The True Account (5 page)

Once ashore, we had a breakfast of bacon and eggs, which was just the right tonic for me, at a little inn called the Sign of the Tipsy Argonaut, where we also secured a room for that night. Then we struck off up lower Broadway. It was a fine sunny morning, with a scattering of high white clouds and a touch of spring in the air. The street teemed with horses pulling beer wagons, lumber wagons, fruit wagons, vegetable wagons. On the corners evangelists preached, fishwives shrieked their briny wares, sailors lurched, boys hawked newspapers and blacked boots. My uncle was in his element, gleefully prying under flounders and cabbage leaves at an out-of-doors market and even popping into shops and offices and shouting “I spy!”—in an attempt to “flush out” or “start” the Gentleman. “Aye,” he said, “I'm sure he's nearby, Ti, for I smell sulphur.” As indeed he did, there being a little paper mill just across the street, where the newsprint for the
Times of New York
was manufactured. Which quite persuaded my uncle that somehow his friend was connected with the
Times
itself.

A lady approached my uncle, tweaked at his chain mail, and tickled his scarlet codpiece. “Anyone home?” she said.

“Nay, nay, madam,” he cried, leaping back. “We shall have none of that.”

At this he pulled me off down the crowded street—though not before he had pressed a shilling into the woman's hand. And though he continued to look for the sooty old lad he had expelled from Vermont, peering into every alleyway to see if he might catch a glimpse of him, he said that New York was “a
real metropolis,
not”—casting a scornful glance northward, in the direction of Boston—“a warren of tight-fisted, literal-minded, pedantical naysayers who wouldn't know a great adventure if it were to bite them in the hinderquarters.”

In the meantime, the private was giving away our few remaining shillings to the beggars, orphans, and crippled people in the street at an alarming rate. Tears started to his eyes at the sight of these unfortunates, who were now flocking after us as if we were leading a ragamuffin crusade. One of their rank, a little chimney sweep of about ten, thrust into my uncle's hand a circular advertising the Circus of Grotesqueries, at the Orpheus Theater on Broadway and 35th Street.

There, for a penny apiece, we were treated to a peep-show featuring a giant named Joseph Hall from Auburn, New York, a sword-swallower, a fire-eater, and a genuine Seneca Indian princess. For another penny each we were permitted to interview the celebrated Mrs. Peg O'Shaye of Dublin, Ireland, who had enjoyed earlier existences as Mary Magdalene, Joan of Arc, and William Penn. I loved seeing these walking wonders, whom my uncle straightaway recruited for the cast of his
Tragical History of Ethan Allen,
which he then arranged to perform at the Orpheus that evening at ten o'clock, after the circus had closed.

During the luncheon hour, while he rehearsed with his recently acquired players, I wrote a letter to my parents, informing them of our whereabouts and bringing them up to date on my uncle's lecture in Boston and his plan to present his
Tragical History
in New York that evening. When I returned from posting the note, he said the rehearsal had gone exceedingly well. Indeed, he doubted whether such a varied company of players had ever been assembled under one roof before, an observation with which I could only agree.

 

That afternoon we went to a printer's and had five hundred handbills run off announcing the New York debut of the play. Afterward we repaired to the office of the
Times of New York
to visit Editor Tobias Flynt. When we arrived, Editor Flynt, a bespectacled man with a sharp nose, was composing one of his famous Federalist tracts—for he was a fierce supporter of Hamilton and adamantly opposed to President Jefferson. No sooner had my uncle announced that he was that very evening presenting a play to raise money to guide an expedition to the Pacific than he and Flynt fell into an argument. Flynt declared that the country would have absolutely no use for the great desert of Louisiana, which he repeatedly called “Jefferson's Folly” and which, in his estimation, was a pig in a poke. My uncle countered that Louisiana was no desert but a land of milk and honey, and the most important acquisition in our Republic's history. Flynt said that giving money, of which we had too little, for land, of which we already had too much, would bankrupt the government. Why, no one even knew the boundaries of the territory we had purchased. No American had ever been there.

“What, sir,” demanded my uncle, “can you possibly mean? I, and my nephew, too, just last year came through Louisiana from the Pacific. We know every foot of the way as well as we know our dooryard in Vermont.”

