Sky-Walk
Encyclopedia
Sky-Walk is the first completed novel by Charles Brockden Brown
. It was started in 1797 and completed by March 1798, when an “Excerpt” was published in The Weekly Magazine of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces, and Interesting Intelligence. The novel was subsequently lost, though Brown’s later novel Edgar Huntly
takes up the same themes as Sky-Walk, most notably, that of sleepwalking
. Like Brown’s other novels, Sky-Walk is an example of the American Gothic novel.
, though the authenticity of this claim in the case of either Sky-Walk or Edgar Huntly is in doubt, as the newspaper which Brown claims to have read the inspirational story in does not appear to have been available to him.
The advertisement espouses similar conceptions of the moral obligation of literature to that which Brockden Brown also maintained, criticizing popular literature as “deficient” in its lack of “views into human nature and all the subtleties of reasoning”. The cognomen
“Speratus” was popular among contributors to periodicals and was one that Charles Brockden Brown used himself. This knowledge gives scholars reason to believe that the advertisement was written by Brown, and most tend to attribute the comments made in the advertisement to Brown rather than to the unknown Speratus.
The excerpt itself was published the following week, on March 24, 1798, by James Watters, the printer who owned The Weekly Magazine. Watters died of yellow fever and Sky-Walk was left with executors who refused to finish printing it due to the unreliability of its success, as Brown was a new author. The executors also set the price of the manuscript (or what was finished of it) too high for Brown to repurchase, and it was thus lost.
Sky-Walk was circulated among Brockden Brown’s friends, and William Dunlap
and Elihu Hubbard Smith each responded to the novel in their diaries in April 1798. From their commentary it could be gathered that Sky-Walk contained elements of somnambulism, or sleepwalking, and featured the landscape of Delaware, though whether or not it included mention of the Lenni Lenape
tribe (a major concern in Edgar Huntly) remains in contention
Following the publication of the extract, a correspondent wrote to the magazine inquiring after the title of the novel. The respondent explained that, “‘Sky-Walk’ represented ‘a popular corruption of ‘Ski Wakee,’ or Big Spring”, the Native American name of the Delaware setting that Brown uses in the novel. This response may indicate that Brown had at least started to develop a concern for the Lenni Lenape tribe in Sky-Walk, though it may not have been as major of a theme as it became in Edgar Huntly. It should be noted that the only reference found for ‘Ski Wakee’ was from the Algonquian language
, and the meaning was “fresh or new earth or ground”. It is likely that both the correspondent and respondent were Charles Brockden Brown himself, having signed the query “A.Z.”, initials he used in other publications by The Weekly Magazine around the same time. This tendency to self-promote under different cognomens supports the theory that Speratus, too, was Brockden Brown.
Not long after, the narrator visits a prison to investigate a claim of debt against a tenant of Mrs. Courtney (presumably, the narrator’s patroness). While at the prison, the narrator finds Annesley in a similar situation to the tenant. Annesley and his father had taken up joint security for a debt, from which the debtor flees, and with the death of his father, Annesley alone is held responsible for the debt. Though Annesley had enough income to pay off this debt and purchase the estate he hoped for, the creditor purposefully misled Annesley into believing the debtor had paid and Annesley was without obligation. Annesley was arrested as soon as he arrived back in Ireland, and his belongings, which included the fortune he had amassed, were stolen.
The narrator takes it upon himself then to go to the creditor and make an appeal. The creditor, realizing that Annesley’s poverty meant he would likely never be paid, becomes enraged and decides to punish Annesley to the full extent of the law. The narrator, disgusted with the creditor, attempts to locate Annesley’s stolen property, but to no avail, and his own income is insufficient to assist his friend. The narrator’s patroness discovers the narrator’s distress and pays off the debt while also transferring an estate to Annesley. The excerpt ends here.
The prologue to Edgar Huntly includes what would seem to be an extract from the Vienna Gazette of June 14, 1784. The extract tells of a woman shot dead by a chronic sleepwalker who had performed the deed while sleeping, "entirely unknown to himself". This phrase is the subtitle to Sky-Walk and it could be supposed that this article, if indeed it existed, was the basis for that novel as well. Though Brown did indeed draw on real-life instances for his novels, such as the James Yates murders
and the Yellow Fever
endemic, in the case of Sky-Walk or Edgar Huntly, the authenticity of this article is held in doubt. It appears that the journal he claimed to have found the article in was not in operation in 1784 and no one has yet uncovered any mention of a similar sleepwalking incident in other journals of this time.
