Colonel Carter of Cartersville — Reading Notes

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In Category - Science Fiction Utopias

Authors: Smith, Francis Hopkinson, 1838-1915 Digital Source: Project Gutenberg Gutenberg Release Year: 2004 First Publication Year: Not confirmed

Key Word: Virginia -- Fiction Target Reader: Readers of public-domain and historical texts

Book Edition: Project Gutenberg digital edition Book Language: en

Edition facts

Words 39,798

Reading time 174 min

Text sections 4

The catalog record for Colonel Carter of Cartersville — Reading Notes provides practical reading context through 39,798 words, 2 hr 54 min estimated reading time, and 4 detected text sections.

The text analysis averages about 19.7 words per sentence, while the detected sections provide another way to judge how the source is divided.

Project Gutenberg metadata also associates the work with “Virginia -- Fiction,” connecting these edition facts with the source record’s subject description.

Source: Project Gutenberg record #6743

An editorial note examining the structure, recurring images, and movement between scenes in Francis Hopkinson Smith's novel about a Virginia colonel in New York, based on the opening chapters and selected excerpts.

Editorial Edition Score 4.5/5

★★★★★ ★★★★★

Calculated from edition completeness, EPUB availability, text structure and catalogue metadata. Not a user rating.

How this score is calculated

Description quality20 pts
Title & short description10 pts
Source metadata20 pts
Text length15 pts
Chapters / structure15 pts
EPUB file integrity20 pts

Total of 100 points, scaled to a 2.5-5.0 range. Editions with an empty description or a missing EPUB file are not scored.

Edition quality

File: pg6743

Read the Text

Chad was wrong. The colonel was at that moment finishing his toilet upstairs, in what he was pleased to call his "dressing-room," his cheery voice announcing that fact over the balusters as soon as he heard my own, coupled with the additional information that he would be down in five minutes.

What a cosy charming interior, this dining-room of the colonel's! It had once been two rooms, and two very small ones at that, divided by folding doors. From out the rear one there had opened a smaller room answering to the space occupied by the narrow hall and staircase in front. All the interior partitions and doors dividing these three rooms had been knocked away at some time in its history, leaving an L interior having two windows in front and three in the rear.

Some one of its former occupants, more luxurious than the others, had paneled the walls of this now irregular-shaped apartment with a dark wood running half way to the low ceiling badly smoked and blackened by time, and had built two fireplaces--an open wood fire which laughed at me from behind my own andirons, and an old-fashioned English grate set into the chimney with wide hobs--convenient and necessary for the various brews and mixtures for which the colonel was famous.

Midway, equally warmed by both fires, stood the table, its centre freshened by a great dish of celery white and crisp, with covers for three on a snow-white cloth resplendent in old India blue, while at each end shone a pair of silver coasters,--heirlooms from Carter Hall,--one holding a cut-glass decanter of Madeira, the other awaiting its customary bottle of claret.

On the hearth before the wood fire rested a pile of plates, also Indiablue, and on the mantel over the grate stood a row of bottles adapting themselves, like all good foreigners, to the rigors of our climate. Add a pair of silver candelabra with candles,--the colonel despised gas,--dark red curtains drawn close, three or four easy chairs, a few etchings and sketches loaned from my studio, together with a modest sideboard at the end of the L, and you have the salient features of a room so inviting and restful that you wanted life made up of one long dinner, continually served within its hospitable walls.

But I hear the colonel calling down the back stairs:--

"Not a minute over eighteen, Chad. You ruined those ducks last Sunday."

The next moment he had me by both hands.

"My dear Major, I am pa'alized to think I kep' you waitin'. Just up from my office. Been workin' like a slave, suh. Only five minutes to dress befo' dinner. Have a drop of sherry and a dash of bitters, or shall we wait for Fitzpatrick? No? All right! He should have been here befo' this. You don't know Fitz? Most extraord'nary man; a great mind, suh; literature, science, politics, finance, everything at his fingers' ends. He has been of the greatest service to me since I have been in New York in this railroad enterprise, which I am happy to say is now reachin' a culmination. You shall hear all about it after dinner. Put yo' body in that chair and yo' feet on the fender--my fire and yo' fender! No, Fitz's fender and yo' andirons! Charmin' combination!"

It is always one of my delights to watch the colonel as he busies himself about the room, warming a big chair for his guests, punching the fire, brushing the sparks from the pile of plates, and testing the temperature of the claret lovingly with the palms of his hands.

He is perhaps fifty years of age, tall and slightly built. His iron gray hair is brushed straight back from his forehead, overlapping his collar behind. His eyes are deep-set and twinkling; nose prominent; cheeks slightly sunken; brow wide and high; and chin and jaw strong and marked. His moustache droops over a firm, well-cut mouth and unites at its ends with a gray goatee which rests on his shirt front.

