My Kinsman, Major Molineux Summary & Analysis

The British monarchy “assume[s] the right of appointing colonial governors” in the American colonies. The governors are criticized by the public, who resent the fact that they do not have a say in the laws that govern their lives. The British rulers are also dissatisfied with the governors’ “softening” of “their instructions from beyond the sea.”

Under the rule of King James II, all six governors implemented in the span of 40 years in the Massachusetts Bay area are met with great dissent. Two are imprisoned, a third is driven out, a fourth dies an early death due to stress, and the remaining two are “favored with few and brief intervals of peaceful sway.” The “inferior members of the court party” have a similarly taxing experience. The narrator states that the preceding information happened about a century ago and serves as a “preface to the following adventures,” and tells the reader to disregard popular narratives of colonial history.

At 9:00 on a “moonlight evening,” an 18-year-old man arrives in Massachusetts Bay as the sole passenger on a ferry boat. The ferryman observes that the passenger has “well worn” but durable clothing, a cudgel, and a wallet. He also has “brown, curly hair, well-shaped features, and bright, cheerful eyes.” The young man, whose name is Robin, pays the ferryman the five shillings they agreed upon, plus an extra three pence. Robin has traveled 30 miles to get to this “little metropolis of a New England colony,” and he curiously observes his surroundings as he enters the town.

Robin thinks to himself that this “low hovel” cannot be where the kinsman he has come to see lives, since it is not “worthy” of him. He stops an old man walking ahead of him who is carrying a long cane and repeatedly clearing his throat in a “solemn and sepulchral” manner. Robin grabs onto the skirt of the old man’s coat and asks him where he can find the house of “my kinsman, Major Molineux,” loudly enough to catch the attention of a barber in a nearby shop. The old man yells at Robin to let go of him, threatening to have the young man’s feet bound in the stocks.

The men in the barbershop laugh as Robin lets go of the old man and continues to wander the meandering “crooked and narrow streets,” smelling tar in the air. He thinks to himself that the old man is a poor reflection of America, as he “lacks the breeding to answer a stranger civilly,” and therefore couldn’t possibly have any knowledge of the respectable Major Molineux.

Robin reflects that he “will be wiser in time” and enters the town’s business district, though most of the shops are closed and the streets are empty. On the corner of a lane, he finds an inn with a sign bearing the “countenance of a British hero swinging” before the door. He hears the sounds of merry voices and smells “the fragrance of good cheer.” Pulling back a curtain, he sees a well-furnished table and realizes how hungry he is, having missed a proper dinner. Certain that his relation to the Major will make him welcome, he enters the smoke-filled tavern.

Inside, Robin takes stock of the establishment’s patrons. Mariners converse from wooden benches and leather chairs, a few little groups are engaged in draining vast qualities of punch, which “the West India trade had long since made a familiar drink the colony.” Others drink alone and in silence. All are said to share a “predilection” for alcohol, “a vice to which, as Fast Day sermons of a hundred years ago will testify, we have a long hereditary claim.” Robin feels a kinship with “two or three sheepish countrymen” eating bread and bacon in the corner of room, “heedless of the Nicotian atmosphere.”

Robin’s attention is attracted to who he observes as a “horned man” speaking in hushed and conspiratorial tones to some poorly-attired youths by the door. The man’s forehead bulges with “a double prominence” and whose eyes burn like “fire in a cave” under shaggy eyebrows.

As Robin wonders to whom he should direct his inquiry regarding the whereabouts of Major Molineux, he is approached by an initially cheerful innkeeper with the manners of “a French Protestant.” He recognizes Robin’s country bearing and welcomes him to town, where there is “much that may interest a stranger.” Thinking that the innkeeper perceives his resemblance to his famous cousin, Robin confesses to having only “a parchment three-pence” in his pocket and asks for Molineux’s address. The patrons of the tavern turn toward Robin and he thinks they are probably all eager to act as his guide. Instead, the innkeeper notes Robin’s resemblance to a runaway servant and wanted man by the name of “Hezekiah Mudge,” and tells him to trudge off before the innkeeper reports him to the authorities for the one-pound reward.

As he leaves, the horned man snickers at Robin and he hears the sound of laughter behind him as he returns to the street. He reflects “with his usual shrewdness” how strange it is that his “confession of an empty pocket should outweigh” the name of Molineux. He thinks of violently thrashing the innkeeper with his cudgel if he ever catches him alone, but continues his search, rounding the corner of the lane and coming to a spacious street of elegant houses and a steepled church whose bell tolls nine o'clock.

In this well-lit quarter of the city, Robin searches the face of each “elderly gentleman” who passes by for Molineux’s features. Instead, he encounters “many gay and gallant figures” in expensive garments carrying silver-hilted swords in imitation of European styles and dancing to “fashionable tunes.” Robin feels outclassed by these “travelled youth” and the gorgeous goods displayed in the shop windows. Robin tries another side of the street, “with stronger hopes than the philosopher seeking an honest man, but with no better fortune.” Rebuked by the elders that Robin briefly waylays, he hears the sound of the old man’s cane and “sepulchral hems” striking the pavement. Hoping to avoid a repeat of his past embarrassment, he turns the corner to a far less gilded part of town.

