The Governor of Massachusetts finely balances the political and the personal. Like its
indeterminately unreliable narrator, Frank, the novel is drawn unwillingly into politics,
laughs at its absurdities, attempts nonetheless to deal for the best with its exigencies,
and ends in a baffled stasis. The character of New England is changing, irrevocably, and
neither individual nor political "plans" can hold back the tide or color it.
Frank considers himself but a spectator at life’s feast, fearful of influencing
others - "the moot sin against the Holy Ghost" - or of taking responsibility for
them. Wishing to preserve his detachment, he is nevertheless sucked in by a sympathy and
"the faculty of responding to other people’s sorrow." Having taken up the
profession of law mainly at his father’s insistence on his "doing something
useful, as he expressed it," he finds a bolt-hole as the partner of the elderly,
silver-tongued attorney Asa Perkins. When the amiable old-school Yankee explains that
"his practice is so limited and his cases so rare," father-subsidised Frank
knows he has found just what he wants: "our days fell into a pleasant routine which
gave us time for individual study or reflection and brought us together when it was better
not to be alone." They while away the time reading in the Park Street offices or
visiting favorite saloons and the burlesque show at the Old Howard. The picture of Lawyer
Perkins is completed when he takes Frank to meet Eileen Ryan, the Irish waitress whom he
had established in a flat on Joy St twenty years before and to whom he repairs faithfully
each Wednesday and Saturday night.1
For all his unworldiness, and because of it, Perkins is sensitive to the encroachment
of the contemporary world upon Boston. Brooding darkly down upon an automobile making its
way through the winter slush on Tremont St - cars had previously only been in evidence in
the milder months - he realises the imminence of the horse-drawn era. Prudently, he
determines to switch the trust-funds of his few, elderly clients out of horse-drawn public
transportation and into steel, which will profit from automobile sales. One of his clients
is his childhood friend, the Boston organ manufacturer Elijah Griffin.
Advising Griffin entails visits to his estate in nearby Eastford, which Frank realises
"had many points of resemblance to the villages of England or of France where a
single landlord cares for his tenants paternally and they look to him when an emergency
arises." Griffin has five children by his two wives, both deceased. The children are
"a difficult lot, phlegmatic and taciturn," except for the youngest, Mary, sole
child of Griffin’s second wife, a Tarr of Rockport, who had died in childbirth. Mary
is "like a moonstone on a dark cloth," with long eyelashes, a sensitive profile,
and a clear and musical voice. Griffin has a "plan" to apportion his property,
investments and business as "an outright gift" among his children as each
reaches maturity. The first portion goes to Griffin’s oldest daughter Mattie, on her
marriage to a thrusting insurance salesman, a symbol of the supersession of the old New
England ways. The modern house Fred Atwell plans on his wife’s portion confronts the
Colonial main house with their difference: "the rigidity of the design the
proportions... were mathematically sound but had never been visualized before
construction."2
At first spectatorially happy – "I could not help but be grateful for the
chance to follow the process from the sidelines" - Frank is drawn in to
Griffin’s planning. In Perkins’s absence, he draws up the legal instruments, and
his growing sympathy for Griffin and the more amiable of his children inclines him to
attempt to keep the plan afloat as successively it begins to encounter difficulty. The
youngest son Charley has no interest in marrying his partner Captain Tewksbury’s
daughter Beatrice, Mary’s best friend, but is carrying on with Sue, the daughter of
the farm’s man-of-all-work. Daughter Anne, however, has social pretensions, and when
she marries an old-family, steel company executive, and is given "the lot across the
lane from Mattie," tension grows between her and her siblings. Her stained-wood
California-style bungalow makes for further architectural incongruity.3
The working-out of the plan is complicated when son-in-law Fred, a rising politician,
engineers the nomination of his reclusive but respected father-in-law as Lieutenant
Governor. Though Griffin has no capacity for politics - it is sometime in the early years
of the century - the accidents of Massachusetts Republican Party machinations make him
"an ideal compromise candidate." Asa Perkins agrees to manage his campaign,
seeing it as a way to redress old scores, and turns Griffin’s naivety, old-fashioned