The Gothic horror of sleepwalking lies in the sleepwalker's inability to control himself and his actions, as well as the aspect of the unknown. What happens while the sleepwalker is asleep is unknown to him when he is awake, and this device allows Brown to build up the mystery and horror in his novel. Sleepwalking also expresses a dual nature. The actions of the man asleep and the man awake are entirely opposite.
, and his concerns for America and its recently revolutionized ideals are apparent in many of his works. Brown's parents were pacifist Quakers, and his father was exiled to Virginia in 1771, the year Brockden Brown was born. Brockden Brown was later sent to the Friends' Latin School in Philadelphia to study under Robert Proud, also a Quaker and an opponent of the war. Brown's parents wanted him to become a lawyer, but Brown was very troubled by the idea of justice that the new America appeared to represent, particularly the "precedence that financial gain claimed over morality and justice". This concern is apparent in Sky-Walk, when the narrator struggles with the creditor to release Annesley from prison. Brown's concerns with freedom and revolution are also indicative in the narrator's dissatisfaction with his patroness.
The setting from the extract of Sky-Walk is Ireland (it must be assumed from the emphasis of a Delaware setting in the notes of Dunlap and Smith that the narrator later moves to Delaware). Ireland, at this time, was associated with radicalism
. In Edgar Huntly it is Clithero who is the Irish exile, in Sky-Walk it appears to be the character of Annesley. Some scholars have asserted that the device of sleepwalking is in itself an allegory of post-revolutionary America, citing that Brown's sleepwalkers share similarities to the "political representative as a 'puppet' of the people'" and those who are "'monstrously' independent of his constituents' intentions".
Charles Brockden Brown
Charles Brockden Brown , an American novelist, historian, and editor of the Early National period, is generally regarded by scholars as the most ambitious and accomplished US novelist before James Fenimore Cooper...
. It was started in 1797 and completed by March 1798, when an “Excerpt” was published in The Weekly Magazine of Original Essays, Fugitive Pieces, and Interesting Intelligence. The novel was subsequently lost, though Brown’s later novel Edgar Huntly
Edgar Huntly
Edgar Huntly, Or, Memoirs of a Sleepwalker is a 1799 novel by the American author Charles Brockden Brown.-Plot summary:Edgar Huntly, a young man who lives with his uncle and sisters on a farm outside Philadelphia, begins the novel determined to learn who murdered his friend Waldegrave...
takes up the same themes as Sky-Walk, most notably, that of sleepwalking
Sleepwalking
Sleepwalking, also known as somnambulism, is a sleep disorder belonging to the parasomnia family. Sleepwalkers arise from the slow wave sleep stage in a state of low consciousness and perform activities that are usually performed during a state of full consciousness...
. Like Brown’s other novels, Sky-Walk is an example of the American Gothic novel.
Publication and Reception
On March 17, 1798, an advertisement appeared in The Weekly Magazine for the novel entitled Sky-Walk, or, The Man Unknown to Himself: An American Tale. This advertisement, signed “Speratus”, introduces both the novel and the author as new and revolutionary, remarking that the author “does not rest his hopes upon the indulgence due to the unripeness of his age, and limitedness of his experience”. It also assures the reader that the novel is, at least in part, “a picture of truth. Facts have supplied the foundation of the whole”. Using newspaper stories and other real life events to draw upon for his novels was a well-known device of Brown’s, such as in the case of WielandWieland (novel)
Wieland: or, The Transformation: An American Tale, usually simply called Wieland, is the first major work by Charles Brockden Brown. First published in 1798, it distinguishes the true beginning of his career as a writer. Wieland is the first - and most famous - American Gothic novel. It has often...
, though the authenticity of this claim in the case of either Sky-Walk or Edgar Huntly is in doubt, as the newspaper which Brown claims to have read the inspirational story in does not appear to have been available to him.
The advertisement espouses similar conceptions of the moral obligation of literature to that which Brockden Brown also maintained, criticizing popular literature as “deficient” in its lack of “views into human nature and all the subtleties of reasoning”. The cognomen
Cognomen
The cognomen nōmen "name") was the third name of a citizen of Ancient Rome, under Roman naming conventions. The cognomen started as a nickname, but lost that purpose when it became hereditary. Hereditary cognomina were used to augment the second name in order to identify a particular branch within...
