It was a strange house, totally wrong and out of balance. The Flemish bond, instead of producing a beautiful façade, looked heavy and lacking in grace. But perhaps the fault lay in the basic design, for which Rosalind was to blame. Various observers, including the Paxmore brothers, had pointed out that what she was building was nothing better than an unadorned cube: “Each of the four sides is a square of identical size. This is monotonous and adds no beauty.” One of the brothers reminded her of the traditional Choptank wisdom: “At first, a wee bit house for you and the wife. When babies start coming, a little larger. And when money comes, you add a real house. That way, each part lends beauty to the rest.”
She had ignored the criticisms and for nine years had obstinately pursued her plan of erecting a perfect cube on the foundations of the original Steed home. But when observers saw the mistake she was making with the two chimneys, they had to protest. One of her ship captains, who had seen the fine homes of England, pointed out, “To give balance, the chimneys must stand at the two ends of the house, not side-by-side along the rear.” He took paper and drew a sketch of what he had in mind, and it was superior to what she was doing. “At least,” he pleaded, “if you won’t put the chimneys in their proper place, put some windows in the side walls. Create a pleasing balance.”
She ignored his recommendations, and in 1721, ten years after she started, she had her cube completed. Only one aspect was satisfactory: the front façade did have a classical balance, with a central doorway of austere cleanliness, flanked on each side by a pair of well-proportioned windows. On the second floor appeared five windows, smaller than those below but centered exactly, the middle one positioned over the doorway. Somehow these ten nicely related openings, framed in white against the Flemish bond, gave the cube stability and quiet elegance—without them the house would have been a total disaster; with them it was merely a failure.
Ruth Brinton Paxmore gave her last testimony one cold First Day in November 1721. She was eighty-eight years old, but able to walk unaided from the town wharf to the meeting house and with firm step to ascend to the waiting chair on the facing bench. She wore gray as usual, and a small bonnet with the strings loose over her shoulders, a custom she had borrowed from her granddaughter Amanda.
Her appearance evoked mixed emotions among the Quakers of Patamoke: she was the leading voice on the Eastern Shore, a woman of demonstrated sanctity, but she was also a bore. In spite of admonitions and incessant defeats, she persisted in dragging slavery into almost every private conversation or public statement. The Patamoke Meeting had repeatedly rejected her suggestion that the ownership of slaves disqualify a Quaker from membership in the society. The Yearly Meeting of the Eastern Shore had done the same, as had the larger general meetings in Annapolis and Philadelphia. The Quakers were eager to point out that a slaveholder must treat his slaves well, as the Bible directed, and they developed a further doctrine which irritated many non-Quakers: the just ownership of slaves must see to their Christian salvation and to their education. But for the radical reforms Ruth Brinton wanted to initiate, there was no support, and she was deemed a nuisance. “She’s our hair shirt,” many said, and when she rose to speak, they squirmed:
“The facts are few and stubborn. Slavery in all its manifestations must be eradicated. It is not profitable to the farmer nor fair to the slave. Every aspect of society is impeded by its existence, and if we on the Eastern Shore persist in this extravagance while other sections rely upon free labor, we must slide backward.
“For a long lifetime I have listened attentively to arguments thrown against me and I find substance in none. The Quaker program must be simple and straightforward. While the African is still a slave, educate him. As soon as possible, manumit him. If that is impractical, at thy death set him free in thy will. And within a decade state so that all can hear, ‘No man or woman who owns slaves can be a Quaker.’ ”
Primly, as if indifferent to the reception of her revealed message, she resumed her seat, and two days later died.
Her death had unanticipated consequences for Rosalind. Four days after the burial in the little graveyard behind the meeting house, Amanda arrived at Devon bringing Beth with her. The bright little girl was now ten and ready for solid instruction in the books which had made Rosalind so firm of character. “We want to live with thee,” Amanda said in the reserved and precise manner of her grandmother, “and Beth and I both deem it timely to employ a tutor.”
“We’ll buy one,” Rosalind said abruptly, and she took Amanda and the child to Annapolis, where numerous young men more or less qualified as teachers were offering their indentures for sale. “We’ll buy the best,” Rosalind said, “and he can set up a school for all the Steeds,” and this she did. The young man was a gem, a graduate of Cambridge in England and a practicing Catholic. Philip Knollys was the kind of brash young fellow who knew nothing in depth but everything at a level which enabled him to expostulate with bounding confidence. He was only slightly brighter than Beth, but he did know how to keep boys and girls free of riot, and as soon as he established his noisy, effective school for the seventeen Steed children, Rosalind told her cousins from the Refuge, “Here’s a young man we must keep.”
These were happy years for Rosalind. She positively cherished Amanda as one of the most sensible young women she had ever known, and with her took an almost malicious pleasure in being a renegade Protestant who loved the complexity of Catholicism. Beth, of course, was enchanted by Knollys and under his tutelage was inclining toward Catholicism; when her uncles returned from St. Omer’s they found her well advanced in Catholic doctrine.
