Somerset

by Leila Meacham

  “I promise.”

  “I leave a happy man. Will you kiss me?”

  “I will.”

  In the shade of the magnolia tree, he bent his head, and Jessica lifted her face, and they kissed. Afterwards, Silas backed away from her with a gaze she believed was meant to lock the image of her in memory. He threw a salute to Joshua, who returned it snapped at attention, and mounted his horse. “Lorimer,” he called to his travel companion, his voice brisk, businesslike, “let us be on our way to Texas.”

  Stephanie and Jake, Jessica and Joshua watched them go. Tippy stole beside them, silent as a shadow, and no one said anything until men and horses and wagons were out of sight. Then Jessica said, “Tippy, we must find some big buckets. We have to get the roots of those roses into fresh soil and do all we can to keep them alive.”

  For how the roses go, so will Silas and Jeremy, she thought.

  It was the first of June, 1836.

  Chapter Forty

  Excerpt from Silas’s journal:

  SEPTEMBER 15, 1836

  “Man proposes; God disposes.” That German writer in the fifteenth century, Thomas Kempis, was right when he penned those words, as Morris would be delighted to hear me admit, though God knows I’ve experienced the truth of them often enough these past couple of years. I sit here now on the eve of my departure to New Orleans wondering where to begin my narration to Jessica of how handily God disposed of my proposal to settle in the black waxy region of Texas. Unless she received my letter of July that I entrusted a soldier returning to Lafayette to deliver, she will not know that the Willow Grove wagon train did not make it to the black soil of my reserved land grant. Once the train had crossed the Sabine and slogged through the bayou country, our people had endured enough. We had survived accidents to limb, wagon, oxen and horses, treacherous quagmires, snakes, and alligators. Two days after we set up camp, exhausted, on a pine-covered knoll, I said to Jeremy out of the blue, “How about here?”

  Jeremy looked relieved. He had already exclaimed over the abundance of white-tailed deer and wild turkeys, clear streams, deep, fertile, sandy loam, and the rich variety of trees, but my admiration of the area was based on an additional attraction. The First Congress of the Republic of Texas was offering immigrants who arrived between March 2, 1836 and October 1, 1837 a grant of 1,280 acres for heads of families and 640 acres for single men, provided they lived in Texas for three years. Why would a man pay 12 and 1/2 cents an acre in the land grants of empresarios such as Stephen F. Austin when the land on which he stood was free?

  Even though the pine forests would be much harder to clear than the blackland prairies, I saw other advantages to remaining in the region. Not only would the savings in cost of land add to my secret coffer, but I could return for Jessica and Joshua sooner. This time, I would take the Old San Antonio Road and cross the Sabine at Gaines Ferry into Louisiana and bring my family back the same way for an easier and quicker route into Texas.

  Lorimer Davis, who’d been within earshot of Jeremy’s and my conversation, asked me to repeat what I’d said.

  Jeremy answered for me. “Silas said, ‘How about here?’”

  Lorimer grinned from one big ear to another and shouted at his neighbor, “HOW ABOUT HERE?”

  When the question was passed from wagon to wagon, a chorus of YEA’s went up and in a meeting the next day, the settlers cast a unanimous vote to settle here among the pines.

  And so, on my thirtieth birthday, I managed to hire a surveyor to stake out my acres and to provide me with the necessary figures of location and boundaries to file my claim at the Texas General Land Office when it opens in Austin in December. I made sure to have witnesses to the surveyor’s report testify to my arrival in Texas and should have no trouble obtaining a conditional certificate to possess the land until I take official ownership of it in three years. Even before the surveying was completed, I set about building shelters, fences, barns, and—most important—clearing land for the planting of cotton seeds in early spring. I am glad Jessica was not here to witness how hard I worked our slaves, but we now have a semblance of the beginning of Somerset. I look forward to carrying her over the threshold of our log house. It is rude at best, but it is weatherproof because I made sure the chinks were properly filled. It boasts three rooms and a loft, and a hall from the front gallery to a shed in back where, at no small expense, I have had installed a bathtub for Jessica! I hope she will be pleased. In time, I plan to join another cabin to the original to double our living space, but the addition will have to wait until I address other, more urgent needs.

  Sam Houston of Virginia was elected the first president of the Republic of Texas two weeks ago. Perhaps now the new nation will know the beginning of stability. The treasury is depleted and credit for the republic next to impossible to obtain. There are no funds to pay for an army, roads, or postal system. Mexico and the Indians present a constant concern. Houston favors eventual annexation to the United States and peaceful relations with the Indians. His opponents support independence and the removal of the Indians from the entire republic. Who will win out? I see myself someday adding my voice to a political body that decides such matters, but at this point in time, I will concentrate on building the plantation my son and his sons will carry into perpetuity in this new land of promise and opportunity.

  I fear Jeremy will not be joining me in a like venture, though he has staked out his 640 acres—“the beginning of The Warwick Lumber Company, my friend,” he proudly announced to my startled ears within a week of our arrival here. “I’m tired of planting cotton, Silas,” he said. “I see my financial future in mining timber.” He went on to say that the logging industry was in its infancy now, but he is certain it will grow as the nation grows, and in that growth was bound to come the need for lumber.

