“I need a cappuccino,” I muttered when I decided to take a break from reading a 19th-century American novel no one has ever heard of.  I did not take the book because the coffeehouse resembles a very dark convenience store; even if you sit by the window – actually on a platform in the window of what used to be a store  – it’s too dark to read.  

You might want to know what I am reading, though.   Have you heard of  Catharine Maria Sedgwick?  She is the kind of writer one reads in Women’s Studies, or American Studies, because her intriguing, fast-paced novels, mostly set in New England in the early 19th century, are read more for her ideas about women, class, and money than for style.  

In her fourth novel, Clarence, published in 1830, Sedgwick considers the definitions of family, wealth, and courtship. Mr. Carroll, a struggling clerk, inherits money from a miser, Mr. Flavel, after his young son, Frank, befriends Mr. Flavel at the market (it involves dropping oranges).  Later, Mr. Carroll’s daughter, Gertrude Clarence (Clarence was the real name of Mr. Flavel), claims she will never marry, and struggles to keep her head in New York.  It’s a bit like reading the novels of Edith Wharton or Conrad Richter, both Pulitzer Prize winners, only less well-written. 

Yet it is certainly well-written enough for me. I am loving it.

The following quote seems appropriate after the dark coffeehouse:

At his usual hour, Mr. Flavel retired to bed, but not to sleep – the strange and strong emotions of the morning had been soon subdued, and his subsequent reflection had convinced him they must be groundless.  These reflections were in daylight, when reason bears sway; but alone, in the stillness, darkness, and deep retirement of the night, his imagination resumed its ascendancy.