Murther and Walking Spirits Page 6

  But what am I to see?

  All through the showing of The Spirit of ’76 I had been peripherally aware of what was on the screen visible to the audience, while much more powerfully conscious of my own film, which carried so much more conviction as a true representation of the prelude to the American Revolutionary War. The old film was about an idea, an historical reconstruction with a propagandist bias, whereas mine was about ordinary people who carried a vastly deeper conviction to my understanding. Was I to continue in that vein, or was I to be whisked off to Eisenstein’s powerfully propagandist notion of the 1905 uprising in the Black Sea fleet, which was famous for its use of real mobs, for its startling depiction of stone lions rousing themselves on behalf of the revolutionaries, for its innovative editing and its splendid music? Apparently not so, for again I found myself watching and comprehending two films at once, and mine began in the comparative peace of New York.

  New York had been cool toward the Revolution in its early manifestations, and it is the lukewarm city of 1776 that I now behold. There were a lot of Dutchmen – British subjects, but still Dutch in the depths of their hearts – in New York then, and many of them were firmly in control of large sums of money. One of these is old Claes van Someren, part lawyer and part banker, and all financier, and it is in his hands that the fortune of Anna Vermuelen Gage is safely lodged. So, when Major Gage has met a soldier’s death, it is to him that Anna turns for advice, and his advice is banker’s advice: be quiet, be confident and do nothing hastily. Money talks, and Anna has plenty of money in Claes van Someren’s careful hands.

  Anna is an heiress, and it is upon her fortune that the Major had been able to maintain a manner of living well beyond what a Major’s pay would support. By law, of course – that eighteenth-century law which made a wife’s property the possession of her husband – everything Anna had was the Major’s, but the Major could gain access to it only through old Claes, who was affable in the highest degree, but not very communicative. He had his own ideas about the financial responsibility of English soldiers, and he had put reasonable quarterly sums in the Major’s hands without ever giving him a full account of Anna’s fortune. Her father, Paulus Vermuelen, had been a close friend of Claes van Someren, and the lawyer had resolved that his ward, who was also his cousin once removed – the Dutch are very strong on the dignity of cousins – should not be despoiled. So the Major, who was a financial innocent and inclined to trust lawyers, had never truly known about the mortgages that were Anna’s, or the good farms up the Hudson in Greenbush from which she received substantial rents. Or rather, she did not receive them, for old Claes collected them, and they went into very strong boxes in his place of business, in bags to which her name was attached with strong wire. Not all of these bags, and indeed never quite half of them, ever sweetened the Major’s happy life.

  Anna was astonished to learn from her old cousin how much money she had, and it is not to her discredit that the knowledge did much to dry her tears. To be a widow is grievous, and Anna loved the Major truly. But between being a rich widow, and being a soldier’s wife rawly left, hoping for a pension from the British, there is a great difference. And thus her tears were dried with the finest of cambric handkerchiefs, and old Claes reflected in his lawyer’s mind that it is wonderful how money cobbles the broken shoe. He was not a hard old man, but like so many people who handle much money, he was not without cynicism about human emotions.

  (8)

  THE OUTWARD PATTERN of Anna’s daily life does not greatly change. New York is not hot or hasty in its acceptance of the new republic. It is recognized, of course, that a new nation has been born, but there is much doubt as to whether the infant will live. George Washington has been made commander-in-chief of the American forces, and it is known that when he served the British he had been snubbed and overlooked when promotion was possible; the little-minded are certain that this has made him bitter against England, and the more generous are certain that he is above such petty considerations. Nobody denies that he is a man of fine spirit, which cannot be said for all the signers of the famous Declaration, but has he the forces to carry through a war against trained troops? It is whispered that when he beheld some of his forces he was dismayed and said, “Are these the men with whom I am to defend America?” As well he might, for my film allows me to have a look at them.

  Compared with the British, who have a marionette-like regularity and dignity as they drill, and march, and mount guard, these American forces are farcical chawbacons. There has not been rime to whip them into a smart army, and it seems unlikely that they would have submitted to such discipline. But they have a spirit of their own, which is more formidable than the British have yet discovered. These farmer boys are deadly shots, and they have a trick of rapid reloading that the British cannot equal. They have fought the Indians, and know methods of what would now be called guerilla fighting which dismay and annoy troops who fight by the book. In pitched battles, such as the defence of New York, the British know exactly what they are doing, and they win. But they are not prepared to deal with a mob who call themselves the Sons of Liberty, and succeed in burning down a large part of the city. In Boston they learn a bitter lesson against firing on mobs. In a melee where the insurgents are not in uniform, how is a British officer to know who is an experienced rabble-rouser and who may be merely an excited citizen, hysterical in the muddle like Crispus Attucks? Let honest folk stay out of mobs and they will come to no hurt.

