The Bastard: The Kent Family Chronicles
Page 30
“Paul is our sober husband and father,” he explained to Philip. “Also the man whose copper engravings illustrate the broadsides we nail up on the Liberty Tree. I suppose we should be thankful he prefers to keep his hand steady.”
Revere smiled back. Philip started out.
“Mr. Kent!”
He turned to see Revere facing him.
“Pleasantries aside—what you’ve heard must indeed go no further. Lives are not yet forfeit in Boston for the kind of talk which takes place in this room. But that time can’t be far off. We will protect ourselves at all costs,” he finished quietly.
Philip shivered a little under the impact of the silversmith’s forthright gaze. “I assure you I’ll say nothing,” he replied, adding to Edes, “and I’ll visit you in the morning, sir.”
As he left, he heard the querulous, yet somehow passionate voice of Adams resume:
“The problem is to seize the advantage! Confrontation—conflagration—must surely come. The sooner the citizens understand and accept that—”
“You are a manipulator, Samuel,” Warren interrupted. “I do not agree that ‘conflagration’—your prettified term for open rebellion—for war—is inevitable. Or need be made so by us!”
Philip pulled the door shut.
vi
He paused a moment, gazing out over the black-beamed taproom crowded with noisy North Enders. He noticed two British officers seated in the front corner, finishing platters of meat while they stared with open arrogance at those nearby.
The arrogance was returned with scowls. Philip felt another chill chase down his back. With a single step into the Salutation’s rear room, he had plunged far deeper than he’d originally meant to.
True, he’d wanted to meet the radical Adams. But now he was linked to the group by an opportunity to seek work with a printer who spread the propaganda for the American cause.
He noted the British officers again, and felt cowed by the figures of authority, despite his best resolves not to be.
Well, the solution was extremely simple. Leave the Salutation. Never call on Benjamin Edes. Avoid further contact with the men who were, by their own admission, dangerous—
Campbell came through the door, stopped, looked at Philip. The landlord seemed to sense Philip’s uncertainty, and his voice bore just a trace of threat:
“I trust you have no regrets about being admitted to that room, young man. It would prove awkward if you did. Molineaux’s North End mobs are no longer rampaging quite the way they did a year or so ago, in company with Ebenezer Mackintosh’s bullies from the South End. But the warning served inside was not given lightly. Should confidences be violated—even by accident—well, Mr. Adams knows the mob organizers intimately. And he is a determined man.”
Philip stared at the bright scarlet coats of the British officers. He remembered his mother, the Amberlys, Girard’s books and his talk of new winds blowing—
“Regrets, Mr. Campbell?”
His eyes hardened.
“No, sir. None.”
CHAPTER II
Mistress Anne
i
THE PRINTING FIRM OF Edes and Gill in Dassett Alley was not particularly prosperous-looking, equipped as it was with but one small flat-bed press in its cramped main-floor room. A few type cases sat nearby. Behind a partition was a tiny, cluttered office from which the stout Mr. Ben Edes oversaw the publishing operation.
As he’d promised to do, Philip called on Mr. Edes at ten the morning following his admittance to the private room behind the Salutation. They soon concluded an agreement for Philip to be a general boy-of-all-work around the shop.
From time to time Edes’ son Peter apparently helped out as well. But the boy was small, and Edes wanted an assistant of size and strength. And, he said, “One who won’t cower and run off when Governor Hutchinson or some other damned Crown toady makes one of his frequent public denunciations of our sheet.”
Before giving his final assent to the arrangement, Edes watched Philip work the press for nearly twenty minutes. At the conclusion of the test, he said, “You’ve practiced with excellent masters. Come, let’s go back to the office and talk wages. Do you have a place to stay?”
Elated, Philip said as he followed Edes, “No, sir. But I’ll find one immediately.”
“We’ve an unused room down cellar where we can move in a pallet if you wish—no charge.”
“That would be perfect.”
