Title: Seasoned Timber
Author: Dorothy Canfield (later Mrs. Fisher)
Date: 1939
Publisher: Harcourt Brace & Co.
ISBN: none
Length: 485 pages
Illustrations: color frontispiece by Paul Honoré
Quote: “Mr. Hulme...had self-indulgently picked up a magazine instead. It was a Manchester Guardian, a fortnight old, but newly arrived. What he saw in it was anything but inspiriting—an account of recent anti-Semitic brutalities under Hitler—but a familiar feeling of guilt over the passively accepted safety of his own life had made him ashamed not to go on reading.”
During the two school years Seasoned Timber spans, Timothy Hulme, principal of the Clifford Academy in Clifford, Vermont, does a number of things because he would be ashamed not to. Around his forty-fifth birthday, he falls in love with a younger woman. He gets over being ashamed of his eccentric aunt, who compulsively plays classical music to keep down panic, and confides in friends about what makes her so special. He recognizes his feeling for one of the older teachers as a kind of nonsexual love. He rescues a nephew from disgrace. He stands up to a frankly detestable member of the school board. He persuades the town of Clifford to vote against what seems to be their clear economic interest. He helps one of the students launch an idea that may be more profitable for the school. And he buys an old house, fixes it up, and nobly gives it away...but the house is made of native stone. Timothy is the “seasoned timber.”
Dorothy Canfield Fisher wrote one novel for children, Understood Betsy, that won a Newbery award. Understood Betsy is the only one of her novels you’re likely to find in most libraries today. It was not her only one. Nor was it her most interesting one. The first few chapters of Seasoned Timber drag a bit, and gave me the impression that the book was going to be a longwinded, boring, but clean romance. It’s not. Halfway through the book I’d lost all preconceived notions of where this story was going and actually built up a sense of suspense.
Vermont’s “hillbillies” had a considerable image problem in Mrs. Fisher’s day; she wrote in defense of her people. With this as a goal, I’d say that she succeeded quite well. I nominate the characters in Seasoned Timber as superb examples of the fine art of describing fictional characters who aren’t meant to be perfect, but whom readers would have to like and respect if the characters were real anyway.
The main fault readers might find with this story is that, for too many chapters in the beginning, all Timothy does is passively admire a woman he knows is too young for him; the plot plods and Timothy starts to seem like an old fool. Bear with him. As the plot becomes more interesting, so does Timothy. One could wish that he’d find a woman his own age to love—he is, after all, still the active and healthy coach for all the school sports—but in 1939 middle-aged people were supposed to have put romance behind them.
Timothy’s period-perfect politics naturally add a great deal to the story. The language used in Timothy’s political discussions is authentic--meaning that it would be very offensive today. Educated adults talked very differently in 1939 than they do now.
This novel is recommended to mature readers. It would be no more offensive to high school students than The Rise of Silas Lapham or The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg but it may, like those classics, be over some high school students’ heads.
