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The Eagle's Shadow

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The "eagle's shadow" is a metaphor for great wealth: "The Eagle suffers little birds to sing, And is not careful what they mean thereby, Knowing that with the shadow of his wing, He can at pleasure still their melody." The Romans were keenly aware of the effect of the "eagle's shadow" as evidenced by the translation of the Latin quotation on the title page of the book: "Futhermore, in that place under the shadow of the eagle: The mob trembles, the Senate dawdles, the nobility gaze on impotently, the judges are compliant, the theologians remain silent, and the lawyers are obsequious while law and custom are ignored." The story is a narrative by Richard Fenton Harrowby who called his tale "the comedy of Margaret Hugonin and the eagle. A story which he completed on 14 April 1923. Margaret Hugonin was the daughter of Col. Thomas Hugonin, an English cavalry officer, and Margaret Musgrave. The colonel's wife had a twin sister named Martha Musgrave who had married Frederick R. Woods, a stock trader on Wall Street who had amassed a fortune. Harrowby wrote: "For the scene of this comedy is laid in the ineffably remote strange days of Colonel Roosevelt's first presidential term. Looking backward, I can remember, but not quite believe in, the queer world we then inhabited: and most droll of all do I find our faith in its stability. For it seemed a fixed and eternally ordered place, a place which was, with minor improvements here and there, to last forever: yet neither Sidon nor Sumeria appears--now--to be more remote than is the America of that day." In the early 1880's, when Frederick R. Woods turned 65, he retired from Wall Street and moved to a site near the Lichfield town of Fairhaven that had once belonged to a 17th century ancestor named Lt. Gervase Woods. On that site he built a handsome Tudor style home which he named Selwoode Mansion. He hired a genealogist who traced his ancestry back to Woden, and determined that the family arms of the Woods sported an eagle. The eagle so fascinated him that he had it carved into the woodwork, set in mosaics, chased in the tableware, woven into the napery, and glazed into the China of Selwoode. Frederick and his wife were childless, but his brother William had one son named Billy Williams, and Frederick named him as his heir. However, when Billy turned 18, he informed his uncle that he intended to study to become a painter, much to his uncle's disapproval. Billy went off to college, earned his degree in fine arts and returned to Selwoode to find that his uncle had invited Col. Hugonin and Margaret to be long-term guests at Selwoode. Frederick ordered Billy to wed Margaret Hugonin. Billy refused to marry her and left Selwoode. In turn, Frederick named Margaret as his heir and when he died Margaret came into a fortune, after which, she struggled to come to terms with her vast wealth while supporting an entourage of hangers-on, and warding off marriage proposals. Later Billy returns to Selwoode, conflicting wills are found and Margaret and Billy struggle to come to terms with one another. The story line is fluent, entertaining and contains gems of subdued wit.