“You’ll have to catch your meals as you can, in the taverns in the neighborhood.”
“No problem there, sir.”
“Do you own a trunk? Any possessions you want to store? We can lock ’em in back. Or at my house.”
“These—”Philip showed him the casket and wrapped sword “—are all I have.”
Settled in the office again, Edes studied him. “Brought ’em along, did you? That’s confidence. You came from England with nothing else?”
“Nothing.”
“Then tell me what you want in this country. More specifically than you did last evening.”
Philip thought a moment. “Frankly, sir, all I can think of at the moment is the chance to start working. Oh, and some new clothes. I’d hope to buy a proper suit from what I save. Without spending all of it, I mean.”
“Got any ambitions beyond the job itself?”
“Yes, sir. I think I’d like to put myself in my own printing business eventually.”
Edes grinned. “Competing with me already!”
“Well—” Philip nodded. “In a way, I suppose. A man needs to look ahead.”
“Understandable, Mr. Kent, perfectly understandable. Let us hope the town of Boston’s not burned to the ground in civil disorders or leveled by the King’s artillery before you’ve the capital to take away my trade.” He continued more soberly, “As you may have sensed last night, Sam Adams is bent on armed collision with the British government. He’s failed in every business venture he’s ever attempted. But the man’s a positive genius at politics—wheedling here, whispering there, stirring mobs in secret to work his will. His hatred of the Crown isn’t all pure idealism, though. Sam’s father was ruined in the Land Bank failure a number of years ago. So, as you were warned, you’ll be associating with less than respectable men if you join Edes and Gill. Are you still persuaded?”
“I am,” Philip replied with an emphatic nod.
Ben Edes looked pleased. He reached for the pull of a desk drawer.
“Then let’s have a tot of rum and haggle over the price of your service.”
ii
Before many days had gone by, Philip realized that financial success was not the paramount goal sought by the proprietor of Edes and Gill and his seldom-present partner.
True, the establishment did a modest commercial printing business, over and above publishing its little Monday paper, the Gazette. In spare hours the press churned out handbills, shop window placards and anything else that might turn a profit. In this last category were several hand-colored copper plate engravings, joint ventures of Revere and Ben Edes.
The two best sellers both dated from 1770. One depicted the still-infamous Boston Massacre. The other was a less sanguinary View of Part of the Town of Boston in New England, and the British Ships of War Landing Their Troops in the Year 1768. Dedicated to the Earl of Hillsborough. When Philip asked why a member of the inner councils of the Sons of Liberty would dedicate such a work to any British nobleman, Edes answered, “You wouldn’t catch him inscribing it in that fashion today. But Paul’s got a houseful of youngsters—and he knows how to sell both sides of the fence to support ’em. His tongue was a good way in his cheek when he wrote those words, Philip. But his eye was on his purse.”
Mr. Edes then went on to note that Revere, a self-taught engraver, made no claim to originality as a pictorial artist. All his engravings were “modeled”—stolen was the interpretation Philip put on it—after drawings by others. Revere merely duplicated them on metal with a few embellishments.
Despite such frankly money-making ventures as the Revere engravings, however, it was evident that most of Edes’ energies were devoted to the Gazette. His aim was to make it not only New England’s most influential news organ, but the means by which the patriots of Boston town could speak their defiance of the King’s edicts and issue their warnings and alarms to a temporarily placid populace.
The Gazette’s—or, more correctly, Ben Edes’ —political orientation was in fact the prime reason the other partner, John Gill, was seldom on the premises. He did not so much disapprove of Edes’ approach as desire to protect his own neck. And, as Edes remarked once, in arguments concerning publishing policy, Gill always lost. “Because I can shout longer and louder every time.”
As the summer of 1772 mellowed into clear, crisp autumn, Philip had little time for anything except the exhausting labor Ben Edes demanded. Just as he had at Sholto’s, he worked a six-day week, resting only on the Sabbath. He usually spent half of that day sleeping off his tiredness in the small but basically comfortable cellar room Edes had provided for his use.
