L. W. Currey, Inc.

Smith, E[lizabeth] Oakes. THE SALAMANDER: A LEGEND FOR CHRISTMAS. FOUND AMONGST THE PAPERS OF THE LATE ERNEST HELFENSTEIN [pseudonym] ... Edited by [i.e. written by] E. Oakes Smith. New York: George P. Putnam ... London: Putnam's American Agency ..., 1848. Octavo, pp. [1-5] 6 [7] 8 [9] 10-17 [18-19] 20-149 [150] [151-152: blank] + 6-page catalogue dated "November, 1848" at rear, flyleaves at front and rear, inserted extra title with color lithograph by P. S. Duval, four inserted plates with engravings on wood by Bobbett and Edmonds after drawings by F. O. C. Darley, original pictorial blue pebbled cloth, front and rear panels stamped in gold and blind, spine panel elaborately stamped in gold, all edges plain. First edition. The story is dedicated by Smith to James Fenimore Cooper, whose writings were a major influence on Smith's fiction, but here she follows in the footsteps of Washington Irving. Packaged as a Christmas gift book -- in the tradition of Dickens' A CHRISTMAS CAROL. "This short novel mixes together archangels, elementals, jeweled dancing toads, elaborate (and heterodox) Catholic theology, Neoplatonism, Germanic folk legends, astrology, alchemy, not to mention a word written in fire in a burning triangle underneath a 'huge brown creature studded with crimson' sitting in a cavern magically glimpsed through the ground -- a word that, if spoken, would confer absolute dominion and absolute damnation on the speaker -- mixes these and other elements (including a tragic love story) into one of the earliest full-blooded American supernatural novels, a complex and thought-provoking work that should be rescued from obscurity and given careful consideration. "The author deserves praise, among other reasons, for daring to set a fantastical romance on American soil, a secluded glen west of the lower Hudson River Valley in early colonial times, 'disinclined as our people are to recognize the materials for a national literature amongst our own traditions and our own wild and peculiar scenery.' Against the homely particularity of this setting, the author sets in motion events that have their origin in aeons past, and address themes that are on the same scale of immensity. "The glen is loaded with iron ore, which the first European settlers, blond-haired and blue-eyed, turn into steel -- and weapons -- much to the dismay of the original Indian residents, who pack up and leave. The master of the forge in the current (second) generation is Hugo, a skilled artisan and good master, but, 'having traveled abroad and busied himself with many philosophies, had less the pious gentleness of his father.' When his workers ask that the furnace be shut down in accordance with the German belief that every seven years such a Sabbath rest must be given the fire or else it will breed a salamander (a fire elemental) who will spread disaster when it escapes from the furnace, Hugo refuses. Sure enough, the salamander begins to stir inside the furnace, seen by all who look, including Hugo, who looks upon it with admiration rather than terror. Just as it is about to emerge, Hugo's wife, a saintly woman, summoned from her sickbed by another onlooker, Margery, enters with a crystal pitcher of holy water. She sprinkles this on the fire seven times, saying words each time that no one else could understand.' At the end of this, she collapses and dies, and so does the fire. "Soon after, at the christening of the two infants she left behind (little Hugo and Mary: twins?), their father crosses the threshold of the church with his left foot first (thus inviting bad luck). When Margery, now in charge of the children, enters (with her right foot), the priest meets her and the children with a shower of holy water. A flash of light makes the boy cover his eyes and Margery shouts, 'The Salamander!' In her shock she drops the boy, who instantly vanishes, swallowed up by the ground. Mary's reacts to the holy water by closing her eyes and falling into a trance for seven years. "The spell is broken when a strange little boy suddenly appears by her bedside with a crown of precious jewels for her, apologizing that they aren't flowers. She wakes up just as he disappears. She grows up as a wild, elfin creature, at home outdoors and averse to mundane tasks such as sewing, but loving and gentle. "Her father, meanwhile, grows more sullen and dissatisfied, taking to the mountain at night, where a pale blue light can be seen streaming from the rocks. He has a vision of an underground cavern filled with jewels -- and a magic word that will make them his, if only he could pronounce it. Three times he tries and fails, like someone on the point of sneezing who suddenly loses momentum. He encounters a jeweled toad who sings to him, 'an ill song' that Mary also has heard. She, too, has seen this buried word of power but she refuses to speak it despite the cajoling and bullying of her father. Seven years later