It's only been in the news for a few days that a time capsule was found in the Robert E. Lee statue that was removed in Richmond....but they have already opened the capsule.....and first reports are that inside where only a few artifacts....one of which appeared to be a novel....the title....The Huguenot Lovers: A Tale Of Old Dominion written in 1889 by a civil engineer in Richmond whose name was Collinson Pierrepont Edwards Burgwyn.
I Googled the novel not expecting to find anything but there are reprints that can be purchased....of which I considered doing until I found that the novel could be read online.....of which I did.....in about two hours.
Here is my synopsis....a very proper young lady and her distinguished father leave Boston to travel by train....for mostly health reasons....to see what the South was really like. They stop first in our nation's capitol....and then on to Richmond. The young daughter meets a former Confederate brigadier general....still a fairly young man....this barely over twenty years after the end of the Civil War.
The prose....I found to be beautiful.....and the history in descriptions of the capitol and Richmond to be valuable....and the story itself compelling. It is as much if not more a love story than historical reflection....with an ending that I would not even attempt to describe....(you can read this for yourself if you want.)
If you have read much of these posts of mine at all then you know what I will add here. Honor and civility were themes from the writer who lamented what society was becoming. He had an admiration for Stonewall Jackson and Robert E. Lee that I have....(the main male character served under both men)....along with Joshua Lawrence Chamberlain and Abraham Lincoln and so many others from both sides of this conflict....but it does not appear that he had the devotion to God that these men had.....and the lack of it shows up in the story....for the question of....what is love....holds an important place in the end of the novel....and as profound as the author may have made it....it should leave the Christian sad that the love of Christ for His children....and the love of His children for him....the essence of love.....is not there.