ethics and taciturnity into a political asset: "his brevity was his best asset and
attracted state-wide admiration." Griffin’s victory results in a not onerous
round of duties and he is duly re-elected. His public tenure but puts a delay on the
domestic dynamics which time has set in train. Joe, the son who is to inherit
Griffin’s organ business discovers that it is heading for bankruptcy;
top-of-the-market mahogany organs are no longer in demand, "there’s no future in
it." (Fred is keen on the mass-produced cylinder phonograph, not the organ.)4
Frank’s position as reluctant friend to Elijah Griffin, to Charley, Joe, and Mary,
and to Mary’s friend Beatrice, is becoming difficult:
The new generation, the life which would persist and bring forth something of its
own..., was represented by Beatrice and Mary and I could no longer conceal from myself
that I shrank from witnessing their experiments. I did not want to stay around to see what
might happen to them... on account of the hurt I felt when I realized that they must drift
away from me. I was neither young more old. Mr. Griffin... treated me as if I were a
contemporary. So did the girls, and it resulted in my being each day a bit more of a
hypocrite.... I could not deny that I wished to keep the girls as they were, to shield
their youth and beauty from eligible young men, to restrict their destiny because I had
not the qualities for sharing it. I wanted to admire them, to touch them, to watch them
bloom without incurring the responsibility which would fit me for such privileges. I knew
it was not good for them to talk and act frankly with me, for in the relationships they
must assume there was no safe place for such comradeship. I did not want to endure the
pain which longer association with them would bring me. I longed for the end of the world,
for delirium, for Nirvana.... There was not a single place in the scheme of things which I
cared to fill, which I could think about without repulsion, or abject cowardice....
I could not understand how I had been maneuvered gradually from my usual
objectivity, or what had become of my sense of humor.... Previously I had been proud of my
inaction, supported its inconveniences with a sort of zeal for the principle.... Now I had
lost my convictions but not the habits with which they had enchained me.
Just at this moment, Frank is drawn in even closer to the Griffins: a telegram arrives
announcing the death of Governor Doane, and Elijah Griffin is Governor of Massachusetts.5
Part II of The Governor of Massachusetts is given over to the political life,
with which it deals sardonically and satirically ("one day while a senator was
speaking, a messenger handed him a telegram and after glancing at it the senator cleared
his throat, said, ‘On the other hand,’ and argued exactly the opposite
way"). Frank becomes Governor Griffin’s Secretary and learns to work the
machine, especially to stay on the right side of "the boys," the members of the
press. He spars with O’Rourke, the Irish Catholic Mayor of Boston, endures the
pomposity of the inaugural ritual, babysits the Governor on charitable visits. When
Charley Griffin at length gets his girl Sue into trouble, Frank arranges her convenient
absence, shielding the Governor from the facts - and from press outcry. While he persists
in thinking politics and his work "more or less of a joke," Frank is moved by
Griffin’s rectitude and decency, particularly in the appointment of a scientist as
the Commonwealth’s fish and game commissioner over a politician hand-in-glove with
the industrial polluters of the riverways. Making the Republican Party stalwarts swallow
the pill requires clever handling of Frank. "You would be a wonder," the
Republican state chairman says, "if only you would take things seriously."6
Frank’s life has changed completely: "Instead of idling away the morning and
drinking mildly in the afternoons, I was busy at my desk from nine o’clock in the
morning until far into the evening and more than once had been obliged to take Mr.
Perkins’ place as the Governor’s spokesman." He finds himself "more
anxious
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each day that the year should be one on which he might look back with pride and no
regrets. That would... give me inner justification for failing to turn my hand again the
rest of my natural days." It is not difficult to see Frank’s feeling of
"getting worried about everybody" as an expression of his guilt over Mary, to
whom he is attracted - and has once kissed, on the forehead - even while his attention
strays to Beatrice, "It was a bit disgusting... prancing like a satyr whenever my
client’s children dressed as grown-up women for an hour."7
He soon finds the occasion - seemingly forced upon him - to justify his vague guilt.