a strange youth, courteous and cultured, appears in the rude glen. He becomes friendly with Hugo, who relishes this breath of the outside world, and with Mary, who falls in love with him. Margery thinks he looks like the lost infant Hugo. Soon enough the truth comes out, and, in the book's climactic section, he tells her his story -- and the story of mankind. He is one of the archangels who left heaven to be companions for Adam, the perfect man, a unity unto himself. The original sin was not Eve's disobedience regarding the apple, but Adam's desire for a material expression of his internal feminine half, and his insistence that God make such a creature for him [shades of Frankenstein], which he does, dooming men ever afterwards to eternal longing for their lost half. "The angel also has erred, inflated with the glory of redeeming 'mankind' rather than coming down to earth and redeeming one miserable human at a time. His element is fire, the element closest to God (but also closest to Satan), and he exults in it, but it becomes a prison when malevolent angels cast him into the shape of a Salamander elemental. But the baptism of holy water by Hugo's wife enables him to take human shape, entering into the body of little Hugo (a mere shell since he had not yet been baptized). Though human in form now, he still has the powers (and limitations) of an exiled archangel. He falls in love with Mary and puts her into a trance to keep her pure and away from contact with the world, keeping her to himself so that her being will merge into the nature of an archangel. But he must live underground, trapped in the earth, able to create only the jewels of that element (diamonds and rubies, etc.) but not the more precious jewels of the element of air (flowers, etc.). Realizing his selfishness after a period of time, he releases her from the trance, thus releasing himself from the prison of the earth. Now it is time for him to suffer the 'ordeal of the senses' necessary to his purification and restoration to heaven. His last temptation is the carnal love of Mary, which he resists, with painful restraint on both his and her part. "Their tete a tete is interrupted by the arrival of Hugo the elder with a lynch mob, maddened by their own fantasies of what the boy and girl are doing out so late at night. They seize the youth and drag him back to the forge to thrust him into the fire, knowing not what they do (as with the crucifixion of Jesus): namely, the accomplishment of God's plan for the redemption of the angel, who, even as they are thrusting him into the fire (back where he came from, though they don't know this either) is transfigured and enlarged and liberated. "A brief denouement show us the elder Hugo, struck blind the next day, still fierce towards his daughter, yet still loved and cared for by her. But Christmas day arrives and he dies with a hymn on his lips, thus also finding redemption in the end. Mary's fate alone is up in the air. 'Shall we meet again?' she had asked the stranger more than once, but the question goes unanswered. "HUGO (aka, THE SALAMANDER) is not a work of Gothic or sensational fiction, but what might be termed an eccentric occult/theological romance. The supernatural is not injected to supply atmosphere or symbolism or excitement. The story is supernatural from start to finish. Its hero is an exiled archangel, inhabiting the element of fire, trapped into the shape of a salamander, liberated through a heretical freelance baptism so that he may take over the body of an un-baptized infant and grow up to be reunited with, and torn away, from his twin sister, and returned finally to heaven. For a short novel, it crams a lot of action and discussion into a small space. The compression makes it hard to summarize and sometimes hard to read. It would benefit from re-reading. The tone is serious, somber, pious, to be sure, which may challenge modern readers, but its theology is so off-trail, so obviously the product of an inquiring and unorthodox mind, that it is saved from any suggestion of smugness. Its main story is nested within a frame situation and passed off as the work of one 'Ernest Helfenstein,' which has been merely edited by Smith. It teems with footnotes, among which can be found a complete short story, 'The Elixir Vitae.' A preface and a long digressive introduction further serve to veil the main story so as to discourage the kind of scrutiny that might interfere with the suspension of disbelief. Complex, vivid, thought-provoking, difficult, original, THE SALAMANDER deserves to be better known." - Robert Eldridge. Reginald 13343. Not in Bleiler (1948; 1978). Wright (I) 2453. Hamilton 600. Shallow loss to cloth at spine ends, corner tips rubbed, small chip from center of front joint, cloth a bit spotted (possibly some re-coloring at edges), endpapers tanned, still a sound, very good copy with clean interior. A very scarce book. (#157076).

Price: $750.00