The Square Pegs (41 page)

As the project neared preparation there was only one major change in its conception. Dexter had wanted marble, but Wilson insisted upon wood. Wilson argued that wood was more permanent. It was probably also much cheaper. In the end Dexter told his artist to go ahead with wood.

The outdoor museum was completed in little more than a year. There were forty wooden images in all, and their diversity indicated that their patron was a man of catholic tastes. Scattered throughout the property, mostly on pedestals and pillars, stood, among others, Louis XVI, Venus, an anonymous preacher, Governor Gilman of New Hampshire, two grenadiers, Motherly Love, four lions and a lamb, John Hancock, Moses, one dog, Adam and Eve, George III, Horatio Nelson, Governor Strong of Massachusetts, Aaron Burr, an Indian chief, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Emperor of China, William Pitt, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Benjamin Franklin.

The four lions, symbols of international peace, guarded Dexter’s door. Above them rose an arch, supported by two columns, on which stood George Washington “father gorge with his hat on” flanked by John Adams, carrying a cane and facing the father of his country “as if thay was on sum politicks,” and President Thomas Jefferson, the “grat felosfer” grasping a scroll labeled “Constitution.” For the position at the head of his walk, near the fence and facing the street, Dexter reserved Wilson’s finest work of art. It was a life-sized statue of Timothy Dexter himself, mounted high on a pedestal and bearing the engraved inscription: “I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western World.”

After the forty figures had been garishly painted, the Dexter mansion appeared less a residence than a rainbow. From the day the museum was completed, High Street was crowded with visitors from all New England, and eventually from all the East. The popular theory has it that Dexter erected this carnival with profit in mind. To reach his residence many tourists had to pay toll to cross the Essex Merrimack Bridge, In which Dexter was the largest shareholder, so they were contributing to his wealth. While Dexter was thus enriched, of course, money could not have been his primary motive. He was a sad and lonely man who wanted company and approval. The museum brought him company in excess. Whether it brought him approval is debatable.

Though spectacular, the forty wooden figures that graced Dexter’s landscape were not the most interesting personalities to inhabit his royal domain. Inside the great house there was a more animate and more colorful menage. Even the ghost that was Mrs. Dexter, and the drunken Samuel and the drunken Nancy, were pallid when compared with the retainers Dexter had gathered under one roof.

If King Arthur had his Merlin, Lord Dexter had his Madam Hooper. This crone, with a double set of teeth and a chicken for a companion, had sailed to America as the mistress of a British officer. With him she had gone through the privations of the Indian wars, and from him she had learned to fire a musket and brandish a broadsword. Finally abandoned, she had made her way to Newburyport. She had been fairly well educated, and so took up the profession of teaching. But few in Newburyport wanted to be taught. In desperation, she turned to fortunetelling. This was better, but ignominious, as many in the community thought her a witch. One day, by propitious chance, Dexter requested that she locate the thieves who were depleting his melon patch. It was the supreme test. Madam Hooper was ready for it. Muttering among her dream books and crude horoscopes and perhaps putting her ear to the ground in a district from which many vandals had been graduated she came up with the name of the culprit, thus endearing herself to Dexter for life. Promptly, accompanied by her chicken and her sorcery, she went to live in the great mansion as adviser to the master.

When Madam Hooper died she was succeeded by Mary McCauley, a leathery, husky, brusque woman who had done laundry for her keep until she became a prominent fortuneteller in the vicinity of Lynn. Mrs. McCauley’s place in American history, as it turned out, would exceed even her employer’s. At sixteen Mary, or Molly, as she was known, married a young barber named John Hays. When he was called to serve the revolutionary cause she followed. At Monmouth, when Lee retreated before the redcoats and Mad Anthony Wayne fought back with fury, Molly left the safety of the other wives to invade the battlefield and relieve the American wounded with pitchers of water. Thereafter she was always Molly Pitcher. At Monmouth, too, when her husband was hit and gunners were scarce, she manned a cannon. After the war and Hays’s death, she married one George McCauley, who would not support her. She left him to support herself. Her fame as a seer was growing when Dexter made his off er. She moved into his dwelling, where, puffing a pipe and cussing like the veteran she was, she cheered him with her readings of astrology.