Nearing the harbor, on a street of “mean appearance,” Robin is hungry, impatient, and prepared to use his cudgel on the “first solitary passenger whom he should meet.” The street is largely deserted except for a row of shabby houses. In the doorway of one of these, there is an attractive woman in scarlet petticoats. Thinking his luck may be about to change, he asks her to direct him to Major Molineux’s household. The woman, whose “bight eyes possessed a sly freedom,” claims that Major Molineux dwells inside the house. Robin believes her wholeheartedly and feels that he is in luck, and “so indeed […] is the Major, in having so pretty a housekeeper.”

The presumed “housekeeper” tells Robin that his kinsman is inside in bed and not to be disturbed, as he is sleeping off a powerful draught of liquor. She also flatters Robin, saying he is “the good old gentleman’s very picture.” As she takes hold of Robin’s hand, Robin hesitates, as he reads “in her eyes what he did not hear in her words.” She attempts to pull Robin inside, but then a night watchman with a lantern in one hand and a spear in the other emerges from another doorway, causing the “housekeeper” to run inside the house, leaving Robin on the threshold.

The night watchman calls Robin a vagabond and tells him to go home or hang in the stocks. Robin thinks to himself, “This is the second hint of the kind […] I wish they would end my difficulties, by setting there tonight.” Still, he asks this “guardian of midnight order” to guide him to the house of Molineux and receives only “drowsy laughter” in return as the watchman vanishes around the corner. From the open window above him, the “housekeeper” beckons him with a “saucy eye” and a protruding arm. He hears her coming back down the steps, but Robin, “being of the household of a New England clergyman,” resists temptation and runs off.

Now Robin is truly lost, walking unlit streets “desperately and at random.” He wonders if he is under the spell of a wizard, like the one back in the country who once kept three pursuers wandering through a winter night even though they were 20 paces from their cottage destination. Though the streets are desolate, Robin does discern two hurried groups of men in “outlandish attire” who speak to Robin in a strange dialect and then curse him in English when he fails to answer. Robin decides to simply knock at the door of every mansion “worthy to be occupied by his kinsman.” But as he passes the church, he sees a stranger bundled up in his cloak and bars his way, holding out his cudgel with both hands.

Robin blocks the stranger’s path and demands to know the dwelling of Major Molineux. The stranger retorts, “Keep your tongue between your teeth, fool, and let me pass!” He threatens to strike Robin down, but Robin persists and the stranger throws back his cloak and tells Robin that if he waits at his present location for an hour, Major Molineux will pass by. Robin is dismayed to discover that the stranger is in fact the horned man from the inn, but this time his face is painted half-red and half-black, “as if two individual devils, a fiend of fire and a fiend of darkness, had united themselves to form this infernal visage.” The horned man leers at Robin, then muffles himself once more and hurries past, leaving the shocked Robin to reflect, “Strange things we travelers see!”

Robin seats himself on the church steps and resolves to wait for his cousin. He spends a few moments “in philosophical speculations upon the species of man who had just left him,” but becomes distracted by the respectable houses around him bathed in the moonlight, “creating, like the imaginative power, a beautiful strangeness in familiar objects” like the irregular rooftops and the “pure snow-white” of some of the buildings and the “aged darkness” of others. Growing wearisome again, Robin peers into the distance and sees a large Gothic mansion. He wonders if this might, finally, be the house of his kinsman Major Molineux.

A scarcely-audible sound floats through the air, a “low, dull, dreamy sound, compounded of many noises.” Robin marvels at “this snore of a sleeping town,” broken by the occasional “distant shout.” Instead of approaching the mansion, Robin climbs a window-frame and peers into the church. There, he witnesses an idyllic and perhaps holy sight, as the moonlight floods over the pews and a single ray alights on an open Bible. The sight fill Robin with nostalgia and loneliness, as he wonders if Nature itself has come to worship the houses built by man or whether the light has come to sanctify the deserted church “because no earthly and impure feet were within its walls.” Climbing back down, he looks grimly upon the church cemetery and wonders if Molineux is lying dead beneath the earth. Haunted by the thought of Molineux’s ghost gliding by, he exclaims, “Oh that any breathing thing were here with me!”

Now firmly in the grasp of his own plaintive memories of home, Robin sends his thoughts “over forest, hill, and stream,” back to his family house and the old tree under which he and his siblings would listen to his father reading from scripture. He thinks of his elder brother and younger sister and recalls that though he was often bored at the time, now these informal services number “among his dear remembrances.” He cries out, “Am I here, or there?” and fixes his eye on the church, halfway between “fancy and reality.” He seems to see a face in the Gothic window. Just then, he spies, sitting in the shadow of the steeple, “a gentleman in his prime, of open, intelligent, cheerful, and altogether prepossessing kindness.”

