Q. Do you ever see anything of any of them, Del?
A. Nope. Nope. They don’t push it. And we don’t push it.
This was perhaps wise of Mr. Theobald Delafont De Brooks who had, anyway, a few other stories to tell. Not many.
Story Number One. When TDD’s grandfather was a student in the seventh grade at the old Governor Daniel Tompkins School (long obliterated), who should make a visit to said school but old T. D. himself: see an officious principal shove Del’s grandfather forward, Mr. President, here is a namesake of yours! Well, you don’t get to be President by asking too many dumb questions and so all that old T. D. said was, “I believe we may be related, then.” “I believe we may, sir.” Old T. D. grinned, made feint of offering the boy a cigar, and, amidst the genial laughter, briskly shook hands with him, and passed on along.
Story Number Two. Del’s father did have the courage to send a letter beginning Dear Cousin Grosvenor congratulating GDD on his first election: back came another letter, from the same mold and form as all replies to all such letters, but beginning—mind you, mind you—Dear Cousin Delafont. Explain that, would you. They knew—almost spooky, as you might say.
In neither case: No invitation to come boating or swimming at Muskrat Sump. No invitation to go golfing or riding at Parkill Ridge.
Oh well. Take what you can get. Hope for the Big Chance. Keep your powder dry. And—say?—don’t knock it. On the strength of the Story Number One, Theobald De Brooks the distant, floated into a job offered by an uncle of the boy standing next to him during the handshake. And on the strength of the letter (framed) D. James De Brooks floated into a job given him by the local Commiteeman: not much of a job, but it kept them in groceries and off Relief. See?
Maybe at one time they had been the poor relations. But for a long, long time, they hadn’t even been that. Had Del’s dad been merely boasting, swaggering, in giving his son the names, the given names, of both the presidential De Brookses? Or had he merely given what he had to give—
Were there any other family anecdotes? There were no other family anecdotes. Were there, then, any family traditions …? any, even, family words or phrases, such as almost every family has? Well…this expression: More money than six patroons… Theo. Del. De Brooks’s grandfather sometimes used to say that. And, actually, for quite a while, the grandson had taken it for granted that a patroon must be a rich Irishman! Later he learned, long later, that a patroon had been a Hudson Valley landowner, a sort of squire, with a land-grant from the old Dutch or English governments. And this expression: did someone say, Say, guess what I found? a family answer was, the spook box! No explanation came with that. And this expression (and a little bit more): If the family was having a hot-dog roast or toasting marshmallows in the backyard (the barbecue had yet to cross the Mississippi) and the fire didn’t at first or at second burn too well, see Grandpa De B. grub for a cigar- or cigarette-butt or even a pinch of pipe-tobacco, stamp his foot, and say, with an air of mock solemnity something that sounded like Skah-ootch! and cast the bit of tobacco on the fire. And the fire did always seem to burn better. Once: Theo. Del De B.: “Grandpa, what does Skah-ootch mean?” Grandpa (once) “That’s what the pow-wow man used to say.” “Grandpa, who was the—” Mrs. De Brooks: “Pa, you are going to burn that frankfurter!” A low-scale squabble, but after that it (the trick) was seldom done. A few times, if an electric light flickered or the old vacuum-tube radio misbehaved, the boy did actually stamp his foot and cry “the magic word” and sometimes it did work. But his Mother didn’t like feet being stamped in the house. So he quit doing it.
And the funny old yellow brick “from the old house in the Bowery”? Vanished. Dusty old thing. Forget it.
And don’t think, either, that it was all peaches and cream and little anecdotes (even what little there were of them), having a famous Name. Names. For one thing: If you’re so much, whutta ya doin’ here? If your name is De Brooks, why ain’t chew rich? How often, merely to answer, What’s your name? was to collect a sneer, a scowl, a jeer, jibe, explicit insult, sometimes—more than once—a poke in the ribs? Often. There was an army sergeant who had made his life a living hell, and—Ya don’t like it? Write t’ GDD! Well…doubtless there had been people who had hated George Washington… Millard Fillmore, for that matter.
Once, Theo (actually, he had more often been called Baldy) did put the question to his old man. “How come all we’ve got are the names?”
At once he saw that his father well knew the meaning of the question and only pretended his, “Huh? Whuddaya mean?”
