The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton

Hardscrabble Books—Fiction of New England

Laurie Alberts,
Lost Daughters

Laurie Alberts,
The Price of Land in Shelby

Thomas Bailey Aldrich,
The Story of a Bad Boy

Robert J. Begiebing,
The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton; Or, A Memoir of Startling and Amusing Episodes from Itinerant Life

Anne Bernays,
Professor Romeo

Chris Bohjalian,
Water Witches

Dona Brown,
A Tourist's New England: Travel Fiction, 1820–1920

Joseph Bruchac,
The Waters Between: A Novel of the Dawn Land

Joseph A. Citro,
Shadow Child

Sean Connolly,
A Great Place to Die

Dorothy Canfield Fisher (Mark J. Madigan, ed.),
Seasoned Timber

Dorothy Canfield Fisher,
Understood Betsy

Joseph Freda,
Suburban Guerrillas

Castle Freeman, Jr.,
Judgment Hill

Frank Gaspar,
Leaving Pico

Ernest Hebert,
The Dogs of March

Ernest Hebert,
Live Free or Die

Sarah Orne Jewett (Sarah Way Sherman, ed.),
The Country of the Pointed Firs and Other Stories

Lisa MacFarlane, ed.,
This World Is Not Conclusion: Faith in Nineteenth-Century New England Fiction

Kit Reed,
J. Eden

Rowland E. Robinson (David Budbill, ed.),
Danvis Tales: Selected Stories

Roxana Robinson,
Summer Light

Rebecca Rule,
The Best Revenge: Short Stories

Theodore Weesner,
Novemberfest

W. D. Wetherell,
The Wisest Man in America

Edith Wharton (Barbara A. White, ed.),
Wharton's New England: Seven Stories and
Ethan Frome

Thomas Williams,
The Hair of Harold Roux

Also by Robert J. Begiebing

C R I T I C I S M:

Acts of Regeneration: Allegory and Archetype in the Works of Norman Mailer
(
1981
)

Toward a New Synthesis: John Fowles, John Gardner, and Norman Mailer
(
1989
)

The Literature of Nature: The British and American Traditions
(
1990
) (a critical anthology with V. Owen Grumbling)

F I C T I O N:

The Strange Death of Mistress Coffin
(
1991
)

The Adventures of Allegra Fullerton

Or, A Memoir of Startling and Amusing Episodes from Itinerant Life

a novel by

Robert J. Begiebing

University Press of New England

Hanover and London

UNIVERSITY PRESS OF NEW ENGLAND
publishes books under its own imprint and is the publisher for Brandeis University Press, Dartmouth College, Middlebury College Press, University of New Hampshire, Tufts University, and Wesleyan University Press.

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Begiebing, Robert J., 1946–

The adventures of Allegra Fullerton; or, A memoir of startling and amusing episodes from itinerant life: a novel/by Robert J. Begiebing.

p. cm.—(Hardscrabble books)

ISBN
0–87451–947–0 (cloth: alk. paper)

ISBN
978–1–61168–374–5 (ebook)

I. Title. II. Title: Adventures of Allegra Fullerton.

III. Title: Memoir of startling and amusing episodes from itinerant life. IV. Series.

PS3552.E372A65
1999

Published by University Press of New England, Hanover, NH
03755

©
1999
by Robert J. Begiebing

All rights reserved

For my daughters,
Brie and Kate,
the two other painting
women in my life.

I recollect bestowing some vituperation on female authors lately. … Generally, they write like emasculated men, and are only to be distinguished from male authors by greater feebleness and folly; but when they throw off the restraints of decency, and come before the public stark naked, as it were—then their books are sure to possess character and value. Can you tell me anything about this “Fanny Fern”? If you meet her, I wish you would tell her how much I admire her.

—Nathaniel Hawthorne to William Ticknor

Writing is worthless except as the record of a life.

—Margaret Fuller

Contents

Acknowledgments

Preface

1  
The onset of my captivity

2  
How I became an itinerant painter

3  
First enterprises
The persecution of a bearded man

4  
My captivity continues

5  
Recherché dramas

6  
Little Effie again, and women who discovered independence

7  
Boston and my associations with artists
This strange captivity begins

8  
A mysterious opportunity for liberty

9  
Eden in Massachusetts
Et in Arcadia ego

10  
Precious reunion

11  
Doubts and quandaries

12  
A murderous instance

13  
A Canterbury tale from our retreat to Connecticut

14  
To Springfield and beyond
Mr. Stock tells a curious tale

15  
Far travels and new resolutions

16  
Temptation in the shape of a man

17  
My return

18  
Chas returns to me

19  
My italian adventure

20  
Our Pelasgian Arcady

21  
The rival

22  
Mr. Ruskin terminates his visit

23  
Miss Fuller embraces Italy

24  
My leave-taking

25  
The wreck of the
Elizabeth

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the New Hampshire Council on the Arts and the Lila Wallace-Reader's Digest Fund's Fellowship for Creative and Performing Artists and Writers at the American Antiquarian Society for their financial support for research and travel. I thank the
Staatliche Antikensammlugen und Glyptothek Muchen
for permission to use the photo by H. Koppermann.

My thanks also for the help and honesty of the following friends and readers: Robert Craven, Merle Drown, Bob Hoddeson, Larry Kinsman, Loftus Jestin, Moira Sieker, and Wesley McNair. I also owe a debt of gratitude to the many helpful professionals at the American Antiquarian Society—with special thanks to Georgia Barnhill, Joanne Chaison, Thomas Knoles, Caroline Sloat, and Laura Wasowicz. And Dick Pantano, Library Director at New Hampshire College, helped (auf Duetsch) with a particularly difficult permission.

Many books, articles, periodicals, and manuscripts provided grist for my fictional mills, but no one working on the subject of itinerant painters in the early years of the Republic could avoid two books especially: Clara Sears's ground-breaking
Some American Primitives: A Study of New England Faces and Folk Portraits
(1941) and Caroline Sloat's
Meet Your Neighbors: New England Portraits, Painters, & Society, 1790–1850
(1992). Both texts provided the basis for several characters and incidents along Allegra's journey; I am deeply grateful to the work of these two authors.

And my deepest gratitude to my wife, Linda—the first and last of my readers.

R. J. B.