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"Facts are but the Play-things of lawyers,— Tops and Hoops, forever a-spin— Alas, the Historian may indulge no such idle Rotating. History is not Chronology, for that is left to Lawyers,— nor is it Remembrance, for Remembrance belongs to the People. History can as little pretend to the Veracity of the one, as claim the Power of the other,— her Practitioners, to survive, must soon learn the arts of the quidnunc, spy, and Taproom Wit,— that there may ever continue more than one life-line back into a Past we risk, each day, losing our forebears in forever,— not a Chain of single Links, for one broken Link could lose us All,— rather, a great disorderly Tangle of Lines, long and short, weak and strong, vanishing into the Mnemonick Deep, with only their Destination in common."
- The Revd Wicks Cherrycoke, Christ and History
"Why," Uncle Ives insists, "you look at the evidence. The testimony. The whole Truth."
"On the contrary! It may be the Historian's duty to seek the Truth, yet must he do ev'rything he can, not to tell it."
"Oh, pish!"
"Tush as well."
' 'Twasn't Mr. Gibbon's sort of History, in ev'ry way excellent, that I meant,— rather, Jack Mandeville, Captain John Smith, even to Baron Munchausen of our own day,— Herodotus being the God-Father of all, in his refusal to utter the name of a certain Egyptian Deity,—
"Don't say it!"
"What,— seek the Truth and not tell it! Shameful."
"Extraordinary. Things that may not be told? Hadn't we enough of that from the old George?"
"Just so. Who claims Truth, Truth abandons. History is hir'd, or coerc'd, only in Interests that must ever prove base. She is too innocent, to be left within the reach of anyone in Power,— who need but touch her, and all her Credit is in the instant vanish'd, as if it had never been. She needs rather to be tended lovingly and honorably by fabulists and counterfeiters, Ballad-Mongers and Cranks of ev'ry Radius, Masters of Disguise to provide her the Costume, Toilette, and Bearing, and Speech nimble enough to keep her beyond the Desires, or even the Curiosity, of Government. As Æsop was oblig'd to tell Fables,
'So Jacobites must speak in children's rhymes, As Preachers do in Parables, sometimes.'
Tox, Pennsylvaniad, Book Ten of course...."
"Hogwash, Sir," Uncle Ives about to become peevish with his Son, "Facts are Facts, and to believe otherwise is not only to behave perversely, but also to step in imminent peril of being grounded, young Pup."
"Sir, no offense meant. I was but pointing out that a single Version, in proceeding from a single Authority,—
"Ethelmer." Ives raises a monitory Eye-brow. "Time on Earth is too precious. No one has time, for more than one Version of the Truth."
"Then, let us have only Jolly Theatrickals about the Past, and be done with it,— 'twould certainly lighten my School-work." Mr. LeSpark's Phiz grows laden with Menace.
"Or read Novels," adds Aunt Euphrenia, her tone of dismissal owing more to her obligations as a Guest than her real Sentiments, engag'd more often than she might admit, with examples of the Fabulist's Art.
As if having just detected a threat to the moral safety of the company, Ives announces, "I cannot, damme I cannot I say, energetically
enough insist upon the danger of reading these storybooks,— in particular those known as 'Novel.' Let she who hears, heed. Britain's Bedlam even as the French Salpetriere being populated by an alarming number of young persons, most of them female, seduced across the sill of madness by these irresponsible narratives, that will not distinguish between fact and fancy. How are those frail Minds to judge? Alas, every reader of 'Novel' must be reckoned a soul in peril,— for she hath
made a D——l's bargain, squandering her most precious time, for
nothing in return but the meanest and shabbiest kinds of mental excitement. 'Romance,' pernicious enough in its day, seems in Comparison wholesome."
"Dr. Johnson says that all History unsupported by contemporary Evidence is Romance," notes Mr. LeSpark.
"Whilst Walpole, lying sick, refus'd to have any history at all read to him, believing it must be false," declares Lomax, gesturing with his Brandy-wine Glass.
"As if, at the end, he wish'd only Truth? Walpole?" Euphie plays an E-flat minor Scale, whilst rolling her eyes about.