The printer soon recognized Philip’s skill and expanded his duties to include not only inking and operating the press but setting type—a slow process at first. But satisfying once Philip got the hang of it. He would never be as swift as Esau Sholto. But he was competent.
By now Philip was physically grown to manhood. Though not of great height, he was strong and powerful-looking, his shoulders thickly muscled from hauling on the press lever hour after hour. His dark, forthright eyes took in every new sight, every new face—and every word printed by Edes and Gill—with avid interest. Thanks to Sunday afternoon rambles about town, he soon became quite familiar with Boston—and his work acquainted him with the leading citizens involved in defending the cause of Englishmen’s rights against the encroachments of the King and Parliament.
Samuel Adams was a frequent visitor to the print shop, usually arriving with sheets of foolscap on which his palsied hand had penned his latest diatribe against the North ministry. In the announcement that the Royal Governor’s salary, as well as those of all Massachusetts judges, would soon be coming directly out of England’s treasury, Adams had found an issue with which he hoped to excite his countrymen. He wrote about it incessantly. The Gazette printed the articles under his various pseudonyms—a continuing indication of the dangers inherent in such literary work.
Another frequent visitor was introduced to Philip as Abraham Ware. A Harvard-trained lawyer, Ware was a small, pot-bellied man with popping, frog-like eyes. He contributed essays almost as inflammatory as those of Adams, but he had only one nom de plume, Patriot.
Revere, the quiet, plainly dressed silversmith of North Square, also called occasionally, bringing bits of news or a crudely engraved political cartoon.
On the second floor of the Edes and Gill building, these men and others met by night. The chamber up there was called the Long Room. Philip was never admitted, even though he was by now a reasonably trusted employee. But Edes didn’t mind identifying his nocturnal visitors for his young assistant—
That stout little lawyer from nearby Braintree was Samuel’s cousin John. The handsome, rather dandified man in his early thirties, whom all visitors seemed to treat with special deference, was John Hancock, the merchant prince of Beacon Hill.
Edes said Hancock was no hothead. In fact, he occupied a position of such status that he might have fallen more logically into the Tory camp. Those who supported the King’s policies and policymakers were a majority in Boston, albeit a relatively silent, inactive one.
But Hancock had somehow developed a quixotic interest in the ideals espoused by Sam Adams and the others. Then, so Ben Edes explained, in 1768, the Royal Commissioners of Customs had recognized the potential strength Hancock could lend to the cause of the Sons of Liberty. The commissioners had falsely accused him of smuggling Madeira on his sloop Liberty. His cargo was impounded.
The strategy backfired. Hancock suffered no financial loss whatsoever—thanks to the convenient and not at all coincidental intervention of one of the famous Boston mobs put together by the cobbler Mackintosh from the South End and hardware merchant Molineaux from the North. The savaging crowd rescued Hancock’s Madeira, and from that time on, the wealthy man’s devotion to the cause was steadfast. Although he remained less of a firebrand than Adams, he spent considerable personal money underwriting the extra printing expenses—the broadsides, the handbills—that the Sons of Liberty distributed and nailed up surreptitiously all over town.
Hancock, the Adams cousins and Revere—the only non-Harvard man in the group apart from Edes—met at least once a week in the Long Room. Working at the press by the light of whale-oil lamps, Philip could often hear contentious voices raised during those sessions. That of Sam Adams was usually the most strident.
In addition to the Long Room and Campbell’s Salutation up north, the Green Dragon on nearby Union Street was another popular meeting spot for the patriots. Philip took many of his meals at the Dragon. He felt that patronizing the place somehow enhanced his association with the cause, even though he was not privileged to share the thinking of its leaders, except as it slipped off the press in the pages of the Gazette or in the broadsides run behind locked doors at night.
