The Square Pegs

by Irving Wallace

  Then a more persistent visitor came calling. He attended Nancy once, and then a second time, and then again and again, until he asked for her hand. His name was Abraham Bishop. He was a university graduate, a Connecticut judge, a cosmopolite who had visited the Far East, and a Mason. Dexter has left us a picture of Abraham Bishop or A b, as he was wont to call him a picture that may be highly colored by a father’s distaste. “A b is the beast or Greater two leged Conekett boull short Neck boull head thik hare big sholders black Corlley hare he wants to be A god …” But the beastly, bullish, hairy, and self-assured Bishop presented a more attractive visage to vacant Nancy. Awed by his scholarship and glib tongue, prodded by her mother, she was eager to marry him. Only her father objected. Dexter suspected that Bishop was less interested in his “babey” than in his “tuns” of silver. “He being A fox and A old fox, he was after the graps…

  In the end the ladies won. But the marriage was a disaster, “I have bin in hell all the time more so sence Abraham bishup got in to my house …” the wretched Dexter wrote. Bishop took his bride to New Haven to live. His income was such that he required his father-in-law’s help. After two years Dexter complained that Bishop, as well as son Samuel and “my wife that was” had cost him $10,000. Bishop, impatient with his wife’s feeble mentality, cuffed her about continually. Once, while brutally beating her, he so injured her side that she was compelled to wear plasters on her body for three years. In despair, she began to drink, and finally lost her reason. She bore Bishop a child. When she had given way fully to alcoholism and insanity Bishop demanded a divorce. He obtained it, but not until he had cost his angry father-in-law “one tun of silver.” Pitiful Nancy, bruised, addicted to “likker,” and “Crasey,” returned with her offspring to Newburyport and became the charge of her distressed parent for the rest of his life.

  It is not inconceivable that Timothy Dexter, so beset, might have gone “Crasey,” too, had he not at this moment in his life found an outlet for his troubled brain. He was almost fifty when he took up his pen in earnest and became an author.

  Of course, motives other than mere escape brought him into literature. He still sought the respect of Newburyport society and thought to dazzle its members by his creative outpourings. More important, he had cast his eye, at last, on immortality. “Nearly every act of his apparent folly may be traced to one overpowering passion, uncontrolled by any natural or cultivated taste, though combined with considerable shrewdness: this passion was vanity,” Mrs. E. Vale Smith has stated.

  In earlier years, Dexter had enlightened Newburyport with an occasional letter to the editor. But by now he had lived much and suffered deeply, and he had wisdom in excess to impart. It is unfortunate that his style, original and uninhibited from the first, was marred in the beginning by the vandals who edited the Newburyport Impartial Herald and other journals. Actually, the Impartial Herald was published for a time by a friend and admirer, Edmund Blunt, who had raised its circulation from 70 to 700 in two years. Perhaps veneration for his forty-dollar printing press, which had once served Benjamin Franklin, convinced Blunt that he must punctuate and rewrite Dexter’s earliest ungrammatical effusions. Perhaps, too, Blunt did not wish to make an old friend appear the object of ridicule in the community though later, in Salem, Blunt would agree to print Dexter’s “unimitated and inimitable” master work, A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, without tampering with the text.

  There was some reticence in Dexter’s first offering to the Impartial Herald. “Mr. Printers, I hope my weak brothers won’t be disturbed about my scratching a little in the newspaper. I do it to learn myself to write and spell which I never knew how; I am now at leisure and a man of pleasure. I mean no hurt I let you know what I know without reading what I know only by experience Clear Nature has been my schoolmaster.” At various times Dexter discoursed on brotherly love, the human soul, a seven-foot African lion he was displaying in his back yard, the perfidy of Abraham Bishop, the wisdom of appointing Dexter the Emperor of the United States, female fashions, and the folly of entrusting public offices to men without means.

  Then suddenly, without warning, like a bolt from the blue, was published in the Impartial Herald what appeared to be Timothy Dexter’s valedictory to Newburyport:

  “It costs eight hundred dollars a year to support a watch in this town, and yet gentlemen’s windows are broken, fences pulled down and Cellars broken open, and much other misdemeanors done at night. Are the watch asleep, or are they afraid to detect those who are guilty of such practices? Boast not of it, if you call this Liberty and Equality… .

