The Windy Hill by Cornelia Meigs, 1921.
Oliver and Janet are spending the summer with their mother’s cousin, Jasper, who is a wealthier man than the rest of their family. Janet is enjoying the visit and Jasper’s grand house so far, but Oliver is very uneasy there. Oliver doesn’t like the vast, empty house, and he’s noticed that Jasper’s manner seems different from he remembers the last time they saw him. Oliver senses that something is troubling Jasper, something that he doesn’t want to discuss. Jasper is usually a cheerful person who enjoys his cousin’s children, but during this visit, he hardly pays attention to them and never smiles. Janet finds things to do to keep herself occupied, but Oliver is terribly bored and bothered by Jasper’s odd behavior.
Then, one evening, Jasper sees Oliver looking at a nearby house. He says that the people who live in that house are also cousins of theirs, but he’s been too busy lately to see much of them. Jasper apologizes for having neglected Janet and Oliver during their visit so far, and he says that he will invite Eleanor, the daughter of the cousin who lives in that house, to lunch the next day. Eleanor is close in age to Janet and Oliver, and Jasper thinks that they will be friends and that a visit from her will liven up the visit for them. Janet is pleased at the idea of another girl cousin visiting, but Oliver is at that phase where he doesn’t like girls. He can’t imagine that he would have anything in common with this unknown girl cousin, and he thinks he’ll be bored while Janet and Eleanor have fun together. He tries to tell Jasper as much, but Jasper is just amused by his attitude and tells him that, if he is afraid of girls, the sooner he gets over it, the better.
When Jasper orders his car and driver to take Janet and Oliver to see Eleanor, Oliver decides to rebel by going to the train station and trying to get a train home. However, while he is waiting at the train station, he becomes curious about the countryside around him and the nearby river he hasn’t yet investigated. He wanders off to explore a little and encounters a man and a girl at a nearby cottage. The man and the girl ask him to help them with their beehives. Oliver is a little nervous of the bees at first, but he follows the beekeeper’s directions and finds himself enjoying the work. The beekeeper and his daughter, Polly, invite him to join them for lunch afterward. After a lunch of biscuits, honey, and iced cocoa, Oliver feels much better about everything.
Polly thinks that she and her father have somewhere they need to be after lunch, but her father tells her not to worry about that. Instead, he entertains Oliver and Polly with a story about a Native American medicine man, a boy who is curious about what lies beyond the ocean, and their first encounter with white people. By the time the story is over, Oliver realizes that he has missed his train. He decides to return to Jasper’s house, where he is told that Janet didn’t go to see Eleanor because Eleanor was delayed somewhere. (Guess where.)
More and more, Jasper’s odd mood becomes apparent. His servants have also noticed how worried he’s been, and it seems like he’s always more upset after a mysterious and disagreeable man comes to see him. Nobody knows who he is or what his visits are about. Oliver knows how to drive, and Jasper has Oliver drive him out on a mysterious errand one evening to see someone. Oliver doesn’t know who Jasper talks to or what they say to each other, but the visit takes a long time, and it makes Jasper angry.
Oliver’s visit with Jasper gets better because Jasper allows him to use the car by himself from that point on. He takes Janet to visit the Beeman and Polly. Although Oliver is still not enthusiastic about girls, he likes Polly because she is very different from how he imagines that cousin Eleanor must be. The Beeman says that they have to pick up some new beehives that day, and Oliver volunteers to take the girls to get the hives from a man named John Massey. John Massey complains about his landlord, who hasn’t been maintaining the dikes. Massey has had to take it on himself, and the burden is becoming too great for him to bear.
It turns out that Massey’s landlord is Anthony Crawford, the unpleasant man who has been troubling Jasper. Crawford also seems more than happy to let Olive and Janet know that he is also a cousin of theirs. He seems to be under the impression that Jasper has cheated him in some way. Jasper says that he’s already given him what he’s entitled to have, but Crawford says that his share should be more than that. Crawford says that, if Jasper doesn’t give him what he really owes him, he can take everything Jasper has and destroy his reputation in the process. There are secrets in their family’s past that would cause a scandal if the public knew about them, and Crawford says that if people knew that there was one crook in their family, they would all be suspicious that Jasper is much the same way.
