Greed—like gluttony or sloth—is not conducive to human flourishing. Regarding greed, Russell Kirk commented, “Avarice, rather, is desiring more wealth than one’s soul can support properly. Avarice sometimes produces present poverty: the miser, proverbially, is ragged and lean.”[i] When he chose to personify greed in his fiction, Kirk had to look no further than his personal history to illustrate how greed corrodes and corrupts our humanity and our community. The Magazine of Fantasy and Science Fiction published Kirk’s avaricious ghost story “Fate’s Purse” in May of 1979, but the inspiring events happened nearly two decades earlier.
In a 1961 letter to writer Robert Drake, Kirk detailed how he was currently serving Mecosta County’s Morton Township as justice of the peace. He, his uncle, and a member of local law enforcement had been called out to dig in the cellar of the recently deceased “Miser of Mecosta”. Allegedly, this miser had buried $8,000 of his half-million-dollar estate in half-pint jars in his cellar. Kirk summed up the miser with, “all in all, the dirty old man, who had lived on stale bread and honey for more than seventy years, had saved half a million, by going without running water, and baths, and the like.”
Years later, Kirk expanded his encounter with the local miser to include a supernatural element and packaged it all within a Classical context possibly because these events happened prior to his Christian conversion in 1963. The three main characters all carry names from the Classical world: Fate Brownlee, Virgil Brownlee, and Titus Moreton (Kirk’s personification). Judge Moreton reads not a Bible but Cicero’s Offices and quotes the Emperor Tiberius rather than the Apostle Peter. Cicero writes in Book II (Part 22) of his Offices, “There is, then, to bring the discussion back to the point from which it digressed, no vice more offensive than avarice, especially in men who stand foremost and hold the helm of state.”[ii] Above all, Kirk superimposed the pre-Christian belief of the impersonal power of Fate directing human lives in its mysterious ways. By using this Classical frame, Kirk sought to show that the philosophy of the Classical world was enough to condemn greed. Though this tale could be interpreted purely in a Classical context, Kirk transformed it into a Christian tale via the story’s New Testament epigraph. This transformation will be discussed below.
In “Fate’s Purse,” Kirk illustrated the corrupting nature of greed by contrasting the principled Pottawattomie County probate team—probate judge Titus Moreton, township supervisor Abe Redding, and under-sheriff Buck Tuller—with Fate and Virgil Brownlee, an IRS agent, and local thieves. The virtue and self-restraint of the county team is obvious throughout the reading. However, the narrative explicitly connects their action to the rejection of greed on the day the estate was settled at the courthouse noting that estate administrator, Redding “could have made bigger charges, had he been greedy, with an excellent chance for approval of the court.”
Four different characters are present in the tale who try to move assets from one pair of grasping hands to another. First of all, Kirk briefly notes the greedy “two-footed predators” that had recently plundered several lake cottages and unsuccessfully attempted a night burglary at the local bank. With this, Kirk acknowledged the plunder economy that forcibly moves possessions from one person to another by robbery. Next, a larger and more legitimized pair of grasping hands shows up unexpectedly when the probate team first travels to Fate Brownlee’s farm to inventory Fate’s estate. Thomas Paine’s “Greedy Hand of the government” appears when an IRS agent enters the property unannounced to lay claim to any part of the Brownlee estate. Judge Moreton dismisses the federal man and orders him to leave the property while the local team does their official job. Moreton muses, “And why should the Treasury get its fingers, through arrears of income tax or extortionate inheritance tax, upon the hoard for which dead old Fate had sacrificed comfort, pleasure, friends, even true humanity? Fate had paid for his ignoble treasure.” The State appears later at the probate court settlement hearing to claim their slice of Fate’s declared fortune that is now subject to, “federal and state inheritance taxes, necessarily.” In contrast, the township and county took no portion other than legitimate fees, and Judge Moreton used his probate authority to conduct a reasonable investigation suspecting—but never conclusively proving—that much of Fate’s “ignoble treasure” lay hidden at the Brownlee farm buried in the ground, concealed in beehives, or elsewhere.
Third and more central to the story, Fate Brownlee personifies greed as the proverbial “ragged and lean” miser referenced by Kirk in his autobiographical writings. Fate Brownlee lived on expired bread and honey, eschewed creature comforts, never treated others to food or drink, and gave up his “true humanity” in Judge Moreton’s opinion. In The Sword of the Imagination Kirk recollects the miser’s domicile as, “extreme poverty worse than that of any welfare client.” Throughout his life, Fate hoarded cash by minimizing spending and expenses, loaning money to other farmers, and “working as if under a lash” to make his farm productive. He reported no income to the IRS and buried what monies he could in hopes of passing it to his sibling heir. Fate’s corrupted brother Virgil proclaims when unearthing cash during the investigation, “What you see here ain’t income. It’s capital.” But much of this capital was never deployed to increase flourishing. A lifetime of greed, to reference Kirk again, produced “present poverty,” and Fate Brownlee became sub-human by the end of his life. Greed warped Fate’s soul to such an extent that his ghost haunted his farm after being murdered by his brother. Fate’s ghost even craved the coin purse that Virgil took from him as he lay dying in the river.