By early October, the drumfire of propaganda had succeeded in generating a certain amount of public concern about the threat posed by the salaries of the Governor and the judges being paid from England. Adams’ next move was to press for the convocation of a town meeting. Its purpose was to establish permanent correspondence committees in Boston, as well as in other Massachusetts villages, to further communicate the position of the Adams group and seek support not only of neighboring communities but of like-minded people in New York, Philadelphia and other colonial cities.
In connection with the committee scheme, Edes dispatched Philip one morning on an urgent errand to the South End. He was to pick up copy from Adams at his home on Purchase Street; copy for a broadside destined for the trunk of the Liberty Tree and other highly visible spots around town.
Hurrying up Purchase Street not far from the Neck, Philip was astonished at the size and splendor of the Adams residence. It was multi-storied, even boasting an observatory on the upper floor.
He imagined the observatory would afford a fine view of the harbor. But he wondered how a man as financially distressed as Adams could maintain such a large home. In conversations at the Dragon and the print shop, Philip had learned that despite a promising start at Harvard, Samuel Adams had subsequently succeeded in mismanaging every single business opportunity life had presented to him.
Adams’ father—the Deacon, he was called, because of his strong religious convictions—had indeed lost much money when the British government outlawed the colonial Land Bank he’d organized. But along with resulting lawsuits, son Samuel had inherited the Deacon’s thriving brewery-distillery, source of some of the best beer and rum in New England. That firm, having been operated for several years by Mr. Samuel, was now defunct.
Adams’ stint as Boston’s tax collector had been equally disastrous. When he had stepped down in sixty-five, he was behind in collections to an amount exceeding eight thousand pounds. Governor Hutchinson accused him of malfeasance. Edes said Adams’ real problem was “no head for figures—and a tendency to be generous to anyone with a heart-rending story.” Philip readily understood how the Royal Governor had become one of Adams’ favorite targets.
But after the business debacles, Adams, already into his forties, found his destiny and his lifelong career at last. Politics. Or, as he termed it, “the cause of liberty.” At the moment, though, no one in Boston professed to know how he was able to support his family and conduct his busy political life. There were rumors that his younger cousin John, the successful lawyer from Braintree, paid him a dole as a
“consultant.”
Philip reached the metal fencing outside the Adams house. It became evident that, contrary to his first impression, the property was not being kept up at all. The fence badly needed painting; rust showed everywhere. Behind the fence, weeds that had yellowed in the first frost still stood knee-high.
The front-door knocker was tarnished. And the pretty but fatigued-looking woman who opened the door wore an old dress befitting the poorest-paid servant.
“Is Mr. Adams at home?” Philip asked. “I’m from Edes and Gill—”
“Oh yes, my husband’s expecting you,” the woman said, shocking her visitor with the revelation of her identity. Her smile was tired. “Step in, won’t you? Samuel’s in the study upstairs. He’s having an early lunch. Would you like to have something with him?”
“No, thank you, I’m to hurry straight back with his manuscript.”
The woman started to say something else, but was distracted by the rocketing entrance of a huge Newfoundland dog that badly needed bathing. Philip started up the stairs quickly, crunching spilled breadcrumbs under his feet. He noticed cobwebs in the ceiling corners, and scarred woodwork.
Despite the gloomy, run-down atmosphere, Mr. Samuel Adams was humming cheerily beyond the open door of the study near the top of the staircase. Philip walked toward the door. Adams looked up, his palsied head bobbing. His smile broadened. He laid down the quill with which he’d been writing, called out:
“Come in, Kent! Care for a bite of something while I finish up the copy?”
With a trembling hand, he shoved a plate to the corner of his littered desk, nearly upsetting his inkstand. He was wearing hose, breeches, a white long-sleeved blouse stained black in a dozen places. His left shoe was missing its brass buckle.
The politician noticed Philip’s expression as the latter stared at the slimy-looking edibles on the plate.
“Raw oysters—good for you! I have an absolute passion for ’em—sure you won’t join me?”