Last Refuge of Scoundrels

by Paul Lussier

  Friday, May 21: I was standing in the courtyard of Independence Hall rehearsing my narrative, waiting for the delegates to break—yet again—for lunch, when George Washington, the pear-shaped planter with what must have been a button for a bladder walked urgently past, as he had thrice before within the hour, bound for the privy. I knew very little about him (none of us did), but I decided that he was my man, since I could make him my captive audience by pinning him down in the line for use of the facilities.

  To enhance my credibility, I spoke in even, dispassionate, inhuman tones. I’d learned that the trick with these gents was to act like you cared not a whit about that which you spoke. I informed Washington coolly, as if I were talking about the weather, of how the latest dispatch of stories from Lexington and Concord seemed to point “quite scientifically” (it sounded good) to a “profound change of heart” on the part of the Rebels. That of late the Rebels had been turning sweet, compliant, respectful, deferential—their wrath reserved exclusively for a bloated Parliament, not Mother England, not King George, and certainly not those born of the American gentleman class.

  Instead of speaking of the Rebels’ right to freedom (a subject which I mistakenly had broached on a previous occasion and very quickly left behind due to the alarm it engendered in the discussion’s participants), I spoke as monotonally as I could of their sad and pathetic travails: housewives risking their lives tossing billeted British soldiers out on their ears; still-breathing Yankee soldiers being kicked into mass graves by angry Redcoats; wailing wives and children jumping in after their men’s bodies and being buried as well; children losing their fathers, and fathers their sons and daughters and limbs. Mothers by the hearth at home on bended knee, praying for peace.

  “Stop, stop!” George finally insisted, clacking his unruly teeth and clutching his heart. By which time several congressmen and, for some reason, a curly-haired poodle had gathered around to hear my story: There wasn’t a dry eye in the line for the latrine.

  Planter Washington’s turn came up and he left me only long enough to relieve himself. After wiping his hand cursorily on his breeches, he shook mine and said, “The Rebels are lucky to have you in their court, young man. You speak their case well—very well.”

  “Their plight speaks for itself, sir, through my heart,” I said, tapping my sternum for effect.

  Washington continued, “And so we must attend to it.”

  “My heart, sir?”

  “No, no—their plight, their plight. You expect me to care about your heart, son, when there are naked, starving children roaming the streets in search of a crumb of food and defenseless women holding vigil at graves while Redcoats just across the river mock and abuse them and plot their ruin?”

  Eureka! I’d ignited an imagination even more fertile than my own (and a temper infinitely more volatile, for which his odd shape helped me forgive him . . . all those years of being compared to a fruit must have been tough).

  Washington invited me to have a port with him that evening back at the Robbins house, where he was staying.

  “I think I can be of help to your friends; indeed, I feel I know just the thing to do. But I’ll need to know more first. . . .”

  I was so excited now that it was my turn to run to the latrine.

  That afternoon I wrote Deborah and Warren:

  The tide, I do believe, has turned. I seem to have interested a tall Virginia planter with a hot temper in The Cause. Apparently he’s not terribly bright—the story goes that he almost single-handedly started the French and Indian War when he mistook a Frog for an Indian and shot him dead. But be that as it may, I don’t care! Home soon—with food and guns, plenty for all! Keep Granny Gage guessing.

  Your comrade, John

  She never wrote back.

  He was much too big a man for a parlor so red, so small. It seemed that there was no place to lay my eyes without his being in my view. A second before he sat down, I thought there had been a tiny chair in the corner. Maybe it wasn’t such a tiny chair. Maybe he was just bigger than he had previously struck me at first meeting and the piece of furniture that had vanished under his body actually was sizable, perhaps even a winged Chippendale. In any event, the effect of the combination of Washington’s bulk, this room, that chair, was that he appeared to be seated comfortably on thin air, a demigod from the start.

