LAUGHTER
drifted down from the second floor. And applause. They went up the staircase and into a corridor. A door was open, and a noisy group of men was gathered inside a meeting room. Most were young, in their twenties. Shel and Dave stopped at the entrance, where an open ledger had been set up on a small table.
Franklin had just signed in and was deeply engaged in conversation with a portly gentleman who was puffing on a large cigar.
A man with spectacles spotted Shel and Dave. He shook his head no, but when Shel entered anyway, he got up and came over. “Gentlemen,” he said through a regretful smile, “I’m sorry. This is a private meeting.”
“I know,” said Shel. “Forgive me, but this
is
the Junto, is it not?”
“Yes, it is, sir.”
Shel fixed his eyes on Franklin. “We’ll only take a moment of your time. We wondered if we might speak briefly with Silence Dogood.” He raised his voice sufficiently to be heard inside the room.
Franklin turned to look at them. “Really?” An amused glimmer appeared in his eyes. “And what do you know of Silence Dogood?”
“We lived in Boston for several years,” said Shel. “If you are the man, I must tell you how much I enjoyed your work.”
He came over. “I have it, Hugh,” he told the individual who was trying to get them to leave.
“We were subscribers to the
New-England Courant
,” Shel continued. “You were the best thing in the paper.”
“That’s very kind of you, sir.” They had everyone’s attention now. Franklin smiled and shrugged his shoulders, enjoying the moment. “How did you know
I
wrote the features? Only a few were aware of that.”
“I’ve heard it from several sources, Mr. Franklin. You
are
Mr. Franklin?”
“Yes, I am.”
“I’m sorry if we interrupted at an inopportune time, sir. I hope you’re not offended. But when we heard you were going to be here—” He stopped midsentence. “My name is Adrian Shelborne. This is David Dryden. When we heard you were going to be here, we just couldn’t resist coming by to wish you a happy birthday.”
“You don’t sound like a New Englander, Mr. Shelborne.”
“I was born and grew up in Philadelphia, sir.”
“I see. Well, I thank you for the good wishes.”
The two men from the table downstairs arrived at precisely that moment. “I see they found you, Ben,” said the Hispanic.
Shel smiled and held out the package. “Mr. Franklin, we brought you a gift.”
Franklin looked curiously at it, but made no move to accept it.
“It’s a book,” said Shel.
He took it, finally. He opened the bag and withdrew one of the volumes. “Interesting,” he said. He held it up so everyone in the room could see it. “
Gulliver’s Travels
.” He glanced at the second volume and turned back to Shel and Dave. “That’s a substantial gift for someone you do not know.”
“It’s small enough return for one who has given us so much pleasure.”
A man with shaggy red hair laughed. “The Brits say whoever wrote it is a troublemaker.”
“Good,” roared another. “Troublemakers always make the best reading.” He smiled up at Franklin. “Don’t they, Ben?”
No one else seemed to have known it was Franklin’s birthday. They thanked the newcomers, passed a motion that Franklin not be permitted to pay for his drinks, and, after some discussion, passed another suspending the rule barring nonmembers from participating in meetings. Shel and Dave were shown a copy of the bylaws, which informed them, while on the premises, they must keep open minds, that no unprovable assertion would be considered sacrosanct, that strong opinions would not be tolerated, and that speakers were not to monopolize the time.
“We are not a debating club,” Franklin said. “Our goal is to get at the truth, where that is possible.”
THE
topic for the evening was the willingness of human beings to be influenced by the social milieu in which they live. Tribalism. The damage that unthinking groups, following what would eventually be called memes, inflict on each other. The discussion rapidly veered off into whether rebels are as dangerous to a peaceful society as those who are unthinkingly obedient and respect authority.
It went back and forth. Without authoritarian controls, chaos would ensue. But people acting in the name of authority, or of a group, will commit atrocities they would never perpetrate on their own.
Take the New England witch trials, for example.
Shel found himself thinking of the Holocaust. He wondered how many in that room would believe that such an event was even possible in a supposedly civilized nation. If it could happen in Germany, could it happen anywhere?