Oliver doesn’t know what to think of Crawford’s insinuations or his threats. Not knowing who else to turn to, Oliver explains the situation to the kindly Beeman and asks him what he should do to help Jasper. The Beeman knows far more about everything that’s been happening than Oliver knows, and he say that Crawford has unknowingly been laying a trap for himself. Crawford thinks he’s pretty sharp in his dealings with other people, but he’s been neglecting something very important. Actually, multiple things.
In a series of stories that the Beeman shares with the children, he indirectly tells the children the history of their family and quarrels that go back generations. He tells them about a family with a shipping business that restored their lost fortunes during the War of 1812 by turning to piracy. He tells them about siblings divided by quarrels over money during the Gold Rush. Although the Beeman doesn’t admit to the children that all of his stories are true in the beginning, they soon come to realize that they are and that they are directly connected to the them and the current situation.
Toward the end of the book, the Beeman ties all the pieces of the puzzle together before telling them the final story, the one about three cousins named Jasper, Anthony, and Thomas, who were all raised together and were very close, until they had a falling-out over Anthony’s scheming and his unethical dealings. There are reasons for everyone to resent Anthony for his meanness and greed, but the Beeman is correct that Anthony has set himself up for a fall. He really should have listened when everyone tried to tell him to fix the dike.
The book is available to borrow and read for free online through Internet Archive (multiple copies) and Project Gutenberg. Because it is in the public domain, there is also a LibriVox Audiobook recording.
My Reaction and Spoilers
The Family’s Story
In some ways, the story of the family in the book is also a celebration of American stories. The short stories about different generations in their family are set at turning points in American history. Something that fascinated me about these stories was that they were not all glowing about these points in American history and their associated legends. There are parts of the stories that emphasize the bold American values of adventure and ingenuity, but there are also dark sides and downsides to the stories and flawed characters. The family fortunes were set partly by piracy, but one of the heroes of the family was the man who realized when it was time to stop. Members of their family have been consumed by greed and quarrels, although some have overcome their flaws and misconceptions to come together and be a family again. Again, the Gold Rush story resolves happily when the brothers involved also realize the folly of endlessly pursuing riches at the expense of relationships with the people they love. There is even a slight rebuke against the westward expansion of the United States – portrayed heroically but also as highly costly as people died and killed others over land and gold and promoting an endless, unhappy quest for more and more, with people living their whole lives never feeling satisfied. In short, the family, like the stories and American history itself, is a mixed bag, and they are at their best when they realize their wrongs and make the decision to change. For a book from the early 1920s, a period of heightened patriotism and prejudice after WWI, it seems remarkably insightful and self-aware.
It was Anthony’s decision to forge a relative’s name to get money to cover his unethical dealings that ruined his relationship with his family. It was only by their charity and intervention that he wasn’t charged with his crime and sent to prison. He’s fully aware of that, but he’s been resentful about it rather than grateful. Even from a young age, Anthony had always coveted what other people had. Even if he didn’t really want things for their own sake, he would go through elaborate schemes and bitter fights to get what someone else had, just because someone else had it. Out of greed and spite, he has resurrected old property quarrels in their family. He not only got the old house that was originally willed to Jasper, but he has been scheming to get Jasper’s new house. The Beeman (who is the third cousin in the last story and father of Eleanor, who is called Polly as a nickname) says that Anthony should have headed the lessons learned by their family during the Gold Rush, that always reaching and reaching for greater prizes means never being satisfied with what one has and risking its loss in pursuit of the unattainable.