“They’re famous. We’re not famous. They got money. We haven’t got no—any—money. They’re up on top. We’re down at the bottom. How…come…?
A weary expression. A sigh. “I dunno, Theo. I just don’t know. How’d I know? Maybe one of us married the servant girl. Maybe one of us was a horse thief. Maybe we’re illegitimate, or something. And I’ll tell ya somethin’ else, sonny. My great-great-grandmother? She was a cousin to Commodore Aurelius Vandervelt. And it never even got none of us a job shovelin’ coal on the old East Coast Steam Boat Line. They say that once she went to the Old Man’s wife’s funeral. And at the, ah, reception? They wouldn’t even give her a glass of sherry. Said, ‘No, this is just for the family.’ And so she just turned around and went home. Big people don’t like little people, and if they got the same name? seems like they like ‘em even less. The, uh, names? Well…hold onto ’em. Who knows…”
And, before turning back to his newspaper, he added, “You’re entitled to them, anyway.”
So.
There had in those days been someone, at least someone, to whom the matter had meant something; his high school teacher, the virginal Miss Vark: “Are you planning to go to college, Theobald?”
“No money.”
And Miss Vark had explained to him that there was a certain scholarship, he had long ago forgotten its name, “for the benefit of native-born American boys being of Holland Dutch descent.” “I think,” said Miss Vark, “that the part about the being of Dutch descent…which I am, too, Theobald…may actually be of more importance than the actual grades.” Poor Miss Vark. Ancestry was no dowry. And, rather to his own surprise, there really was such a scholarship: that year there were three openings, and they all went to native-born American boys being of Holland Dutch descent, all of them having names like Vanderdam, Vanderzam, Vanderbam, and all of them of a more recent and perhaps more vigorous immigration, by way of Grand Rapids, Michigan. But good Miss Vark didn’t stop there. He was fazed, but she wasn’t. Her face an unaccustomed pink, she said to him, “I am going to write to Sophronia Vandervelt De Brooks,” no need to explain who she was, you’d have to be illiterate never to have read about her; half way between the two lines of Presidential De Brookses—very famous…very charitable And so, he hadn’t meant to, he’d known better than to mention it to any of the kids, he told her of the great-great-grandmother who’d been Commodore Vandervelt’s cousin. He left out about the snub and the sherry.
Miss Vark felt sure that this would clinch it…and what was the lady’s maiden name? Dad De Brooks put his poor old head in his hands at the question, and said, “Jesus.” It took a personal visit from Miss Vark to persuade him to look into the matter; in his Sunday suit he traveled via two changes on the subway to find his only living great-uncle, who gave to the question the same pious reply. Great-uncle Greeley, however, was game. And took Dad De Brooks, via trolley-car, to the uttermost end of the wilderness, where miraculously there still survived, God knows how, an aged lady cousin, in an ancient cottage smelling of kerosene. She didn’t even remember her cousin’s great-nephew but she remembered the incident. “They wouldn’t even give her a glass of sherry!” she exclaimed, as vivid to her as though it were yesterday. She went on to say a few vivid things about Old Aureeley Chaw-Tobacco (as she called him). None of them to his credit: but—what was the lady’s maiden name?
Long, long the ancient creature sat, from time to time murmuring
Now, don’t mix me up—and then—like a tongue of fire at Pentecost—“Phoebe Fisher! That’s what it is! Phoebe Fisher! From Fishkill, New York!” The fire died down, leaving only age and suspicion: “Why do ye want ta know, Greeley?”
“Delly here, wants t’send his boy to the academy, and he hopes Soprony De Brooks’ll give’m some money, they bein’ distant double-cousins, as y’might—”
“She’ll never do it! She’ll give him nothing! Not a thrip, not a fip, not a shinplaster! All them old family connections?—not-worth-a-continental!” Very, very suddenly she stopped. Looked Del in the eye. Very slowly got up, fumbled through the Family Bible, extracted an envelope crumbling with age, and drew forth a splendidly engraved and antique five-dollar bill, so archaic that it was blue and not green. “I send this to your boy,” said she. “Tell him that Millie Totten sends it.”
“Say, guess what I got, Theo?”
“The spook box?”