  “Now fellow citizens is it wisdom, is it policy, to use a man or men so shocking bad as to oblige them to leave the town where they paid one Dollar a day to support government?

  “A friend to good order, honor to whom it belongs, to great men a friend to all good citizens and honest men good bye.”

  Timothy Dexter was leaving Newburyport at last. He had been provoked to move, he said, by unrestrained youths, thieves, and ruffians who were disturbing his peace and destroying his property. Fie did not announce, though it was plainly evident, that he was tired of being ostracized by polite society and hurt by the rejection of his offer to pave the town’s main street. He had decided to go to a community where his originality and liberality might be appreciated and where his worldly goods would be protected. He purchased a vast country-estate in Chester, New Hampshire. He then disposed of the Tracy house at a profit. Early in 1796 he departed Newburyport for Chester. Early in 1797 he returned to stay. The year of absence had not been without its advantages. For the Dexter who returned was a nobler Dexter, far better equipped to fend off the disapproval of his Newburyport neighbors.

  What happened in Chester to alter Dexter’s outlook? Somehow, in his new location, the leather-dresser and man of commerce acquired nobility. One day he was the plebeian Dexter, the republican Dexter, the everyman’s Dexter and the next he was Lord Timothy Dexter of Chester. The origin of his title remains a mystery. Had he knighted himself? Or had he been knighted by the circle of sycophants who courted a man of wealth? The facts are not known. All that is known is that soon, in the public prints, Dexter was referring to himself as “the first Lord in Americake the first Lord Dexter made by the voice of hamsher state my brave fellows Affirmed it they gave me the titel & so let it goue for as much as it will fetch it wonte give me Any breade but take from me …” Evidently Lord Dexter was realistic about his peerage. It would give him no bread. On the contrary, the high station would be costly. But he would not shirk the responsibility. After all, the “voise of the peopel and I cant Help it” had elevated him.

  Yet even his rapid ascent to the peerage could not make him unaware of his antipathy toward Chester. A Baptist preacher in the new community directed a sermon and the threat of fire and brimstone at Dexter. Angered, Dexter walked out of the church. The tax collectors of New Hampshire, more persistent than those of Massachusetts, exacted one dollar a week from him for road improvements and twenty-four dollars for use of his carriages, and tried mightily to get their share of his “two Hundred wate of Silver.” The specter that was Mrs. Dexter was more visible and more verbal than ever. Her activity may be attributed to the knowledge that Dexter was having visitations from more earthly females. It is with difficulty that one pictures Dexter as Casanova. But there is evidence that during his New Hampshire year he reserved much of his wit, and some of his wealth, for unattached females. At Hampton Beach he once became romantically involved with an attached female, much to his regret. Her boy friend belabored Dexter with more than words. Finally, there was the unhappy altercation Dexter had with a member of the bar. According to Dexter, a lawyer-Dexter on any hurried journey, lay a supply of fireworks, a speaking trumpet, pipes and tobacco, and “a bibel to read and sum good songs.”

  The most curious and best-remembered addition to his landscape was yet to come. In 1801 Dexter conceived and announced his outdoor museum. It was to be dedicated to the late George Washington and
to his equals from the earliest dawn of history. It was to take the form of a series of statues of great personalities and symbolic figures, all carved of marble and life-sized. These representations would be distributed at the mansion’s entrance, on the front lawns, in the rear gardens, so that all who wished might see them plainly and appreciate being a part of the human family. “I will shoue the world one of the Grate Wonders of the world, in 15 months,” Dexter announced in the press, “if No man murders me in Dors or out of Dors.” No man murdered Dexter, and he proceeded with his plans. There would be, he said, “The 3 presidents, Doctor Franklin, John hen Cock, and Mr Hamilton and Rouffous King and John Jea, and 2 granedears on the top of the hous, 4 Lions below, I Eagel, is on the Coupulow, one Lamb to lay down with one of the Lions,—One Yonnecorne, one Dogg, Addam and Eave in the garden, one horse. The houll is not concluded on as yet Dexter’s Mouseum.”