Finally, younger brother Virgil’s greed distorted him more than any other character in the story. His greed for his brother’s estate caused him to watch passively as his brother drowned in a shallow creek while pinned under a tractor. Virgil Brownlee coveted all of Fate’s money and even took his purse off of him as he lay drowning in Brownlee Creek—a microscopic fraction of Fate’s vast fortune but money enough to covet. Judge Moreton overhears Virgil’s murderous confession as Virgil confronts Fate’s ghost with a shotgun near the end of the story. He calls Virgil a “brother killer” as he tackles him to bring an end to the standoff. Greed corrupts both brothers, but Virgil conducts the more heinous acts.
In another display of his character, Judge Moreton closes the story with compassionate words toward Fate’s restless spirit rather than the condemnatory words some might be tempted to speak. In the last line, Moreton tells his wife that Fate Brownlee’s ghost, just needs, “an obol or two for Charon.” In the Classical World, the dead were buried with a small coin, an obol, in or near their mouth to pay Charon, the boatman who ferries the dead into the underworld, so they could pass into the afterlife and not wander the earth. These words are just one more reminder of the Classical anchoring of this story.
So, what about Fate’s titular purse? The coroner noted that Fate’s purse—described as a “very big oldfangled leather change-purse or pouch with steal fasteners at the mouth”—was missing from his dead body in Brownlee’s Creek. The coroner requested two neighbors near the creek to search for it to no avail. “Fate’s Purse” certainly refers to the physical purse Fate Brownlee carried on his person. Though missing at the beginning of the tale, this purse shows up near the end in the possession of Virgil Brownlee as he challenges Fate’s ghost when it returned for the purse. Virgil tosses the purse back towards Fate’s ghost, and the purse rests on the ground. Titus Moreton confirms the purse’s physicality by nudging it with his foot and hearing coins clink inside. Fate’s purse connects the two brothers and their sins.
Symbolically, however, “Fate’s Purse” also refers to the entirety of Fate Brownlee’s fortune distributed by the power of Fate. That is, the power of Fate controlled the destiny of the fortune (i.e., Purse) more than Fate Brownlee controlled the fortune’s future. The power of this ghost story lies with this second meaning and strengthens its impact as a cautionary morality tale. Kirk deepens the moral of Fate’s story by placing a Christian epigraph at the start of the story. The otherwise pre-Christian “Fate’s Purse” begins with “Thy money perish with thee, because thou hast thought that the gift of God may be purchased with money.” (Acts 8:20). This is one of only two New Testament epigraphs in Kirk’s stories.[iii] This epigraph allows the reader to, among other things, substitute the power of Providence for the power of Fate.
Kirk noted in one of his weekly columns that “God has given to man the power to know good and evil – and to choose. Once we have chosen—even though unconsciously—providence begins to work on us.”[iv] Near the end of the tale, Judge Moreton echoes this passage with the somewhat enigmatic quip, “I suppose he had his heart’s desire, and the iron in his soul withal.” Most likely, this is a reference to Psalm 106:15 describing how God allows us to choose and to Providentially suffer the resulting consequences.
In The Sword of the Imagination, Kirk relates how he learned the lesson “Never save any money!” from his friend Bernard Iddings Bell. In fact, Kirk practically parallels the lives of Canon Bell and Fate Brownlee in his autobiography.[v] Unlike Fate Brownlee, Canon Bell spent his money as soon as it came in, died poor, and “laid up his treasure in heaven,” according to Kirk. In doing so, Canon Bell secured the gifts of God that eluded Fate Brownlee. What gifts of God escaped Fate Brownlee’s grasp? That list might include friends, family, community, contentment, happiness, and—as suggested by Fate’s wandering spirit at the end of the tale—an eternal home with God.
Once the tale is baptized by its Christian epigraph, other Christian parallels come into focus. The Parable of the Rich Fool in Luke chapter 11 is an obvious comparison as Jesus spoke some of his sternest teachings against those who failed to use money relationally. Verse 20 of that parable reads, “But God said to him, ‘You fool! This very night your life will be demanded from you. Then who will get what you have prepared for yourself?’” And who got what Fate Brownlee prepared for himself? His niece, Dorcus, with some percentage taken out for federal and state taxes. In addition, no small amount of Fate’s ignoble treasure may remain buried in the ground in undiscovered locations on his farm awaiting some future treasure hunter.
Commenting on a different parable in Luke 16, Jesus gave his disciples the somewhat cryptic instruction to, “use worldly wealth to gain friends for yourselves, so that when it is gone, you will be welcomed into eternal dwellings.” Kirk’s moral imagination left us the image of Fate’s restless and wandering spirit to remind us how greed separates us from God. In verse 11, Jesus added, “So if you have not been trustworthy in handling worldly wealth, who will trust you with true riches?” For those readers who may never have the chance to engage the local miser, “Fate’s Purse” gives them a detailed view of the shrunken life and tragic death of the avaricious. In addition, Kirk’s ghostly tale shows us a more virtuous path forward following the footsteps of Judge Moreton and his like-minded community members who flourished beyond the grasp of greed.
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Notes:
[i] This quotation is from an essay in The Imaginative Conservative.
[ii] Cicero On Duties, Walter Miller translation (2021), page 126.
[iii] The other is for “There’s a Long, Long Trail A-Winding” (Luke 17:1-2).
[iv] “To the Point”, Saturday, April 18, 1970.
[v] See The Sword of the Imagination pages 160-163 for the “Miser of Mecosta” and pages 168-172 for Canon Bell.
The featured image is “Old Man With Coffee Grinder” (1886) by Albert Anker, and is in the public domain, courtesy of Wikimedia Commons.
