The Nearly Complete Works, Volume 1

by Donald Harington

  Sarah’s dream, which she had dreamt years earlier on the occasion of their first night in the dogtrot, came exactly true. The dream had been about the perhaps excessively highfalutin reception that Jacob now hosted in her honor, after he had taken her and their daughters out to the town’s best dressmaker and had them fitted out with hoops. Most of the younger girls of that day did not wear hoops, but Jacob was determined to have all three of his “gals,” including Sarah, in hoops. Rachel was almost twenty, and looked quite ladylike in hers, but Lucinda was only fifteen, and looked uncomfortable, and felt uncomfortable, and was not able to move about in her hoops, nor sit, so during the reception she remained parked inside her hoops in one corner, where no one spoke to her, although I doubt that this experience was sufficiently traumatic to account for the fact that many years later she went insane.

  The part of the reception that Sarah did not like at all was when the other ladies tried to talk to her and she couldn’t understand them, couldn’t tell whether they were asking questions or just making statements. “It is so festive?” a woman would say to her, and she didn’t know if this was a question or not. “The price of crinoline is outrageous?” another woman would say. “I am Senator Fishback’s wife?” another would say. “The militia makes one feel more secure?” “The price of coffee is ridiculous?” “The band will be playing soon?” “Your daughters are exquisite?” Some of these words, like “exquisite,” Sarah did not even understand, and to the lady who asked this particular question, if it was a question, she mumbled in reply, “Not as fur as I know, yet.”

  She was very glad when Jacob came and took her hand and led her away from the ladies and out onto the balcony to watch the band playing, and to see the crowd waving and cheering, and to hear the cannon firing their salutes. The Arkansas Gazette’s society editor commented the following day: “For a woman so little familiarized with the amenities of the drawing room, the governor’s lady acquitted herself handily.” Jacob read this item to her, but was required to explain, as best he could, “amenities,” “drawing room,” and “acquitted.” Still Sarah wondered if they weren’t poking fun at her, and her next words to Jacob were: “Jake, how long do you have to be governor?” When he told her four years, she sighed.

  She was to do a lot of sighing during those four years. She would sigh when the Gazette wrote, in reference to a habit of Jacob’s: “For a man who prefers to receive visiting dignitaries with his coonskin cap atop his head, the governor acquitted himself handily.” When the Little Rock National Democrat, commenting on a dinner (“luncheon” they called it) that Sarah held for the legislators’ wives, wrote: “For a woman whose culinary accomplishment is limited to porcine dishes, the governor’s lady acquitted herself handily,” Sarah sighed. Sarah sighed when the Arkansas Advocate, commenting on Jacob’s conciliation of a feud between the legislature and the Little Rock Ministerial Alliance, wrote, “For a professedly unregenerate disbeliever, the governor acquitted himself handily.” Finally the New York Tribune, in a long “profile” on the Arkansas governor and his family, commented about Sarah: “For a lady of such high standing and comforts, Mrs. Ingledew sighs handily.”

  Jacob Ingledew was not a great governor, but he was a good one. His administration began without a dollar in the treasury, yet by the end of his term every cent of expenses had been paid, with a surplus of $270,000 in the vaults. His strong suit was a near-genius for raising revenue. He taxed everything that could be taxed, and many things that could not. He was the inventor of highway taxes: for the upkeeping of streets and roadways the provost-marshal was ordered to collect a highway tax of two weeks’ labor or fifty dollars from every citizen between the ages of eighteen and fifty years, actual government employees excepted. Most people preferred working for the government at low wages to gain this exemption, and there was no dearth of cheap government labor. At one time, Jacob had working at the governor’s mansion alone three majordomos, six butlers, seven coachmen, nine maids, eleven cooks, thirteen valets, and thirty-two yardmen. The grounds were immaculate, but the yardmen began fighting among themselves with their shears and spades, and Sarah sighed.

  Jacob also managed, adequately if not adroitly, the orchestration of the three separate branches of government. It has been pointed out (or if it hasn’t, it has been now) that the three branches of government may be compared to the three levels of personality as seen by Freud: the legislative body is the id, the executive body is the ego, and the judicial body is the superego. Jacob got along splendidly with his legislature, who were for the most part simple country men like himself, some of them uncouth, many of them illiterate, all of them loud and hard-drinking and tobacco-chewing. Superciliously the Little Rock Daily Republican observed that Jacob’s legislature was composed of “at least a few worthies who, we may assure our readers, are able to sign their names without running out their tongues or distorting their countenances in the effort, and thus acquit themselves handily.” The judiciary branch, on the other hand, was composed mainly of city men, or citified men, sedate, grave, and disapproving. They disapproved of most of Jacob’s taxes, declaring the taxes unconstitutional.

