The Winthrop Covenant

by Louis Auchincloss

The Winthrop Covenant is a collection of nine stories, thematically related and arranged chronologically from 1630 to 1970s. They are designed to trace, by the use of fiction and dramatized history, the rise and fall of the Puritan ethic in New York and New England. The characters of the stories are different members of the Winthrop family but only John and Wait Still are modeled on actual persons.

(adapted from author's foreword)

Genres: Historical Fiction

261 pages, Mass Market Paperback

First published January 1, 1976

About the author

Louis Stanton Auchincloss was an American novelist, historian, and essayist.

Among Auchincloss's best-known books are the multi-generational sagas The House of Five Talents, Portrait in Brownstone, and East Side Story. Other well-known novels include The Rector of Justin, the tale of a renowned headmaster of a school like Groton trying to deal with changing times, and The Embezzler, a look at white-collar crime. Auchincloss is known for his closely observed portraits of old New York and New England society.

Reviews

[LadyCalico · Rating 5 out of 5]

I found this to be a thought-provoking book chronicling the gradual deterioration of the Puritan ethic in a series of nine shortstories featuring Winthrop descendants (two real, seven fictional) from 1630 until 1973. The Winthrop Covenant was based on a belief that God would bless this great American experiment as long as we remained obedient. The fly in this anointing ointment was that their God was a stern legalist focused on judgment and punishment, who valued a dry obedience to law and uncompromising duty to equally stern authorities made in his image, with mercy and compassion never entering their minds. The Covenant is kept by the elect, the right people, and the smug delusion of sanctity could be kept alive only by shutting out notice of or any feelings of guilt toward the others, the non-elect, such as Native Americans, non-WASP immigrants, slaves, and the wrongly accused and punished, who are just collateral damage. Better 10 innocents erroneously executed than just one sinner escaping judgment and righteous punishment. Thus, the legal profession and private men's clubs become settings for many of the stories--two sanctuaries that provided the latter-day Puritan elect with the illusion of safety and approval. This dry, bloodless Covenant is carried on as a mission through the generations, who have a bad habit of marrying or giving birth to iconoclasts who question the value of a life without compassion and passion--a life of head and behavior that ignores heart and mercy and thus in spite of its piety can never find its own soul. The answer to what way leads to God--obedience or mercy--seems to have an obvious answer--both, together. However, although one iconoclastic wife astutely observes that the Puritans are better at finding an antichrist to battle than they are at finding a Christ, the iconoclasts themselves have nothing positive to offer. They are merely destructive to the Puritan's ethic. They are only effective at being antipuritan rather than offering effective alternatives. In view of the direction of this society since the 1970's one can't help but speculate if maybe the elect did indeed have good reason to so fear compromise. In the intervening years the waning of the Puritan ethic and the compromises meant to infuse blood into their mission has not resulted in bringing together the best of both duty and passion but seems to be indeed leading to the death of both and possibly the death of the American experiment just as Gov. John Winthrop feared. Instead of joining duty and passion to bring about a living faith and a vital American spirit, we instead seem to be choosing a very empty, nihilistic culture of neither, the very thing the Puritans hoped that they left behind in Europe. I wished Auchincloss would have added subsequent chapters since 1973 to see if he still approved of where the demise of the Puritan ethic would lead us. Auchincloss was deservedly harsh to the Puritan standard-bearers in this book, but even though I am not a Puritan or a legalist, I must admit I prefer the Puritan ethic to no ethic at all. Truly, like John Winthrop, I do not see how God can continue to bless the nihilistic straw-man America we are becoming.

[Jack · Rating 3 out of 5]

Louis Auchincloss tortures me. He is an excellent writer, clear and elegant in his prose, with deep understanding of character. His subjects inhabit the apex of society - old money, old houses, venerable names, private clubs, the most prestigious prep schools where the headmaster was likely to be a relation. To a small degree, these people are insufferable; Auchincloss' view of poverty is one where Granny is stingy in doling out funds, from her crumbling Southampton mansion. And he knows the lay of this precious land - Southampton, never East Hampton. Always and only, the "right" places.

The worst sin, and gravest epithet, is to be vulgar.

That being said, he writes about genuine moral dilemmas, in this case a quandary that spans ages of the descendants of John Winthrop, first Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony. (Did I mention old money?) In succeeding generations, various and sundry Winthrop offspring face the question - can humans be saved, or or only some elect, and the others damned?

