by Chet Hagan
Madness swirled around Charles as he tried to help the fallen Jackson.
Alexander Donelson, dagger in hand, joined Coffee in advancing on Tom Benton. The two men struck with their knives, wounding Benton several times. Benton continued to retreat. An unseen stairway, as he moved backward, became his undoing. He tumbled down the stairs, the walls bloodied from his wounds.
Another Jackson adherent, Stockley Hays, had cornered Jesse Benton, ramming a thin sword cane at his chest. It struck a large metal button on Jesse’s coat and broke.
The young Benton had the advantage now. He put a pistol against Hays’s heart and pulled the trigger. It misfired!
“For God’s sake,” Charles screamed to be heard above the melee, “come and help me with Andy! He’s badly hurt!”
His cries seemed to end the insanity. Coffee, Hays, and Donelson rushed to Jackson’s side and, with Dewey, lifted the skinny figure of Andrew Jackson and carried him to a room in the Nashville Inn.
Blood soaked through two mattresses as every doctor in Nashville was called to the inn to attend to the general.
Shouting could be heard in the square outside the hotel, and Charles went to the window. Both Bentons were standing out there, surrounded by their friends, shouting defiance at the wounded Jackson.
Tom held high a small sword that Andy had dropped during the fight. Symbolically, Benton broke it over his knee as a cheer went up from the Benton followers.
In disgust, Dewey turned away from the window to watch the doctors in their efforts to stem the profuse bleeding.
“I believe we may have to amputate the arm,” one of them whispered.
Andy’s eyes opened. His voice was weak.
“I’ll keep my arm,” he ordered.
III
IT was difficult for Charles to be rational about what he had witnessed. Nevertheless, on his return to Bon Marché, he gave a deliberately unemotional report on the brawl, with as little detail as possible.
In bed that night, Mattie said quietly: “It was madness, wasn’t it?”
“Yes.”
“I’m deeply grateful that you weren’t hurt.”
Dewey was startled by her words. It was the first time he had thought about being in danger himself. He didn’t comment.
She sighed. “We had a conversation like this once before—it seems to have been in another life—when you returned from that duel in Kentucky. You said then that this family would not involve itself with Andy Jackson again.”
“I remember.”
“But I persisted,” Mattie went on. “I thought our association with Andy was important.”
“Hmmm.”
“Now I know that it isn’t. Can you forgive me for putting the Jackson name above that of Dewey?”
“I never imagined that that was what you were doing.”
His wife smiled. “I hate you, Charles, when you take that rational tone.”
“Oh? I thought the rational, unemotional, levelheaded Charles Dewey was what you wanted.”
“Stop that, Charles! You know perfectly well what I’m trying to say.”
“Uh-huh.”
“I’m trying to say that I love you, Charles Dewey, because you are Charles Dewey—and not what I may try to make of you. And I certainly don’t want you to be a handmaiden to Andy Jackson.”
“Very well,” he said flippantly, “I won’t be.”
“Or a handmaiden to anyone else, for that matter.”
“Not even you?” he teased.
“Not even me.”
BOOK THREE
A man is the creator of his own life. It’s like clay: you mold it and shape it, trying to make it into something beautiful. And when it’s finished a man ought to fight like hell to preserve his creation.
—Charles Dewey, 1845
36
LITTLE Carrie, nestled in her grandfather’s lap, warmed by the fire in the drawing room and by Charles’s love, clapped her hands in delight, giggling as he read from the book, acting out the story.
“And guess what happened next?”
“What? What?” the child demanded.
“Well, ‘At midday they saw a beautiful snow-white bird sitting on a tree. It sang so beautifully that they stood still to listen to it. When it stopped, it fluttered its wings and flew around them.’” He pantomimed the flight of the bird with a hand. “‘They followed it till they came to a little cottage, on the roof of which it settled itself. When they got quite near, they saw the little house was made of bread.’ Imagine that! ‘And it was roofed with cake.’”
“I love cake, Grandfather,” Carrie said quite seriously.