  Jacob did not get along very well at all with his supreme court. He did not like city men to begin with, as we have seen. City men who were also justices were as intolerable to him as our superegos are to our egos. But the superego, I think, is gullible, and Jacob gulled his justices. He would invite them into his office, and take a gallon stone jug from a barrel filled with straw, and offer them “whiskey so good you kin smell the feet of the boys who plowed the corn.” The justices would sniff their noses and at first decline, but he would urge his real mountain dew upon them and, while they became progressively intoxicated, he would tell them tall tales, wild stories, fish stories, which they believed. He would tell them of having caught a four-hundred-pound catfish which he hadn’t been able to drag out of the water. “Yes,” one of the justices would remark, “I suppose it’s difficult to land those big ones.” Jacob would explain how he tickled the catfish’s whiskers, and stroked its head, causing it to leap out of the water and follow him around like a dog. The justices would nod, declaring that they had heard that catfish are easily tamed. Jacob would say, “I jist throwed a bridle on her, and rid her plumb home.” When none of the justices expressed any incredulity at that, he would raise his voice and declare, “I tied her to my strawstack, and bedded her down with the cattle all winter.” The justices would solemnly nod. Finally, Jacob would desperately declare that he bred the catfish to a mule, and foaled two horse colts! At this point, one of the justices would remark, “I do not believe that part of it. Everybody knows that mules are not fertile.”

  Then, Jacob would know, he had them right where he wanted them, and he could proceed to explain to them why, for example, the air of Arkansas, being, as anybody knows, the sweetest and purest air to breathe anywhere, is therefore taxable, and it is perfectly justifiable to put a tax on breathing. In the end, the justices yielded, but were so drunk they had to be carried from Jacob’s office. Government labor being cheap, Jacob retained twelve men for the purpose of carrying drunk justices out of his office.

  Jacob’s successive successes in the office of governor meant nothing to Sarah; he did not discuss affairs of state with her; to her he was just the same old Jake, and she did not defer to him any more than she would have “back home.” Obviously she missed “back home,” and it was Sarah Ingledew who is credited with the coinage of the adjective “old-timey” in reference to the lost past. Increasingly, for the rest of that century and down through our own century, mass nostalgia would employ this expression that Sarah invented…although nostalgia isn’t what it used to be. Today we are even speaking of “old-timey” television, and tomorrow we shall be speaking of “old-timey” gasoline and electricity, but it was Sarah Ingledew who first said, “Jake, I shore do miss them old-timey days back home.” And the governor got a bit misty-eyed himself (although it was hard to tell, because the blueness of his eyes m
ade them seem always watering) and replied, “Yeah, Sarey, them were the days.” (This expression, grammatically corrected, also entered our language.)

  Nor was this merely a fleeting mood on both their parts. It lingered, and it infected those around them, who in turn infected those around them, until all of the people were in the grips of epidemic nostalgia. Although the French had identified the disease early in that century, nostalgie had not been identified or named in America at this time, and it would be a few more years before a Missourian, Sydney Smith, having discovered its spread from Arkansas to Missouri, would write his seminal article, “What a Dreadful Disease Is Nostalgia on the Banks of the Missouri!” and still more years before the first English dictionary would define it. But it began with Sarah’s casual remark to Jacob, and soon everyone had it, and because it had no name yet and no one could name it, they simply referred to it as it, and noted that there was a lot of it going around in those days. People would stop one another and ask, “Do you have it yet?” and admit “Yes, I caught it last night, I think,” and all of the Little Rock newspapers ran editorials with titles like “It Does Not Acquit Itself Handily.”

  The war was not over, bushwhackers and jayhawkers still roamed and pillaged, but people were tired of it all. Everybody yearned for the old-timey prewar days, but everybody knew that the old-timey prewar days would never—no, never—come again, and because they would not come again people could only wish for them, and because wishing for something that can never be had is wishful thinking, and because wishful thinking is erroneous identification of one’s wishes with reality, then reality is warped into a melancholy dream. In this dream that was life, all the people developed sheep’s eyes, which enhanced their looks at the expense of their vision.

  There was only one person in Little Rock who did not catch “it,” and that was Jacob’s ladyfriend (whom we cannot name). Probably the reason that she did not catch nostalgia was that there had been little or nothing in the old-timey prewar days that she had enjoyed; she lived for the future, not in languishing longing for the past. All around her people, including her lover, especially her lover, were afflicted with the aches of pining for the past, but she remained oriented to the future. Undoubtedly she would have looked all the more beautiful with sheep’s eyes (I have seen a daguerreotype of her), but she did not get them. We do not know her; not even her name; of all the many persons in our story she will remain the most mysterious; but we know this much about her, that she alone was afflicted with longing for the future, and that she had come to the point where she could not conceive of a future without Jacob, and yet she knew that when his term expired he would leave Little Rock. He could, if he wished, run for another term, but he was stricken deeply with nostalgia, and the people, also stricken, were longing for the governors of the past, men like Izard and Conway and Yell, all aristocrats compared to Jacob Ingledew (and the man they would elect to replace him, Powell Clayton, would be the most aristocratic of them all). So if Jacob’s lady-friend wanted to hang onto him, she would have to scheme.

