What can we read in his discomfort? Few have so nimbly conjured with Sewall and his silence as Richard Francis, author of an excellent 2005 biography of the Salem justice. He devotes about a third of the volume to 1692, making the case that Sewall took the path of least resistance that year. Now Francis has revisited the episode in a work of fiction, arguably the closest a biographer comes to setting his book to music. The quiet “must haves” of the biography burst into exuberant set pieces in the novel, Crane Pond. The biographer is out on a joyride after the long haul as designated driver, and Francis seems to have enjoyed himself from the start. Still in his nightshirt, wrapped in a coverlet, Sewall greets his family at the breakfast table on a chill January morning. “First prayer,” he announces, “then pie,” leaving his wife to frown at the casual conjunction.
We are on familiar territory. The frozen bread rattles around the communion plate. Betty collides with Isaiah. The naked flax-harvester returns. But the rules are now off. The novelist is meant to put words in people’s mouths; he is expected to make scenes. In February 1692—just as the first witchcraft diagnoses emerged from Salem—the Sewalls lost their cow, badly mauled by their dog. Sewall dispatched the incident with one line. Francis takes it from there. Already our hero is on edge. Howls had disturbed his dreams; he initially heard them as the damned, moaning in hell. We see the bloodied animal. We hear of an Indian attack. Sewall’s servant mentions a black dog that has been roaming about the property. “Many dogs are black: nothing extraordinary in that,” Sewall tells himself, shivering all the same. Several days and two pages later, Cotton Mather calls, with news of strange happenings in Salem.
Even when he veers from the record, Francis remains faithful to the texture and tone of New England life. In a fraught discussion with William Stoughton, the future chief justice of the witchcraft court, Sewall thinks: “He is pink and Stoughton is grey, which sums up the difference between them.” Sewall was too decorous ever to have committed such a thought to paper but the comment rings true. Cotton Mather speaks to his friend “as though Sewall is a roomful of people.” Wig askew, he races about as no biographer has suggested but as his bibliography does. The New England buffet—all gleaming venison pies, roast lamb, and raspberry tarts—is on glorious display, as are each of Sewall’s preoccupations. He rails against those blasted wigs. He frisks his day for providential signs. The avoidance of Christmas takes the form of a feast “to celebrate not celebrating Christmas.” Cheekily, Francis invites Madame Winthrop to haunt Sewall’s dreams.