He hugged the little girl, laughing. “So I’ve noticed.… ‘The windows were of transparent sugar.’ ‘This will be something for us,’ said Hänsel.’… Do you remember who Hänsel is?”
“He’s the little boy.”
“Right! And he’s saying: ‘We will have a good meal. I will have a piece of the roof, Gretel.’”
“That’s the little girl,” Carrie cried.
“It is, indeed. And Hänsel says to her, ‘You can have a bit of the window, it will be nice and sweet.’”
“Can you really eat a window, Grandfather?”
“Of course you can, if it’s made of sugar, as this one was. ‘Hänsel stretched up and broke off a piece of the roof to try what it was like. Gretel went to the window and nibbled at that. And then—A gentle voice called out from within: “‘Nibbling, nibbling like a mouse, Who’s nibbling at my little house?’”
“I know, I know! It’s Hänsel and Gretel!”
Dewey laughed at the enchantment of his granddaughter.
Mattie, who had been standing watching them for a few minutes, said, “While all that nibbling is going on seems a good place to end it for tonight. It’s time for bed, young lady.”
“Oh, Grandmother!”
“Your mother is never going to let you stay with us again if we don’t see that you get your rest.”
“Grandmother is right, Carrie. Off to bed!” He lifted her high, and Mattie took the child in her arms.
“You seem to be as delighted as the baby with those stories.”
Charles laughed. “I guess I am. George couldn’t have picked a better gift to send. He says that the tales by the Brothers Grimm are the sensation of the Continent.”
“And of Bon Marché, too, it appears.”
Dewey got to his feet, kissed his granddaughter good night, and watched, smiling, as Mattie carried her off toward their bedroom.
He poked the fire to a new flame, then went to the sideboard to pour himself a sherry. As he settled into the big chair again, he thought of what the passing years had brought to him. The big family Bible he had carried from Virginia and Mattie’s meticulously kept farm journals documented the growth and successes of Bon Marché. Charles didn’t have to refer to them to know what they contained.
October 1813 had seen a son born to Corrine, named William Holder, Junior. Dewey sighed, wishing Billy would let him see the baby more often. Only a few weeks later, little Carrie was presented with a baby brother, Richard, by Franklin and Amantha Dewey. And a second brother, Albert, the following year. Then, too, there were the twin daughters born to Louise and August Schimmel in 1814, christened Joy and Hope. Charles thought their names mirrored all that was Bon Marché.
Of course, it hadn’t gone unnoticed on the plantation that Mattie’s second cousin was called to war again. Given a Regular Army commission finally, Andrew Jackson was sent to avenge the massacre of four hundred Americans by the Creek Indians at Fort Mims, Alabama. Old Hickory, still nursing the shoulder wound given him in the brawl with the Bentons, destroyed the Creeks at Horseshoe Bend on Alabama’s Tallapoosa River. Andy, on his own authority, then invaded Spanish Florida, routing a small British force at Pensacola, where the remnants of the Creek Indians and “maroons”—Negro slaves who had escaped from the United States—had been recruited to the English cause.
Ultimately, it was Jackso
n’s destiny to go to New Orleans. There, early in January of 1815, he annihilated a numerically superior English army under the command of Major General Sir Edward Pakenham, inflicting more than two thousand casualties on the redcoats, while suffering only seventy-one himself.
Andy Jackson of Tennessee, frontier lawyer and duelist, plantation owner and slaveholder, gambler and horse racer, had become a national hero. It made little difference that the Battle of New Orleans was fought two weeks after a peace treaty had been signed in Europe. Jackson had restored America’s pride.
At Bon Marché, Mattie Dewey quietly reflected that pride. But the talk of General Jackson was minimal. There was much more discussion of a plan to further extend the influence of the purple racing silks of the Dewey family. Charles was to take a racing string to Charleston, still the most prestigious track in the South.
II
“DO you mean to tell me, Mr. Dewey,” the handsome matron was saying, smiling sweetly, “that you’ve come all this way just to go racing?”