  To execute the grand design Dexter hired an admirable artist and new friend, Joseph Wilson, who had carved figureheads and other decorations on sailing ships before arriving in Newburyport Dexter had previously tested Wilson with the development of the gold eagle that turned on the cupola. The result had satisfied him, and he regarded Wilson “A fine fellow.” However, Dexter did not let sentiment cloud his business sense. Knapp has it that Wilson received $15,000 for the task, but later research proves that the sum was $4,000. An architect, Ebenezer Clifford, was retained to assist the ship-carver.

  As the project neared preparation there was only one major change in its conception. Dexter had wanted marble, but Wilson insisted upon wood. Wilson argued that wood was more permanent. It was probably also much cheaper. In the end Dexter told his artist to go ahead with wood.

  The outdoor museum was completed in little more than a year. There were forty wooden images in all, and their diversity indicated that their patron was a man of catholic tastes. Scattered throughout the property, mostly on pedestals and pillars, stood, among others, Louis XVI, Venus, an anonymous preacher, Governor Gilman of New Hampshire, two grenadiers, Motherly Love, four lions and a lamb, John Hancock, Moses, one dog, Adam and Eve, George III, Horatio Nelson, Governor Strong of Massachusetts, Aaron Burr, an Indian chief, Napoleon Bonaparte, the Emperor of China, William Pitt, Toussaint L’Ouverture, and Benjamin Franklin.

  The four lions, symbols of international peace, guarded Dexter’s door. Above them rose an arch, supported by two columns, on which stood George Washington “father gorge with his hat on” flanked by John Adams, carrying a cane and facing the father of his country “as if thay was on sum politicks,” and President Thomas Jefferson, the “grat felosfer” grasping a scroll labeled “Constitution.” For the position at the head of his walk, near the fence and facing the street, Dexter reserved Wilson’s finest work of art. It was a life-sized statue of Timothy Dexter himself, mounted high on a pedestal and bearing the engraved inscription: “I am the first in the East, the first in the West, and the greatest philosopher in the Western World.”

  After the forty figures had been garishly painted, the Dexter mansion appeared less a residence than a rainbow. From the day the museum was completed, High Street was crowded with visitors from all New England, and eventually from all the East. The popular theory has it that Dexter erected this carnival with profit in mind. To reach his residence many tourists had to pay toll to cross the Essex Merrimack Bridge, In which Dexter was the largest shareholder, so they were contributing to his wealth. While Dexter was thus enriched, of course, money could not have been his primary motive. He was a sad and lonely man who wanted company and approval. The museum brought him company in excess. Whether it brought him approval is debatable.

  Though spectacular, the forty wooden figures that graced Dexter’s landscape were not the most interesting personalities to inhabit his royal domain. Inside the great house there was a more animate and more colorful menage. Even the ghost that was Mrs. Dexter, and the drunken Samuel and the drunken Nancy, were pallid when compared with the retainers Dexter had gathered under one roof.

  If King Arthur had his Merlin, Lord Dexter had his Madam Hooper. This crone, with a double set of teeth and a chicken for a companion, had sailed to America as the mistress of a British officer. With him she had gone through the privations of the Indian wars, and from him she had learned to fire a musket and brandish a broadsword. Finally abandoned, she had made her way to Newburyport. She had been fairly well educated, and so took up the profession of teaching. But few in Newburyport wanted to be taught. In desperation, she turned to fortunetelling. This was better, but ignominious, as many in the community thought her a witch. One day, by propitious chance, Dexter requested that she locate the thieves who were depleting his melon patch. It was the supreme test. Madam Hooper was ready for it. Muttering among her dream books and crude horoscopes and perhaps putting her ear to the ground in a district from which many vandals had been graduated she came up with the name of the culprit, thus endearing herself to Dexter for life. Promptly, accompanied by her chicken and her sorcery, she went to live in the great mansion as adviser to the master.

