The Worst American Book
Now and then an honest superlative is both a luxury and a necessity, and I take real pleasure in declaring my confident belief that the worst book in American literature is one which was written by Milo Erwin of Williamson County, Illinois, and published at Marion, the county seat, in 1876 under the title The Bloody Vendetta. Though intended to be an authoritative county history, it concerns itself chiefly with a feud which had lately flourished in the neighbourhood between the Bulliner and Henderson clans, with their allies. Only ruthless quotation can do the work justice.
“On the morning of December 12, 1873, George Bulliner started to Carbondale, on horseback. The sun was standing against the murkey haze of the east, red and sullen, like a great drop of blood. The pearly, vapour-like sails dotted the sky, and covered the more delicately sculptured clouds with their alabaster sides. The great oak trees lifted their parapets to the morning sky, and spangled the earth with shadows. The voiceless winds swept the earth with sublime resignation lawless through the leafless woods, and a melancholy breeze stirred the dead ferns and droping rushes. A cold-scented sleuth-hound had followed the tracks of Bulliner remorselessly. This morning two of them, with stealthy movement, took their position near the Jackson county line in an old tree top, on the ground. There, planted on the spot, their ears drank in every sound that broke the air, mouth half open, ears, eyes, soul, all directed up the road to catch, if possible, each passing object.... Bulliner came riding along and one of the assassins fired on him; only two or three of the balls took effect in his hip and leg; but his horse wheeled and threw his back to the assassins, who fired on him again, and forty-four buck-shot took effect in his back, and he fell to the earth. The assassins then escaped. Bulliner was soon found and carried to the nearest house, and his sons notified, but after desperate riding John reached the place only in time to hear his father say, ‘Turn me over and let me die.’ He did so, and George Bulliner escaped from the cruelties of earth to the charities of Heaven.”
A few months later David Bulliner, another son, was shot, also from ambush. “David was carried home by a host of friends, who had gathered at the gate. At the gate he asked ‘Is it a dream? is it a dream?’ and each broken word gurgled up out of the red fountain of his life. His brothers were standing around, their faces sealed with the death seal of inexpressible suffering, and their hearts hushed in the pulsation of woes. His mother lay trembling against the casement, her heart throbbing with its burden of sorrow, while the issues of life or death were being waged in the soul of her son. His sisters were standing in the vortex of misery, praying for the dreadful slaughter to be stopped, and suing for happiness with the sunny side of life in view....
“This was the worst murder of them all. No other equals it in heinousness. You may combine corruption, debauchery and all the forms of degredation known to inventive genius of man, and cord them together with strings drawn from maiden’s hearts, and paint the scene in human blood bespangled with broken vows and seared consciences, and still it will redden Heaven with revengeful blush and leave you blacken hell to make it equal.”
Thomas Russell, an ally of the Hendersons, was brought to trial for the murder. Here are sketches of certain persons present at the trial: “One of The People’s witnesses was Miss Amanda Bulliner... about sixteen years old. She took the stand with a helpless and confiding look, her voice was a little softened by emotion, her rose-left lips curled delicately, but soon her clear, translucent eye lit up with a brilliant lustre. The shadows of misery seemed to depart. Her soft, round cheek dimpled and dimpled again, like the play [of?] waters in the sun, in the lovely and touch [touching?] assembly of charms. Her features were of classic regularity. Her presence seemed to shadow the place. So pure, so truthful, so charming her actions, that all pronounced her a most gentle, and most noble creature. Though never a jewelled wreath may span the curls of her beautiful brow, yet, happiness may as well erect its shrine around her, for Nature can no further gifts bestow.... One of the witnesses was the famous Sarah Stocks [John Bulliner and Russell had both courted her], who swore to threats. Her contour is not as faultless as a Greek goddess, but her form and features had caught some new grace from the times. Her eye was as clear and cold as a stalactite of Capri. She wore a sigh, and there is something in a sigh for everybody. But I will throw no shadow over her, for life in her is as mysterious as in the rich belle; and when the golden chariot of destiny rolls through the skies, she may take her seat among the great.”
Yet all these charms arrayed against Russell could not convict him. He was acquitted, and, though pursued by the Bulliners, got away. Fate, however, tangled him in the snare of Milo Erwin’s prophecy. “If Thomas Russell is guilty, it may be that the almighty sovereignty, love, was too strong for him, and envy seized him, and John and not Davis [David] was the one he wanted to kill. If he could have wrung this lady from John Bulliner, and unstained her life, I doubt not if the shadow of his own would not have again darkened it; and inasmuch as he did not, it may be that the arrowy words wrung by the hand of passion from each of them were destined to hang quivering in memory’s core till they festered and bled, making an irremedial wound, shaped in the red-hot forge of jealousy, and cured only by the exultant feelings of gratified revenge. These little bubbles of joy that jet up from the tumultuous waters of passion, soon evaporate, and leave but mingled dross and shame to fester and canker the mind of its possessor, who ever after leads a life of infamy and its accompanying wretchedness. Whoever committed the murders is the guiltiest of them all. It was he who with death first knocked at our portals, and with buck and ball opened the flood gates of misery, and let murder rush with living tide upon our people. And today his life is ruined, his hopes blasted, and sooner or later he will come to sorrow, shame and beggary, and have the scorpion thongs of conscience lashing his guilty bosom as he promenades the sidewalks of destiny.”
Consider the plight of the Bulliner boys, thus denied justice by the law. “Must they be driven to the bushes by this hard bargain, or be placed for a lifetime at the mercy of assassins, with their hearts enclosed in palisades of sorrow? They saw their father and brother shot down by vandal hands, and their own lives threatened by fiends stalking in midnight darkness.... What could they do but pick up the gauntlet hurled into their faces, and give vent to anger long pent up?... Embassadors were at an end. Words of menace and expostulation were exchanged for the thunders of the shot gun.... The god of the bushes had been invoked.”
This is enough to justify my claim for Milo Erwin’s book, but I must cite one anti-climax from the sequel touching Marshall Crain, who joined the vendetta and was later hanged for murder. “Soon after, Marsh’s wife entered his cell, and he took her on his knees and embraced her.... Her eyes glittered with a metallic gleam, and the soft curl of her lips was lost in a quiver of despair. Her’s was a deadly pallor. It was the incandescence, and not the flame of passion, that was burning in her inmost being. She would burst out into shrieks of great anguish, and then subside into sobs. She dreaded the heaving of her own bosom—dreaded the future and the world. If she could have died she would have been happy and holy in the hope of mercy. To be torn from a love made holier by past sorrows, was an insult to the attribute of Heaven. Marsh was in his sock feet, with a pair of jeans pants on, and a ragged jeans coat. He looked care-worn, and shed a few tears.”