Beatrice Tewksbury comes to his State House office and asks to be taken to his room on
Pinckney St; there she tells him she has discovered her father’s adultery. Frank,
exercising his accustomed sympathy,
explained as best I could the difficulties her father must have undergone because of
her mother’s infirmity, the irregularity of his life at sea, and the need which all
vigorous men feel for the natural expression of their exuberance. I called to her
attention... the effect which her own lavish affection must have had in stirring his
desire for companionship. As I warmed to the subject, ...I did credit to the tutorship of
such persuasive men as Mr. Perkins..., citing instances from history and from literature
in which men of her father’s age had shown the same craving for rejuvenation by means
of younger women....
...I do not hesitate to say that I made out a remarkable case for him, turning the
very incident which had threatened to estrange his daughter into a cause for loyalty and
unrestrained love.
Beatrice agrees that she can now understand her father, being like him herself, and
"she began to detach the hooks from the eyes in the back of her waist."8
In the event, he feels "triumph" - "Could anything have been more
fatuous." On the political front, too, he coasts, seeing out Griffin’s final
months of office. As the Republican convention draws near, Frank is sounded out by
Congressman Moore, who "represent[ed]... another generation, a new race of crafty men
who were seizing upon the mechanical improvements of the age and discarding... the
standard of conduct their predecessors had left unchanged in its essentials."
Frank’s innocent remarks about travelling are naturally taken to be bargaining
counters for a consulate. Griffin announces he will not run, and will support the
convention’s choice; when it chooses him, "in an atmosphere of mutual hatred and
distrust," it brings down the wrath of the disappointed Moore, who alleges Frank has
deceived him. Newspapers now rumor Frank’s engagement to Mary; Beatrice "played
up splendidly but... I could not act naturally at all with Mary. I began to suspect that
she knew about Beatrice and me." The prospect of an extra year of delay makes Joe
Griffin burst out about leaving the organ factory, and his father learns of its weakness
for the first time. Mary too sees "the flux and change of everything... brought into
her mind so inescapably.... [S]he burst out, clinging to me, ‘I want my mother,
Frank.’ And she fell down sobbing on the grass.... I knew what she wanted, all right,
but what could I do?"9
Despite having agreed to abide by the convention’s choice, Congressman Moore
announces his independent candidacy. Frank is secretly pleased that he might not have to
put in another year of work, but the Party machine, and Asa Perkins, insist that a strong
campaign must be run. Forcing their candidate around the hustings, they fail to notice his
physical debility. At a public meeting in Boston on the eve of the election, Moore charges
Griffin with graft for having given work to his own company. A riot ensues. (The charge is
untrue, but the damage is done.) Frank recoils:
I recalled all my former distaste for exertion and for public affairs. I could not
understand how Mr. Perkins and I had been drawn into such a vortex. I think he felt the
same way. We had made fools of ourselves and exhausted Mr. Griffin, spoiled his plans for
peace, damaged his reputation.10
At the election night party, Frank dances with both Mary and Beatrice, and fantasises
about the beauties of having two women, one daring and forceful the other with
introspective passion. His "moment of real happiness" is shattered when Mayor
O’Rourke, in a shady deal throws Charlestown and South Boston to Moore, and Griffin
loses by the narrowest of margins.11
The political waters close over Governor Griffin; in a Presidential campaign year, the
Party does not want trouble and his outrage at being cheated of the Governorship is an
embarassment. Governor Moore rejoins the Republican Party and is re-elected with a large
majority. Acting as Mary’s tutor, Frank abets her dreams of organ lessons in Paris:
"I realized I was doing, in a subtler way, what my shameful scruples forbade in the
open." At the Moore’s trial for slander, Asa Perkins trounces him. On the night
before the summing up, however, the trap is sprung. The police, with an agent of the Watch
and Ward Society in attendance, arrest Perkins in Eileen Ryan’s bed. The next
morning, while Perkins is being charged in another court, an unprepared Frank stumbles
through his first closing argument. The jury is hung. Perkins vows to leave Massachusetts
forthwith, with Eileen.12
Frank closes up Perkins’s office; Beatrice goes to California with her parents;
Griffin’s affairs are in disarray, the plan a failure. One afternoon, Frank strolls
to T wharf:
The tide was high, and just ready to turn, and a cluster of Portuguese fisherman’s
boats with sails stained sienna and large ungainly prows were clustered at one of the
landings. Gulls, cocking their heads knowingly and diving for bits of refuse, sailed
serenely against the breeze, then banked and flapped their wings in the other direction. A
huge foreign steamship, newly painted and flying a flag I did not recognize, was edging
her way through the channel and toward the sea. I breathed the salt air, watched the smoke
from the funnels at the East Boston wharves, saw the ferry creep out of its shed to meet
another going eastward, heard the voices of sailors on the tugboats and felt my resolution
drifting away. The air smelled of Europe. The foreign flags and accents, the haze over the
sea, stirred my slumbering urge to go somewhere that was distant from where I was.