The man who’d taken them into the hall, Hugh Meredith, wondered if it wasn’t possible to establish strict controls on authority. “Give ultimate power to the people,” he suggested.
“I agree,” said John Jones, Jr., a shoemaker. “Surely there is a place between authoritarian rule and chaos.”
“Perhaps,” said Franklin, “we should resurrect Rome. Cicero’s Rome.”
“Divide the power.” Voices were joining in from all over the room.
“Two consuls.”
“A senate.”
“And vote them all out every couple of years.”
AT
the end of the evening, as the members were leaving, Franklin took Shel and Dave aside. “I think you will be receiving an invitation to join our group,” he said. “I will hope to see you again.”
“Ah,” said Shel, “we appreciate the compliment. Unfortunately, we do not live close enough that a membership would be practical.”
“That’s a pity. Where
are
you living currently?”
“Baltimore.”
“Yes.” He sighed. “Well, we were glad to have had you with us for the evening.” He gazed down at
Gulliver’s Travels
. “And thank you for this. I’ve heard interesting things about it.”
“I think you’ll enjoy it, Ben.” (They were by then on first-name terms.)
“By the way,” said Dave, “I wonder whether we didn’t see an example of tribalism here tonight?”
“By
us
?” asked Franklin. “How do you mean?”
“The club,” Dave said. “There were no women present.”
CHAPTER 30
I have often thought that if there had been a good rap group around in those days, I might have chosen a career in music instead of politics.
—RICHARD NIXON, AUDIO, THE NIXON PRESIDENTIAL LIBRARY
THE
lack of women participants at the Junto led Dave and Shel to Sojourner Truth. They were among the very few males present when she delivered her “Ain’t I a Woman?” speech in 1851 at the Ohio Women’s Rights Convention in Akron.
They spent an evening with Alexander von Humboldt in eighteenth-century Berlin discussing celestial mechanics and politics.
They hung out in a Milan bar several evenings with Ernest Heming way, while he was recovering from wounds incurred driving an ambulance during World War I.
A few nights later they were in eastern France, at the Chateau de Cirey, talking with Voltaire and his lover, the Marquise du Châtelet. Actually, Dave did most of the talking, because Shel’s French was nonexistent. But they hit it off. Voltaire, whose name was actually François-Marie Arouet, was simultaneously the funniest and the most passionate man Shel had ever encountered. And this despite the fact that everything had to be translated.
The evening went well, and they were invited back. Shel worked on his French, and the next time they went, he was better able to participate.
Voltaire loved parties. They met Ibrahim Muteferrika at one and Alexander Pope at another. Jonathan Swift was to have traveled with Pope, but he failed to arrive. “I think,” Pope said, “he has no taste for traveling long distances.”
On October 1, 1932, they were in the stands at Wrigley Field when Babe Ruth called his shot against Charlie Root. (And yes, there was no question in Shel’s mind what Ruth intended when, on a 2-2 count, he stepped out of the box and pointed his bat toward the right center field bleachers.)
At Fort Bridger, in 1868 Wyoming, Dave bought a round of drinks for Calamity Jane. In France after the Great War, they arranged to meet the Unsinkable Molly Brown while posing as reconstruction volunteers. (And, in fact, she successfully coerced them into doing some work.) Years later, her time, they partied with her on the Hannibal, Missouri, social circuit.
But the big catch was to be George Washington. Claiming to be journalists, they attended the award ceremony for Mary Hays McCauly. Mary, the general explained, had accompanied her husband to the battle fie ld, and “on a blazing hot day, paid no mind to incoming artillery shells, and carried pitchers of water to thirsty soldiers. When her husband was wounded, she took his place at the gun.” He presented her with her warrant. “Henceforth, Mrs. McCauly will be known as Sergeant Molly.”
In fact, of course, history knows her as Molly Pitcher.
After the ceremony, in their anxiety to talk with Molly, they let Washington slip away.
THE
converters were hopelessly addictive. Shel and Dave were out constantly, visiting Caesar’s Rome, wandering through Florence at the height of the Enlightenment, offering advice to Van Dyck and El Greco. On August 3, 1492, they stood at the mouth of the harbor in Palos, Spain, watching Columbus’s three ships depart westward, ostensibly for India.
