The Square Pegs

by Irving Wallace

  Emboldened by his success in “stay stuff,” Dexter embarked on even more spectacular risks. There were his shipments to the West Indies, an influx of oddity that dazed and delighted the merchants of Havana. “I Dreamed,” he wrote, “of worming pans three nites that thay would doue in the west inges I got no more than fortey two thousand—put them in nine vessels for difrent ports that tuck good hold I cleared sevinty nine per sent the pans thay made yous of them for Coucking …”

  Long before central heating and electric blankets, warming pans were devices employed by New Englanders to heat their glacial beds. These covered pans were filled with hot coals and placed between the bed sheets. They were, needless to say, designed for climes of low Fahrenheit. Dexter’s purchase of 42,000 of them for export to the West Indies began as a crude joke. Some merchants’ clerks goaded him into the investment. The Captain, under charter to Dexter, must have been shaken by the ruinous cargo he had been hired to transport to the tropics. But once again economic history adjusted itself to Dexter’s innovations. The arrival of the warming pans in the Indies coincided with a production war between two giant molasses-makers. Each was in need of any utensil that might speed his output. At once, Dexter’s Captain saw the light. Or perhaps the light he saw was only a reflection of Dexter’s shining creativity. According to Knapp, the Captain contemplated his unlikely cargo, then being “a young and ingenious man,” he “took off the covers, and had handsome handles put to them, and called them skimmers, and the pan part ladles. He then had them introduced into a large sugar-making establishment, and they were much approved of, as the best machinery of their kind invented.” The warming pans in the disguise of ladles sold at 79 per cent profit, and were used in the Indies mainly for skimming the scum off cane syrup as it boiled in huge vats. Some of the reconverted pans found their way to private families, who used them to fry fish over open fires. It is thought that Dexter made $6,000 in this venture.

  Assured that the West Indies were a soft touch, Dexter next bombarded the native population with Bibles. “I bort twelve per sent under halfe pris they Cost fortey one sents Each bibbel—twenty one thousand,” he admitted. “I put them into twentey one vessels for the west inges and sent a text that all of them must have one bibel in every familey or if not thay would goue to hell …” Whether or not this deluge of Good Books, with the accompanying text promising hell and fire to reluctant customers, was bought up entirely in the West Indies or distributed elsewhere is not known. We have only Dexter’s word that he profited by 100 per cent or the sum of $47,000 by his missionary zeal.

  If the Bibles were wholly a speculative whim, the woolen mittens probably were not. There was much hilarity in certain Newburyport quarters when Dexter shipped his mittens to the sweltering Indies, though veteran merchants thought it anything but strange. For this was a time when a four-way trade existed among America, Russia, China, and India, with the West Indies serving as the exchange counter. Vessels out of St. Petersburg brought canvas hemp, iron, and linen to the Indies, where New Englanders accepted them in trade for rum, tobacco, coffee, and flour. Dexter’s mittens did not remain long in the heat of a Caribbean warehouse. They were bought up by a merchantman headed for the cold Baltic regions, where they were disposed of in Russia.

  Perhaps Dexter’s most profitable deal with the Indies, in terms of percentage rather than of gross receipts, was his less-publicized feline transaction. Newburyport abounded in stray cats. Dexter learned that sailors often took them aboard ship as pets or to chase rats and then disposed of them for cash in the Caribbean islands, where a shortage of cats existed. Immediately Dexter began to collect and crate them. He sent his squealing cargo to the Indies, where large warehouse owners purchased them some for as much as five dollars a head to ward off destructive vermin.

  Dexter’s only recorded transaction of an unusual nature with the Old World resulted in his most memorable achievement. A practical joker, it is said, gravely suggested to him that there was a need for coal in Newcastle, England. Dexter was neither widely read nor widely learned. He could not know that Newcastle was a leading coal center of the world, and he could not have heard that familiar phrase of ridicule, “like carrying coals to Newcastle.” With childish innocence, Dexter acted. He ordered immense quantities of Virginia soft coal loaded on his ships and carried off to Newcastle. Under any normal circumstances, the reaction of the Newcastle citizenry at the moment of the cargo’s arrival might have made an unforgettable picture. But Dexter’s coal arrived at the precise moment when Newcastle was paralyzed by a coal strike. The mines were empty, the miners unemployed, and all production was at a standstill. Not only Newcastle, but also all the vicinity surrounding, was suffering a shortage of fuel. Bids for Dexter’s cargo were enormous. His profits added vastly to his “tuns” of silver.