At this news Flynt seemed to change his tune. He inquired how long our trip had taken; and seemed most interested to learn that we had accomplished the odyssey in a single day. Flynt asked to see the manuscript of my uncle's play. I was afraid he might not find it up to the mark. But looking it over with a knowing eye, he praised the work for its originality, faithfulness to reality, vigorous language, and justness of character. My uncle replied that though he and Flynt might disagree on some few minor political matters, he was glad that those differences had not clouded the editor's artistic judgment; and he hoped Flynt would attend the performance that night and give it good play in the next morning's edition. Flynt assured him that he would be honored to do so and that he would mention our forthcoming journey to the Pacific as well.

Later we rejoined the grotesqueries at the Orpheus, where the play began at ten sharp to a rather sparse audience of about six, including the crew of the
Lord Baltimore
and Editor Flynt. The performance ran very long, with just the representation of Colonel Allen's regiment rowing across the lake to Fort Ti taking more than an hour. When my uncle, in the role of Allen, demanded that the British general, as played by the giant, surrender the fort in the name of the Great Jehovah and the First Continental Congress, the three or four people remaining in the audience laughed heartily. All in all, he counted the night a huge success.

Afterward, Flynt went straight to his office to write his notice, which he assured us would be read by every literate resident of New York in the morning. My uncle, the cast, and I repaired to a nearby ale-house, where he treated the actors and himself to rum. Finally we made our way back down Broadway, which seemed as crowded at two in the morning as it had been at two that afternoon—my having first borrowed from the tavern owner a blue potato barrow in which to wheel the private back to our lodgings. “Hoist, hoist your flagons, roisterers all,” he sang from the confines of the barrow. “For if summer be arrived, soon come the withering rimes of fall. Tooleree, toolera, tooleroo!”

T
HE NEXT MORNING
the private awoke with a throbbing head and a tongue, as he put it, “as large as a full-grown buffalo's.” But his expectations of being lionized in Flynt's
Times of New York
precipitated him from bed. He rousted me out and inquired how, in my estimation, his presentation of
The Tragical History
had gone.

“Splendidly,” I said. “No question, uncle. You put on an exhibition to be remembered.”

He said he was certain of it, and that however unappreciative of his lecture the haughty academical intelligentsia of Boston town had been, and however undiscerning, good Editor Flynt and the
Times
would see him right and vindicate his reputation as an artist and a gentleman.

All this while he was shaving. But when he opened the door and stepped outside, all besoaped, to take in the morning air, he tripped over the potato barrow and was obliged to perform a very intricate fandango to keep from slitting his throat with his own razor.

“Why, Ticonderoga, is this plebeian conveyance blocking the way?”

“I brought your honor home from the play in it last evening—or rather this morning,” I said.

“Well, for the love of Jehovah, Ti, trundle it down to the
Times
and bring back as many copies of today's paper as it will hold. I shall order us a celebratory breakfast.”

When I arrived back at the Tipsy Argonaut with the papers, my uncle was dressed in his full knight's gear, and the captain of the
Lord Baltimore
was with him. I sat down at their table. My uncle clapped me on the back and cried up coffee with sweet cream, hot glazed rolls, and clay pipes all around for a smoke of hemp. Then, leaning back in his chair like a sultan, he bade me read his notice aloud to the assemblage, which, apart from myself and the ship's captain, consisted mainly of fishmongers, sailors, and ladies of the evening just arriving from their employment.

“Uncle, are you certain—?”

“Yes, yes, Ti, read on.”

Clearing my throat several times, I began to read aloud from the
Times,
as follows. “‘Last evening, our city was treated to an exhibition of sovereign entertainment, a play from the pen of one Private True T. Kinneson, recently arrived in New York from Vermont.'”

“‘Sovereign entertainment,'” my uncle exclaimed. “Jesu, that's good. Did you hear that, my dear ladies and gentlemen? I must write a public apology in the
Times
to the excellent people of New York for ever supposing that the Dev—that the Gentleman from Vermont, ha ha—would be allowed to dwell for one hour in their fair city. Read on, Ticonderoga.”