The five-dollar bill looked so odd that they bore it to the bank with trepidation. “Is this worth anything?” “It’s worth five dollars,” said the cashier, cheerfully. “Real old-timer. Want it changed?”
It was a nine-days wonder; and, after much talk, bought Theo a pair of shoes. He needed them. Badly.
Primed with the name of Phoebe Fisher De Brooks of Fishkill, New York, and with whatever other information Miss Vark was able to find on her own researches—there was after all a rather large gap between Jacobus Aurelius De Broogh and John Quincy A. De Brooks, whose services with the Army of the Potomac had anyway earned him an honorable mustering-out—off the letter went. To be followed, in no haste, by one from Sophronia Vandervelt De Brooks’s secretary. To the effect that there were so many demands upon her employer’s means and so many commitments had already been made that Miss De Brooks was absolutely unable to be of assistance even in regard to distant family ties, and that she hoped that Theobald would meet with all the success to which his merits might entitle him.
“Well, such a disappointment,” Miss Vark observed. “Though rather a nice letter in its way, all the same.”
Delafont James De Brooks said, “The old lady was right. Not worth a continental.”
>When you’re on your own, and having nothing else to do in particular, you might as well sell insurance. In doing so, Theo left the Old neighborhood and moved into a rather better one where, anyway, there were no more—well, very few—insults. In fact, people…some people…seemed rather impressed by the double-barreled, the ancient and honorable name(s). One thing led to another. By and by he opened his own office, added the words Real Estate to his sign and calling card. In order to do that he’d had to pass an exam, yet nothing but the assistance of the sign painter and the printer was required to add the words Business and Financial Management. Sometimes (often) he much felt that he was god-awful tired of the names and all, and that maybe he’d just change it to, say, Higgins…or, for that matter, to his mother’s maiden name of Puckleman; the Pucklemans were cheerful outgoing urban yeomen, brewery deliverymen who had never looked a glass of sherry in the eye; asked, where had they come from? cried, Off the pickle-boat! and farther than that, did not and could not have cared less. But…somehow… Theobald Delafont Puckle man? And if it came to changing first and middle names as well, well really, there were just too many choices. So he held to his, such as it was, heritage.
Someone in his family, perhaps a grandmother still reluctant to accept that marriage into a glorious name had brought her no further to glory than a rather shabby house on a rather shabby street, had begun, long and long ago, an attempt to keep a scrap-book about people with The Name; but the effort did not persist—how could It?—no library in the world could have kept up with it. But some loose pages persisted here and there throughout the house: in the kind of old cardboard cartons which continue on in the cellar of almost every house, a nuisance, but no one wants to throw them away…in the backmost part of a closet…in the bottoms of drawers, along with an old shirtwaist, an old pair of longjohns, a fountain pen which had been awaiting a bladder transplant since 1920…and some of these must have followed (must have followed, for surely he would not have wanted to bother taking them) TDD from place to place in his various moves; most of them did not interest him any longer.
Now and then one would surface, a page from the extinct scrapbook, that is, would surface, like an old piece of shrapnel or a fragment of bone from a tooth which was no longer there. These had become familiar to him in his long and lonely hours waiting for The Chance which never came, and when, unaccountably, one would rise and appear again, he would read it again, although he may have read it a dozen times before… Theobald De Brooks, Jr. had perhaps shot a rare antelope somewhere in Manchuria, say… James Q. De Brooks’s yacht had been overdue but all’s well that ends well… Grosvenor D. K. De Brooks III had been appointed to an office and the newspaper wondered if this newly-begun career would culminate in the presidency…just as certain cardinals were considered papable, so certain De Brookses were considered presidentiable (but no one had ever proposed appointing Theobald Delafont D. to any office, however minor). Interest in these appointees persisted, then flickered, then went out: twenty years later another one would come into focus…for a while. But no reporter or feature writer or political leader ever focused, however briefly, on Theobald Delafont De Brooks, because nobody even knew he was there. Nobody watched him during the long grey years while he grew more and more solitary and his wraith of a business just about sufficed to bring his two good suits to the dry-cleaners a few times a year and his six good white shirts to the French Laundry down the block.
