Caxton (8 page)

* * *

It was midmorning by the time Jack neared Proudlocks’s shack on the edge of
a field. The fowl and swine were kept here in special pens, while the cattle
were allowed to roam free in fenced-off pastures beyond the crop fields. Under
Proudlocks’s care, the guinea hens, muscovy ducks, turkeys and chickens had
increased in numbers to the point that Morland could sell the birds to other
freeholds and to the taverns and still have plenty left over for its own tables.
The guinea hens and turkeys were let loose in the tobacco fields during the
growing season to combat the hornworms that could infest the leaves and eat
their way to the stalks. “The birds are more efficient than men for worming
and grubbing,” said Proudlocks once. “Men look under each leaf, hoping not to
find something to pluck and crush. My hens and turkeys are hungry, and hope
to find a meal under each leaf. It is only the top leaves they cannot reach.
We should order some ostriches from London.”

Proudlocks was a vociferous reader now, regularly borrowing books from the
Morland library with titles that ranged from history to science to agricultural
treatises. Jack often thought that his friend was more widely read than he.

He found Proudlocks in one of the pens, in the midst of scores of birds, pouring
water into their troughs. The bronze face looked up. “Greetings, Jack,” he said.
He was the only person at Morland who addressed Jack Frake by his first name.

Proudlocks put down his pail and came to the fence. “You returned early from
the ball. I heard you pass by this morning.”
“Yes. I stopped at Mr. Reisdale’s for a while.”
“I saw the fireworks. Watched them from the roof of the coop.” Proudlocks laughed.
“And, I caught the fox.”
“The one that carried off your prize guinea two nights ago?”
“That one. He was not expecting me to be out and waiting in so black a night.”
Jack smiled. “Good. Moses and Henry are going into the woods in the afternoon
to pick out wood for more grain hogsheads. Would you go with them to cut it
and haul it back?” Moses Topham was Morland’s carpenter, Henry Dakin its cooper.
“Yes.” Proudlocks frowned. “Heard one of Swart’s people ran away last night.”
“Who?”
“Champion.”
Champion Smith was Brougham Hall’s master blacksmith — and a slave. “How did
you hear?” Jack asked.
“Bristol crossed over to see his wife and daughter at Mr. Otway’s place.” Bristol,
another slave, was the blacksmith’s apprentice. “Stopped here to trade news.
Said they all heard there was to be a new master. Also, Champion got into a
fight with the others. Bristol didn’t say about what.”
Jack grimaced. “Swart will advertise for him when he returns — if he returns
— and offer two or three pounds reward, which he won’t need to pay. The gentleman
who is buying Brougham Hall this morning will pay it, if Champion is caught
and returned.”
“He carries no pass,” remarked Proudlocks. “It is true, then?”
Jack nodded. “I spoke with Mr. Kenrick last night. But, I don’t think Swart’s
people need fear him.”
They talked about what else needed to be done on the plantation to prepare for
the coming winter. “I’ll be joining Henry and Moses in the woods. Have supper
with me tonight. Miss Beck is preparing one of her potpies that you like so
much, and plum pudding. Then we could have a game of chess.”
Proudlocks agreed, and Jack rode off to see the other tenants about the day’s
chores.

I
n February of 1759, Handel died, and was interred in Westminster Abbey. William
Pitt the “Younger” was born in May. In Bohemia, Haydn completed his first symphony.
In Salzburg, Austria, Leopold Mozart was preparing his three-year-old son, Wolfgang,
for a tour of the courts of Europe the next year. An English dilettante undertook
to translate French physiocrat François Quesnay’s
Tableau Économique
,
published the year before; it was the first attempt to analyze an entire economy.

In Geneva, his latest residence-in-exile, Voltaire completed
Candide
,
and broke with Rousseau over the latter’s public attack on an article by Jean
d’Alembert in the
Encyclopédie
that extolled the theater, which was banned
in Geneva. In Rome, Pope Clement XIII put the
Encyclopédie
on the Index
of prohibited books and decreed that all Catholics who did not have their copies
of it burned by a priest ran the risk of excommunication. The French government,
bowing to pressure from the clergy and conservatives in all strata of society,
revoked the
Encyclopédie
’s printing license, but retained the services
of its director of book production, Chrétien-Guillaume de Lamoignon de Malesherbes,
who found a loophole in the law and arranged to have the great work published
in Paris under a Swiss imprint. He also alerted Denis Diderot to planned raids
by the authorities, and found places to hide new pages of the
Encyclopédie
until the danger passed, often in the basement of his own house.

Samuel Johnson published that year
Rasselas, or the Prince of Abissinia
,
his first major work since completing the
Dictionary
. David Garrick produced
at Drury Lane his
Harlequin’s Invasion
, a patriotic stage piece about
a foiled French invasion of England, for which William Boyce composed the score
for “Hearts of Oak.”