The kind gentleman approaches Robin with concern and asks if he can be of any service to him. Despondent, Robin doubtfully asks him if there is really such a man as Molineux in these parts, or if he is dreaming. The kind man replies that the name is “not altogether strange,” and asks the nature of Robin’s business with the Major. Robin relates that his father is a clergyman and that the Major, “having inherited riches, and acquired civil and military rank” visited one or two years ago and, being childless, offered to take Robin and his older brother under his wing. The elder brother “was destined to succeed to the farm” cultivated by their father, leaving Robin to seek his fortunes elsewhere under the tutelage and support of Molineux, “for I have the name of being a shrewd youth.” The kind gentleman replies, “I doubt not you deserve it […] but pray proceed.”

Robin continues that, being 18 years of age, he felt it “high time to begin in the world.” After his mother and sister put him in “handsome trim,” he embarked five days ago for Massachusetts Bay. He also relates his encounter with the “ill-favored fellow” with the painted face of two colors, who told him to wait at this spot for his cousin. The kind gentleman says he knows the horned man Robin speaks of, though “not intimately,” and says Robin can trust his word. The kind gentleman decides to keep Robin company as he waits.

Robin hears the shouting he heard earlier growing closer and asks the kind gentleman about the uproar. The kind gentleman replies that “there do appear to be three or four riotous fellows abroad tonight,” but that’s nothing out of the ordinary and the night watchman will surely be on their heels and put them in the stocks by “peep of day.” Robin wonders how a thousand voices can make up a single shout and the gentleman cryptically answers, “May not a man have several voices […] as well as two complexions?” Thinking of the “housekeeper” in her scarlet petticoats, Robin retorts that “a man may: but Heaven forbid that a woman should!”

Robin hears a trumpet and a “wild and confused laughter” coming from an adjacent street and wonders aloud whether they should join the merrymaking. But the kind gentleman urges Robin to continue his vision, lest he miss his kinsman when he at length passes by. The uproar now fills the streets and windows open on all sides as the townspeople find their sleep disturbed and half-dressed citizens ask one another for an explanation as to the din. A hundred yards away the source of the “shouts, the laughter, and the tuneless bray, the antipodes of music” emerges in a procession of people bearing torches.

At the head of the parade, wearing “military dress,” atop a horse and wielding a drawn sword is the horned man, still with his double-painted face, who appears “like war personified; the red of one cheek […] an emblem of fire and sword; the blackness of the other betokened the mourning that attends them.” Behind him is an unruly crowd, some disguised as Native Americans, creating a fevered atmosphere “as if a dream had broken forth.” Spectators surround the mass of revelers, as the horned man turns in his saddle and makes eye contact with Robin. Terrified, he mutters, “The double-faced fellow has his eye upon me.”

When Robin finally breaks his gaze from the horned man’s fiery eyes, the procession of musicians pass him by and he hears the rattle of wheels. At the center of the crowd, lit by torches that blaze so brightly that “the moon shone out like day” and attended by trumpets that “vomited a horrid breath,” is an uncovered cart where Molineux himself sits captive, in “tar-and-feathery dignity.”

“A large and majestic person,” the elderly Molineux is clearly humiliated, his face “ghastly” to behold and foam hanging from his open mouth. He trembles inside the cart and he meets Robin’s gaze and recognizes Robin where he stands “witnessing the foul disgrace of a head grown gray in honor.” Overcome by both pity and terror, Robin feels his legs tremble. Reflecting on his adventures that night, the crowd with their torches, the air of “tremendous ridicule,” and “the spectre of his kinsman reviled by that great multitude,” Robin experiences a “sort of mental inebriety.”

All the various townspeople Robin has met so far reappear: the night watchman rubs his eyes and seems to enjoy Robin’s shock; the “housekeeper” with the scarlet petticoat laughs and pinches Robin’s arm while fixing him with her “saucy eye”; the innkeeper passes on his tiptoes; and the old man, wearing a nightcap, laughs from a balcony with the same “sepulchral hems” as before, “his solemn old features like a funny inscription on a tombstone.” Finally, Robin seems to hear the laughter from the barbershop, the guests at the tavern, and “all who had made sport of him that night.”

The pandemonium travels through the crowd like a “contagion,” and Robin shouts with a laughter that is the loudest of all. As the “mirth went roaring up the sky,” the narrator imagines the Man in the Moon looking down and declaring “the old earth is frolicsome tonight!” The horned man gives a signal for the crowd to move on and they pass “like fiends that throng in mockery around some dead potentate, mighty no more, but majestic still in his agony.” They leave the street (and Robin) behind, “in counterfeited pomp, in senseless uproar, in frenzied merriment, trampling all on an old man’s heart.”

The kind gentleman asks the dazed Robin if he is dreaming. Now “somewhat pale” following the night’s misadventures, Robin is “not quite so lively” as he was but mere hours ago, so he just asks the gentleman for directions back to the ferry, for he has at last met his kinsman, and says that “he will scarce desire to see my face again.” Bitterly, he adds that he has grown “weary of town life.”

The kind gentleman protests that Robin should at least stay the night and wait a few days before he makes his final decision as to whether to stay or to return to the country. Robin is “a shrewd youth” who, or so the gentleman says, “may rise in the world without the help of your kinsman, Major Molineux.”