"What of Shakespeare?" Tenebras still learning to be disingenuous, "Those Henry plays, or the others, the Richard ones? are they only make-believe History? theatrickal rubbish?" as if finding much enjoyment in speaking men's names that are not "Ethelmer."
"Aye, and Hamlet?" suggests the Revd, staring carefully at the youngsters in turn.
Her eyes a lash's width too wide, perhaps, "Oh, but Hamlet wasn't real, was he?" not wishing to seem to await an answer from her Cousin, yet allowing him now an opening to show off.
Which Ethelmer obligingly saunters into. Of course he has the Data. "All in all, a figure with an interesting Life of his own,— alas, this hopping, quizzing, murderously irresolute Figment of Shakespeare's, has quite eclips'd for us the man who had to live through the contradictions of his earthly Life, without having it all re-figur'd for him."
"Then, did he 'really' have a distant cousin named Ophelia," Tenebrse inquires, a shade too softly to be heard by any but Ethelmer, "and did he, historically, break her Heart?”
"More likely she was out to break his,— being his foster-sister actually, working on behalf of his enemies, tho' with no success. A minor figure, who may have charm'd Shakespeare into giving her more lines than she merits, but who does not charm the disinterested Seeker."
"Did he love anyone, then? besides himself, I mean...."
"He ended up marrying the daughter of the English King, 's a matter of fact, and later, in addition, the quite intimidating Hermuthruda, Queen of Scotland."
"What about that Stage strewn with Corpses?" wonders Uncle Lomax.
"Two wives!"
"Barbary Pirates take as many as they wish," twinkles Euphie.
"0 Euphrenia, Aunt of Lies," Tenebrae shaking her Finger in pretended sternness.
"Mercy, Brae,— I was nearly one myself. Hadn't been for the old Delusse, here, you'd be calling me 'Ayeesha' now. Had to run the Invisible Snake Trick that time, none too reliable in the best o' Circs...." She plays a sinuous Air full of exotick sharps and flats. The Company redeploy themselves in the direction of Comfort, as the moistly-dispos'd Uncle Lomax steers again for the Cabinet in the corner, presently returning with a bottle of Peach Brandy.
Upon his first Sip, the Revd reels in his Chair. "Why bless us, 'tis from Octarara."
"Amazingly cognizant, Wicks."
"I once surviv'd a Fortnight, Snow-bound," replies the Revd, "upon
little else. Twas at Mr. Knockwood's, by Octarara Creek, in the terrible
winter of 'sixty-four—'sixty-five, when, after four years, the Surveyors and
I once more cross'd Tracks "
Twas a more tranquil time, before the War, when people moved more slowly,— even, marvelous to say, here in Philadelphia, where the bustling might yet be distinguish'd from the hectic. There were no Sedan Chairs. Many went about on foot. Even Saint Nicholas was able to deliver all his Gifts, and yet find time for a brisk Pint at The Indian Queen.
I was back in America once more, finding, despite all, that I could not stay away from it, this object of hope that Miracles might yet occur, that God might yet return to Human affairs, that all the wistful Fictions necessary to the childhood of a species might yet come true,.. .a third Testament— I had been tarrying over Susquehanna, upon a Ministry that had taken me out among the wilder sort of Presbyterians, a distinct change from the mesopotamian Mysticks of Kutztown or Bethlehem. A bug-ridden, wearying, acidic Journey. Among these folk,— good folk, despite litigious and whiskey-loving ways,— I was not welcome. In my presence dogs howled, milk turn'd, bread failed to rise. Moreover, a spirit of rebellion was then flickering across the countryside, undeniable as the Northern Lights, directed at Britain and all things British, including, ineluctably, your miserable Servant. What we now style "The Stamp Act Crisis" was in full flower. The African Slaves call'd it "the Tamp." Unusual numbers of Riders were out ev'ry Night. The Province seem'd preparing for open warfare. Whiteboys and Black Boys, Paxton Boys and Sailor Boys,— a threat of Mobility ever present.
