by John Fox, Jr., 1908
Sweet, romantic book about an older man, John “Jack” Hale, and a “little girl,” June Tolliver, who meet in the Lonesome Cove up in the hills of Virginia, near the giant pine, the “Lonesome Pine.” They fall in love. Incredibly romantic. Set in the early 1900’s, when the railroad and coal mines were just beginning in the hills of Virginia near Cumberland Gap. John Hale was an engineer and explored the hills and discovered good coal on June’s land. He buys up the land and for a little while, everything is booming. He saves June from her backward, feuding family. He sends her to school in Cumberland Gap, then on to New York City. She learns to be a lady, to speak well, she can sing beautifully, and she is intelligent and beautiful. The coal mining boom ends, though, and the feuding starts again between June’s family, the Tolliver’s, and the Falin’s from Kentucky. Old evil Rufe Tolliver, her step-uncle, returns from out west and shoots and kills a policeman. John Hale, one of the lawmen in Cumberland Gap, helps to get him convicted, but it tears June apart, having to choose between him and her family, her beloved daddy, Old Judd, her little brother, Bud, and her cousin who loves her and wants to marry her, Dave. Eventually, all’s well that ends well. Old Judd takes her and all the Tolliver’s out west. She learns the truth about John “Jack” Hale, whom she has loved since first sight; that he has been supporting her and bought the Lonesome Cove for her, and she returns to find him waiting for her at Lonesome Cove, still in love with her. They get married by sweet Uncle Billy and live happily ever after.
I learned about this book from the book, Gilead, because one of the characters in that book (a young wife married to an older man) loved to read it over and over again. I read it immediately after I read J.D. Vance’s, Hillbilly Elegy. It amazed me that the violent, drunken, feuding, backwards, dirty, ugly ways go way, way back in that part of the country. Even back to Scotland where they came from.
Page 97-98, Hale and the Hon. Sam Budd are having a conversation about the mountain people and their feuding ways: “”You see, mountains isolate people and the effect of isolation on human life is to crystallize it. Those people over the line have had no navigable rivers, no lakes, no wagon roads, except often the beds of streams. They have been cut off from all communication with the outside world. They are a perfect example of an arrested civilization and they are the closest link we have with the Old World. They were Unionists because of the Revolution, as they were Americans in the beginning because of the spirit of the Covenanter. They live like the pioneers; the axe and the rifle are still their weapons and they still have the same fight with nature. This feud business is a matter of clan-loyalty that goes back to Scotland. They argue this way: You are my friend or my kinsman, your quarrel is my quarrel, and whoever hits you hits me. If you are in trouble, I must not testify against you. If you are an officer, you must not arrest me; you must send me a kindly request to come into court. If I’m innocent and it’s perfectly convenient–why, maybe I’ll come. Yes, we’re the vanguard of civilization, all right, all right–but I opine we’re goin’ to have a hell of a merry time.”
“Hale laughed, but he was to remember those words of the Hon. Samuel Budd. Other members of that vanguard began to drift in now by twos and threes from the bluegrass region of Kentucky and from the tide-water country of Virginia and from New England–strong, bold young men with the spirit of the pioneer and the birth, breeding and education of gentlemen, and the war between civilization and a lawlessness that was the result of isolation, and consequent ignorance and idleness started in earnest.”
Page 159, again the Hon. Samuel Budd: “”Yes, sir,” had added cheerily, “we’re in for a hell of a merry time now. The mountaineer hates as long as he remembers and–he never forgets.””
Page 201, 202, June is seeing her beautiful Lonesome Cove for the first time in a while and the effects of mining on its beauty: “The geese cackled before her, the hog-fish darted like submarine arrows from rock to rock and the willows bent in the same wistful way toward their shadows in the little stream, but its crystal depths were there no longer–floating sawdust whirled in eddies on the surface and the water was black as soot. Here and there the white belly of a fish lay upturned to the sun, for the cruel, deadly work of civilization had already begun. Farther up the creek was a buzzing monster that, creaking and snorting, sent a flashing disk, rimmed with sharp teeth, biting a savage way through a log, that screamed with pain as the brutal thing tore through its vitals, and gave up its life each time with a ghost-like cry of agony. Farther on little houses were being built of fresh boards, and farther on the water of the creek got blacker still.”
Page 362, June is brooding over the feud: “And through the long night June thought her brain weary over herself, her life, her people, and Hale. They were not to blame –her people, they but did as their fathers had done before them. They had their own code and they lived up to it as best they could, and they had had no chance to learn another. She felt the vindictive hatred that had prolonged the feud. Had she been a man, she could not have rested until she had slain the man who had ambushed her father.”
Thankfully, the main ‘feuders,’ June’s dad and her cousin, end up dead and gone. June returns to her beloved Lonesome Cove just as John Hale has decided to leave forever, but they meet at the Lonesome Pine fortuitously and in the nick of time. They declare their undying love for one another and Uncle Billy marries them that evening on the porch and they live happily ever after. They are going to undo all the damage the mining did to Lonesome Cove. They are going to live in town, but visit the cove at least once a year to tend it and keep it beautiful. Sweet book.