The Wapshot Chronicle

American writer John Cheever’s debut novel, The Wapshot Chronicle (1957), received the U.S. National Book Award for Fiction in 1958. Cheever followed this debut with a sequel entitled The Wapshot Scandal (1964).

The Wapshot Chronicle is about the lives of an eccentric family living in a Massachusetts fishing village. Once a bustling, prosperous river port, St. Botolphs is currently kept alive by a few small industries and summer tourism. A little port town that is rapidly in decline, it boasts a tourist center with antique stores, gift shops, and tea rooms adorned with artifacts from another time, recalling America’s agricultural and seafaring history.

The protagonist, Leander Wapshot, lives on West Farm, a place cluttered with memories of generations past, Wapshots who are dead and gone. It is symbolic of a fortunate past and an uncertain future. The older generations of the Wapshot family were seafaring wanderers, learning life’s lessons out on the open ocean. They left St. Botolphs as boys and came back as men, seasoned by the hardships and perils of their calling and with their wits sharpened by the strategies of trade in foreign ports. They had their first experiences with women in exotic locations, memories of naked brown women in the islands of the Pacific.



Like their hometown, the Wapshots have come down in the world. Leander can hardly imagine the life lived by his predecessors. He has never known adventure, has never traveled or fallen in love. St. Botolphs has fallen on hard times, severely affecting Leander’s family as well as his livelihood, keeping him landlocked. His prospects limited in the small port town, he is dependent on Cousin Honora’s charity.

Technically Leander is the head of the family, but the person who wields the real power is Cousin Honora. She controls the purse strings of the family — a matriarch who is not afraid to exert her power. She is described as being slightly eccentric. She believes Leander and herself to be the holders of the family trust. Leander has earned his place because he has fathered two boys; Honora intends to pass the money along to the boys once they get married and have sons of their own.

In the meantime, Honora uses her position of power to control and bully Leander. She pays the bills, believing this gives her carte blanche to act as she pleases. She believes Leander to be a foolish man, never able to earn much of a living, and now he is old. Cousin Honora buys a battered old launch, the Topaze, in order to give Leander some work to do. Leander ferries daily between Travertine and the amusement park across the bay at Nangasakit. She believes this keeps Leander busy enough to stay out of trouble, and provides him with just enough excitement in his life, which he has been lacking.



Leander’s sons, Moses and Coverly, leave St. Botolphs after Cousin Honora demands that Moses leave, and Coverly could not bear to live at home without his brother. The men become nomadic, floating along on the tide of life, allowing it to take them where it will. This part of the novel reflects on life’s endless possibilities and variations, as well as its inexplicable randomness.

Moses goes to Washington and lands a job with the government that is so secret the narrator cannot divulge any more information. He then has an affair with a married woman named Beatrice, gets fired from his job, and leaves Washington. He ends up marrying Melissa, the ward of a distant cousin, Justina Wapshot Molesworth Scaddon. Justina, the widow of a five-and-ten-cent store king, is a caricature of the American nouveau riche.

Simultaneously, Coverly goes to New York where he attempts to get a job in the carpet business owned by the husband of a wealthy cousin. However, Coverly fails the days-long psychological tests. Instead, he works in a department store while he attends night school. He falls in love with Betsey Macaffery who is from Georgia, and the two get married.



Both Moses and Coverly face difficulties in their marriages. Melissa turns aggressively asexual as the couple is forced to live under the roof of Justina’s mansion. Coverly’s marriage starts to go downhill when they move to the planned community of Remsen Park where Betsey struggles to make friends.

At the end of the book, both couples get back together, and both Moses and Coverly father sons. In doing so, they fulfill the terms laid out for them by Honora, gaining access to their trusts, part of which they decide to use to buy Leander a new boat.