Thro' this rambunctious Countryside, a Coach-ful of assorted Travelers make their way Philadelphiaward, each upon his Mission. The purposefully jovial Gamer Mr. Edgewise, in whose purse already lie more of my Chits than he really likes to have out at any given time, has won from me a sum we both must view, less as any real Amount, than as a Complication to be resolv'd at some unnam'd date. I lose yet again,— "Why, damme Rev just write me another note, what's it matter the color of the paper, who has any cash anyway?" Business then, in this Province, Wagering included, was conducted overwhelmingly by way of Credit,— the Flow of Cash was not as important as Character, Duty, a complex structure of Debt in which Favors, Forgiveness, Ignominy were much more likely than any repayment in Specie. Mr. Edgewise is traveling with his Wife, who, when she must, regards him with a Phiz that speaks of the great amounts of her time given over, in a philosophickal way, to classifying the numerous forms of human idiot, beyond the common or Blithering sort, with which all are familiar,— the Bloody-Minded I., for example, recognized by the dangerous sea of white all around the irises of the eye-balls, or the twittering
Variety, by the infallible utterance "Frightfully." Then one has Mr. Edgewise—
We have passed, tho' without comment, out of the zone of influence of the western mountains, and into that of Chesapeake,— as there exists no "Maryland" beyond an Abstraction, a Frame of right lines drawn to enclose and square off the great Bay in its unimagin'd Fecundity, its shoreline tending to Infinite Length, ultimately unmappable,— no more, to be fair, than there exists any "Pennsylvania" but a chronicle of Frauds committed serially against the Indians dwelling there, check'd only by the Ambitions of other Colonies to north and east.
Our Coach is a late invention of the Jesuits, being, to speak bluntly, a Conveyance, wherein the inside is quite noticeably larger than the outside, though the fact cannot be appreciated until one is inside. For your Benefit, DePugh, the Mathematickal and Philosophickal Principles upon which the Design depends are known to most Students of the appropriate Arts,— so that I hesitate to burden the Company with information easily obtain'd elsewhere. That my Authorial Authority be made more secure, however, it may be reveal'd without danger that at the basis of the Design lies a logarithmic idea of the three dimensions of Space, realiz'd in an intricate Connexion of precise Analytickal curves, some bearing loads, others merely decorative, still others serving as Cam-Surfaces guiding the motions of other Parts.—
("We believe you, Wicks. We do. Pray go on.")
Bound through the nocturnal fields, the land asleep, the sky pressing close, losing at an ever-unadjourned game of All-Fours, dyspeptic from the fare at the last inn, restlessly now and then scanning the dark outside for any Light, however distant, I was bounced out of a disgruntled reverie by the Machine's abrupt slowing and eventual halt, out in the middle of a Night already grown heavy with imminent snow. Waiting at the Roadside were two Women, who prov'd to be mother and daughter, dresses flowing as homespun was never suppos'd to, and Faces that were to drive me, later that night, unable to sleep, beneath the Beam of my writing-lanthorn, to diaristic excess.— Yet, how speak of "Luminosity" in that pre-snowlight, or say "flawless," or, in particular, "otherworldly," when in fact in Cisalleghenic America, apparitions
continue,— Life not yet having grown so Christian and safe that a late traveler may not, even in this Deistically stained age, encounter a Woman of just such unearthly fairness, who will promise him ev'ry-thing and end by doing him mischief. Indeed, already in the course of this journey we had encountered what may well have been a Victim, fix'd and raving in the batter'd road, of some such Night-Interception. As the pair of Creatures boarded the Machine, I mutely ask'd,— not "pray'd," for all my Prayers in those Days must be Questions,— Are these now come for me, to be my own guides across the borderlands and into Madness?
But to my surprise and perhaps disappointment, their eyes will meet no one else's. As the Machine again gathers speed, it becomes clear that the young women intend to sit in companionable but perfect silence, for the entire journey. One by one, around the traveling Interior, small private lanthorns begin to glow, whilst I, long accustomed to finding beauty only among the soiled and fallen,— having thereby supposed a moral invariance as to beauty and innocence in women,— grow distracted at the very Conjunction,— undeniable, overwhelming, each with her hair tucked away 'neath a simple cap of white Lawn, tied under the chin, so that her face is the only part of her body exposed,— Faces innocent of all paint, patches, or pincering, naked as Eve's own.
