions as plainly as I do mine, and tell me what a mother deserves, who weds her young and unsuspecting child to a brute, without contemplating her fate in prospect? Pray, Tom Pynsent, what is the conclusion of that fate? ”

“ Brynbella, 30 Aug. 1802.
(Franked "Kirkwall.")
Sick or well, sorry or glad, nobody sure does write such letters as our dear Mrs. Pennington. It is because nobody else writes from the heart, I suppose.... Mr. Pennington was always an honourable character, and since you are to be a dependent wife, be thankful your dependence is upon a Gentleman who, while he deems himself such, will never desert you. Be thankful too, that you have no young [251] family. You cannot now I think, be parent of two children, and live to see the one rob the other and run away. These are sins against Nature! ”

“ On the other hand, it is cause for gratitude unspeakable that the old bondage of the family life is relaxed, never to be tightened again to such oppression as once prevailed. The fact that inheritance is now seen to be so varied and so unpredictable that one child in a family may "take back" to one ancestor and another to a different one to ends of complete divergence of character and capacity, shows that the old attempt to keep them together, whether they could love each other or not, was a social mistake. To-day we are more reasonable. ”

“ As my Countryman is no Lord, nor no Wit, nor no Beau, nor no man of monstrous Fortune, I know not how the connection will be relished by London Friends, or by Cecy's Sisters, Guardians, the Chancellor, etc. But that she should pitch upon a youth of ancient and respectable family in my own neighbourhood, grandson to an old intimate of my own Father, with a clear estate of £2000 pr. Ann.; independent in mind, manners, and fortune, with a beautiful person, and character highly esteem'd, cannot chuse but be agreeable to me. ”

“ We find in this the remains of the custom of punalua among their remote ancestors. Undoubtedly there was a time among them when own sisters went into the marriage relation on the basis of their sisterhood; the husband of one being the husband of all, but not the only husband, for other males were joint husbands with him in the group. After the punaluan family fell out, the right remained with the husband of the eldest sister to become the husband of all her sisters if he chose to claim it. ”

“ The risk of marrying a cousin, even a first cousin, is greatly diminished, provided there is no decided hereditary taint in the family. And when such hereditary taint does exist, the danger is little more than in marrying into any other family where it is also found. Indeed, a certain German author has urged the propriety of such unions, where the family has traits of mental or physical excellence, as a means of preserving and developing them! ”

“ I wish my children to marry well, I confess, but no one detests fortune-hunting more than I do. I consider a manœuvring mother a nuisance in society, and, therefore, Mrs. Pynsent's notion is ridiculous—too ridiculous even to confute. I shall get your father to make an intimate acquaintance with Sir Foster Kerrison, Julia. He is a widower, but his eleven children would not interfere with Clara's comforts: some may die, and the others might be sent to school. ”

“ The law of inheritance for people of distinction differs from that of the kings in the fact that the eldest son inherits by right of primogeniture, and succeeds to all his father’s property, wives and slaves. He generally allows his mother a separate establishment and maintenance and finds employment and maintenance for his father’s other wives in the family residence. ”

“ There was—there always had been—a vein of suspicion, breeding reserve of manner, in the Pennycomequick family. It was found chiefly in the men—in the women, that is, in Mrs. Sidebottom, it took a different form. As forces are co-related, so are tempers. It chilled their manner, it made them inapt to form friendships, and uncongenial in society.
Uncle Jeremiah had it, and that strongly. ”

“ The reasons for mother-descent have been altogether misunderstood by those who regard it as the earliest phase of the family, and connect the custom with sexual disorder and uncertainty of paternity. In all cases the clan system shows a marked organisation, with a much stronger cohesion than is possible in the restricted family, which is held together by the force of the father. ”

“ In the polygynous household the children of the different wives are half brothers and half sisters, hence family affection has little chance to develop among them, and as a matter of fact between children of different wives there is constant pulling and hauling. Moreover, because the children in a polygynous family are only half brothers this immensely complicates relationships, and even the line of ancestors. ”

“ Furthermore, there will be a "structural advance" as compared with lower types of the family. Paternity is certain; and, where descent is traced in the male line, "inheritance of power by sons becomes possible; and, where it arises, government is better [148] maintained." The family cohesion is greater; and "this definite descent in the male line aids the development of ancestor-worship; and so serves in another way to consolidate society." [459] For these reasons chiefly he regards polygyny as a type of marriage higher than polyandry ”

“ Wicked families are nurseries for hell, as good ones are for heaven. (3.) Masters and others of the family may not think it enough to be good, singly and severally in their personal capacities, but they must be socially so; as here Philemon's house was a church; and Paul, for some concern that all might have in this matter of Onesimus, directs to them all, that their affection as well as Philemon's might return to him, and that in their way and place they might further, and not hinder, the reconciliation wished and sought. ”

“ HALFWAY down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm. ”

“ Possibly in the long ages in which man or his pre-human ancestors lived in relatively isolated families, this tendency was of advantage in the struggle for existence, in so much as it may have contributed both to more rapid multiplication and to the greater consolidation, and therefore greater safety and stability, of the family, as the most important social unit. The tendency to incest may thus be due ultimately to the action of natural selection ”

“ Einion was questioned about it, without his giving any satisfactory answer, and one came to the conclusion that she was one of the Fair Family (Tylwyth Têg) . ‘Certainly,’ replied Einion, ‘there can be no doubt that she comes from a very fair family, for she has two sisters who are as fair as she, and if you saw them together, you would admit that name to be a capital one.’ This, then, is the reason why the remarkable family in the land of charm and phantasy (Hud a Lledrith) are called the Fair Family. ”

“ The family is formed by the mutual attachment of the married couple, and by their love for their children. This attachment and this love are a natural need, and satisfy an interest than which there is none higher and greater. It is, therefore, an entirely false supposition that parents who really love each other could find it to their interest to dissolve the family; but for those who do not love each other the family has lost all value and all moral import. It is, therefore, a service to moral society to make dissolution possible to such families. ”