Adam Smith, dean of faculty at the University of Glasgow, published
The
Theory of Moral Sentiments
, the subject of which was heavily influenced
by David Hume’s
Treatise of Human Nature
. A copy of the latter work was
confiscated from Smith years before when he was a Snell scholar at Balliol College
at Oxford; it had been deemed heretical and atheistic. Hume, now a close friend
of Smith’s, was busy publishing the quartos of his
History of England
,
a work which Thomas Jefferson decades later would fault for being partial to
royal tyranny. Among Smith’s other Glasgow friends were Joseph Black, a professor
of anatomy who discovered carbon dioxide and latent heat; young James Watt,
who would patent the first highpressure steam engine; and many merchants and
entrepreneurs from whose congenial contact Smith would be partly inspired to
begin taking notes for what would become
The Wealth of Nations
. And Benjamin
Franklin, in London representing the Pennsylvania legislature, was collaborating
on a book that would urge Britain to expel the French from North America by
annexing Canada, arguing that an unrestrained, growing colonial population would
be a boon to British manufactures. Franklin’s book was an early critique of
the dominant mercantilist theory of trade, whose premise of static wealth was
a major contributing factor to most of the century’s wars.

Frederick the Great, who six years earlier had broken with Voltaire, suffered
one of his bitterest defeats at the hands of the Austrians and Russians at Kunersdorf,
near Frankfurt. So distraught was the warrior king by the rout, that he deliberately
exposed himself to enemy fire, begging fruitlessly of every bullet that flew
his way to strike him down. He was ungently removed from the field by his loyal
subordinates.

That same August, at Minden, near Hanover, field marshal Prince Ferdinand,
Duke of Brunswick and an ally of Frederick, with a smaller army nearly destroyed
the French army that threatened to capture George the Second’s principality
— nearly, but for the funk of Lord George Sackville, British commander of a
cavalry detachment, who repeatedly ignored Ferdinand’s orders to rout the fleeing
French cavalry. For this impudent conduct, described by a fellow officer as
“frightened trauma,” a delicate euphemism for cowardice, Sackville was court-martialed
and cashiered in disgrace from the British army. A witness to his “trauma” was
an aide-decamp on Ferdinand’s staff, Lord Charles Brome, a 21-year-old officer
of the Grenadier Guards, who later became the second Earl Cornwallis. Sackville,
after sedulously inveigling his way back into politics, was some fifteen years
later, as Lord Germain, appointed by Frederick Lord North to be Secretary of
State for the Colonies, in which capacity he would deal firmly with his enemies
from afar.

And John Harrison, a clockmaker and a commoner, in this year completed the
construction of his fourth marine chronometer. The scheduled sea trials of the
third were delayed by a combination of the war and the meddling interference
of envious royally appointed astronomers.

* * *

Hugh Kenrick had also observed Halley’s Comet.
But while Jack Frake wondered half-seriously whether it was a harbinger or an
omen of the future, to Hugh, studying the bright streak in the night sky through
the smoke of Philadelphia’s chimneys, it was a salutary punctuation mark for
his past.

It marked his decision to remain in America for a few more years. Two events
influenced his decision: the worsening of relations between his father and uncle
to the point that his seniors now rarely spoke to each other; and Reverdy Brune’s
engagement and marriage to Alex McDougal.

It began with a letter from his friend, Roger Tallmadge, who reported that
his older brother Francis was killed at Hastenbeck. Seconded from the Duke of
Cumberland’s Own Regiment of Horse to serve as a courier on the Duke’s staff
during the campaign to protect Hanover, Francis, carrying orders from the Duke
to his Hanoverian allies during the heaviest fighting, rode into the path of
an errant French cannon ball and was picked neatly and fatally from his galloping
horse. Stung by the humiliating and unnecessary capitulation of Cumberland and
his brother’s seemingly wasted death, Roger persuaded his equally bitter father
to try and purchase him a commission in the same regiment. This proved impossible.
Roger ended up as an ensign in the Grenadier Guards.

In the course of his correspondence, Roger alluded both to the feuding between
Hugh’s father and uncle, and to the frequent exchanges of visits between the
Brunes and the McDougals. He did not feel it his place to speculate or give
Hugh details. His careful allusions were discreetly worded warnings.

The details were supplied in gently couched missives from Hugh’s parents and
from Reverdy herself. The widening rift between his father and uncle unfolded
as slowly and inexorably as did his loss of Reverdy.

“Your uncle and I do not much speak to each other, except on unavoidable business,”
wrote his father during Hugh’s first year in Philadelphia. “Our servants are
kept trim and busy in the carrying of notes between Milgram House and your uncle.
Often they pass each other on the road. By the bye, I have decided not to erect
a new place for us. It could be done, for our interests in the Portland quarries
would give us an advantage. But Milgram House, your mother and I have concluded,
will do until such time as we can return to the seat of Danvers.”

Months later, Garnet Kenrick wrote his son: “Your uncle Basil had some guests
down from London last week, among them that fulsome fellow we encountered some
years ago, Sir Henoch Pannell, who was accompanied by his fribblous creature
of a wife, Chloe. Sir Henoch, I have heard it said, now controls a bloc of votes
in the Commons, and he and your uncle seem to be forging some kind of unholy
alliance. I do not worry about the longevity of such a pact; devils prefer to
work alone, and one can only surmise that two such objectionable persons would
not long be able to tolerate each other. I was obliged to sell to Sir Henoch
a small number of shares in the bank, in exchange for his silence on your last
London escapade. Your uncle arranged this, having fixed in his noodle the possibility
that if His Majesty heard of it, his legal counselors could find a way to annul
our patent on Danvers.”