Mr. Edgewise leans forward to introduce himself in a mucilaginous voice he would have described rather as cordial. "And how far would you ladies be traveling this fine evening?"
Because of the net outflow of light from her face, the daughter is seen instantly to blush, whilst the mother, with a level gaze but without smiling, replies, "To Philadelphia, Sir."
"Why, 'tis Sodom-upon-Schuylkill, Ma'am!" the blunt but kindly Traveler rolling his eyes about expressively. "What possible business could be taking a Godly young woman down into that unheavenly place?"
"My story must be only for the ears of the Lawyer I go to hire, Sir," she answers quietly, in the same determin'd voice.
All of us stare, each in his own form of astonishment. "You intend,"-it happens that I am first to speak,— "to engage the services,— forgive
me,— of...a Philadelphia Lawyer? Good lady, surely there is some recourse less...extreme? Your family, your congregation, the officials of your Church,—
She is gazing at my clerical collar, within which I must appear shackl'd secure as any Turk's slave. "Are you one of these? The English Church, net?"
How might I speak of my true "Church," of the planet-wide Syncretism, among the Deistick, the Oriental, Kabbalist, and the Savage, that is to be,— the Promise of Man, the redemptive Point, ever at our God-horizon, toward which all Faiths, true and delusional, must alike converge! Instead, I can only mumble and blurt, before the radiance of these young Pietists, something about being between preferments at the moment, so askew in my thoughts that I've forgotten my new Commission, and indeed the Purpose of my Journey,— even using "inter-prebendary" again, after promising a Certain Deity that I would refrain. But her innocent attention has reach'd unto the dead Vacuum ever at the bottom of my soul,— humiliation absolute.
Mr. Edgewise, a devotee of machinery, the newer the better, produces a Flask of curious shape and surface, devised in Italy by a renowned Jesuit artificer, out of which, to the wonder of the company, the Gambler now begins to pour steaming-hot coffee into a traveler's cup he has by him, and hands it to the young woman, who introduces herself as Frau Luise Redzinger, of Coniwingo. As she continues to sip more and more eagerly at the refreshing liquid,— which Mr. Edgewise is content to keep providing ever more of, out of the strange and apparently inexhaustible Flask,— before long she finds herself talking quite readily.
"Philadelphia, Sirs, can hold little to surprise me. My sister lives in the most licentious Babylon of America, though they are pleased to call themselves "Bethlehem,' so. Liesele happened to marry a Moravian, now a baker of that town,— the two having met upon the ship that carried us all here. Her destiny was to be fancy, as it was mine to be plain, I who do not know one grape wine from another,— whilst Liesele, already, between her first and second letters to me, had slid steeply into a gaudy Christianity aroar with Putzing and gay distrac-
tion, little to be distinguish'd from that of Rome,— having, indeed, its own Carnival, its gluttony and lustfulness, and the Trombone Choir, imagine, a wonder their minister is not addressed as Pope, so." At this the daughter gives a small gasp. But Frau Redzinger has grown flushed and cheerful, as if this address to a coach-ful of strangers were perhaps more speech than she has allow'd herself, save among her own sex, in who knows how long.
"Child, child, 'twould be far more sensible to forgive your sister," murmurs Mistress Edgewise, taking the young woman's hand. "You must both pass beyond it, dear." Her husband huffs forward, intending a similar Courtesy toward the young Woman's knee, but is deflected by a wifely stare, that contrives to look amused, tho' indisposed to bantering.
Frau Redzinger gestures expansively with her coffee cup, which is luckily, for the moment, empty. "Oh, yes, I am a bad sister, a bad wife and Christian, I am the one who must be forgiven, somehow, but,— she regards us each for a moment, her chin atremble, "of whom here would I ask it? Of course I resent Liesele, I envy her life. She has her husband."
