Four Books: Champagne, Skid-row, Generosity, & Mountain Midwifery

I’m catching up on some recent reading…

Tilar J. Mazzero, The Widow Clicquot: The Story of a Champagne Empire and the Woman Who Ruled It. 

(Harpers Business, 2009), 264 pages. 

Late last year, I listened to the author’s “Great Courses” lectures on “Creative Nonfiction.” She often used examples of her own writing including this book. I was curious as to how she took what little personal knowledge is available about Clicquot and turn it into a book that remained “true” to the available facts. Mazzero uses a lot of qualifying words to suggest what her subject might have done or said. While this sometimes became annoying, I enjoyed the book. And I don’t particularly like champagne! 

The Widow Clicquot (Barbe-Nicole Ponsardin) was born into a wealthy French industrial family. He father had created a textile empire. At boarding school when the French revolutionary began, a family seamstress risked her life to rescue the young woman. Afterwards, during a time when the Catholic Church in France was frowned upon, she was married in a secret wedding to the son of another wealthy French industrialist. The marriage had benefits both, as both families were primarily involved in textiles. However, as was common among those whose fortunes were rising in France, they also had wineries. Her husband, Franciois Clicquot, decided that he would make his fortune in the champagne. During this period, champagne was just coming into its own and gaining popularity in England and in Russia.  

When she was 27, she found herself widowed with a child. She would never remarry. For years, she struggled to build the dream she and her husband held for their champagne business. At first, it seemed that every year created another setback. Sometimes it was the weather, other times it was global politics. Napoleon’s warmongering meant that France’s ports were often blockaded. Russia had been a hot market for champagne until Napoleon invaded. This led to an interesting story as one of her agents who were procuring orders barely escaped Russia with his life as he was seen possible spy.

After years of setback, champagne became more popular after the Napoleonic wars. As foreign forces pushed Napoleon back, they occupied the champagne region and fell in love with the drink.  Then she creates the “riddling table”, a new way to produce champagne, which took out some of the guess work and allowed for more streamlined production. She had racks built that held the cork opening down. The bottles were turned, drawing the dead yeast toward the opening, where they could be discarded and the bottled topped off with fresh champagne. This secret allowed her company to outproduce the other wineries producing champagne. Her wealth continued to grow.  By the middle of the 19^th Century, her bottles of champagne became known as “the Widow,” a reference that is often found in 19^th Century literature, when characters order champagne. 

I learned much from this book. Not only does the reader learn about with widow and her company, but also the history of champagne. Mazzero debunks the popular story that it was Dom Perignon who popularized the drink as “drinking the stars.” The book tells the story of the risks Barbe-Nicole and her business partners took to build their empire. Insight into 19^th Century trade, along with the development of trademarks and marking augment Barbe-Nichole’s story. However, due to the limited about of personal resources, many of Mazzero’s insights into Barbe-Nicole’s life is by inference and cannot be factually proven. 

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Cormac McCarthy,  Suttree

 (1979). Audible 20 hours and 22 minutes. 

I had a love/hate relationship with this book which I listened to on Audible. There isn’t really a plot, unless the plot is that everyone dies. But that’s not exactly true, just many of the secondary characters die.

However, the writing is mostly beautiful, with a few gross or raunchy scenes. McCarthy is a master storyteller and his descriptions brings places and people alive. This novel is a collection of vignettes from Sutrree’s life. Through his eyes we learn what life was like on skid row in Knoxville, Tennessee in the early 1950s. 

Suttree lives on a dilapidated houseboat and makes a meager living by fishing for catfish in the river. But there is something that separates Suttree from the rest of those who are down on their luck. For one, we catch a glimpse of his past. Through the story told, we learn he attended a Catholic school and latter college. He had also once been married and had a child. But for some reason he walks away from it all. He seems to enjoy the life down by the riverfront, even though he does get away at times and into the mountains. 

Those down and out in Knoxville look to Suttree for advice. Suttree takes on the role as their protector, as he tries to steer people the right way. His advice is generally good, such as discouraging Gene Harrogate from attempting to break out from the workhouse (a chain gang prison farm), telling him if he did, he’d be caught and would spend the rest of his life in and out of prison.  He befriends all: prostitutes, blacks, homosexuals, alcoholics, and drug addicts. 

