The Square Pegs

by Irving Wallace

  His noble house, it shines more bright

  Than Lebanon’s most pleasing height;

  Never was one who stepped therein

  Who wanted to come out again.

  Lord Dexter, thou, whose name alone

  Shines brighter than king George’s throne;

  Thy name shall stand in books of fame,

  And princes shall thy name proclaim.

  His mighty deeds they are so great,

  He’s honored both in church and state.

  And when he comes all must give way,

  To let Lord Dexter bear the sway.

  When Dexter dies all things shall droop,

  Lord East, Lord West, Lord North shall stoop,

  And then Lord South with pomp shall come,

  And bear his body to the tomb.

  In heaven may he always reign,

  For there’s no sorrow, sin, nor pain;

  Unto the world I leave the rest

  For to pronounced Lord Dexter blest.

  What made Dexter take up his pen again on his own behalf was not his lack of faith in the immortality of Plummer’s verse, but simply that he was bored. In a few weeks, unhampered by stops, he scratched out the twenty-four pages of A Pickle for the Knowing Ones. When he wanted a printer, there was only one he could trust. Edmund Blunt had been the editor of the Newburyport Impartial Herald when Dexter had been a contributor, and now Blunt owned a prosperous printing-shop in Salem. Blunt still visited his favorite author. As late as 1853 he remembered, in a letter to Mrs. Smith, his friend Dexter, “with whom, in his own summer-house, on his coffin, decorated with decanters, &c., I have taken many a glass of wine, with a company of cavalry to which I then belonged.” Undoubtedly, they discussed the book. In the spring of 1802 Blunt brought it forth.

  Despite a naked press, Dexter maintained sturdy confidence in his brain child to the very end. It was, he told an editor, “A Littel mousement to mankind at Large … I—I me T Dexter of N Port Desires Any man or men on the gloube to Exseede me as to what I have Rote in my Littel book …”

  None was tempted by his challenge. In literature, in originality, no man exceeded him.

  With the book, his museum, and his retainers he reached his peak. There was little time left. He would have to stand by what he had accomplished. He was fifty-five years of age. The only surviving portrait of him, “engraved from the life” by James Akin, of Newburyport, was done in this period. It was said to be a startling likeness. In it Dexter is seen strolling with a small, hairless black dog, something that might be a cross between dachshund and chihuahua. His Lordship wears a broad, tasseled cocked hat, a white tie and shirt, a wrinkled waistcoat, a long, blue topcoat, breeches secured just above the ankles with ribbons, and comfortable-looking black shoes. He is carrying a gold-headed cane. His graying hair hangs below his ears, and his brows are bushy. His eyes seem large, alert, mischievous. The nose is long and thin, as is the upper lip, which is cast downward in the manner of the cynic. The jaw is determined. The arms are long, and the hands seem the hands of an artist rather than those of a laborer. The feet are large.

  His work was done and the days were long. Daily, followed by his porcine dog, he took his constitutional within the boundaries of his estate. Often he paused to banter with his workmen. Sometimes he halted to contemplate the oddities of his museum, and when the spirit moved him, he eradicated the name of some celebrity and replaced it with another. Occasionally, he invited visitors to share the fruits of his garden and enjoy his wooden images. When the visitors were pretty damsels they were soon damsels in distress, for Dexter was frequently inflamed and attempted “improper liberties with his female visitors.” In recounting these instances, Knapp added: “When disappointed of his prey, he would rave about his house and curse his family for joining in league against him. How wretched is the life of a dotard, in the pursuit of what he calls pleasure!”

  More often, as he suffered the gout and other assorted ills, he spent his days indoors. He addressed the local press and the papers in Boston with offers to sell his mansion and museum, which he estimated to be worth $25,000, at a bargain price. In 1806 the Probate Court determined the value at $12,000. He supervised and added to his collection of watches, clocks, and their works. The timepieces ticked and clattered in every room of the great house. Dexter regarded his clocks as living shadows, railed against them when they ran down, and often wished mankind could be wound up like them. Many visitors desired to see his house and converse with its illustrious owner. Dexter preferred the company of old friends who drank with him, though he was not averse to receiving youths who addressed him as Lord or to entertaining foreign newcomers who professed to be noblemen. In one case, a peace advocate of Portsmouth named Ladd, eager to see Dexter in his natural habitat, pretended that he was a peer recently arrived from England. Dexter was most gracious. He was concerned about only one thing. What had the King of England been saying about him recently?

  It was very late. Perhaps he had a premonition, or perhaps it was only the all-too-human desire to know what others would say about him after he was gone, that inspired his last eccentric gesture. He announced a “mock founnel.” As it turned out, the mock funeral was staged with full cast and accessories. It lacked only the leading man. Dexter sent invitations to friends and acquaintances throughout the state. He tried to obtain the services of a minister. Failing in that, he hired a Dr. Strong to officiate and deliver a eulogy. Learning that a Lord North was in the vicinity, Dexter invited him to serve as a pallbearer, then christened his other “grand pallholders” Lord South, Lord East, and Lord West.