At which looseness of tongue the daughter, at last, protests. But too late, for her Mother has rush'd on, as we now go rushing along down the Communication, above us our Jehu son of Nimshi taking chances he would never have taken in the Daylight.
' 'Twas not the same as being struck by lightning,— we've lightning over Schuylkill that's every bit the equal of Mr. Franklin's famous city-lightning, folk who've been hit by ours, speak of being 'prison'd in a thunderous glory'...but Peter was only bringing hops in to the cooling-pit, the most ordinary of tasks,— slipped in the dust, fell in the Pit, with the dried hops nearly twenty feet deep, hot from the Kiln, you can squeeze them together almost forever, drowning in them is easy, last year it was a church person over at Kutztown, even the odor of the pollen is deadly, the man's wife said, that it took him into a poison'd sleep,— but neither of us was with her husband when it happened, it is not a place women go, I was in the fields, with the other women and the last of the harvest, the way it is, we work only with the living Plants, so we tend the
Bines all summer,— soon as the Cones are picked, and dead, it is then the Men take over, net?
"I don't know what I might have done— The hops buoy'd him up, but not so much,— when help arrived, they said they could see only his hand above the cones, releasing their dust and terrible fumes as his struggling broke them,— by the time Jürgen could anchor himself, there was only my husband's one finger, reaching back into this world, his poor finger. The force it took to pull him out...no physician anywhere could have put it back to what it was. Peter would call it his sacramental finger, his outward and bodily sign of the Other thing that had happened to him down in that miserable suffocation. He bore it without shame, rather.. .with bewilderment."
Certain herbal essences in massive influxion, as I feel it my duty to assure her, have long been known and commented upon, as occasions of God-revealing. She nods emphatically.— As weeks passed, she tells us, Peter Redzinger's account chang'd, from a simple tale of witness, to one of rapture by beings from somewhere else, "long, long from Pennsylvania," as he expressed it,— and always at the center of the Relation, unwise to approach, an unbearable Luminosity.
As God has receded, as Deism has crept in to make the best of this progressive Absence, more and more do we witness extreme varieties of human character emergent,— Cagliostro, the Comte de St.-Germain, Adam Weishaupt,— Magicians with Munchausen tales and ever more extravagant effects,— Illuminati, Freemasons, Elect Cohens, many of whom, to my great curiosity, have found their way into Pennsylvania. They wander the town streets, they haunt the desert places, they are usually Germans. Woe betide the credulous countryman who falls under their influence,— or, as in the case of Peter Redzinger, is transform'd into one of them.
Another American Illumination, another sworn moment,— and where in England are any Epiphanies, bright as these? Bring anything like one,— any least Sail upon the Horizon of our Exile,— to the attention of an Established Clergyman, and 'twill elicit nought but gentle Reproofs and guarded Suggestions, which must sooner or later include the word "Physician.”
These times are unfriendly toward Worlds alternative to this one. Royal Society members and French Encyclopaedists are in the Chariot, availing themselves whilst they may-of any occasion to preach the Gospels of Reason, denouncing all that once was Magic, though too often in smirking tropes upon the Church of Rome,— visitations, bleeding statues, medical impossibilities,— no, no, far too foreign. One may be allowed an occasional Cock Lane Ghost,— otherwise, for any more in that Article, one must turn to Gothick Fictions, folded acceptably between the covers of Books.
"They say Peter is seen now over Susquehanna, aus dem Kipp, wandering from one cabin to another, anywhere two or more Germans may be gathered together, with his Tales of the Pit. He calls it preaching,— so, to no one's surprize, do others. Some even follow him, Redzingerites, for whom his enlightenment by way of nearly drowning is the central event. Their view of Baptism does not, need I say, stop at Total Immersion. I imagine him by now a creature of the Forest. Perhaps I have mistaken my own destiny for his, and his Elevation," sighing, "has prov'd my Enearthment."