  When he wrote his little book, a tome not noteworthy for its modesty, Dexter allowed himself to appear humble only once. “I found,” he wrote, “I was very luckky in spekkelation …” History blindly accepted this autobiographical verdict. But again, as in the case of the Continental currency, was it all luck?

  William C. Todd, the great dissenter, felt that Dexter exaggerated, possibly even invented, the more incredible of his commercial transactions to promote the legend of luck and thus irritate his neighbors. Todd, contending that many of the Newburyport eccentric’s ventures could only have been “lies or jokes,” revealed that 342 tons of whalebone might have cost Dexter anywhere between $60,000 and $2,000,000, depending on the year the purchase occurred. Todd did not think that Dexter had that kind of money and said that if he did, the demand for corset stays would not have absorbed his whalebone, for very few women dressed in the height of Parisian fashion.

  Todd regarded the warming-pan episode as even more improbable. “No hardware was made in this country until a little more than half a century ago [or about 1830] and all the warming pans in use came from Great Britain. The amount named would have cost $150,000, to be paid for in hard money. … Is it possible, rating his intelligence very low, that, if he had attempted such a speculation, he would not have been persuaded of its folly long before he could have executed it?” Furthermore, Todd thought the warming pans ill adapted to straining molasses. “Did any visitor to the West Indies ever see or hear of one of those 42,000 warming pans?”

  Todd assailed the supposed Bible exportation with even more fervor. Obviously, the Bibles had been printed in English. Who would buy them in lands where only Spanish was read? Besides, weren’t the West Indies Roman Catholic, and didn’t they have enough Holy Books of their own? Next, Dexter’s shipment of mittens came under scholarly assault. Why would Russians need American mittens? They could buy their own home product more cheaply, for both wool and labor were cheaper in Russia than in America. As to the business of the cats and the coals to Newcastle, these Todd discreetly ignored.

  While Todd’s argument against Dexter’s veracity is often devastating, other contemporary evidence supports the merchant-jester. Knapp remembered and recorded the incident of the warming pans. It is unlikely that he would have done so if the transaction had not occurred. An anonymous clergyman, writing Dexter’s obituary in the Newburyport Impartial Herald a few days after his death, admitted: “The fortunate and singular manner of his speculations, by which he became possessed of a handsome property, are well known, and his selling a cargo of warming-pans to the W. Indies, where they were converted into molasses-ladles, and sold to a good profit, is but one of the most peculiar.” Even Mrs. E. Vale Smith, who had no affection for her recent neighbor, conceded the occurrence of the incidents of the warming pans and the woolen mittens. Nor did she credit his success to luck. “We see no evidence of folly, but rather shrewd management, and cunning reticence to cover it; as it cannot possibly be supposed, that with vessels constantly arriving at Newburyport from the West Indies, and with cargoes from the North of Europe, he did not know that the one was a warm country and the other cold. No doubt, he knew the use to which his warming-pans
were to be applied, before they left the wharf… .”

  Though strange, unlettered, ostentatious, Dexter was not unintelligent. His craftiness and trickery were well known. He was the well-informed fool. He always learned the true value of an article and the possibilities of its use before speculating in it. Then he moved swiftly and audaciously, often trying to monopolize a single product, though, toward the end, his competitors resisted selling to him for fear his endorsement would put the product in demand. At the peak of his commercial career he frequented his wine cellar more and more often, quaffing deeply of rum and brandy. But he made it a policy to terminate all his buying and selling before the noon hour. This was because he never drank in the morning when he did business, and he never did business in the afternoon when he drank. The Dexter fortune was founded on sobriety and a hang-over.