“It’s a shame girls can’t be educated,” Pierre complained to his mother. “Our little Beth is quicker of mind than we were.”
Little Beth had her own plans for further education; as soon as she reached seventeen she informed her mother and grandmother that she intended marrying the tutor. He was summoned, and stood facing Rosalind and Amanda with charming arrogance; he was all of twenty-nine and with one year to run on his indenture, and Rosalind asked, “Is it proper for a man still a servant to seek the hand of a young woman he is obligated to teach?” Before he could respond, Beth interrupted, “Thee is asking three separate questions. How can he possibly answer in one swoop?”
“What three questions?”
Like a little lawyer, her chin jutting toward the bench, she replied, “First, is it proper? Anything in good conscience is proper. Second, does he have a moral obligation to me as his student? He has, and he has discharged it. Third, does his being a servant disqualify him? It does. But that can be quickly remedied.”
“How?” Rosalind asked contentiously.
“Terminate his indenture. Now.”
Amanda agreed, and when that was done the little girl rushed to Knollys’ arms and embarrassed him with kisses.
The wedding was held under the oak, with Father Darnley, an old man now, officiating in half-drunken jollity. Amanda was shocked, for Quaker weddings were solemn, but since Father Darnley had married her many years ago, she was willing to grant him indulgence.
Now Rosalind had time to proceed with the building of her home, and when a new tutor was purchased to take over the Steed school, Mr. Knollys was free to help. He had a considerable knowledge of geometry and carpentering and gladly assumed control of the slaves assembled for the final effort. As the months passed, and Rosalind revealed her intentions, Knollys caught her infectious enthusiasm and assured everyone in Patamoke, “It’s to be the finest home on the Eastern Shore.”
Those who had laughed at her stumpy original cube with its misplaced chimneys and unsatisfactory end walls could see at last what she had always intended. Using it as the solid center of her construction, she built at some distance east and west two slightly smaller cubes, each containing two rooms downstairs, two up, but with much lower roof lines than the main building. When they were finished they looked as peculiar as the central cube: squat, heavy buildings without any pleasing adornment e
xcept the rigorous arrangement of their front façades, where four windows somewhat smaller than those in the main house gave balance.
When asked what the two strange appendages were, Rosalind replied, “Rooms for the children we’re all going to have.” And the children did come, so that the new tutor was kept busy instructing a seemingly endless supply of Steeds, while Rosalind continued medicating them. To her emergency supplies she had added ginseng drops, most effective in treating the flux, and Venice treacle for childhood coughs. A woman in Patamoke had introduced her to burnt hartshorn, a bitter substance which produced good results when used to combat congestions, and it was now possible to get steady supplies of turmeric from London, and this was certain to cure weaknesses of blood. But the medicine which made life among the mosquitoes bearable was the new one called simply “the bark.” It was that, the bark of some magic tree, extremely bitter, which attacked all fevers and ate them up.
“A child can be prostrated with fever, shaking as if a dog worried him, and five applications of the bark puts him on his feet again,” Rosalind told the Steeds at the Refuge, and when they followed her advice, they found that their summers were twice as comfortable as they had been previously. The bark was a miracle, and on Devon Island only Mrs. Steed was allowed to dispense it, which she always did with a promise: “Enjoy its bitterness. It’s going to fight on your behalf.”
And then, in 1729, she disclosed the final plan for her home. Using a huge pile of bricks assembled over the past two years, and goading Knollys’ slaves to extra efforts, she made various bold moves. At the original cube she tore out large segments of the two end walls, and at each of the flanking buildings she did the same. It looked as if she were determined to wreck the very buildings she had worked so long to construct, but when all was prepared, she put the slaves to the exciting task of erecting two low, compact passageways, each with three windows, which bound everything together. These new additions were not large enough to be considered houses, but they were built with such solidity that they were obviously parts of the whole. When challenged as to what they were, Rosalind said, “On sunny days I shall sit in these warm, comfortable rooms and sew.” These were the lovely connectives that bound the cubes together into one magnificent home.
When the rubble was cleared, and the lawns raked, and low shrubs put in place to hide the scars of building, Rosalind’s Revenge stood revealed, and no part of the beautifully balanced five-part structure was more ideally suited to its purpose than the original cube which had evoked such cynical merriment. Now it was clear why she had placed her chimneys at the rear: the passageways could not have been added if the chimneys had been at the end walls. And it was also manifest why the end walls had been left so bleak: she had always intended that they be pierced for the passageways.
How stately the great house was, with five separate roof lines, with twenty-four matched windows in a façade that moved forward in the center, slightly back at each end, and well back at the passages. Especially satisfying was the manner in which the house fitted the trees, which she had planted well before the building was begun, so that when a visitor arrived at the wharf and looked northward, he saw a stretch of lawn not too spacious, a collection of trees not too numerous, a house not too ornate, so that he was tempted to exclaim, “How well-proportioned it all is.”