“Speratus” was popular among contributors to periodicals and was one that Charles Brockden Brown used himself. This knowledge gives scholars reason to believe that the advertisement was written by Brown, and most tend to attribute the comments made in the advertisement to Brown rather than to the unknown Speratus.
The excerpt itself was published the following week, on March 24, 1798, by James Watters, the printer who owned The Weekly Magazine. Watters died of yellow fever and Sky-Walk was left with executors who refused to finish printing it due to the unreliability of its success, as Brown was a new author. The executors also set the price of the manuscript (or what was finished of it) too high for Brown to repurchase, and it was thus lost.
Sky-Walk was circulated among Brockden Brown’s friends, and William Dunlap
William Dunlap
William Dunlap was a pioneer of the American theater. He was a producer, playwright, and actor, as well as a historian. He managed two of New York's earliest and most prominent theaters, the John Street Theatre and the Park Theatre...
and Elihu Hubbard Smith each responded to the novel in their diaries in April 1798. From their commentary it could be gathered that Sky-Walk contained elements of somnambulism, or sleepwalking, and featured the landscape of Delaware, though whether or not it included mention of the Lenni Lenape
Lenape
The Lenape are an Algonquian group of Native Americans of the Northeastern Woodlands. They are also called Delaware Indians. As a result of the American Revolutionary War and later Indian removals from the eastern United States, today the main groups live in Canada, where they are enrolled in the...
tribe (a major concern in Edgar Huntly) remains in contention
Following the publication of the extract, a correspondent wrote to the magazine inquiring after the title of the novel. The respondent explained that, “‘Sky-Walk’ represented ‘a popular corruption of ‘Ski Wakee,’ or Big Spring”, the Native American name of the Delaware setting that Brown uses in the novel. This response may indicate that Brown had at least started to develop a concern for the Lenni Lenape tribe in Sky-Walk, though it may not have been as major of a theme as it became in Edgar Huntly. It should be noted that the only reference found for ‘Ski Wakee’ was from the Algonquian language
Algonquian languages
The Algonquian languages also Algonkian) are a subfamily of Native American languages which includes most of the languages in the Algic language family. The name of the Algonquian language family is distinguished from the orthographically similar Algonquin dialect of the Ojibwe language, which is a...
, and the meaning was “fresh or new earth or ground”. It is likely that both the correspondent and respondent were Charles Brockden Brown himself, having signed the query “A.Z.”, initials he used in other publications by The Weekly Magazine around the same time. This tendency to self-promote under different cognomens supports the theory that Speratus, too, was Brockden Brown.
Excerpt
Sky-Walk is told from the first-person perspective of an unnamed narrator. It opens with the narrator relating his unhappy circumstances being in a position of obligation to his patroness. The narrator then explains that while he had been traveling, he had formed an acquaintance with an Irish merchant just recently out of apprenticeship in Bourdeaux. The Irishman, later named Annesley by the narrator, is married and has two children, and quickly realizes his dream of ending his profession with enough income to return to Ireland and support his family. Annesley left for Ireland to purchase an estate while his family remained in Bourdeaux. The narrator awaits his return, though upon Annesley’s arrival, his friend immediately disappears, and the narrator reflects on this mysterious behavior.Not long after, the narrator visits a prison to investigate a claim of debt against a tenant of Mrs. Courtney (presumably, the narrator’s patroness). While at the prison, the narrator finds Annesley in a similar situation to the tenant. Annesley and his father had taken up joint security for a debt, from which the debtor flees, and with the death of his father, Annesley alone is held responsible for the debt. Though Annesley had enough income to pay off this debt and purchase the estate he hoped for, the creditor purposefully misled Annesley into believing the debtor had paid and Annesley was without obligation. Annesley was arrested as soon as he arrived back in Ireland, and his belongings, which included the fortune he had amassed, were stolen.
The narrator takes it upon himself then to go to the creditor and make an appeal. The creditor, realizing that Annesley’s poverty meant he would likely never be paid, becomes enraged and decides to punish Annesley to the full extent of the law. The narrator, disgusted with the creditor, attempts to locate Annesley’s stolen property, but to no avail, and his own income is insufficient to assist his friend. The narrator’s patroness discovers the narrator’s distress and pays off the debt while also transferring an estate to Annesley. The excerpt ends here.