  I knew this was my chance. Hour by hour, blow by blow, I chronicled it all: the current crisis in the Charlestown hills, Revere’s ride, the skirmish on Lexington Green, and the assault on Old North Bridge. Hanging on my every word, not interrupting me except to fart (“Whoever heard of turtle soup?”), Washington listened intently. And drank, deeply.

  Several ports later, he extricated himself from his chair (a Queen Anne with mahogany arms and legs, as it turned out), ducked behind a japanned screen, where . . . yes, he proceeded to disrobe, flinging his shoes and scarf out into the room like a man primed for a revel with a whore.

  Oh, dear.

  “Now, on to why I’ve brought you here.” He veritably shook with excitement as he flipped his coat over the top of the partition, his breeches soon to follow.

  Please, God, no—say not that the planter is a poof!

  “. . . how you could be of great help to me . . . and I to you,” he quavered. I blanched; it was true!

  “I—I must be running along,” I blurted out, and tried unsuccessfully to rise from my minuscule seat.

  Out from behind the screen came his left leg—not a bad calf, I have to say, especially in the white stocking—which he appeared to be modeling for me in a teasing, music-hall kind of way.

  “Good-bye, dreary planter, and hello . . .” With maximum dramatic effect, he leapt out from behind the screen. I covered my eyes.

  “I promise you, you’ll like what you see,” he wheedled, then commanded me: “Open your goddamned eyes!”

  What I found before me was a very large man encased like a sausage in a moth-eaten military uniform, so tight it looked applied with adhesive.

  Washington walked about, admiring himself. “I recognize it’s a bit small. I was twenty-four at the time it was made, allergic to cream and seeking to make a beneficial match. This dates back to the French and Indian War.”

  No doubt.

  He leaned in to me, taking one of my hands and guiding it to his open waistcoat. “Now, if you take one side, and I the other, and we pull nice and hard, I believe the stomach could be forced into compliance with the size. I’ll exhale. Don’t fart too, I pray!”

  His prayer wasn’t answered, but his vest buttons did manage to find their holes rather nicely. “As long as I remember to keep inhalations slight, I should be fine. I brought this old thing in the event a situation such as the one you’ve described presented itself. High time, as you say, for Congress to appoint a commander-in-chief!”

  He broke off, gazing at himself in a cheval glass, and fixed me with a stare.

  “Promise me you’ll keep to your stories—the better ones, weeping widows and all that. In the meantime, I’ll ‘allow’ myself to be seen in this. We’ll regard ourselves as a team, for which I promise you’ll soon receive ample reward. But, to disguise our mutual purposes, we will appear unallied, unacquainted. You story-tell while I parade, and—Oh dear, if I get too excited, I’ll pop! Slight inhale, deeeeeep exhale, there we go! Well, just you wait and see! Before you know it, you’ll be writing your friends, telling them help is on the way, faster than you can say ‘His Excellency George Washington, sir’!” (Faster than all that, I certainly hoped.)

  And so, like a vision, a premonition of what was to come, there George Washington stood, posing mute as a statue in his outfit of buff and blue with gold epaulettes, brandishing his sword, and dreaming of the glory days to be.

  Food and guns, food and guns. Oh well. Where there was a commander-in-chief, food and guns would be certain to follow, I surmised. And I was in much too deep to back out now.

  By morning of the next day, before I had even set up m
y soapbox in the courtyard, things were already starting to change. Nothing impresses Congress more than a man in uniform, I guess.

  About the only two delegates who were unfazed by Washington’s parade were Benjamin Franklin and Thomas Jefferson. Their objections could not be entirely trusted, however. For Franklin, even at seventy, was never really interested in anything that wasn’t female, naked, and hot to play; and Thomas Jefferson was a resolute pacifist across the board, considered too queer (“He eats only vegetables, the silly squirrel!”), and his views therefore summarily dismissed. (Eventually, in fact, they handed him the onerous task of writing the Declaration of Independence, mostly to get him out of their powdered hair. Lucky for him he was landed gentry and owned slaves, otherwise he’d never have stood a chance with those gents.)