“I would have come the six hundred miles, and more, to know the charming hospitality I’ve received here in Charleston.”
The matron cocked her head, studying him. “You’ll pardon me, Mr. Dewey, but you’re not at all the crude—I hope you’ll excuse that word—frontiersman I would have expected to come from western Tennessee.”
Annoyed, Charles smiled nevertheless. “It’s true, ma’am, that some frontiersmen are crude. But I imagine the same percentages might apply in this area as well.”
Her face darkened. “Not among the whites,” she sniffed.
Dewey bowed to her. “My pardon, ma’am.”
He was attending a reception in his honor at the magnificent Steepbrook, ancestral home of the Manigault family of Charleston, one of the “old families” of South Carolina, dating back to 1680 when the French Huguenots, denied the right to be Protestants in their native land, had come to the New World. It was a formal society of fine ladies and gentlemen, schooled in the arts, proper in their speech, both English and French, and confident of their wealth.
Nothing in Tennessee, not even Bon Marché, could match the vast Steep-brook estate. Or the Elms, the plantation of the influential Izard family, which he had also visited. These people were rice planters, owners of thousands of slaves. Charles was astonished by the number of house servants they used; the ladies, he deduced, were left with nothing to do but to be beautiful.
And on that night, as he looked around the ballroom of the Manigault mansion, he was impressed with the collective elegance of the women. Mrs. Julius Pringle (he hadn’t learned what it was her husband did) particularly impressed him. Dark, wide eyes that looked at him coolly out of a flawless face, her lustrous black hair done up in flattering ringlet curls. And a somewhat shy Mrs. Henry Broughton Mazyck, always on her husband’s arm, protectively it seemed, her young beauty so perfect as to defy adequate description, her brunette hair piled high on her head and fastened with a large Spanish comb studded with diamonds.
One of the women, Charles had to admit to himself, stirred erotic thoughts in him. She was the petite Mrs. Langdon Cheves, whose husband had just completed a term as Speaker of the House of Representatives. There was nothing reticent about her. She spoke and moved with a confidence that suggested she was comfortable in a male-dominated world. Unlike many of the women, she eschewed the popular ringlet coiffure and wore her auburn hair cut short, exposing all of the breath-catching beauty of her face. The decolletage of her gown displayed more soft shoulder and bosom than most of the other women; indeed, she had more worthy of display.
“I regret that my husband is away in Washington,” Mrs. Cheves said to Charles. “He’d want to know all about your Andrew Jackson.”
“Yes, General Jackson is a large figure in the nation now.”
“Are you acquainted with him, Mr. Dewey?”
“Yes. He’s my wife’s cousin.” He was uneasy with this woman; the desire that she aroused in him made him cautious.
“Well, then, do tell me about him.”
Charles gave her a rather laudatory recital on the merits of Andy, omitting the things about the general that raised his own ire. He told her what he thought she’d want to hear.
“General Jackson seems a paragon.”
He laughed. “Hardly. No man is, I’m afraid.”
It came to him suddenly: My God, she’s just like Mattie!
Dewey coughed nervously. “You’ll pardon me, Mrs. Cheves, but you remind me so much of my wife. In many ways you’re very similar: the confident manner, the auburn hair, the figure—” He stopped, realizing he had gone too far.
“Oh?” She laughed delightfully, her eyes opening wide. “Spoken, Mr. Dewey, like a man who has been away from home for too long a period.”
“Please forgive me.” His face reddened. “I meant nothing—”
“Of course you did, Mr. Dewey.” She seemed to find delight in his discomfort. “I find your unique interest in me flattering.”
He was left without words.
“Perhaps, Mr. Dewey,” she went on, “if you find the time heavy on your hands, we might find it mutually beneficial to discuss further my astounding similarities with your wife. I’d be interested to know just how far they extend.”
Her candor only reinforced the thought that she was like Mattie. Had she issued an invitation? No, Charles decided; she was toying with him. What an old fool he was!