Effney Kenrick wrote her son: “Mrs. Tallmadge reports to me that the Brunes
have been receiving the McDougals with ‘suspicious frequency.’ We had the Brunes
over to Milgram for a Michaelmas supper once after your departure, but they
have since begged to excuse themselves from our subsequent invitations in every
instance, pleading prior social commitments, or illness.”

Reverdy wrote Hugh: “Thank you for the description of Philadelphia and of the
quaint environs in which you have been ensconced. It sounds like lovely but
rude country. Is it true what I have read here, that the Quaker women there
must go about in public with veils over their faces, and that the authorities
there allow Indians to roast Presbyterian captives alive in the square and say
prayers of thanks after their repast?”

The undertone of flippancy eluded letter-hungry Hugh, who was usually sensitive
to literary turns and twists. He said in an amusing but instructive letter:

“The Quaker women here are pious and intelligent, often outspoken, very resourceful,
and dress as plainly as their men. They do not wear veils. At times, however,
their bonnets are so large and umberous that their features are in shadow, and
one must peer into their depths to properly ascertain the age and phiz of the
speaker, and to hear her muffled words. You have been reading low magazine accounts
of the Indians. Most of them are at sixes-and-sevens and have been pacified
by the preachful emissaries of various denominations. They are so stunned and
stupefied by the arrival of so much civilization that they remind me of our
own country folk when they learn that a manor and its adjacent lands are to
be enclosed. The assembly here tries to assuage them with settlements and charity.
They have little notion of property, and cannot fathom wheels. They are doomed.
The only cannibals I have heard of are the western tribes, who are often engaged
by the French to extinguish our settlements beyond the mountains.

“When Fort William Henry fell to Montcalm, hundreds of these beasts violated
the terms of the surrender and descended upon our soldiers and the militia men,
who carried muskets but no powder and ball. They were to be escorted by the
French to another British fort, but neither the Canadians nor the French regulars
moved to protect them. The Indians beheaded or scalped the wounded in the fort’s
hospital, then butchered the camp-followers — mostly women and children — in
a similar fashion, and finally turned on the men, taking their clothes and useless
weapons and often their lives. Montcalm and his officers are reported to have
intervened, but quit the effort because it was too risky as the beasts were
drunk on rum and blood. Montcalm bought most of the hostages back, and saw that
they were safely escorted to Fort Edward. Many of the Englishmen, however, were
kept by the savages, and were forced to porter the rum and gunpowder Montcalm
had paid the savages, then were tortured and made meals of on the trek back
to Canada. The last one was flayed alive and boiled in Montreal and consumed
there. This I have from a French deserter who has settled in Philadelphia and
established a tannery.

“The forests beyond the settled regions must be salted with the bones and skulls
of many who journeyed here to escape the wars, conditions, and persecutions
in England and on the Continent. An expedition through these dark woods must
follow morbid trails and come upon sad instances of families and farms come
to grief. It is, I suppose, difficult enough to tame this wilderness and try
to wrest a living from it, and to be on guard against hazards such as panthers,
bears, wolves, and snakes. It must be more difficult to take precautions against
human predators, whose notion of manhood is the number of scalps they can lift
from especially women and children. However, whether they are Christianized
or savage, the Indians are doomed by their manner of living and customs, which
encourage neither industry nor measurable increases of their numbers….”

Hugh wrote Reverdy many such letters, eagerly composed to share with her the
wisdom and knowledge he was acquiring. Their unintended consequence was to cause
her to reconsider his value to her. For a year or so, there was no hint of the
McDougals in her letters to Hugh; her letters could have been penned by an acquaintance
or a stranger.

Then, at the beginning of his second year at the Academy of Philadelphia, he
received a long apologia from her explaining her engagement to Alex McDougal.

“You are a man,” she said in one part of the letter, “in whom any discriminating
woman could count dozens of reasons to love him. But these reasons can only
be docketed like goods on a merchantman. They are worthy and commendable reasons,
but a cargo of virtues cannot inspire love of its owner. Love springs from the
inscrutable but feckful heart, it cannot be analyzed or measured or subjected
to rational scrutiny, not without causing it to wither and die. Love can only
be felt or observed, never judged or justified. I have tried to love you in
the manner you expect me to, and cannot. I have imagined loving you in that
manner, and have come to know that I have not the strength to sustain that mode
without regarding it in time as an unfair, cruel trial that would exhaust my
endurance….”

This was the only section of Reverdy’s rambling letter that Hugh could make
sense of. He read it over and over, unbelieving of its meaning, but eventually
being convinced of it.

He sat still at the desk in the room he occupied in Otis Talbot’s house, not
moving for a long time, holding a letter in his hands he could no longer read.
It was such a mortal, unexpected blow that he was in a numbed stupor, unconscious
of time and sound and light. As the growing dusk claimed the corners of his
room, it seemed also to claim his soul. He felt that Reverdy had died, and that
he would soon follow her.