  Much of his business activity was less eccentric than the warming pans or Bibles, but certainly as profitable as they. He invested heavily in real estate. He backed homesteading in frontier Ohio, rented his stables for construction of carding machines to be used in the first woolen mill in America, and planned (possibly even erected) factories to manufacture cheap clay pipes of his own design.

  One of Dexter’s most conservative business acts, but one which was to play a great role in encouraging his future eccentricity, was his investment in the Essex Merrimack or Deer Island Bridge. Until 1793 travelers and farmers from the north entered Newburyport by crossing the Merrimack River on ferryboats. But the ferries were overcrowded. A company was formed to construct a toll bridge over the river at the point where a small island, called Deer Island, stood. A stock offering was made public. Sixty-three citizens bought stocks in the enterprise. With one hundred shares in his name, Dexter was the largest single stockholder.

  On the Fourth of July holiday of that year, when many gathered at a tavern on Deer Island to celebrate the newly opened bridge overhead, Dexter appeared, accompanied by family and exuding good cheer. Inspired, perhaps, by the proximity of beverages and a few well-wishers, he mounted a tavern table to deliver an impromptu address. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he said, “this day, the eighteenth year of our glorious independence commences. Justice, order, commerce, agriculture, the sciences and tranquillity reign triumphant in these united and happy states. America is the asylum for the afflicted, persecuted, tormented sons and daughters of Europe. Our progress towards the glorious point of perfection is unparalleled in the annals of mankind. Permit me, then, my wife and jolly souls, to congratulate you on this joyful occasion. Let our deportment be suitable for the joyful purpose for which we are assembled. Let good nature, breeding, concord, benevolence, piety, understanding, wit, humor, punch and wine grace, bless, adorn and crown us henceforth and forever. Amen.”

  This happy speech and the festive occasion that prompted it might serve to lull the unsuspecting student of Dexter’s life. For the times were not happy times for Dexter, and the two years that followed were not festive. Though by enterprise and daring he had gained much wealth and solidified his financial position, lie had made no inroads upon Newburyport society. To the oldest inhabitant, he was still an irksome, odd intruder. For one thing, he drank too much, and when he drank he talked too much, and when he talked he boasted of his merchandising feats. For another thing, in a community of excessive piety, he was confusingly irreligious.

  In 1775, when still a leather-dresser, he had been converted by a housekeeper in his hire. This was his own admission. To what he had been converted he did not reveal. When he was advanced in years, he turned on the clergy. They were “gokbey handed preasts Deakens gruntters whimers” that is to say, jockey-handed priests, deacons, grunters, whiners. Furthermore, “mankind and woman kind is in posed upon all over the world more or less hy preast craf o for shame o for shame I pittey them …” Occasionally, he relented. He gave Saint Paul’s Church one hundred pounds for improvements and he gave the Second Presbyterian Society a magnificent bell upon which was engraved: “The gift of Timothy Dexter Esq.” Sometimes he even received members of the clergy. Once, when a clergyman visited him and offered up a prayer, Dexter solemnly heard it out, then turned to his son and said: “Sam, wasn’t that a damned good prayer?”

  Periodically Dexter tried to win the affection of his fellows by means of donations to the community. Besides his church gifts, he repaired roads that were properly the responsibility of the government, and he willed $2,000 to Newburyport “for the benefit of such of the poor of the town, as are most necessitous.” Incidentally, the interest earned by the $2,000 was, at least until very recently, being used to aid the indigent. But even in his charity Dexter somehow managed to antagonize. He offered to pave all of High Street, a work sorely required and involving great expense, if the town would change the name of the thoroughfare to Dexter Street. The city fathers said nay. Again, Dexter offered to build a large brick market-house in the center of town if it would bear the name Dexter Hall. Once more the city fathers said nay, but this time with anger.