“Please, uncle, you must not break in on me,” I said. “To continue. ‘The play, which we shall come to presently, was performed at the stately old Orpheus Theater, a landmark of our noble city, though recently reduced to providing quarters for a circus of curiosities, with the design of raising funds for the author to lead an expedition to the Pacific Ocean.'”

“That's good,” my uncle said. “That can only help our greater purpose. But come to the matter here, nephew. What says Mr. Flynt of my
Tragical History
?”

“Well, uncle, since you seem bent on hearing the rest, I won't try to dissuade you. ‘The play itself, insofar as this commentator is fit to judge, is the greatest farce ever written. Juvenile in conception, violent in execution, puerile, nay, prurient, in its attempts at humor, and in the most vile taste,
Ethan Allen
violates all known principles of composition. Characters are thinly drawn, nor do their actions flow from human nature, but rather from the diseased imagination and self-conscious extravagancies of the author, who fancies himself a kind of American Quixote and has no more sense than his Andalusian prototype. And we add only, for the amusement of our readers, that in a wonderful epilogue to this hilarious masterpiece its bumpkin hero reportedly had to be trundled back to his lodging in a potato barrow after a drinking bout following the production.'”

The entire coffeehouse was now in a paroxysm of laughter. But I feared the very worst as my uncle clapped his hand to his wooden sword, leaped to his feet, and roared, “Where is this man Flynt? He and I have a pressing appointment.”

“Oh, uncle,” I cried. “Aren't you delighted?”

“Delighted? This is an outrage to me and to all other playwrights in the universe. But vindication is near, Ti. Retribution is at hand. Go out and cut me a stout cudgel about as thick as my wrist—”

“Why, sir,” I interrupted, pretending to be astonished. “What can you possibly mean? Don't you see? ‘Greatest farce.' ‘Wonderful epilogue.' ‘Hilarious masterpiece.' Critic Flynt is praising you to all New York not for your supposed tragedy but for your great
comedy
.”

I quickly turned to the ship's captain. “Isn't that so, sir?”

“Why, I suppose it is, for I laughed all the way through it,” he said.

My uncle stared at the captain. He stared at me. Snatching up the paper, he scanned the offending passage through his tin ear trumpet and then stared at the trumpet. He took off his red flannel night-stocking, folded it neatly in twain and in twain again, and very vigorously began to polish his copper crown until his headpiece shone like the sun.

“Eureka!” he cried at last. “Gentlemen and ladies, my nephew has set me right again. As Ti says, Critic Flynt, bless his good heart, has seen through to the heart of my play. He—ha ha—knows it better than I do. As of this moment I call it a
tragical
history no more but
The Most Comical History of Ethan Allen.”

And declaring that since he had taken the great literary bastion of New York by storm, as it were, with his new
commedia,
we would rejoin the crew of the
Lord Baltimore,
bound that morning for the city of its name, and from there flare out to Washington and plead our cause directly to the President. So although I had prevented my uncle from killing Flynt or being killed himself, in the end I had succeeded only in sweeping us farther along on a mad journey from which, I feared, there would be no turning back. And what might lie ahead was as blank and unknowable as the vast white space on my uncle's old “Chart of the Interior of North America.”

 

 

 

 

Y
OU WOULD SUPPOSE
we were waiting for an audience with an Oriental despot, Ti. I can't say I like this. I can't say that I quite approve of standing on all this formality, President or no. Particularly when the fate of America may well depend on our meeting.”

Having found the President not in Washington but at his famous home in Virginia, after three hard days by coach and hired wagon we were at last standing in the great rotunda at Monticello. Finally, the inner door to the President's study opened, and there stood Thomas Jefferson himself, wearing his house slippers and a dressing gown, though it was late afternoon. With no hesitation my uncle said to the President, “I tell you, sir, the fate of the United States, and whether those states are to be one strong unbroken nation from coast to coast or a parcel of squabbling little hegemonies like rotten old Europe, may well depend on the next hour. And in particular, on whether you appoint as leader of your expedition to the Pacific Private True Teague Kinneson.” He swept off his stocking cap and made a deep bow, in the process striking the bewildered President's outstretched hand with the metal plate in his head.