  I was shocked that he would be so enticed to jump ship—turn his back on his Warwick heritage—but of course, I wished him well. For me, the only calling of a Toliver is to till land—large parcels of it—and that, I and my heirs will do.

  Henri picked his plot on the hilliest, least fertile ground a good distance from the river. He envisions his 640 acres as the site of the town we will build together and has already marked the spot where he intends to erect his mercantile store—a sort of general store at the beginning, he says, but later, when the town is established—“Ah, mon ami such an emporium the public has yet to behold!” To him I wish the best of luck as well and count myself fortunate to have within hailing distance two of the finest men I will ever call friends.

  This is my final entry in the journal. Writing it has provided solace for my loneliness at the end of many long, wearying days. Once I’m reunited with Jessica and Joshua, I see no need to commit to paper the daily events I will live with them.

  (Note to myself: Before sharing my journal with Jessica, mark the parts to be left unread.)

  Chapter Forty-One

  Excerpt from Jessica’s diary:

  SEPTEMBER 18, 1836

  Silas has been gone now for three and a half months. There are times I believe I cannot endure another day of waiting for his return. Now that I’m feeling better, I’ve packed and arranged for several trunks to be stored in the Conestoga in readiness to leave as soon as possible to Texas when he does arrive. Stephanie is as much on tenterhooks as I. She, too, is tired of having time on her hands and of being cooped in her hotel room with a rambunctious six year old.

  Still, I am glad Silas was not here to see me so sick the first months of my pregnancy. I lived by the chamber pot, not a pleasant sight for a new husband to behold. Only these last weeks have I been able to venture out and about, mainly to take the street car to the DuMont Emporium where my presence is to remind Monsieur DuMont of my threat.

  Silas had not been gone a day before Henri’s father approached me with an offer to lend out Tippy—“for a wage, of course,” he said, “since your husband tells me the girl is not for sale. He turned down a very handsome offer, too,” he said pet
ulantly, as if still needled by the insult.

  I stared at him, my mouth so ajar he understood at once that his offer to Silas was new information to me. “Didn’t your husband tell you? Ah, well, then—” an ingratiating smile heightened the greedy light in his eyes, “perhaps you and I can strike a deal since the girl is your maid to do with as you please.”

  I asked him how much he’d offered for Tippy, and when he told me, I very nearly gasped. I do not know how much money my father agreed to pay Silas to take me off his hands, but I would not be surprised if the sum Monsieur DuMont offered did not equal a good portion of it. If Silas had accepted the money, he would have less need for my father’s and fewer years to depend on it. He could then throw the contract into my father’s face.

  He could have gotten rid of me.

  But Silas had kept his promise never to sell Tippy and did not take advantage of Monsieur DuMont’s offer.

  “Well?” My visitor prompted in a tone spiked with impatience.

  A heady feeling took hold of me. I would not have been surprised if my body had sprouted wings and lifted me, extra pounds and all, off my feet. “I repeat my husband’s words, Monsieur,” I told him. “My maid is not for sale.”

  “Very well then, what do you say to hiring her out to me for…” he pursed his lips in a calculating manner and named a wage. The work would not be hard, he assured me. He rather thought my maid might enjoy it. He wanted to use her in his design room.

  I’d see what Tippy had to say about it, I told him. As I saw him to the door, he did not disguise his chagrin that I did not give him an answer on the spot—why was it necessary to discuss his offer with a slave?—but he agreed to return the next morning for my decision.

  He could not leave my presence soon enough. I wanted to be alone to think on the implications of Silas turning down so much money. I remembered that our conversation the late afternoon of the party had followed Jean DuMont’s meeting with him, but Silas had kept the reason for his visit to himself. Silas would certainly have realized the consequences to our tenuous relationship if he’d sold Tippy, but why would that loss matter compared to so much gain—including the opportunity to rid himself of the wife he’d been forced to marry!

  I placed my hands on the mound that was the fruit of the two nights we’d been together. Here within me was the seed of our destruction. We needed no other. I must accept Silas as a slave owner, but I could not abide our child sharing his endorsement of the purchase and sale of human beings to do another’s bidding without compensation for their labor or the freedom to make the choice.

  But that conflict would come soon enough, I told myself. For the moment I was warmed—overjoyed—by the sacrifice I believe my husband had made on behalf of our marriage.

  Tippy could not hide her delight at the opportunity to work in the design room of the DuMont Emporium. The wage seemed hardly of interest to her. It was the pleasure of handling silks and satins, brocades, and finely woven cotton and woolen fabrics that set her hands to flapping when she imagined herself creating her marvels in such a place.

  “But how will you look after yourself and Joshua with me gone all day?” she cried.

  “Joshua and I will look out for each other,” I told her. Already my stepson was the attentive big brother, often laying his head on the swell of my abdomen and talking to it.

  “If you’re a boy, I’ll teach you to do the things I like to do,” he’d say. “If you’re a girl, I’ll protect you from bad things.”