At perhaps somewhat shorter intervals the classical old De Brooks homes at Muskrat Sump or Parkill Ridge were always good for a story; same, dim and thin as old tissue-paper by now, the faded dream that a Someone would appear, “Say, I’m Jim K. De Brooks! Mother and Dad think it’s about time you paid us a visit… I’ve got the car outside.” Through the years (decades) the car changed: it was a Stutz…a Star…a Caddy…a Kaiser… Edsel… Jag…but…somehow…it never really Got Outside. Here.
There was one old newspaper story in particular; unlike others, which tended to be cyclical, it seemed to have appeared in print only once: and the scissors had missed the date: it was worn, torn, and faded: its headline was, MISSING TREASURE OF THE PATRIOT PATROON. A patroon, remember, was a sort of squire who held an old land grant from the Dutch or English governments; this particular patroon was Wouter Cornelius De Brooks, and he was a patriot because, unlike anyway some other patroons he remained steadfast to the Continental Cause, whose ultimate victory he did not live to see. The list of the treasure itself was so detailed that it must have been read even by King George while he helped himself to his breakfast beer and beef. And, except for 75 silver Pieces of Eight Royals, it was all in gold: escudos, guineas, louis d’or, doubloons. The Patriot Patroon, one season during the War of the Revolution, had in the presence of witnesses packed the treasure into a traveling-chest made of cedarwood and black bull’s-hide and set off in his very own sloop from De Brooks Castle high above the lordly Hudson with the expressed intention of making his way to Philadelphia via the kills, creeks, rivers, and bays which lay outside of British Occupation, and, once arrived, to put said treasure at the disposal of the Patriot Government. One month later he turned up in York, Pennsylvania, “tired, hungry, muddy, bloody, and exceedingly confused.” He had nothing with him save the clothes on his poor old back, and died a few weeks later, without ever having disclosed where he had been, what he had done, or what had happened to the carefully-listed Treasure. A contemporary source (said the old newspaper clipping) had darkly suggested that “the poor old man” (the Patriot was then fifty-five in age) “had somehow been waylaid by the British or the Tories and feloniously robbed.” Three generations later some sad, sour Whig (this was not in the article, but TDD had found it in a letter at the Historical Society) commented, with who knows what mad motive, that “Neeley De Brooks had really intended to
send it by ship to be banked in France, but was made drunk and lost it at the craps”; fie upon the fellow who said so.
And, “is this all there is?” Theo asked the faded, quiet lady at the Historical Society. She thought for a moment. “Well, there is this,” she said, removing a manila envelope from a file. Within lay something between translucent sheets; removed, this appeared to be a page from an old, old letter, so stained with time and water and God-knows what, that only a few words were, theoretically, legible. And Theo could not have read even them, had not the letter-page been accompanied by a conjectured reading of those words, typed on even-now-yellowing paper by an old-time typewriter. As follows:
......cadet of [the] fam[ly?].........addlepa[te?] or drunkar[d?].........strong[ly] defen[ded?] himself, but cou[ld?] or [wou?]ld produ[ce?] no [evi?]dence.........but never shewed any Signs of [ac?]crued Wealth, so.........alOthoug[?] tis true that a Fool and his money are soon......
Also in the old-fashioned typewriting:
This paper was certainly manufactured between 1820 and 1829 or 30, but the Penmanship is of the late 18th century, Mr. Stuyvesant believes it relates somehow to the Patriot Patroon. —G. D.
“Mr. Stuyvesant, of course, has been dead for some years,” said the faded, quiet lady; “and so has Mr. Gilbert Dawes, our former Director. Our budget,” she concluded, “does not allow us to submit the paper to any of the later scientific tests.”
That was that.
And, last and last of all, was this, from a letter of Phillip Hone, Mayor of a then-much-smaller New York City, both in population and in area, say a million years ago, give or take a quarter of a million; addressed to a Mr. Gansevoort, Officer aboard the Ship Nepera, care of the Office of the Seamens’ Chapel, Honolulu, Sandwich Islands: skip most of it; stop at this: “Yesterday was the funeral of Aurelius De Brooke, son of the Patroon, last of the old Indian Traders, of whom I recall my Gt. Aunt Maria used to say, That he knew more of the ways of the Pow-whaw Men than was lawful for a Christian to know, I cd not go, having a bad cold.”
The Avram Davidson Treasury Page 56