Dewey was rescued, in a sense, by his host, Charles Izard Manigault, a grandson of the patriarch of the prolific family. After proper apologies to Mrs. Cheves, Manigault led him to a group of gentlemen anxious to discuss horse racing.
“We’re very proud of our racing here,” a man named Fenwick told him. “There was a Jockey Club in Charleston as early as 1734, even before the English thought of such a thing.”
“I hope my horses will be up to your tradition,” Dewey said.
“What have you brought with you, sir?”
Charles was eager to tell them. “Twelve young runners. I had special vans built to make the trip, four horses to a van.” He smiled. “And to be perfectly honest, gentlemen, I hope to sell the horses here—to you. All are uncut males with breeding potential: sons of Royalist, a rather nice imported English sire; of New York, with Messenger bloodlines; of Predator, who is by Shark; of Arrangement, a solid racing son of Medley; and also two sons of a stallion I brought from Virginia when I first established headquarters in Nashville: Premier Etoile, who traces back to Yorick.”
“Impressive bloodlines, Mr. Dewey,” another horseman commented, “but can they run?”
A laugh. “We’ll just have to see, won’t we? All are young—three to five—and their greatest racing potential is still in front of them.”
“A question, Mr. Dewey,” Manigault said. “Why are they all for sale?”
“Because, sir, that’s what we do at Bon Marche—breed to sell.”
He thought then of Mattie, who had devised that strategy for the plantation. And he thought, too, of Mrs. Cheves.
III
IT was a rare social engagement away from Bon Marché for the ladies—for Mattie; her stepdaughter, Louise; her daughter-in-law, Amantha; and her daughter, “Princess” Alma May. The occasion was the sixteenth birthday anniversary of Alma May.
The youngster had been disappointed that her father would be away from home at the Charleston races on that important date. She had told Mattie: “I don’t think I want a party, Mother, if Father can’t be here.”
But Louise had come home from the newspaper office with a report that a young showman from Philadelphia had rented a building on the public square in Nashville to convert into a temporary theater, the first such enterprise in the city. Mattie immediately made plans for them to attend the debut performance.
Making it a special time for the Princess was important to her mother. It was to be a full evening. They’d have dinner at Mr. Parker’s Nashville Inn, then attend the play and stay the night at the inn. She bought
a new dress for Alma May, and made sure that Horace, in full livery, would drive them to Nashville in the little-used formal coach.
Nashvillians turned out in impressive numbers for the introduction of the theater. The impresario, one Nathan Ludlum, was staging a comedy, The Soldier’s Daughter, for the opening night and had proudly posted an SRO sign at the box office. He was surprised by the number of times he had to explain what the letters meant.
Mattie had bought seats in the first row, and she was delighted that Alma May was so excited about the event. They had gone through the entire dinner without the Princess mentioning the absence of her father.
Applause rolled through the little theater when the curtain parted for the first act. And the traveling players didn’t disappoint the entertainment-starved Nashvillians. Ludlum—dark-haired, broad-shouldered, and slim—played the lead with professional aplomb.
Alma May leaned over to whisper to Mattie: “Isn’t he handsome, Mother?”
“Hush, dear.”
“But isn’t he?” she insisted.
“Yes, Princess, he’s very handsome.”
It may have been that the actor could make out the whispered words, in that they were spoken so close to the stage, because Ludlum looked down at Alma May and smiled.
“Oh!”
Mattie looked over at her daughter, annoyed. “Do be quiet, Alma May.”
“But he smiled at me, Mother!” The words were in more than a whisper now, turning other heads to them.
An elbow was dug into the young girl’s ribs. Hard. It took that to silence the Princess.
When the play was ended and the cast had taken several curtain calls, Nathan Ludlum came to the apron of the stage.
“Thank you,” he said exuberantly. “It is so nice to know that we are so warmly welcomed in Nashville. I hope we will continue to please you. And I hope, too, that I will be able to meet many of you”—he looked directly at the Princess—“at the door as you file out.”
At the entrance, with Mattie and her party among the last to leave, Ludlum was particularly solicitous to Alma May.