  When Madam Hooper died she was succeeded by Mary McCauley, a leathery, husky, brusque woman who had done laundry for her keep until she became a prominent fortuneteller in the vicinity of Lynn. Mrs. McCauley’s place in American history, as it turned out, would exceed even her employer’s. At sixteen Mary, or Molly, as she was known, married a young barber named John Hays. When he was called to serve the revolutionary cause she followed. At Monmouth, when Lee retreated before the redcoats and Mad Anthony Wayne fought back with fury, Molly left the safety of the other wives to invade the battlefield and relieve the American wounded with pitchers of water. Thereafter she was always Molly Pitcher. At Monmouth, too, when her husband was hit and gunners were scarce, she manned a cannon. After the war and Hays’s death, she married one George McCauley, who would not support her. She left him to support herself. Her fame as a seer was growing when Dexter made his off er. She moved into his dwelling, where, puffing a pipe and cussing like the veteran she was, she cheered him with her readings of astrology.

  Another in the household was William Burley, whom Dexter called The Dwarf. He was a thimble-brained jester, towering six feet seven inches in height. For a housekeeper Dexter employed a vast and aggressive Negro, Lucy Lancaster, daughter of an African prince. She became Dexter’s mainstay. She humored him, protected him, and understood him. During long periods she curbed his drinking and eccentricities. To visitors she was his apologist, insisting always that he was honest and good and that his follies were inspired by unemployment and a nervous temperament.

  But the most improbable of those who served Lord Dexter was Jonathan Plummer, a local fishmonger turned book peddler. Plummer, a stocky, bowlegged, eloquent creature, had tried to make his way as a preacher, pawnbroker, and eligible bachelor (he courted, successively, nine “vigorous and antiquated virgins”), before concentrating on the retailing of halibut. Eventually, he found that banned books and pamphlets dealing with pornography, murder, scandal, miracles, and atheism were in more demand than fish as food for the brain.

  Hiding these lurid works under fish and straw in a wheelbarrow, he made his way about Newburyport. Gradually, as he had difficulty supplying the demand for lively reading, he began to produce writings of his own. Though murderers and sex monsters were occasionally his subjects, he soon saw in Timothy Dexter a better subject.

  He penned a pamphlet in prose praising Dexter’s commercial abilities. This was not enough. In the winged words of poetry, perhaps, he could express his innermost feelings and touch the sensibilities of one so rich and remote. When Dexter returned from New Hampshire, Jonathan Plummer had “a congratulatory ode” waiting for him. Of the eleven stirring stanzas, the first two will suffice:

  Your Lordship’s welcome back again—

  Fair nymphs with sighs have mourn’d your staying

  So long from them and me your swain,

  And wonder’d at such long delaying;

  But n
ow you bless again our eyes,

  Our melting sorrow droops and dies.

  The town of Chester to a Lord

  Must seem a desert dull and foggy,

  A gloomy place—upon my word

  I think it dirty, wet and boggy:

  Far different from your Kingly seat,

  In good saint James his famous street.

  Understandably, Dexter could not resist. With the lure of a small regular salary, use of his premises and table, and a new red suit, Dexter acquired Plummer as his full-time poet laureate. Plummer enjoyed his new post and was inspired to excessive productivity. Only one thing rankled. The red suit had not been delivered. Plummer blamed this lapse on the fact that Dexter was suffering from the gout. “The painful disease, in a great measure, destroyed his Lordship’s relish for poetry,” Plummer noted. Eventually, the gout was overcome, and Plummer had his suit. It was not red as he wished, but something far more imaginative, as his patron wished. The cocked hat, cloak, frock suit, and buckled shoes were black, but sprinkled with silver stars that sparkled and danced. In this silk-lined uniform, with a parsley on his hat and a gold-headed cane in his hand, Plummer went out to hawk his most grateful and airy poesy. This time the rhyme was fifteen stanzas, but a generous sampling will convey its tone:

  Lord Dexter is a man of fame;

  Most celebrated is his name;

  More precious far than gold that’s pure,

  Lord Dexter shine forever more.