To examine the facets of this question, he looks at the manifestations of "goodness" over the ages. Anne Hutchinson is banished from Boston to Rhode Island for the fervor of her religious intensity, and her perceived heretical viewpoints. (Not to mention being a bold, outspoken WOMAN; the nerve of her!) Adam Winthrop, generations later, is a perfect gentleman - president of the Patroons Club, art collector, on the right civic and cultural boards - will nonetheless brutally destroy a friendship rather than admit his own error in judgment. Natica Seligmann, daughter of the celebrated Winthrop girls (think Mitfords), has married brilliantly, but discover that neither she nor her husband are actually much interested in one another. When he decides to leave their sparkling life at the top of New York society to teach in a remote and unremarkable college upstate, she has no choice but to divorce him. What else can she do?

One cannot fault Auchincloss, descended from one of the founding families of New York. He knows this world intimately. It's more than a bit of a hothouse, with its obsessions about money and power and position. But these are rarely spoken in more than a whisper. To do otherwise would be, heaven forfend, vulgar.

And yet his people slip up time and again. There are period-accurate but nonetheless repellent moments of casual racism, effete anti-Semitism, and a pervading smugness that dismays even as it illuminates. Basically, this WASP paragon concerns himself entirely with a world that interests me less and less, even given my own position of privileged white male with an Ivy League education and all that goes with it.

Admirable but scarcely enjoyable, well-crafted but encrusted in amber. He was never the voice of a generation, but nonetheless admirable and abominable in almost equal measure.

[S.L. Berry · Rating 4 out of 5]

A weird kind of book, interesting but nothing like what I thought it would be. In my quest to read down the books on my bookshelves at home, I have been reading books as they appear on my shelves. This was the second of those books. I must have gotten this one at Friends of the Library Book Sale.

I thought that it was a historical fiction or maybe a narrative non-fiction about the Puritan Winthrops, Anne Hutchinson. That period of history has always fascinated me. In a way, the book, a set of short stories was, or at least the book started off that way. It gradually evolved into a history of New England, and in particular upper class New York society. It ends in the late 1970's.

Auchincloss' writing is excellent, though some of the ways the characters interacted with each other were not quite believable. For instance, I could not see a mother writing to her son about her sex life with her husband. It wasn't graphic but some things I have never thought are for a parent-child relationship except maybe as a "the birds and bees talk" that is part of a parent's duty. And then there was the characterization of nude paintings of each other in a bedroom as an example of conservative values. I guess if the paintings were in the living room then that would be of the liberal persuasion?

[Al · Rating 2 out of 5]

The Foreword says it is nine loosely connected stories that analyze Puritan character over 400 years beginning in 1630. I say, the stories portray how puritanical character traits impact the lives of people so afflicted, and those around them, over that time frame. The writing is good but by the end of the book I was slightly annoyed with all the ‘holier than thou’ characters.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Great read

[Nelleke Plouffe · Rating 4 out of 5]

I thought the quality of the chapters (all from different points of view) felt uneven and choppy. However, a few of those chapters were so well done that I have to give the whole thing four stars.

[Martha Johnson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a curious little book, actually the first Auchincloss I have read. It's about generations of Winthrops from the founding of the colonies until the 1960's. Auchincloss has quite an ability to dream up scenarios for sets of people -- this is like ten short stories.

The dialogue is curious. No one talks the way these characters do, yet that is the method by which most of the stories are told. Sometimes people keep journals or write letters and quote themselves but the ponderous conversations are not about how people sound but the mechanism for conveying the story.

Surprisingly, with little effort, I was pulled into each cameo of a story and could muse on the threads of moral approach that are being passed from father to son. It took me a long time to read -- short, though it is. But, worth it. I'll refer to it often.

[Ahemx · Rating 4 out of 5]

Louis Auchincloss is a master of language and this book does not disappoint. This is a collection of nine stories and some will be enjoyed more than others, hard to give this book an overall rating but the quality of the writing is superb. At times it was difficult to get through because of so many references to art and culture that were not familiar to me, so, research needed to be done quite often so I could really understand the scene.

[Kathy Hale · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was Ok but not great. I thought that the first part with the banishment of Anne Hutchinson interesting. I thought it would be more of that time period rather than a Mitchner like book of following the family through history.

[Bumby Scott]

The first few chapters held my attention. As much as I wanted to like this book, I found it to be boring.

[Juan Navarro · Rating 2 out of 5]

a lot of small stories of the same historical family but about the same thing... :S

[Veronica Harris · Rating 5 out of 5]

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