In the end, when Anthony’s scheming and corner-cutting leave him with no one to turn to but the family members he has harassed and schemed against, he finally experiences a change of heart. I find stories where the villain has a sudden change of heart after long-term villainy to be unrealistic, but the crisis that Anthony realizes he caused is sudden and serious. Because he has neglected the dike and driven away the people who were helping to cover his negligence at their own expense, he suddenly realized that he has endangered many lives, and everyone knows that it’s all his fault. He schemed to get control of that land but didn’t take care of it when he had it. Everyone knows what he did, nobody’s going to cover for him, and while he’s unscrupulous enough to scheme to get others’ property, he doesn’t want to be responsible for killing people. It’s enough to make him swallow his pride and acknowledge the reality of the situation to his cousins. They help him for the sake of the people in danger, and in return, he decides to leave the area.
In the end, Anthony takes a hard look at himself and his life, and he realizes that he and his wife and children were better off when they lived in another community, where he was forced to work for a living instead of by his schemes. He now fully understands his weaknesses and temptations, and rather than continuing to resent the things and people in his life that stop him from furthering his schemes, he has come to welcome them as the guiding forces that keep him from making destructive decisions. The way he phrases it struck me as a little corny, almost like the end of a PSA, but I approved of the sentiment. His family members made him angry because they saw him for who and what he was, but the point is that he now understands who and what he is himself. Although the others are willing to allow him some leniency because of the way he handles the crisis, Anthony realizes that he must give himself the discipline he needs and be the changing force in his own life.
Overall, I thought it was a pretty good story, although there are a few issues with racial language related to Native Americans. I’m not sure if there is a modern revised version of this story or not. The version that I’m reviewing is the original from the 1920s.
Native Americans in the Story
I found the first story the Beeman tells, the one about the Native Americans, fascinating because the story contains the concept that Native Americans arrived in the Americas by crossing the Pacific Ocean and moving eastward across the continent. I know that’s the modern concept of the origins of Native Americans, but I was surprised to find the concept in a book from the early 1920s. I didn’t realize that people in the 1920s had that concept because I thought the older theory was that Native Americans crossed a land bridge.
During the story about the Native American medicine man, the book uses the term “squaw”, which is a controversial term because, although it apparently can mean just “woman” in some Native American languages, it can mean something vulgar in others. Modern books avoid the use of the word, but it appears in some older books, like this one, because white people weren’t always aware of the connotations the word could have. This is the danger of using words you don’t fully understand. It isn’t meant in an insulting way in this book, but be aware that the word appears here and that it isn’t a good word to use yourself. If you’re referring to a Native American woman, just say “Native American woman”, and leave it at that.
The book also uses the word “Indian” instead of Native American, something that also appears in older books. I’ve explained before that this hearkens back to a much earlier misunderstanding about who Native American peoples were, and the nickname has stuck to a certain degree. However, modern convention is just to say “Native Americans” because it’s both a more accurate description and less confusing than explaining American Indians vs. Indians from India. I don’t mind the use of that term too much because it isn’t insulting. However, the book also occasionally uses the term “Red Man” to refer to Native Americans. The characters saying that don’t seem to use it out of malice, but I still think it’s inappropriate. I think that sort of thing went over my head when I was a little kid because I knew people were referred to as “white people” and “black people”, but after I was old enough to understand that there were other connotations to the term it became one of those terms that I think of as “derailing terms.” Even if the characters use it in a non-hostile way or kind of thoughtless way, we (the readers) know that there are hostile or demeaning connotations to the term. It just derails the train of thought of readers like me because we stop to process whether or not the character is trying to be insulting or demeaning, and it just distracts from the rest of the sentence and the thread of the story. I’m generally in favor of reprintings of books like this, with the racial terms updated because, provided that the author and characters are not trying to be demeaning or insulting, a change in the language can clarify attitudes and put the readers’ attention back where it belongs – on the story itself.
Native Americans also appear in the story about the Gold Rush, as risks encountered by westward travelers. Their appearance in the story is minimal, if stereotypical.
Jestress's Forgotten Books and Stories 