Calling the Meeting to Order: A Commentary on "Quaker Quiddities"

CALLING THE MEETING TO ORDER: A COMMENTARY ON "QUAKER QUIDDITIES" By Virginia V. Hlavsa* In the preface to the long poem, Quaker Quiddities, its author, James Bunker Congdon, writing anonymously in 1860, pleads for the kind of relevance to pressing social concerns that we might expect to hear in our own time : The only questions which have any vitality in them, connected with the admitted fact of the decline of Quakerism, are "Is it worth saving?" "Can it be saved?" "How can it be saved?" One thing is sure: it must show its right to a distinctive place in the world's civilization by something more significant and progressive than a formless method in its meetings and a uniform costume. Its negations cannot give it a longer lease of life. It must in some way grapple with the world, and show its potency by helping the world onward. The world is demanding aid from every organization that has for its object the inculcation of moral and religious truth. It is not satisfied, it should not be satisfied, with the plea of selfpreservation .1 The fact that this follows so closely works such as the Communist Manifesto (1848), Uncle Tom's Cabin (1852), and Darwin's On the Origin of Species (1859) which, although written with varying degrees of competency and insight, nevertheless still attempt to grapple with the problems of the day, makes us hope for a similar consideration from a Quaker viewpoint of such matters as might "help the world onward." Other Friends were so committeed, as the lives and works of Whittier, Whitman, and Lucretia Mott testify. But the colloquy itself, between a defender and a critic of the Society, hardly seems to suggest a prescription for survival. Instead of life-and-death struggles with issues of war, the emancipation of slaves and women, and problems of cultural confrontation—issues we still face—we find skirmishes over the quaintness of Friends' dress and * Virginia Hlavsa is a member of Westbury Monthly Meeting, New York, and a teaching fellow at Queens College. 1 Quaker Quiddities; or, Friends in Council: a Colloquy (Boston, 1860), pp. 6-7. The copy I used is from the Anna Curtis Quaker Book Library of Friends World College. I am especially indebted to Morris Mitchell, provost of the College, for his generous suggestions and extension of library privileges. 67 68Quaker History customs, their grammar and speech, or their cultivated ignorance of the arts. We find the shocked advocate of silence: 'Twould be strange To hear the speaking from our rising-seats, Like recitations in a public school, Or social readings at our quiet homes, Or hireling sermons from the pulpit sped, Without that solemnizing, measured tone Which marks its coming from a sacred source.2 doing battle with the eloquent admirer of rhetoric: But speech has other laws,—by nature formed, By wisdom perfected, and use ordained. By these, when reason clothes the thought in words, When feeling to its gushings utterance gives, When passion flashes and when mercy pleads, And indignation thunders its behest, All speech is governed; and each living word Flies on its embassy of weal or woe, Winged by the potency of utterance clear, A graceful manner, and an earnest soul; And, by an intonation richly robed, Like beauty by the sculptor's chisel traced.3 Valid as these debates may have been, they hardly seem to be issues on which the efficacy of the Society of Friends ought to stand or fall. So our first impression is that the author of this book has himself engaged in the "quibbling" connoted by his title, rather than penetrated to the quidditas, or essence of the matter.4 His anonymity in the light of such feeble sparring only compounds our disappointment, and we believe we have encountered a fashionable Victorian born into a fairly unfashionable sect, with only moderate amounts of courage to bridge the gap. 2 Pp. 22-23. These Unes are spoken by "Jeremiah Austen" ; cf. the Jeremiah Austin whose doctrinal argument, Gospel Doctrine Vindicated, and Freed from the Mists in which It Is Involved by Oliver C. Bartlett s Book, which He Calls "A Vindication of the Two Gospel Ordinances...