Another in the household was William Burley, whom Dexter called The Dwarf. He was a thimble-brained jester, towering six feet seven inches in height. For a housekeeper Dexter employed a vast and aggressive Negro, Lucy Lancaster, daughter of an African prince. She became Dexter’s mainstay. She humored him, protected him, and understood him. During long periods she curbed his drinking and eccentricities. To visitors she was his apologist, insisting always that he was honest and good and that his follies were inspired by unemployment and a nervous temperament.

But the most improbable of those who served Lord Dexter was Jonathan Plummer, a local fishmonger turned book peddler. Plummer, a stocky, bowlegged, eloquent creature, had tried to make his way as a preacher, pawnbroker, and eligible bachelor (he courted, successively, nine “vigorous and antiquated virgins”), before concentrating on the retailing of halibut. Eventually, he found that banned books and pamphlets dealing with pornography, murder, scandal, miracles, and atheism were in more demand than fish as food for the brain.

Hiding these lurid works under fish and straw in a wheelbarrow, he made his way about Newburyport. Gradually, as he had difficulty supplying the demand for lively reading, he began to produce writings of his own. Though murderers and sex monsters were occasionally his subjects, he soon saw in Timothy Dexter a better subject.

He penned a pamphlet in prose praising Dexter’s commercial abilities. This was not enough. In the winged words of poetry, perhaps, he could express his innermost feelings and touch the sensibilities of one so rich and remote. When Dexter returned from New Hampshire, Jonathan Plummer had “a congratulatory ode” waiting for him. Of the eleven stirring stanzas, the first two will suffice:

Your Lordship’s welcome back again—

Fair nymphs with sighs have mourn’d your staying

So long from them and me your swain,

And wonder’d at such long delaying;

But now you bless again our eyes,

Our melting sorrow droops and dies.

The town of Chester to a Lord

Must seem a desert dull and foggy,

A gloomy place—upon my word

I think it dirty, wet and boggy:

Far different from your Kingly seat,

In good saint James his famous street.

Understandably, Dexter could not resist. With the lure of a small regular salary, use of his premises and table, and a new red suit, Dexter acquired Plummer as his full-time poet laureate. Plummer enjoyed his new post and was inspired to excessive productivity. Only one thing rankled. The red suit had not been delivered. Plummer blamed this lapse on the fact that Dexter was suffering from the gout. “The painful disease, in a great measure, destroyed his Lordship’s relish for poetry,” Plummer noted. Eventually, the gout was overcome, and Plummer had his suit. It was not red as he wished, but something far more imaginative, as his patron wished. The cocked hat, cloak, frock suit, and buckled shoes were black, but sprinkled with silver stars that sparkled and danced. In this silk-lined uniform, with a parsley on his hat and a gold-headed cane in his hand, Plummer went out to hawk his most grateful and airy poesy. This time the rhyme was fifteen stanzas, but a generous sampling will convey its tone:

Lord Dexter is a man of fame;

Most celebrated is his name;

More precious far than gold that’s pure,

Lord Dexter shine forever more.

His noble house, it shines more bright

Than Lebanon’s most pleasing height;

Never was one who stepped therein

Who wanted to come out again.

Lord Dexter, thou, whose name alone

Shines brighter than king George’s throne;

Thy name shall stand in books of fame,

And princes shall thy name proclaim.

His mighty deeds they are so great,

He’s honored both in church and state.

And when he comes all must give way,

To let Lord Dexter bear the sway.

When Dexter dies all things shall droop,

Lord East, Lord West, Lord North shall stoop,

And then Lord South with pomp shall come,

And bear his body to the tomb.

In heaven may he always reign,

For there’s no sorrow, sin, nor pain;

Unto the world I leave the rest

For to pronounced Lord Dexter blest.

What made Dexter take up his pen again on his own behalf was not his lack of faith in the immortality of Plummer’s verse, but simply that he was bored. In a few weeks, unhampered by stops, he scratched out the twenty-four pages of A Pickle for the Knowing Ones. When he wanted a printer, there was only one he could trust. Edmund Blunt had been the editor of the
Newburyport Impartial Herald
when Dexter had been a contributor, and now Blunt owned a prosperous printing-shop in Salem. Blunt still visited his favorite author. As late as 1853 he remembered, in a letter to Mrs. Smith, his friend Dexter, “with whom, in his own summer-house, on his coffin, decorated with decanters, &c., I have taken many a glass of wine, with a company of cavalry to which I then belonged.” Undoubtedly, they discussed the book. In the spring of 1802 Blunt brought it forth.