  But as for the rest, now weren’t they cowed? The glint of that regalia of Washington’s must have gone to their heads, for this is the only possible explanation, as I see it, for what happened next.

  Suddenly everyone wanted in. A few days more and the Committee of the Whole had indeed created the position of commander-in-chief.

  No weapons, no army—just a commander-in-chief.

  Overnight, Lexington and Concord suddenly became “assaults upon the people,” a replay of the Boston Massacre, but “this time the colonists defended themselves.” “Bloody Butchery by British Troops!” it was written, rivaled only by “Redcoat cruelty and barbarity such as this has never been perpetrated even by the savages of America.”

  A job title had finally brought the Founding Fathers willy-nilly to The Cause.

  And oh, did Hancock, screwed out of his presidency by the duly elected Randolph, want that job! He was absolutely driven to distraction by the possibility, making a complete fool of himself—popping pills, swatting flies that weren’t there—and I’m dead certain that was his tapered foot that tried to trip George Washington the day he walked down the aisle to accept Congress’ nomination of him as commander-in-chief of the (nonexistent) American army.

  John Adams, who had more or less been pushing for war with England—even for arming the natives for it—was the one to make the nomination because he correctly assumed that Congress would back a discreet (if conspicuous) Southerner over any fiery mid-Atlantic Scotsman or Yank. (“Discreet” isn’t exactly the word I would use to describe Washington’s approach, but never mind.)

  “. . . A gentleman who is among us here and very well known to all of us . . . a gentleman whose skill and experience as an officer, whose independent fortune, great talents, and excellent universal character will command the approbation of all America . . .”

  Hancock half rose from his seat in anticipation of bounding to the fore. Adams paused to beam and gesture. “. . . General George Washington!”

  Hancock sat down quickly and practically sprouted horns.

  Washington, like a virgin bride, had to be begged to reenter the chamber out of which he’d begun strategically to tiptoe as John Adams put forward his name. What a show.

  The General blushingly claimed he was not fit for the post and further insisted on serving without pay!

  This last condition History has always loved, but his wife Martha didn’t. She hit the ceiling, although she was ultimately reassured by the huge stipend Washington later privately demanded—and received—in lieu of salary. One in which he made a sizable dent immediately with the purchase of a new carriage and a team of horses to whisk him (and his aides, of which I was automatically made a member) off to Cambridge in true commander-in-chief style.

  Next came the wrangling over the suitable number of generalships to be allotted under Washington and, even more troublesome, the assignment of them. Here all pretense was dropped: Not bothering to make a case for one nominee as better qualified than another, congressmen made no bones whatsoever about proposing their favorite sons. And why shouldn’t they? Since Washington, the new commander-in-chief, had been refused promotion as an officer while serving in the British army time and again, and in fact had never won a single battle during his earlier military career, why exert oneself to justify one’s own candidate in terms of his skill, talent, or experience in war?

  The upshot of all this was, of course, that within hours there were dozens more names in Congress’ hat than there were available generalships. So, in their infinite wisdom, to keep the peace, Congress simply created more posts than would ever be required. The New England contingent uncorked champagne to celebrate their receiving half the major general posts and seven of the eight brigadier general slots. Artemas Ward of Massachusetts was named first, as compensation for his essentially being stripped of the commanding generalship he currently held, in favor of Washington.

  Then too, Charles Lee, a former English officer, was named as a major general. I don’t know who he got to swing his appointment, just that he was a vile, filthy man who toted Pomeranians about in a bag. Lastly commissioned were Philip Schuyler of New York and Israel Putnam of Connecticut, both sweet bores.

  The appointments complete, teeth securely in place, Washington dashed off a letter to Martha, promising he’d be home by Christmas—not specifying for which year—and then we were off to realize America’s . . . what?

  Bid for war?

  No.

  Hankering for freedom?

  No.

  Fight for justice?

  No.

  Who knew anything, but that a fine new commander, in a newly lacquered phaeton with a brace of good horses, a covey of aides in tow, was on the road to Cambridge?