While many of the characters are short-lived in their encounters with Suttree, Gene Harrogate keeps reappearing throughout the book. Even at the end, we learn he’s in prison for three to five years. Harrogate and Suttree first meets in the workhouse. We don’t really learn what Suttree did, but Harrogate is there for copulating with many watermelons, ruining a farmer’s crop. He’s always trying to find a way to “make it.” When the health department puts out a call for any found dead bats in town, promising a dollar a bat to check for rabies, Harrogate masters a way to wipe out a bat colony. However, once they learn the bats died by other means, they don’t pay him for the bats. Learning of the tunnels through the city, he concocts a plan to blow up the city’s vault. While much of Knoxville believe they’ve experienced a small earthquake, Suttree knows better and goes underground to find a wounded and stunned Hargrove stinking from the sewer lines that ruptured in his failed attempt to blow the vault.  

Suttree has two “romantic” encounters in the book. One is with a teenager daughter to his “freshwater mussel” partner. The mussel shells are sold to be manufactured into buttons (something I recently learned from the writings of Alice Outwater is a reason for the decline of freshwater mussels). She dies in a rockslide. The next is a prostitute. The two of them live it up for a short while, but then she has a breakdown and leaves. 

One of the more interesting vignettes is of Suttree and a black friend visiting an old Geechee witch. She puts him under a spell which creates a horrific vision. He has a similar horrific vision toward the end of the book when he has typhoid fever. I was expecting he was going to die, supporting the plot idea that “everyone dies.” However, he recovers and leaves town.  Hargrove, at the time, is in prison. 

Warning, if you read this book, there are rough spots, which one should expect when writing about those living on the margin of society. McCarthy shows that he can master the grotesque as well as Flannery O’Conner. 

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Julie Salamon, Ramban’s Ladder: A Meditation on Generosity and Why It Is Necessary to Give

 (New York: Worksman Publishing, 2003), 183 pages. 

Maimonides, a Jewish philosopher and physician during the Middle Ages, also known as Rambam, created a ladder of charity. Each of the eight rungs on the ladder represented a step toward more compassionate response to those in need. The bottom rung is the one who gives reluctantly and in a begrudging manner. Next would be the person who gives just a little, not enough, but in a friendly manner. Then there is one who gives when asked, then before being asked, then giving without knowing who the gift is for, then giving anonymously, then giving whether neither the one in need nor the giver knows one another. The highest run on the ladder is the one who helps lift the needy out of poverty by helping them start a business, giving them a job, or going in partnership with them. 

Salamon, in this book, goes through each step. With numerous examples, many from her own life (such as avoiding beggars along the New York Streets, then befriending one…), she illustrates each step. 

I recommend this book for those interested in becoming more generous. It would be an especially helpful book for someone speaking about generosity as she provides so many stories for illustration.

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Karen Cecil Smith, Orlean Puckett, 1844-1939: The Life of a Mountain Midwife

 (Boone, NC: Parkway Publishing, 2003), 166 pages. 

As I’ve been doing since I moved here last October, this another book that I read in my attempts to learn this new area I find myself ministering. A little over a mile north of Bluemont Presbyterian Church, along the Blueridge Parkway, there is a cabin with a historical marker about a famous midwife in these parks, Orlean Puckett. However, the cabin belonged her sister-in-law, Betty Puckett. Orlean’s larger home was torn down after the Park Service refused to allow her to live in it until her death. She died shortly after having to move and the parkway was open for traffic through southwest Virginia.   

There is a lot that is not known about Orlean. Even her birthyear is in question (some records said 1839). Before the Civil War, she married John Puckett. He would serve in the Confederate Army, but like many, he deserted and lived in the Virginia mountains for the rest of the war. There seems to be some question as if the two of them got along or if there was abuse. He did drink a lot, but Smith makes the case that two loved each other. Orlean had 24 babies. All but one died either in womb or shortly after birth. The one surviving, her firstborn, lived a few years. It is now thought she suffered from Rh Hemolytic disease, which was unknown at the time. While some may have thought the children died from mistreatment, it seems unlikely many felt that way since so many women on the mountain would employ her as a midwife. 

After taking on the role of midwife, for 49 years helped deliver over a thousand children. She would travel by foot or horse, all over the mountains, in all kinds of weather. She served as a midwife until just before she died.

Smith overcomes the lack of direct knowledge about much of Orlean’s life by providing a background into mountain ways of life, the history of midwifery, and the development of the Blue Ridge Parkway. There are also interesting tidbits of folklore used by midwives. At times, the story seems a bit disjointed, but I found it interesting.  The book draws heavily on oral interviews, of which Smith quotes from extensively.

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