Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker

Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker

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Title: Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker
Author: S. Weir Mitchell
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HUGH WYNNE
FREE QUAKER
Sometime Brevet Lieutenant-Colonel on the Staff of his Excellency
General Washington.
By S. WEIR MITCHELL, M.D., LL.D.
WITH FOUR ILLUSTRATIONS
By HOWARD PYLE

[Frontispiece Illustration: "IS IT YES OR NO, DARTHEA?"]
[Transcriber's Note: The drawing depicts a man and woman riding on
horseback side-by-side.]

PREFACE TO NINETEENTH EDITION
Since Hugh Wynne was published in book form in 1896, it has been
many times reprinted, and now that again there is need for a new
edition, I use a desired opportunity to rectify some mistakes in names,
dates, and localities. These errors were of such a character as to pass
unnoticed by the ordinary reader and disturb no one except the local
archaeologist or those who propose to the novelist that he shall
combine the accuracy of the historical scholar with the creative
imagination of the writer of what, after all, is fiction.
Nevertheless, the desire of the scientific mind even in the novel is for
all reasonable accuracy, and to attain it I used for six years such winter
leisures as the exacting duties of a busy professional life permitted, to
collect notes of the dress, hours, sports, habits and talk of the various

types of men and women I meant to delineate. I burned a hundred
pages of these carefully gathered materials soon after I had found time,
in a summer holiday, to write the book for which these notes were so
industriously gathered.
It is probable that no historical novel was ever paid the compliment of
the close criticism of details which greeted Hugh Wynne. I was most
largely in debt for the pointing out of errors in names and localities to a
review of my book in a journal devoted to the interest of one of the two
divisions of the Society of Friends.
I deeply regretted at the time that my useful critic should have
considered my novel as a deliberately planned attack on the views
entertained by Friends. It was once again an example of the assumption
that the characters of a novel in their opinions and talk represent the
author's personal beliefs. I was told by my critic that John Wynne is
presented as "the type of the typical character of the Friends." As well
might Bishop Proudie be considered as representative of the members
and views of the Church of England or Mr. Tulkinghorn of the English
lawyer.
A man's course in life does not always represent simple obedience to
the counsels of perfection implied in an accepted creed of conduct, but
is modified by his own nature. He may therefore quite fail to secure
from his beliefs that which they produce in more assimilative natures.
Age softens some hard characters, but in John Wynne the early
development of senile dementia deprived him of this chance. I drew a
peculiar and happily a rare type of man who might have illustrated
failure to get the best out of any creed.
The course of this great revolutionary struggle made or marred many
men, and the way in which such a time affects character affords to the
novel of history its most interesting material.
Erroneous statements in regard to the time and place of Friends'
Meetings have been pointed out. As concerns these and the like, I may
here state that the manuscript of my novel was read with care by a
gentleman who