  Beaming, seated at Washington’s side, I believed that with this triumph, Deborah and Dr. Warren would come around.

  Food and guns. Food and guns. No, better than that: a commander-in-chief!

  And so my journey to scoundrelhood had begun.

  CHAPTER 24

  The Arrival of the Commander-in-Chief

  It wasn’t long before it became clear that we were headed to Cambridge to train, not to assist, the farmers gathered there. Then, on June 23, just as we were leaving Philadelphia, a courier arrived with news of a massacre of Americans on Bunker Hill. No other information was yet known.

  I was shaken by the news. Where was Deborah in all this? Was she still alive?

  The trip was agonizingly slow. To his credit, Washington was anxious to get to Cambridge, although several of his brave new officers were not quite so eager to join the fray.

  En route, Washington spoke reassuringly of his commitment to preserving civilian rule, but also of the need for order and subordination in the army he would create: one to make his country proud. Later, as he was describing it to the thousands who would gather to listen, I realized that his vision resembled England’s organization of forces down to the same drills, boots, and buckles.

  He promised to enlist men who, along with his generalship, would provide, as Congress had insisted, “the kind of example youth can look up to as a pattern to form themselves by,” their conduct in every respect “guided by the rules and the discipline of war.”

  So “to our lives, our fortunes, and our sacred honor! Hear! Hear!” the crowd would cry, followed by thunderous applause for His Excellency, General George Washington, for whom fireworks fetes were held up and down the eastern seaboard to honor “Him.”

  Britain could not and should not be expected to deal with terrorists, the “gentleman’s” argument went. Under no circumstances should the farmers at Lexington be allowed to represent the colonial cause of freedom, which they were deemed to have adopted as an excuse for errant, bastard behavior, and little more.

  Credibility was held to be the key here. The English needed to see their opponent as nobly forbidding, formidable, and worthy of attention, not barbaric and unshaven. This was a “gentleman’s” spat, not guerrilla war, Congress reasoned, and filthy, undisciplined hunters shooting at Redcoats from behind wheelbarrows and trunks of apple trees was no way to a fine end—a fine end by definition being a country that looked, acted, ate, played, fought, entertained, an
d conducted its affairs like England, but a tad freer, maybe.

  And if too much damage had been done already, not to worry—Commander-in-Chief George Washington could be counted on to set things straight.

  It wasn’t that Washington was mean, you see. It was just that he spoke a different language, as described—that of the “gentleman.” In the “gentleman’s story,” which History would adopt, there is no mention of what the “gentlemen” refrained from doing (not sending food and guns, for example), just what they had sent (a general). Furthermore, there would be no account of how the post of commander-in-chief came to be, or of the squabbles that ensued. Or the flies. Or the drink. Or that Hancock wanted to kill George Washington for taking what Hancock regarded as his own job.

  Instead the language would be noble and grand and self-congratulatory. And because, as they saw it, there was nothing noble, “gentlemanly” about dirty little rabble-rousers encamping half-naked, half-starved and poorly armed outside Boston, the talk would not be of the Rebels’ victory (this is why the word “victory” was strictly forbidden to characterize the engagements at Lexington and Concord), but of the defeat which would prove imminent if organization and respect for order were not brought about soon.

  If the Rebels were not taught their place.

  And it was persuasive, very, if only because it was the only story being told—until we got to Cambridge.

  On the morning of July 3, 1776, the event occurred that History says signaled our readiness as a country to stand up and fight against England. George Washington arrived in Cambridge. A spectacular event made all the more moving by the first documented display of the star-studded colonial flag.

  Documented, perhaps. But do the documents reveal that the flag was flown at half-mast? That when we arrived at Cambridge, there was absolutely nobody there to greet us? No military band regaling us with a perky tune. No crowds to greet the five horses, three generals (Washington, Schuyler, and Lee), three aides, and the escort of soldiers that at one point in the journey had ballooned to some five hundred strong—this despite John Adams’s assurances that all of Cambridge would greet us “with the pomp and circumstance of glorious war displayed.”