Like most Southerners living away from great cities his voice is soft and low, and tempered with a cadence that is delicious.

He wears a black broadcloth coat,--a double-breasted garment,--with similar colored waistcoat and trousers, a turn-down collar, a shirt of many plaits which is under-starched and over-wrinkled but always clean, large cuffs very much frayed, a narrow black or white tie, and low shoes with white cotton stockings.

This black broadcloth coat, by the way, is quite the most interesting feature of the colonel's costume. So many changes are constantly made in its general make-up that you never quite believe it is the same ill-buttoned, shiny garment until you become familiar with its possibilities.

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The novel opens with a precise description of the colonel's house in Bedford Place, a two-story dwelling "nearly a century old" that "crouches down behind a larger and more modern dwelling." This initial image establishes a pattern of contrast between the old and the new, the Southern and the Northern, that runs through the excerpts. The house is accessed via a "narrow tunnel" that frames a "delightful picture" of the yard beyond, suggesting a hidden, almost secret world. The narrator's attention to physical details—the rusty lantern, the leak overhead, the "quaint colonial door"—creates a sense of place that is both shabby and charming, much like the colonel himself.

The Tunnel as Threshold

The tunnel from Bedford Place to the colonel's door is more than a setting; it functions as a recurring structural device. Characters pass through it repeatedly, marking transitions between the public street and the private, Southern enclave. The narrator describes it as "uncanny" and "mouldy," yet it frames a "delightful picture" of the yard. This duality reflects the colonel's own position: a Southern gentleman in a Northern city, his dignity intact despite reduced circumstances. The tunnel also serves as a conduit for sound—Chad's singing is heard "all fru de tunnel cl'ar out to de street"—blurring the boundary between inside and out. Each passage through the tunnel signals a shift in tone or plot, from the domestic comedy of dinner preparations to the gravity of a duel challenge.

Recurring Images of Light and Shadow

Smith repeatedly uses light and shadow to underscore mood and character. The tunnel is "lighted at night by a rusty lantern with dingy glass sides," while the yard beyond is glimpsed on "sunny days." Inside the house, the colonel's dining room is described with the window open to a "dreary yard," and the clock tower is "outlined against the evening sky." These images of illumination and gloom mirror the colonel's fluctuating fortunes. When he emerges from the tunnel after sending the duel challenge, his figure is described as "tall" and his tread as "sentry-like," suggesting a man who carries his own light. The contrast between the dim tunnel and the bright yard also echoes the colonel's ability to transform his shabby surroundings through sheer force of personality.

Movement Between Scenes: From Domestic to Dramatic

The excerpts show a deliberate rhythm of scene changes, often marked by the arrival of a letter or a knock at the door. The narrative moves from the leisurely description of the house and Chad's cooking to the tense council of war in Chapter VI, where the colonel reads his challenge to Klutchem. This shift is abrupt: the calm of "two b'iled eggs" and singing gives way to the urgency of "Important" and "In haste." The movement is physical as well—characters hurry through the tunnel, pace rooms, and stand on each side of the dining table. Smith uses these transitions to heighten suspense, as when Fitz and the narrator wait for the colonel's return, their anxiety growing with the passing hours. The structure thus alternates between static, descriptive passages and dynamic, plot-driven scenes.

The Colonel's Voice and the Narrator's Eye

The narrative voice is that of a first-person observer, Major Yancey, who records the colonel's speech with careful attention to dialect and cadence. The colonel's lines are marked by elongated vowels and formal phrasing: "You see befo' you a man on the verge of one of the great crises of his life." This contrasts with Chad's vernacular and Fitz's blunt exclamations. The narrator's own observations are precise and visual, focusing on physical details like the "swinging wooden gate" or the "sentry-like tread." This dual perspective—the narrator's eye for setting and the colonel's voice for drama—creates a layered texture. The reader sees the shabby tunnel through the narrator's description but hears the colonel's grandiloquence directly, producing a tension between reality and self-presentation that is central to the work.

Readers attentive to the novel's structure will notice how Smith uses the tunnel, the clock tower, and the contrast between interior and exterior spaces to frame the colonel's world. The movement between scenes—from the intimate dining room to the public office, from comic banter to formal challenge—creates a rhythm that mirrors the colonel's own oscillations between Southern hospitality and prickly honor. Pay attention to how these shifts are signaled by physical objects: letters, doors, and the ever-present tunnel. The excerpts suggest a work that is as much about place and movement as about character.

There’s something about watching Colonel Carter carry his old Virginia manners through New York that makes me wonder how much of a man’s world he truly leaves behind. George Leatrim seems to ask a quieter version of that same question, and I keep turning it over. George Leatrim — Key Ideas to Explore sits beside my chair, unfinished, and I’m in no hurry.