Society of Early
Americanists
In Memoriam
The Death of Sargent Bush, Jr. 1937—2003
by Philip Gould and David
Shields
Sargent Bush, Jr. died on October 8th,
2003, from an onslaught of metastatic melanoma. A well-known scholar of
early
American literature, Sarge graduated from Princeton University in 1959
with a
BA in English (magna cum laude). Like the New England Puritans whom he
so
passionately studied, Sarge experienced “conversion” very early on in
life, and
switched careers. He left the world of banking and began his graduate
work at
the University of Iowa where he worked under the renowned American
Renaissance
scholar John Gerber. Sarge received his PhD degree in 1967, and after
teaching
briefly at Washington and Lee University, he accepted a position as
assistant
professor of English at the University of Wisconsin-Madison where he’d
been
recruited by the famous Melville scholar Merton Sealts. He very quickly
moved
up the academic ranks, later serving as chair of the English Department
(1980-83) and also as Associate Dean for Humanities in the College of
Letters
and Sciences (1989-94, 1999). In 1997 he was named the John Bascom
Professor of
English. Throughout his professional life, Sarge felt a profound
loyalty to the
UW, and the time and energy he devoted to its service was
extraordinary.
As many of us in early American studies
know, Sarge’s scholarship was characterized by historical depth and
bibliographic precision. He was truly interdisciplinary before
interdisciplinary was cool. After writing a doctoral thesis on
Hawthorne (He
had wanted to write on Michael Wiggelsworth, he once confessed, but did
not
believe that at the time “literary studies was ready for it”), he began
working
seriously on Puritan literature. Over the next three decades he
published
important work on such first-generation figures as Thomas Hooker, John
Cotton,
and John Wheelright. His first book was The Writings of Thomas
Hooker:
Spiritual Adventure in Two Worlds (University of Wisconsin
Press1980), and
also co-edited The Library of Emmanuel College, Cambridge,
1584-1637
(Cambridge University Press, 1986), the place that trained many early
Puritan
ministers who came to New England. While re-reading a review on the
Hooker book
by Robert Middlekauf in Early American Literature, I was struck
by the
high regard his colleagues held for his sensitivity to the textures of
Puritan
language. Recently, Sarge’s monumental edition of The Correspondence
of John Cotton (2001) was published through the Omohundro
Institute. His
intellectual and scholarly interests were quite broad, however, and he
published as well on nineteenth-century figures like Hawthorne,
Longfellow, and
Willa Cather.
Sarge’s reserved demeanor hid from view his
intellectual and spiritual passion—indeed he was probably a lot more
like the
Thomas Hooker he wrote about than anyone ever knew. This extended as
well to
his teaching and mentoring of students at the UW. His graduate courses
on
American poetry, for example, or the Puritan narrative tradition were
always
quite popular, and his teaching in general was adorned with a rich
allusiveness
that flowed easily back-and-forth between the colonial and antebellum
periods.
Like the ministers whom he studied, he believed in the sanctity of the
written
word, and he coupled that belief with the necessity of knowing your
audience
when communicating with them. He shunned abstraction and vagueness; he
gained
converts (like myself) through both precept and living example. His
intellectual passion and sense of purpose were infectious. In the
classroom,
moreover, Sarge was much more of a radical (albeit in his tweed jacket
and tie)
than his professional colleagues imagine; in his early career, he was
of a
cohort of scholars that helped to legitimize the study early American
literature. Colleagues at the UW may have taught courses on the
American
Renaissance; Sarge taught courses like “Franklin and Thoreau.” And for
such an
outwardly dignified man, he could shake up a lecture course of 400 UW
freshmen—as I once witnessed as a teaching assistant for him—by playing
the
Village People’s song “YMCA” to make a point about poetic meter and
rhythm.
Sargent Bush, Jr. felt a devotion to
his religious faith, his family, and his profession. He also had a
passion for
religious music, the outdoors, and the Boston Red Sox. When I saw the
Red Sox
fall to the Yankees, yet again, I couldn’t help but think he was
watching the
same game with me yet from Another Room. For me, as for so many others,
he was
a source of stability and guidance—a Rock amidst what the historian
William
Bradford called this “uncertain world.” He is survived by his wife
Cynthia and
his two sons, who are mourning their loss. So are the others who had
come to
know him.
Philip
Gould
Brown
University
Sargent Bush, Jr., John
Bascom Professor of American Literature at the University of Wisconsin,
Madison, died on October 8, 2003. Educated at Princeton and the
University of
Iowa, he was one of the greatest expositors of
early New England’s intellectual history. While his fame as a
scholar lies as an interpreter and editor of the theological and
political
writings of the first generation N. E. Puritan divines, particularly
Thomas
Hooker and John Cotton, and the antinomian John Wheelwright, he wrote
on a
broad range of authors and subjects, including Longfellow, Twain, and
Cather.
He was the greatest expert on early American epistolary writings, a
remarkably
talented textual editor capable of bringing order to the notoriously
difficult
manuscript letters of John Cotton, and an intellectual historian who
invariably
assumed a transatlantic frame of reference. He had an especially deep
understanding of Reformed Christian pneumatics, the dynamic
co-operation of
psyche and the soul. He collaborated in writing the history of the
library of
Emmanuel College, Cambridge, the institution that trained many of the
early New
England Puritans. He also edited the journal of Sarah Kemble Knight. At the time of his death he was working on a
study of Robert Keayne’s notes on the sermons of John Cotton in the
1640s.
A personable yet
professional man, Sarge Bush will be sorely missed by the community of
Early
Americanists. “A great tree has fallen in Zion.”
Dr. David S.
Shields
Editor, Early American
Literature
McClintock Professor of
Southern Letters
Department of English
University of South
Carolina