What the visitor could not see was that in a corner of the main room Rosalind had caused a cupboard to be built, and here she preserved the pewter dishes rescued when the pirates burned the preceding house. A few of the pieces had been somewhat melted by the flames, but all were serviceable, and each March, as the old year ended, she liked to assemble all Steeds for a banquet of gratitude that the year had passed without disaster. Then she would allow the children to eat off the pewter plates, and feel the dense hand of history, and she would tell them, “You can never foresee how a house or a human being is going to turn out till the work is completed.”
And when the Refuge Steeds had departed in their boats, she gathered her own family to instruct the children in their heritage and told them of how Edmund Steed had come to America with a courageous Catholic heart to build this plantation, and of how his wife Martha Keene had fled England to share the wilderness with him, and then she told them of King Charles, whose head had been chopped off, and this part the children loved for its gruesomeness as she described the falling of the ax. Then, with just the right mixture of high adventure and travesty, she told them who Prince Rupert was, and of how he had galloped back and forth across England to save his king, and then she asked, “And who do you suppose rode with him?”
“Chilton Janney!” the children cried.
“Yes, your great-great-grandfather. He was a Cavalier and he rode with Rupert at Marston Moor.”
And then one of the children would say, “But you always said he was a dead drunk.”
“I never saw him sober,” Rosalind would confess.
“And he wasn’t a real Cavalier,” another child would say, and she would reply, “In his heart he was.”
At various places in this chronicle certain phrases have been used relative to the Choptank which might lead one to think it a peaceful stream: “She got into her shallop and sailed to Peace Cliff” or “They sailed idly down the river past the marsh.” And for twenty-nine days out of thirty these descriptions were apt and these actions possible. The Choptank was a splendid body of water; indeed, that spacious area between Devon Island on the west and Patamoke to the east was practically a lake, and on pleasant days an experienced sailor like Rosalind Steed could traverse it with impunity.
It was on such a day in October 1732 that she left Rosalind’s Revenge, walked down to the wharf and asked the slaves to prepare her shallop—“I’m sailing to Patamoke.” One of the older slaves said, “Better tomorrow. Clouds over the bay.” She rejected this advice—“We always have clouds somewhere.”
As she sailed down the placid creek she came upon a cove black with geese, home from the north, and she thought how beautiful they were, but then a solitary heron came to the edge of a small marsh to fish for crabs, and she thought: I always wanted to be a stately goose but was destined to be an awkward heron. Well, the goose comes back now and then with a show of glory, but the heron stays forever.
The river was incredibly beautiful as she entered it for the easy run to Patamoke; the banks were lined with oak and maple turning myriad shades of red, and above them, on the cliff, stood the gray loveliness of the Paxmores’ telescope house, so different from the manor she had built, so perfect in its Quaker dignity, and she thought: A remote corner like this, and within a few miles, we have two of the most handsome houses in America. Her eyes lingered on the gray house and she could visualize old Ruth Brinton moving about the plain kitchen, and tough-minded little Amanda learning her lessons of integrity.
But as she passed the cliff and headed for the marsh the sky darkened and from the bay came winds of force. And then, within the space of minutes, a storm of tremendous fury engulfed her little world. Rain came down in slanting sheets; the wind roared to forty miles an hour, then fifty; whitecaps as huge as those thrown up by the ocean ripped across the river; and her shallop was tossed and tortured.
Within the first half-minute she had the sail down and the shallop running with the wind: I’ll let it push me ashore ... anywhere. I’ll get drenched walking to land, but no matter. She was following standard procedure for the Choptank; since the entire Eastern Shore was alluvial, a sailor never had to fear putting his craft upon the rocks, for there were none. When trouble threatened, the waterman allowed his boat to move toward shore till it scraped bottom, then he got out and walked through the waves to safety.
But on this October day the waves would not permit this escape; they tossed the shallop until Rosalind had to relinquish the rudder and cling to the sheerstrake to avoid being washed overboard, and when in this position she saw a succession of really monstrous waves coming at her, she realized what peril she was in.
We’ll see it through, she said to herself, bracing for the shock of the first wave, and by strength alone she clung to the violently pitching boat.
When the last of the big waves roared by she gasped: That was a near thing, very near. And she began to take deep breaths, watching in dismay as her mast crumpled, dragging the boom into the water. There was still a good chance that she could ground the boat and struggle ashore, so she returned to the rudder stick, endeavoring to restore the shallop to a reasonable course, and she might have succeeded had not a mighty gust swept in from the bay, throwing the entire river in confusion. Waves moving in one direction were tormented by new ones raised by the howling wind; the shallop rose on one heading, twisted in midair, turned and tumbled violently.
Rosalind was thrown clear, but she still fought to reach shore, which she had every chance of attaining, except for the broken mast which struck her from the rear, tangling her feet in its swirling lines, dragging her down and down.
Turlock children, surveying their marsh after the storm, spotted the wrecked shallop and yelled to their elders, “Boat ashore!” And when all the family ran into the marsh prepared to steal any movable parts, they found Mrs. Steed half buried in the sand, her hands engaged in the shrouds she had been fighting when she died.
VOYAGE SIX: 1773
Chesapeake Page 45