  So she schemed. She told Jacob that she wanted to become Sarah’s social secretary. Jacob pointed out that, government labor being cheap, Sarah already had eight social secretaries. Whom We Cannot Name responded to that by pointing out that that would make it all the easier to “slip her in” among the others. Jacob wondered why she needed the salary, which wasn’t much, one dollar a day. She said she did not need the money, of course; she only wanted to be “closer” to Jacob. Jacob pointed out that as far as being “close” was concerned, it wouldn’t do them any good to be “close” in the governor’s mansion, because every room was so full of people, servants and secretaries and such, that they would never have a moment’s privacy. But Jacob’s ladyfriend persisted, and he hired her as Sarah’s ninth social secretary. The other secretaries, she soon discovered, were not, like herself, products of Little Rock’s finer society, and she quickly learned to dominate them.

  Sarah had very little to do with her social secretaries; she went where they told her to when they told her to, but Sarah did not give them orders, nor spend any time in idle conversation with them, nor seek their advice. Nor did they curry her favor. But her new ninth social secretary, Sarah discovered, was somehow different from the others. A very friendly person. A refined lady, too, and yet the woman did not look down upon Sarah nor make her feel uncomfortable. And on top of that, the woman was a very attractive person, who made a handsome decoration for the governor’s mansion. Soon Sarah found that she and her ninth social secretary had become good friends. When Sarah was invited to give a speech to the Little Rock Beaux Arts Club, the woman offered to write it for her. Sarah was so close to the woman by this time that she was able to confide in her the well-kept secret that she could not read. The woman did not look down upon her for it. Instead the woman offered to help her rehearse the speech over a period of several days, and the woman also spoke many words of encouragement, so that when Sarah finally delivered the speech to the Beaux Arts Club, the Arkansas Advocate commented, “For a lady of somewhat limited elocution and enunciation, the governor’s wife acquitted herself handily.”

  One day Sarah remarked to her ninth social secretary, “Honey, I just don’t know what I’d do without you.” Sarah bragged to Jacob about what a great fine beautiful person her ninth social secretary was, but Jacob pretended lack of interest. Sarah tried to persuade Jacob to meet her, but Jacob said he was too busy. But Sarah kept after him about it, dogging his heels, until finally she caught him in the hallway of the mansion and presented her ninth social secretary to him. “This is her, Jake,” Sarah said. “That I’ve been tellin ye about. This is the lady that keeps the world together fer me.” Jacob said, “Howdy do, ma’am,” and offered his hand. The woman took it, and, smiling, said, “It is a pleasure to make your acquaintance, Your Excellency.” Jacob excused himself, and went on. Sarah apologized to the woman, saying, “If you got to know him, you’d see he’s a real fine man.” “I’m sure he is,” said the ninth social secretary.

  When Jacob came to her house and her bed that night, she and Jacob had a gentle little laugh over that. But Jacob felt guilty, and often he had a temptation to confess to Sarah. Sometimes he would think about saying something to Sarah, forming the words in his mind, but would stop just short of speaking, whereupon Sarah, disconcertingly, would say “What?” This would continue for the rest of their lives, at times unnerving him. He would know that he had not actually spoken, that he had only been thinking about speaking, but still Sarah would say “What?” Was she reading his mind? Whatever the case, he never actually spoke to her, but for the rest of their lives he went on thinking about speaking to her, and each time he thought about it, she would say “What?” We have seen, much earlier on, how at one time the young Sarah revered Jacob as if he were God, and did not want to marry him for that reason, and it seems to me that we stand for the rest of our lives in the same relation to God, always asking that “What?” which has no answer. Perhaps we should feel no greater pity for Sarah than we should feel for ourselves.

  One thing-of-the-past that the people of Arkansas in their excruciating nostalgia yearned for most was a return to statehood. For although Arkansas had been the first state to leave the Confederacy, she had not yet been reaccepted into the Union. The Congress of the United States would not let her come home. Nostalgia in its deepest sense is a yearning for home. But the Congress, dominated by Thaddeus Stevens and his radical Republicans, had not only refused to allow any of the seceded states back into the Union but also passed the dread Reconstruction Act, which would throw the South into seven long and lean years of carpetbaggery. Jacob disliked the carpetbaggers even more than he disliked the Confederates, but he was caught between them and could do nothing. Both sides began to blame him for the failure of Arkansas to reenter the Union. They began to call him “Old Imbecility,” and to openly mock his country ways. He lost control of his legislature to them. He could no longer handle the supreme court justices
, who ceased coming to his office to drink his mountain dew and listen to his tall tales. The supreme court declared unconstitutional his law that Arkansawyers who had borne arms against the United States were not eligible to vote, and this allowed the ex-Confederates to sweep back into government. But the carpetbaggers, or Republicans as they called themselves, gained control, and nominated one of their own, Powell Clayton, an ex-Pennsylvanian, to run for governor. Jacob could not have beaten him even if he were not infected with hopeless nostalgia and longing for Stay More. Shortly after the election in which Clayton took the governorship, Congress restored Arkansas to the Union.