  Half of Newburyport, three thousand persons by Dexter’s estimate, lined the thoroughfares to watch the funeral procession. At the sight of the vacant coffin, Dexter was moved to report, “there was much Cring.” Would it be disrespectful to suggest that there was much crying because the coffin was vacant? As the procession marched to his tomb, there to deposit the empty casket, Dexter watched from an upstairs window. The solemnities over, the mourners poured into the residence to partake of a grand feast and wine. The resurrected host did not appear at once. Loud screams and wails from a far quarter of the house revealed Lady Dexter in agony. Her Lord stood over her, severely caning her for having failed to shed a tear at the funeral.

  In the autumn of 1806, in his fifty-ninth year, Timothy Dexter became very ill. For forty-eight hours he was semiconscious and incoherent, and on October 26, 1806, he was dead.

  His will, written seven years before, was generous and sensible. His estate amounted to $35,027, still considerable after the inroads made upon it by Samuel Dexter, Abraham Bishop, and the museum. Out of this sum he provided for his family and relatives. To a friend who was a teacher he left two shares of Essex Merrimack Bridge stock, as well as silver spoons and gold buttons. To Maiden, whence he had come, and to Newburyport, where he had risen to greatness, he left liberal donations for the impoverished. His last request was that he be buried in the beloved tomb in his garden.

  All of his requests were granted save the last. The Newburyport board of health determined that such a burial might be unsanitary. He was laid to rest in the attractive Old Hill Burying Ground. A plain stone was placed at his grave. Upon it was chiseled a reticent inscription:

  In memory of Timothy Dexter

  who died Oct. 26, 1806, Ætatis 60.

  He gave liberal Donations

  For the support of the Gospel;

  For the benefit of the Poor,

  And for other benevolent purposes.

  Was this recital all that was to be remembered? Surely his closest ones would perpetuate his name. But two of them did not survive him long, and the third was hopelessly out of touch with reality. Samuel Dexter died on July 20, 1807, Elizabeth Dexter on July 3, 1809. Nancy Dexter lived on in the great house alone even after it had been rented out as a hotel and tavern, until her merciful passing in 1851. Her daughter by Bishop, Dexter’s only grandchild, grew to maturity, married well, but died in her y
outh. She was the last of the Dexter line.

  What else was left? The graven images? Their lives were all too brief. In the terrible tempest of 1815 that swept across Newburyport, most of the forty wooden statues were toppled to the ground, many of them disfigured by the storm. With what consent Nancy could give, they were placed on public auction. A number of them brought, sad to relate, only a dollars,” and the others were consigned to a bonfire, among them the majestic representation of Lord Dexter himself, which had not brought a single offer.

  All that remained, and these only until 1850, were Adams, Washington, and Jefferson, weatherbeaten under the royal arch. With Nancy’s death, the mansion was sold to Dr. E. G. Kelley, a man of conservative if inartistic tastes, who removed the three presidents and fed them to “the flames.” He, in turn, sold the residence to George H. Corliss, who restored it to the respectability it had known under Jonathan Jackson in pre-Dexterian days. Later, the residence was converted into a public library. Its varied proprietors had sentiment enough to leave untouched one last symbol of Dexter’s glory. In a federal guidebook to Massachusetts, published in 1937, there is brief mention of the Jackson-Dexter house at 201 High Street. It gives passing notice to Dexter’s greatness: “The ornate wood-encased chimneys, the watch-tower surmounted by a gilded eagle, the columns flanking the door, give an aspect of eccentric charm to this old dwelling… .” It was the golden eagle alone, the brave bird that had once soared as high as Dexter, that survived the depredations of the pedestrian-minded.

  Of Dexter’s personal friends only one remained true to his memory. Jonathan Plummer, in his star-spangled livery, followed his patron’s death with a broadside entitled Something New. In it he concluded that Dexter’s kindness and charity outweighed his faults and that in another world he would rest beside “the glorious company of Abraham, Isaac and Jacob.” Soon even Plummer had to forsake Dexter. For within a year he was peddling a work, of which he was the author, entitled Parson Pidgin: or, Holy Kissing … Occasioned by a Report that Parson Pidgin Had Kissed a Young Woman. Thirteen years later, suffering a loss of his mental powers, the poet laureate went on a hunger strike and expired.

  All the magnificence of Lord Timothy Dexter was gone except the “Littel book.” Perhaps it was enough.

