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The Count of ConcordAuthor: Nicholas Delbanco American Literature Series May 2008 480 pages, Dimensions: 5.5 x 8 Paperback, 9781564784957 Retail Paperback Price: Our Paperback Price: $12.76—20% OFF! 
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Book Description
Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford, was—as Nicholas Delbanco writes—“world famous in his lifetime,” yet now he has been “almost wholly forgotten.” Like Delbanco himself, Sally Ormsby Thompson Robinson—the narrator of this novel and the Count’s fictional, last-surviving relative—is “haunted” by one of history’s most fascinating and remarkable figures. On par with Thomas Jefferson and Benjamin Franklin, Count Rumford was, among many other things, a politician, a spy, a philanthropist, and above all, a scientist. Based on countless historical documents, including letters and essays by Thompson himself, The Count of Concord brings to life the remarkable career of Benjamin Thompson, Count Rumford.
About the Author
| Nicholas Delbanco is a British-born American who received his B.A. from Harvard and his M.A. from Columbia University. He currently directs the Hopwood Awards Program and is the Robert Frost Distinguished University Professor of English at the University of Michigan. An editor and author of more than twenty books, Delbanco has received numerous awards—among them a Guggenheim Fellowship and two Writing Fellowships from the National Endowment for the Arts. |  |
Praise
“[Nicholas Delbanco] wrestles with the abundance of his gifts as a novelist the way other men wrestle with their deficiencies.”—John Updike“An excellent writer is among us, and if we neglect him, we shall have to apologize to posterity.”—New York Times
“Nicholas Delbanco writes like an inspired maniac, with a brilliant outpouring of image and idea.”—Patricia Meyer Spacks, Hudson Review
"A consistent, highly acclaimed writer."—Publishers Weekly
"Delbanco has a fine intellect and a sharp pen, and he wields both with precision."—Harvard Review
More Information
1814
They laughed at him. They watched him pass. Fond mothers drew their sons to the embrasure of the window and, peering, pointed him out. “Formidable,” they whispered. “Extraordinary. It is something to remember and tell your children’s children you have seen. Look!”
Around the corner, rattlingly, the Count appeared. Along the Avenue des Ternesand stopping to collect his glass beyond the Place des Ternes—around the corner, well concealed and from French spies disguised—the beakers and alembics privately prepared for him, the necks in their tight spirals blown according to his secret and exact specifications, these coded in his assistant’s German so that the envious incompetent calumniating locals could neither copy nor take the credit—from Boulevard du Bois le Prêtre, along the Avenue de Clichy and out at its high gate; from Malesherbes, along the Boulevard des Batignolles, or to the north—Berthier, Bessières—he made his great processional: one coach.
The women stared. They smiled and cradled their young sons and kissed them on the cheeks. “You must not forget this, darling, what you see.” And little Jean or Claude or Michel or Philippe would approach the window, greatly daring, and promise to remember and press a cold nose to the glass.
They called their daughters also. “Come and watch this. Remember,” they said. The worldly ones—the eligible—gazed boldly down at his carriage; the modest averted their eyes. No window was unoccupied, no doorway empty where he passed. Old women peered through the folds of the drapes; old men muttered sagely or shook their powdered heads. Servants caught a glimpse, or tried to, jostling for position by the garden wall; the brazen ones braved passage in the street.
There his horses thundered: four white stallions draped in white. They did not require blinders; their manes and tails were clipped. Air escaping from the matched team’s nostrils plumed; black hooves struck sparks from the cobblestone paving. The coach doors bore his crest. His wheels were thrice the width of wheels on any other équipage, the felloes broad and stable, this effected to his satisfaction and by his own particular design; while clattering round the corner, in mud or snow, on hill or ice or thoroughfare, his conveyance did not lean.