They visited Henry Thoreau, jailed in Concord for refusing to pay taxes during the Mexican War; and Harlan Ellison, jailed in southeastern Louisiana for participating in civil rights protests.
They spent an afternoon in Dayton, Tennessee, at the Scopes Monkey Trial, and rode on Mark Twain’s riverboat. They were on a crowded rooftop in the Battery at Charleston, with several dozen others, when, at 4:30 A.M., April 12, 1861, the Confederates opened fire on Fort Sumter.
It was during this period that they moved the base of the operation from the town house to Dave’s modest home on Carmichael Drive. By then there were too many costumes to manage equitably, and Dave had the ideal walk-in closet.
They made a second try for George Washington. During the Revolution, it was impossible to get close to him. They compromised, and spent a few minutes with a younger version of the man in an Alexandria tavern in 1759. He was twenty-seven at the time, but already a veteran of the French and Indian War. Shel and Dave pretended to be journalists, as they had so often. But Shel’s impression was that, while he was courteous, Washington wasn’t particularly receptive. He was unwilling to submit to what he perceived as an interview and took the first opportunity to excuse himself from their company.
But the evening began a tradition of meeting presidents well before they’d become political forces.
A twenty-year-old Andrew Jackson actually unnerved Shel. They were in Salisbury, North Carolina, in 1787. Jackson had recently been admitted to the bar. Shel and Dave, pretending to have just learned about his accomplishment, were helping him celebrate when a couple of oversized roughnecks made lascivious comments to a passing woman. Jackson directed them to leave.
When they challenged him, he took off his jacket and invited either, or both, to try their luck. He glanced at Shel, and smiled. Shel realized, with horror, he was being invited into the fight. Fortunately, it wasn’t necessary: Both thugs backed off.
They located Herbert Hoover at twenty-six in China during the Boxer Rebellion. He introduced himself as “Herb,” and said he was glad to see some fellow Americans. Shel was in the middle of explaining why they were there, how they were on a round-the-world tour, when gun-fire and explosions interrupted the conversation. Several nearby houses exploded. Others erupted in flames. Hoover charged into one of them and began carrying out wounded kids. Shel and Dave hesitated briefly, then followed his lead.
They interviewed Woodrow Wilson in Atlanta, in January 1883, allegedly for an article to appear in
Georgia Law
. During the interview, Wilson discussed his political ambitions. “Of course I’d like to be president,” he said. “The country needs to change its direction.”
“In what way, Mr. Wilson?”
“The government, as it is presently constituted, invites corruption. We need to rewrite the Constitution. Bring it into the modern age.”
“You think the Constitution is obsolete?”
“It’s hopelessly eighteenth-century, sir. Hopelessly.”
THEY
stopped by the Grant & Perkins leather shop in Galena, Illinois, on the brink of the Civil War, to talk with Ulysses Grant about saddles and incidentally his feelings on the tension with the Southern states. “Eventually,” he said, “it’s going to come to a shoot-out.” He shook his head. “Far as I’m concerned, we might as well get it over with.”
They tried on hats at the Truman & Jacobson haberdashery in Kansas City in the summer of 1920. In 1833, they left clothing to be repaired at Andrew Johnson’s tailor shop in Greenville, Tennessee.
Expecting to get away from politics for a time, they traveled to the Lamplight, a restaurant in 1937 Durham, N.C., to encounter, accidentally, Aldous Huxley, who would be there that evening with friends. While they waited, the piano player took a break, and a young dark-haired guy, who was one of a group of students seated in back, came forward at their urging and sat down on the bench. He rippled through the keys, and it became immediately evident that he was quite good. While his friends cheered, he played “These Foolish Things.” Huxley came in during the rendition, and Shel got up, started across the room, and stopped abruptly, pretending shock at recognizing, as he put it, the writer he admired most in the world. “You
are
Aldous Huxley, aren’t you?”
Huxley smiled uncomfortably. Nodded. “Yes, I am.” And: “Hello.”