  At such times, I plant a kiss on the sweet crown of my stepson’s head and wonder if it is possible to love my own child as much as I love this little boy.

  Tippy took the job, but only after I had warned Monsieur DuMont that he would answer to my father if she was mistreated or taken advantage of in any way. I also got him to agree to send a carriage to take her to and from his emporium located in the business district upriver of Canal Street. Because people think of Tippy as an oddity, she draws attention wherever she goes, most of it unwanted. New Orleans is exotic, bawdy, sensual, mysterious, an easy city to get swallowed in, and, without my protection, I imagine her assaulted on the street by ruffians, kidnapped by slavers, or spirited away to serve some evil mistress behind locked doors in moss-draped mansions for the rest of her life.

  The arrangement has worked well, and were it not for Joshua and the tales Tippy brings home at night of the DuMont Emporium, I might have succumbed to the daily waste of my time and energy in the Winthorp Hotel. Because of boredom and the sameness of the days, there is often little of interest to record. I hope Silas will understand the reason for the gaps between my entries. When I next return to these pages, perhaps I will have something of importance to relate.

  SEPTEMBER 19, 1836

  Glory be. Last evening I answered a knock on my door and found Silas William Toliver on the threshold.

  Chapter Forty-Two

  Somerset, January 1841

  His father had touted his belief that a man should gauge his life in segments of five years, Silas recalled. Only then did he have a clear view of the gains and losses, rewards and consequences resulting from his decisions that would then determine his resolutions for the future. Bullocks, Silas thought with his usual anger at the memory of his father. He faced a situation that none of the gains and losses, rewards and consequences from the decisions he’d made in the last five years could shed light on, and God knew the journey to this time and place was littered with plenty of each.

  The voices of his two sons at boisterous play in the side yard of the family’s log house drew him to the window, music that always soothed the beasts that roamed within him. Today’s beast con­jured up the memory of his mother’s blazing face in the drawing room at Queenscrown when she delivered her prediction that his land in Texas would be cursed: Nothing good can come from what has been built on such sacrifice and selfishness and greed.

  But was it selfishness and greed to wish to expand his holdings for the benefit of his family? A sacrifice, yes. His conscience forced him to see that if he diverted the money he’d saved to pay back Carson Wyndham to buy more land, he would be sacrificing his capability to offer Jessica her freedom. He was certain she would not leave him and the home they’d made even if it were offered, but the feat of paying back her father every penny he’d paid to be rid of her would prove to Jessica that their odious agreement was not the reason her husband stayed married to her. But did his wife need that assurance? Not since New Orleans had she referred to the contract. Jessica loved him, though perhaps not wholly, and he loved her, if not exclusively. The issue of slavery was always between them, like smoke they fanned away at the dinner table and in the bedroom and in the presence of their children, and part of his heart belonged to the mistress lying beyond his house that demanded his attention from sunup to sundown.

  So, really, what was the point of returning Carson’s money other than as a matter of his own personal pride and the satisfaction of imagining the man’s face when his agent handed him a banknote worth the full sum he’d doled out over the years?

  Weary from his thoughts, Silas went outside to be with his sons, Joshua, now ten, and Thomas, three and a half. There had been another son, but he had passed from his mother’s womb prematurely in September 1836, four months before he was to be born, one of the losses on the journey to this time and place.

  This time and place. Silas looked about him at what had been accomplished in the past five years and allowed himself a rare feeling of pride, a pleasure he believed should be reserved for the fulfillment of his dream for Somerset rather than its inception. Still, he was justified in taking pride in the spread of his pine-cleared fields beyond his expanded house, the slave compound he’d built within a footrace distance, and most certainly the cotton gin whose cost he’d convinced his neighbors to share and build on his property. Having their own gin saved ginning fees and the bother of hauling their cotton to the closest one ten miles away. In a few years the gin would pay for itself, and t
he owners could charge their own ginning fees.

  His snug house was bounded on one side by well-maintained barns and sheds and corrals; on the other, a tidy yard where the boys could play, an orchard, and two gardens, their soil recently turned. They looked a bit abject this cold January day, the ground in one awaiting its seeds; the pruned, bare branches in the other dormant until spring when each plot would yield its individual bounties of vegetables and roses.

  It had been Henri’s idea for Silas and Jeremy to plant both the York and Lancaster roses in each other’s gardens as a symbol of unity between their houses. The three of them had been elected the framers of the new community, which the settlers whimsically and unanimously agreed should be called and spelled Howboutchere, named for the more literate question—“How about here?”—that Silas had posed the second day of the wagon train’s encampment in the pine trees. He and his fellow planters had recoiled at the folksiness of the suggestion and wangled a compromise: The name of their town would be spelled Howbutker, with the sharp accent on the last syllable.

  Henri would grow both his friends’ roses as well, he announced to Silas and Jeremy in one of their meetings. It was his feeling that, when disagreements arose among them, as they inevitably would, the roses should serve as tokens to express what men of pride such as they could not bring themselves to articulate in speech. “So if ever I should offend you, I will send a red rose to ask forgiveness,” he said, “and if ever I receive one tendered for that purpose, I will return a white rose to say that all is forgiven.”