  A NOTE ON

  Principal Sources

  ALMOST all of the American eccentrics in this book were prolific writers. And, with the exception of Norton, who limited his literary contributions to the daily press, and Symmes, whose articles were not compiled until after his death, all of them wrote books. The total product of their uninhibited, fanciful, and highly original pens would certainly make one of the most bizarre libraries in existence. For here, on a single shelf, might be. found a slender volume in defense of suicide, another entirely devoid of punctuation, another castigating anti-Masons, and yet another proclaiming Shakespeare an imposter and an idiot.

  Yet, without this library of oddity, it would have been difficult for me to have undertaken the research and writing of this book. For my best source of information on American eccentrics remained the creative works of the eccentrics themselves. These works are too many to list in detail, but I should like at least to mention the handful that was most illuminating in helping me portray their authors: The Philosophy of the Plays of Shakespeare Unfolded, by Delia Bacon, London, 1857; Euthanasia, by James A. Harden-Hickey, New York, 1894; Our Writers, by James A. Harden-Hickey, Paris, 1887; The Symmes Theory of Concentric Spheres, by John Cleves Symmes, Louisville, 1878; An American Merchant in Europe, Asia and Australia, by George Francis Train, New York, 1857; My Life in Many States and in Foreign Lands, by George Francis Train, New York, 1902.

  Besides reading the writings of the eccentrics, I spent delightful and amazed hours and days, over a period of twelve years, in the libraries of Los Angeles, New York, London, and Paris, reading letters, diaries, and various published material written by those who had known the eccentrics in person or had previously studied them.

  Contemporary newspapers served me well. Though the news and feature stories were often biased and inaccurate, and much care had to be taken in evaluating them, the wealth of firsthand, living, breathing detail in each account gave reality to characters who sometimes seemed almost fictional. The newspapers I consulted ranged from Le Triboulet in Paris (files from 1878 to 1883) to the Tribune in New York (files from 1893 to 1898).

  Articles in popular and scholarly periodicals were equally helpful. Of the great number that I examined, I found the following particularly useful: an article by W. E. Woodward, The American Mercury, New York, September 1927; an anonymous book review, American Quarterly Review, Philadelphia, March and June 1827; an article by P. Clark, The Atlantic Monthly, Boston, April 1873; an article by Robert Ernest Cowan, California Historical Society Quarterly, October 1923; articles by Wilbur Glenn Voliva, Leaves of Healing, Zion City, May 1930; an article by John Weld Peck, Ohio Archaeological and Historical Quarterly, Volume 18, 1909; an article by David Warren Ryder, Plain Talk Magazine, Washington, D.C., January 1928; articles by William Cleaves Todd, New England Historical and Genealogical Register, Boston, Volumes XL and XLI, 1886, and Volume XLIV, 1890; an article by Harold Frederic, The Saturday Review, August 3, 1895.

  While the literature of American eccentricity is extremely limited, I did manage to find several hundred books that discussed a few fully, but most in passing the unusual personalities who interested me. Of these books, a small number proved especially valuable. To their authors and publishers, my grateful thanks: Delia Bacon, by Theodore Bacon, Boston, 1888; Pilgrims Through Space and Time, by J. O. Bailey, New York, 1947; Real Soldiers of Fortune, by Richard Harding Davis, New York, 1912; The Great Cryptogram, by Ignatius Donnelly, Chicago, 1888; Recollections of Seventy Years, by Mrs. John Farrar, Boston, 1866; Jewish Pioneers and Patriots, by Lee M. Friedman, New York, 1943; Our Old Home, by Nathaniel Hawthorne, New York, 1907; Uncommon Scold, by George Stuyvesant Jackson, Boston, 1937; Emperor Norton, by Allen Stanley Lane, Caldwell, Idaho, 1939; Lord Timothy Dexter, by J. P. Marquand, New York, 1925; Books in Red and Black, by Edmund Lester Pearson, New York, 1923; The Life and Times of Anne Royall, by Sarah Harvey Porter, Cedar Rapids, Iowa, 1909; The Terrible Siren, by Emanie Sachs, New York, 1928; Uncommon Americans , by Don C. Seitz, Indianapolis, 1925; The English Eccentrics, by Edith Sitwell, Stockholm, 1947; History of Newburyport, by Mrs. E. Vale Smith, Boston, 1854; The Nine Lives of Citizen Train, by Willis Thornton, New York, 1948; Mr. Shakespeare of the Globe, by Frayne Williams, New York, 1941.

  Irving Wallace

  was born in Chicago in 1916 and raised in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Since he sold his first article (he was fifteen), he has been a working writer, and he now always has several book projects in hand in addition to motion-picture and magazine work. He somehow manages also to find free time for his other interests, which include art, literature, sports, politics, and criminology. His enduring fascination with bizarre personalities in history led to his writing The Fabulous Originals, his first and immediately successful book, as well as to the writing of The Square Pegs. Mr. Wallace lives in Hollywood, is married, and is the father of two children.