Despite a naked press, Dexter maintained sturdy confidence in his brain child to the very end. It was, he told an editor, “A Littel mousement to mankind at Large … I—I me T Dexter of N Port Desires Any man or men on the gloube to Exseede me as to what I have Rote in my Littel book …”

None was tempted by his challenge. In literature, in originality, no man exceeded him.

With the book, his museum, and his retainers he reached his peak. There was little time left. He would have to stand by what he had accomplished. He was fifty-five years of age. The only surviving portrait of him, “engraved from the life” by James Akin, of Newburyport, was done in this period. It was said to be a startling likeness. In it Dexter is seen strolling with a small, hairless black dog, something that might be a cross between dachshund and chihuahua. His Lordship wears a broad, tasseled cocked hat, a white tie and shirt, a wrinkled waistcoat, a long, blue topcoat, breeches secured just above the ankles with ribbons, and comfortable-looking black shoes. He is carrying a gold-headed cane. His graying hair hangs below his ears, and his brows are bushy. His eyes seem large, alert, mischievous. The nose is long and thin, as is the upper lip, which is cast downward in the manner of the cynic. The jaw is determined. The arms are long, and the hands seem the hands of an artist rather than those of a laborer. The feet are large.

His work was done and the days were long. Daily, followed by his porcine dog, he took his constitutional within the boundaries of his estate. Often he paused to banter with his workmen. Sometimes he halted to contemplate the oddities of his museum, and when the spirit moved him, he eradicated the name of some celebrity and replaced it with another. Occasionally, he invited visitors to share the fruits of his garden and enjoy his wooden images. When the visitors were pretty damsels they were soon damsels in distress, for Dexter was frequently inflamed and attempted “improper liberties with his female visitors.” In recounting these instances, Knapp added: “When disappointed of his prey, he would rave about his house and curse his family for joining in league against him. How wretched is the life of a dotard, in the pursuit of what he calls pleasure!”

More often, as he suffered the gout and other assorted ills, he spent his days indoors. He addressed the local press and the papers in Boston with offers to sell his mansion and museum, which he estimated to be worth $25,000, at a bargain price. In 1806 the Probate Court determined the value at $12,000. He supervised and added to his collection of watches, clocks, and their works. The timepieces ticked and clattered in every room of the great house. Dexter regarded his clocks as living shadows, railed against them when they ran down, and often wished mankind could be wound up like them. Many visitors desired to see his house and converse with its illustrious owner. Dexter preferred the company of old friends who drank with him, though he was not averse to receiving youths who addressed him as Lord or to entertaining foreign newcomers who professed to be noblemen. In one case, a peace advocate of Portsmouth named Ladd, eager to see Dexter in his natural habitat, pretended that he was a peer recently arrived from England. Dexter was most gracious. He was concerned about only one thing. What had the King of England been saying about him recently?

It was very late. Perhaps he had a premonition, or perhaps it was only the all-too-human desire to know what others would say about him after he was gone, that inspired his last eccentric gesture. He announced a “mock founnel.” As it turned out, the mock funeral was staged with full cast and accessories. It lacked only the leading man. Dexter sent invitations to friends and acquaintances throughout the state. He tried to obtain the services of a minister. Failing in that, he hired a Dr. Strong to officiate and deliver a eulogy. Learning that a Lord North was in the vicinity, Dexter invited him to serve as a pallbearer, then christened his other “grand pallholders” Lord South, Lord East, and Lord West.

Half of Newburyport, three thousand persons by Dexter’s estimate, lined the thoroughfares to watch the funeral procession. At the sight of the vacant coffin, Dexter was moved to report, “there was much Cring.” Would it be disrespectful to suggest that there was much crying because the coffin was vacant? As the procession marched to his tomb, there to deposit the empty casket, Dexter watched from an upstairs window. The solemnities over, the mourners poured into the residence to partake of a grand feast and wine. The resurrected host did not appear at once. Loud screams and wails from a far quarter of the house revealed Lady Dexter in agony. Her Lord stood over her, severely caning her for having failed to shed a tear at the funeral.