Comparison to Edgar Huntly
The notes of Brown's friends William Dunlap and Elihu Smith provide some insight into Sky-Walk, particularly the text's relationship to Edgar Huntly, Brown's later novel published in 1799, over ten years after the completion and subsequent loss of Sky-Walk. Dunlap's commentary on the differences between Sky-Walk and Edgar Huntly notes that while the latter includes important plot points regarding the Delaware tribe, Sky-Walk focused primarily on sleepwalking, though the setting in Norwalk remained the same. Smith's thoughts on the novel confirm that the concept of sleepwalking seems to be the major focal point of Sky-Walk. Why Brown added the element of Native American hostility in the succeeding novel is unclear, but Brown is known for his desire to produce literature that was wholly "American" and thus replaced many of the Gothic elements found in European literature with new devices that would reflect the American "experience, values, and language".The prologue to Edgar Huntly includes what would seem to be an extract from the Vienna Gazette of June 14, 1784. The extract tells of a woman shot dead by a chronic sleepwalker who had performed the deed while sleeping, "entirely unknown to himself". This phrase is the subtitle to Sky-Walk and it could be supposed that this article, if indeed it existed, was the basis for that novel as well. Though Brown did indeed draw on real-life instances for his novels, such as the James Yates murders
James Yates Murders
The James Yates Murders refer to a tragic occurrence in 1781 in which James Yates brutally murdered his family, consisting of his wife and his four children, on claims that a voice was instructing him to do so.-History:...
and the Yellow Fever
Yellow fever
Yellow fever is an acute viral hemorrhagic disease. The virus is a 40 to 50 nm enveloped RNA virus with positive sense of the Flaviviridae family....
endemic, in the case of Sky-Walk or Edgar Huntly, the authenticity of this article is held in doubt. It appears that the journal he claimed to have found the article in was not in operation in 1784 and no one has yet uncovered any mention of a similar sleepwalking incident in other journals of this time.
Themes
The notes of Brown's friends and the published extract are the only evidence remaining of Sky-Walks intended content. Brown had taken up the idea of sleepwalking as a source of psychological horror but his concerns with the recently revolutionized America are also apparent in both Sky-Walk and Edgar Huntly.Sleepwalking
The notes of William Dunlap and Elihu Smith corroborate that Sky-Walk had focused on somnambulism as its major theme, though the published extract does not hint at this. Brown's interest in sleepwalking as a way to uncover the state of mind is evident from his later use of it in Edgar Huntly and the short story "Somnambulis. A fragment", written before Edgar Huntly though not published until 1805.The Gothic horror of sleepwalking lies in the sleepwalker's inability to control himself and his actions, as well as the aspect of the unknown. What happens while the sleepwalker is asleep is unknown to him when he is awake, and this device allows Brown to build up the mystery and horror in his novel. Sleepwalking also expresses a dual nature. The actions of the man asleep and the man awake are entirely opposite.
Revolution
Charles Brockden Brown lived through the American Revolutionary WarAmerican Revolutionary War
The American Revolutionary War , the American War of Independence, or simply the Revolutionary War, began as a war between the Kingdom of Great Britain and thirteen British colonies in North America, and ended in a global war between several European great powers.The war was the result of the...
, and his concerns for America and its recently revolutionized ideals are apparent in many of his works. Brown's parents were pacifist Quakers, and his father was exiled to Virginia in 1771, the year Brockden Brown was born. Brockden Brown was later sent to the Friends' Latin School in Philadelphia to study under Robert Proud, also a Quaker and an opponent of the war. Brown's parents wanted him to become a lawyer, but Brown was very troubled by the idea of justice that the new America appeared to represent, particularly the "precedence that financial gain claimed over morality and justice". This concern is apparent in Sky-Walk, when the narrator struggles with the creditor to release Annesley from prison. Brown's concerns with freedom and revolution are also indicative in the narrator's dissatisfaction with his patroness.
The setting from the extract of Sky-Walk is Ireland (it must be assumed from the emphasis of a Delaware setting in the notes of Dunlap and Smith that the narrator later moves to Delaware). Ireland, at this time, was associated with radicalism
Radicalism (historical)
The term Radical was used during the late 18th century for proponents of the Radical Movement. It later became a general pejorative term for those favoring or seeking political reforms which include dramatic changes to the social order...
. In Edgar Huntly it is Clithero who is the Irish exile, in Sky-Walk it appears to be the character of Annesley. Some scholars have asserted that the device of sleepwalking is in itself an allegory of post-revolutionary America, citing that Brown's sleepwalkers share similarities to the "political representative as a 'puppet' of the people'" and those who are "'monstrously' independent of his constituents' intentions".