by James Haley
* * *
* * *
Washington City
January 21, 1837
My love,
I send you a few lines to say that my business here is fairly well concluded, and I shall be home again in a few days.
I do not believe I am wrong in harboring a suspicion that you have some worry over my having been recalled to Washington, and whether I have succumbed to some attraction to the high affairs in this place.
My love, let me allay your fears in this way. If you have ever read the history of Cleopatra, and if you can visualize that bowl of delicious figs presented to her upon her last day, then you can see in your mind’s eye, the delicious and attractive fruit, and the moving curl of the snake within. That is how I feel about this place.
Further, it is my intention when I arrive home to bring you such a present, that if I had been to India, and raided the diamond mines at Golconda, you would not be more pleased. I shall spend the next couple of days in pleasure at the thought of your being perplexed as to what that gift could be.
Your loving,
Bliven Putnam
Capt. USN
Mrs. Clarity Putnam
Putnam Farm, South Road
Litchfield, Connecticut
January was nearly spent when he descended from the coach in front of his house, and Clarity greeted him as she always did on the front steps. They kissed and he held her quietly. After a long moment he said, “Do you recall,” and she felt his throat against her temple, his voice vibrating, “I said I would bring you a mighty gift?”
She stood back and smiled. “Something about a diamond from India?”
“Ha!” He pulled a folded paper from his coat pocket and handed it to her with some show of formality. She opened it and squinted a little in the light.
Washington, Dist. of Columbia
January 22, 1836
Dear Mr. Secretary,
In the normal course of duty, I would address this letter to my immediate superior, but in his absence, and looking toward our imminent second meeting, I take the liberty of writing to you directly.
In the year 1801 I tendered my services to the Navy of the United States as a midshipman, and embarked upon the schooner Enterprise to make war upon the Barbary Pirates. In the ensuing one-third of a century, and more, I believe I may say that my career has not been uneventful. It shall always be the pride of my life to have played a part in the furtherance of my country’s course, and honor.
I am mindful that numerous fellow officers of my similar age and experience remain in service, and I am deeply grateful to yourself and to President Jackson for evincing in me such confidence that I might have a choice in my future assignment. However, I now feel that my higher duty unites with my personal desires, to return to my farm, and to my wife, who has waited for me without complaint these many years, while I still have something left of strength and vitality to offer her.
Thus, sir, as you may imagine, it is with the greatest stir of competing emotions that I tender this resignation from my commission, effective this date. Ever mindful of the great privilege it has been to be useful to my country, it is now my intention to subscribe myself for the final time,
Yours, sir, with great respect,
Bliven Putnam, Capt. USN
Hon. Mahlon Dickerson, here present
Secretary of the Navy
Endorsed, with regret—M. Dickerson, Secy.
Accepted, with the gratitude of your country. A. Jackson, Pres.
As she held the letter with one hand, her other rose to her lips to mask the tremble in her chin. “Oh, can this be true?”
He held her, rocking her gently. “Every word, my love. Your Cincinnatus has come home to plow his fields and to savor the company of his wife”—he lifted her chin and looked into her eyes—“who has never once the first time scolded me for the career I had.”
He hefted his portmanteau and they entered the house together, and the keeping room he had known since a boy. She pointed into their apartment beyond. “You will want to wash and change. I will put some water on and make us tea.”
She closed the door after him, set a kettle of water atop a new Thompson cooking stove, and then crossed the house to the library that had been his parents’ bedroom. She took a seat by the window and donned her spectacles to read the letter again, with the satisfaction of seeing it more clearly. She allowed a tear to fall before she held the paper gently to her chest.
She smiled slowly and shook her head. “A very fine effort, my dearest,” she murmured. “So very sweet, but surely we know this will never last.”
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This fourth installment of the Bliven Putnam Naval Adventures brought me home to my native history, and thus was more in need of a sure editorial hand to keep the story sculpted and not let me rove off into collateral history lessons. Once again my treasured editor, Gabriella Mongelli, proved her worth.
I also bend the knee to the series’ godfather, Ivan Held, president of G. P. Putnam’s Sons, and my agent, Jim Hornfischer, who initially brought the idea of the series to me, and who has regularly enriched it with his interest and suggestions.
And as always I am indebted to the few readers whom I trust with raw manuscript, in this case most particularly Greg Ciotti of Austin.
FURTHER READING
Brands, H. W. Andrew Jackson: His Life and Times. New York: Doubleday, 2005.
———. Lone Star Nation: How a Ragged Army of Volunteers Won the Battle for Texas Independence—And Changed America. New York: Doubleday, 2004.
Haley, James L. Passionate Nation: The Epic History of Texas. New York: The Free Press, 2006.
———. Sam Houston. Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2002.
Jackson, Jack, ed., and John Wheat, trans. Almonte’s Texas: Juan N. Almonte’s 1834 Inspection, Secret Report & Role in the 1836 Campaign. Austin: Texas State Historical Association, 2003.
Jordan, Jonathan. Lone Star Navy: Texas, the Fight for the Gulf of Mexico, and the Shaping of the American West. Washington, D.C.: Potomac Books, 2006.
Moore, Stephen L. Eighteen Minutes: The Battle of San Jacinto and the Texas Independence Campaign. Dallas: Republic of Texas Press, 2004.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
James L. Haley is the award-winning author of the Bliven Putnam naval series, which includes The Shores of Tripoli, A Darker Sea, and The Devil in Paradise, as well as numerous books on history and historical and contemporary fiction. He is a two-time winner of the Spur Award from the Western Writers of America and a recipient of the Fehrenbach Award of the Texas Historical Commission.
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