She speaks, it unfolds, of the Redzinger Farm, an hundred-acre Parcel close to, if not actually in, Maryland,— no one will know until the English Surveyors come through. The Proprietors of both Provinces have been offering lower Land prices, sometimes even exemption from the Quit-rent, to any who'll settle near Boundaries in dispute. Peter Redzinger has always known good land, he can look at it and tell you, if you ask, what it will bear in Abundance, what it will not tolerate. This place, as he recogniz'd from frequent visits to it in Dreams since he was young, would give him back anything he wished. "When he walk'd it, he discover'd he was dowsing it with his feet, and for more than Water, too, and had to keep his Shoes on, because upon his bare soles he could not withstand Die Krafte, the Forces? It whispers to him. He can almost make out the words."
Sometimes he tried to talk to Luise about this, but with such difficulty that she always ended up thinking about her sister in Bethlehem, and the Dancing she might be missing, after all. "...And it comes from the wind moving through the underbrush.. .it is inside of the Wind, and they are real
words, and if you listen..." She must have known quite early, that the Hop-pit, or something as decisive, was waiting for them. Meanwhile, maize and morning glories, tomatoes and cherry trees, every flower and Esculent known to Linna;us, thriv'd. The seasons swept through, Mitzi, and then the Boys, were born, Luise and Peter built a Bakery, Smokehouse, Stables, Milk-barn, Hen-coop, Hop-kiln, and Cooling-pit. His brothers, and their families, live nearby. Like many in Lancaster County, they all have Fields planted to Hops and Hemp. Each Crop, for its own reasons of Peace and War, is in rapidly growing demand, and fetching good prices.
Grodt, one of the farmers whose land adjoins the Redzingers', has long coveted their farm, and furthermore believes that both farms are located in Maryland. Under Maryland law, he knows he may get a warrant to resurvey his land, and in the process include any vacant land it happens to adjoin,— the property Line will be allow'd to stretch about and engross it,— by virtue of the Resurvey, it will become his. (Many were the elephantine tracts swallowed at one nibble, in those times, by the country Mice thereabouts.) Land defined as vacant includes land once settled but now "in escheat," meaning gone back to the Proprietor, usually for nonpayment of taxes,— Luise has been paying the Quit-rents to Pennsylvania, but Grodt, contending that she dwells in Maryland and owes more back taxes there than she can ever pay, believes the land is escheatable.
"I am no attorney," I try to console her, "but his case sounds doubtful."
"If he goes ahead," warns Mr. Edgewise, "obtains a warrant, pays the caution money, has title, then it's his, if no one can prove the land isn't escheatable." All now fall to arguing about Land-Jobbery, the discussion growing at times spirited and personal. Everyone in the Coach, it seems, has suddenly become a Philadelphia Lawyer.
"Why," Mrs. Edgewise demands to know, "must this subject rouse quite so much Passion?"
The Purveyor of Delusion confers upon his wife a certain expression or twist of Phiz I daresay as old as Holy Scripture,— a lengthy range of Sentiment, all comprest into a single melancholick swing of the eyes. From some personal stowage he produces another Flask, containing, not the Spruce Beer ubiquitous in these parts, but that favor'd stupefacient of the jump'd-up tradesman, French claret,— and without offering it to anyone else, including his Wife, begins to drink. "It goes back," he
might have begun, "to the second Day of Creation, when 'G-d made the Firmament, and divided the Waters which were under the Firmament, from the Waters which were above the Firmament,'— thus the first Boundary Line. All else after that, in all History, is but Sub-Division."
"What Machine is it," young Cherrycoke later bade himself goodnight, "that bears us along so relentlessly? We go rattling thro' another Day,— another Year,— as thro' an empty Town without a Name, in the Midnight.. .we have but Memories of some Pause at the Pleasure-Spas of our younger Day, the Maidens, the Cards, the Claret,— we seek to extend our stay, but now a silent Functionary in dark Livery indicates it is time to re-board the Coach, and resume the Journey. Long before the Destination, moreover, shall this Machine come abruptly to a Stop...gather'd dense with Fear, shall we open the Door to confer with the Driver, to discover that there is no Driver,...no Horses,...only the Machine, fading as we stand, and a Prairie of desperate Immensity....”
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