Out of the Shadows 

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The Real Madame Butterfly

By Marc Charisse

I first encountered John Luther Long on a shadowy strip of grass off Frederick Street.

A small plaque a block off the square marks his birthplace.  Long’s short story, Madame Butterfly, became Giacomo Puccini’s famous opera—just another obscure bit of Hanover history.

I didn’t give Long much thought until years later, as I put together a Haunted Hanover walking tour. Film critic Roger Ebert called Madame Butterfly “one of the cruelest stories ever told,” so maybe there was ghostly tale to tell. 

Well, sort of. Turns out the original Madame Butterfly has a happy ending. So maybe it’s more the story of a restless spirit — Long himself — remembered for a tragedy instead of his original tale of resilience.

Born in Hanover Jan. 1, 1861, Long married Mary Anne Sprenkle and went on to become a prosperous Philadelphia lawyer. He was also moderately successful as a fiction writer in his spare time. 

Several of Long’s stories focused on Japan, based on the experiences of a sister who had lived there with her missionary husband. Interest in Asian culture was high at the end of the 19th century, and Long’s stories were popular with American readers. Like his other stories, Madame Butterfly, first published in Century Magazine in 1898, perpetuates the Asian stereotypes of the time. But Long’s sympathies are always with his Japanese heroine.

Madame Butterfly tells the story of 15-year-old Cho-Cho-San, a Nagasaki geisha who marries an American naval officer, Lt. Benjamin Franklin Pinkerton. At first, Cho-Cho-San’s impoverished family supports the arranged marriage; such temporary unions with Asian women were not uncommon. 

But Cho-Cho-San believes her marriage is as real as her love for Pinkerton. Her family disowns her when she considers renouncing her traditional faith to adopt her husband’s religion.

After Pinkerton’s ship sails, Cho-Cho-San gives birth to a son she names Trouble. But she plans to rename him “Joy” as soon as her husband returns “when the robins nest in the spring.”

Pinkerton does come back, but he is accompanied by a “real American wife” who wants to take the child and raise him in the United States. Finally realizing Pinkerton’s infidelity, Cho-Cho-San resolves to die.

Her suicide is the climactic scene in Puccini’s opera.

Cho-Cho-San blindfolds her son and gives him a small American flag to wave while waiting for his father. Then she moves discreetly behind a screen to end her life with her father’s sword. Her husband arrives to find her dead, takes the child and sings the opera’s final, mournful song.

Long died on Halloween night 1927. His obituary in The New York Times quotes him as saying he was “a sentimentalist, and a feminist and proud of it.”

It seems hard to square Long’s description of himself with the opera’s helpless, passive-aggressive protagonist. But Long’s original story offers a more empowered ending. Cho-Cho-San still resolves to kill herself but hesitates.

“They had taught her how to die,” Long writes, “but he had taught her how to live — nay, to make life sweet.”

She cuts herself, but then drops the sword when she hears her son crying.

“The baby crept cooing into her lap. The little maid came in and bound up the wound,” the story concludes. “When Mrs. Pinkerton called next day at the little house on Higashi Hill, it was quite empty.”

Cho-Cho-San determines to break free of the constricting traditions of her family and culture, as well as the bitter betrayal of her husband. Life with her son, she decides, is worth living. That’s what I told the people who joined me for those Hanover ghost tours.

And like a real ghost story, it didn’t die there. One of the people on that tour had a hand in the new wayside markers that recently went up around Hanover.
A new marker near the original plaque now includes Long’s original final scene.

Another happy ending for Madame Butterfly, right here in Hanover. 

Marc Charisse, Ph.D. is the former editor of The Evening Sun in Hanover. Dr. Charisse has a Ph.D. in communications and journalism history. These days, he performs magic and conducts local history and ghost tours.

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Marc Charisse

Marc Charisse, Ph.D. is the former editor of The Evening Sun in Hanover. Dr. Charisse has a Ph.D. in communications and journalism history. These days, he performs magic and conducts local history and ghost tours.

1 Comment

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    Alexandra Folk on

    Mr. Charisse, please reach out to me. John Luther Long is my great great great grandfather. I love to speak with you!

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