Frank has a blank check in his pocket, given to him by his father for having earlier
settled down to real work. His "hour for self-indulgence had come." There
is still Mary, however. She has been asking for an explanation of the "statutory
charge" brought against Asa Perkins. The thought of her physical attractions - and no
doubt the absence of Beatrice - haunt Frank ("I was really almost envious of
Tristram Shandy"). He determines to disabuse Mary of "the notion, if she had
one, that Mr. Perkins had committed sin or crime, or even a misdemeanor."13
Griffin suffers a stroke and becomes paralyzed on one side. Griffin’s daughter
Anne has to be prevented from taking away family treasures under her clothing.
Griffin’s last days coincide with the public airing of the family’s dissention,
and Frank’s reads the will at a similarly undignified scene. Again minded to leave,
there are only his "qualms about parting with Mary." When Mary sees him packing,
his door left ajar "in my confusion," she brings matters to a head. When he
announces that is going to London to see Asa Perkins for advice, she retorts, "Well,
why don’t you go?" and collapses. Thus prompted, he takes Mary in his arms,
asking her to go with him. Questioned about Beatrice, he denies that he loved her.
Suddenly Frank shifts his narrative ahead and we realise that he and Mary have married and
have lived abroad for a long time. Now, however, his father’s money is exhausted, and
he must he presumes return to America, perhaps to Boston, but to do what?14
The narrator has been much more to the story than the observer he considered himself,
and it is that by which Paul precisely involves the personal with the political. The
Governor of Massachusetts is much more than a satirical snub for the author’s old
employer. "Change and disintegration" are chronicled in family and public terms
alike.15
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NOTES
1 Paul, The Governor of Massachusetts (New York:
Horace Liveright Co., 1930), 55, 89, 9, 12, 14.
2 Ibid., 38, 34, 54, 76. Mary may be as young as fifteen when
the novel opens (see 83).
3 Ibid., 54, 108.
4 Ibid., 119, 124. Early years of the century: just what
years the events are taking place in are unclear. At times it seems to be about 1904 to
1908, but towards the end there is a reference to an event that took place in 1915 -
Jess Willard’s 5 April heavyweight title victory over Jack Johnson. Paul takes care
to keep the novel’s chronology even vaguer than in his previous novels.
5 Ibid., 112, 119, 128-29.
6 Ibid., 201, 198.
7 Ibid., 199, 200, 101.
8 Ibid., 208-09.
9 Ibid., 211, 246-47, 227, 226-27, 229-30. Act naturally:
but elsewhere Frank says his relation to Mary now became more natural (257).
10 Ibid., 251-52.
11 Ibid., 257.
12 Ibid., 277.
13 Ibid., 302, 303, 298, 305, 309. Tristram Shandy:
"‘Cannot you contrive, master, quoth Susannah, lifting up the sash with one
hand..., - cannot you manage my dear for a single time, to **** *** ** *** ******?’
He was especially fond of that chapter, made catastrophic by the lack of a chamber pot and
a window-weight..." (Laurence Sterne, The Adventures of Tristram Shandy).
14 Ibid., 328. Frank and Mary become "on intimate
terms" while Griffin lies dying: it is impossible to know whether the ambiguity is
unintended, stems from authorial revision, or is the result of incomplete expurgation by
the publisher (321). "Of course I did love Beatrice. I loved Mary, too. What I wanted
was both of them. I longed for what every man really wants, I suppose, - no work and two
beautiful women. ...[T]wo lovely, congenial girls who could live in peace together"
(329).
15 Ibid., 127.
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