  Deeply affronted, Dexter withdrew to the bosom of his family. Here, too, there was lack of hospitality. At his hearth he found small solace and certainly no peace. His wife, Elizabeth, of uneven temper and unending verbosity, was a thorn in his flesh. From the day of his first absurd speculation in depreciated currency, she had opposed his gambles. That he was proved right and she wrong made matters no better. Resenting his manner of investments, his mode of living, his grandiose schemes, his predilection for pretty young wenches, and, eventually, his affection for the improbable servants and friends who were to enrich his later years, she descended into the role of senior nag.

  From the day of their invasion of the Tracy residence, the Dexters were permanently embattled. Dexter stood his wife’s insults so long, and then stood them no more. Did he leave her or divorce her or eliminate her by violence, as any normal man might have done? No, for Dexter possessed a creative turn of mind. On the day of decision he simply turned Elizabeth Frothingham Dexter, mate, into a ghost. Henceforth, for the most part, he would ignore her actual existence as a person and treat her as an apparition. To strangers he would refer to her as “Mrs. Dexter, the ghost that was my wife.” It must be remarked that the wraithlike Mrs. Dexter was the most vocal shade in the annals of the supernatural and possibly, the most vigorous in a long line of ghosts, for she continued to haunt her husband’s residences until he passed into the phantom world to which he had relegated her. With unblushing heartiness, she managed to outlive him by three years.

  Dexter’s male heir, Samuel, was no less disappointing. But Dexter never gave up on his son, who was generously permitted to retain his corporeal existence. As a youngster pampered and spoiled, Samuel tried to buy the friendship and protection of schoolmates with favors. Exposed to education at home and abroad, he remained ignorant. His head, according to one who observed him, was “stored with nothing that was useful or ornamental.” In maturity he was possessed of impressive physique, but little wit. He spent money with reckless abandon, and after he discovered the pleasures of the bottle, his life became one lingering dissipation. The fault was not his, of course, as Knapp has sternly pointed out. “If he had been fortunate enough to have a sober and discreet father … feeble as he was, something might have been made of him.”

  Dexter made one effort to introduce his son to the world of commerce. He charged Samuel with the transport and disposal of a shipment to Europe. Upon arrival at his port of call Samuel indulged in drink and games of chance and was forced to give up the entire shipment to pay his debts. This was the end of Samuel’s business career. Thereafter he was confined to quarters in Newburyport and spent much of his time keeping his father company in the wine cellar. Once, a year or two before Dexter’s death, when father, son, and the ghost that was Mrs. Dexter lived in a finer home in Newburyport, the two men emerged from an alcoholic bout to find a tourist on the street staring up at their residence. Usually Dexter had no objections to voyeurism. But on this occasion, possibly, he had drunk too
much and was in an ugly mood. He grabbed a musket, shoved it at Samuel, and ordered his son to prove himself. Samuel for once displayed good sense: he objected. His father darkly threatened him. Still Samuel refused to play sniper. In a rage Dexter took back the rifle, aimed it shakily, and fired. The bullet missed. The tourist, more furious than frightened, sped off to the Ipswich jail some twelve miles distant, and summoned the law. Dexter and son were brought before a magistrate. While Samuel was exonerated of attempted murder, Dexter was heavily fined. He refused to pay the fine. He was immediately clapped into the Ipswich jail. There he sat brooding for two months, martyred and stubborn, while his heir had the wine cellar to himself. When martyrdom wore thin, Dexter paid his fine and rejoined his son.

  If Samuel was Dexter’s pride only in conviviality, his younger daughter Nancy was his fondest hope in every way. She was comely, docile, and mentally retarded. “She blossomed for a while, a pretty but entirely vapid child with none of the mental adornments one anticipates in a nice young lady,” wrote Knapp. She was the apple of Dexter’s eye and his one domestic comfort. He dreaded the day she would depart his house for one of her own. For she was much courted. Young gentlemen came calling regularly, no doubt attracted by her beauty as well as by her father’s widely advertised wealth. But suitors rarely returned for a second look. Her good prospects apparently could not overcome her lack of intellect. Dexter was not dissatisfied. The disembodied Mrs. Dexter, however, was much annoyed. She wanted a good match. Nancy wanted nothing. She was Still Life incarnate.