  The Americans too are furious. The sense of fair play that enrages the British against the American irregularity of battle enrages the Americans equally, because General Howe has brought in mercenary Hessian troops – thousands of Germans – to fight against them. When brother turns against brother, is it decent to bring in foreigners from outside the family? The grievance is compounded because these Hessians – not all were Hessians but all were from the German duchies – are splendid fighters, not so lethargic as the British, and their Jäauger Corps is the best army in the field. Bringing in foreigners – it is not to be endured, and it adds bitterness to bitterness. It is easy to hate General Howe, who displays haughty British superiority, but he is not feared so much as is von Riedersel, a Brunswicker who is not ashamed to learn from the enemy and quickly trains his men in rapid fire. The Americans are waking up to the fact that this is a real war, and not just a family feud, and that dirty fighting is being met with fighting just as dirty. Both sides are learning that all war is dirty and that the noble deeds on the plains before Troy, about which so many of their officers are well informed, had no reality except in the imagination of Homer. As usual it is the common soldiers, who have never heard of Homer, who know the worst of it.

  It is all a muddle, and the women, like Anna, cannot understand why the men have created such a muddle, and cannot find a way out of it. She knows only that there has been destruction in New York city, but that General Howe and his men have it firmly under their control, so far as a city may be controlled where there are so many people who favour the other side. There is trouble about food, but it is not serious for her, because she has money to buy whatever food there is. Claes van Someren is firm in his advice to be quiet, be confident and do nothing hastily, and Anna is careful of what she says, even to trusted Dutch friends, who are just as cautious with her. In time it will blow over.

  (9)

  IT DOES NOT blow over. The colony of New York, as opposed to the city, has accepted the Declaration of Independence, and it is assumed that all the citizens of the city are waiting eagerly for the day when the British will have to give it up. Roger, who is big enough to do some scouting unnoticed, as boys tend to be, sees the gilded statue of George III in Bowling Green torn down and insulted, and his British heart turns in his breast. His father had heard “Yankee Doodle” sung in derision of the American troops, but Roger hears it everywhere turned into an American patriotic song, with a variety of inflammatory words. Loyal British boys have words of their own, and Anna hears her son singing in
the street –

  Yankee Doodle came to town

  A-riding on his pony;

  He stuck a feather in his arse

  And called it macaroni.

  She beats Roger for singing a dirty song. Or rather, she orders James to beat Roger, and James, who is an old friend of Roger’s, conspires with him to accept a noisy but not a painful punishment. But it is undignified and Roger is resentful. His notion of loyal partisanship is already masculine, and he thinks women should keep out of men’s affairs. Elizabeth, who has been listening when she should have been at her embroidery, wants to know what macaroni means.

  “It means foolishly elegant, like Ensign Larkin,” says Anna. She is indignant when, a few weeks later, it is learned that Ensign Larkin has accepted big Yankee money to go over to the rebellious troops, to act as a drill-instructor. There are several such defections, for British pay is not generous.

  All of this I see, with an eye cocked now and then at Battleship Potemkin, which hammers home the lesson that all rebellions are ill-shaped and bring heavy troubles on those who want no part of them, but cannot get away from them. When Cain is raised, Cain’s fury will strike blindly. Roger knows that Loyalist windows – so costly to re-glaze – have been broken in the night by gangs whose blackened faces make them unrecognizable. There is a terrible week when James, the porter and odd-job man, talks too loudly in the tavern about the iniquities of the Americans, who won’t fight fair; he does not see the three men in the corner, who lie in wait for him the next day, and lead the gang that tars and feathers him and rides him on a rail through streets where American sympathy is strong. When James manages to crawl home he is in a very bad way, and Anna and the two black women have to nurse him for a fortnight before he is able to take up his duties again.

  Tarring and feathering lives now only as a form of jocose speech, but it was a dreadful and dangerous humiliation. If the hot tar were spread too widely over the victim’s body it might kill him, for his skin could not breathe. The feathers were a purely decorative indignity, but being ridden – half naked – on a rail might destroy a man’s privates for any future generative employment, because the rail was sharp, and those who carried it shook it to bounce the victim up and down. The tar could be removed with turpentine, but that could burn if it were too generously applied, so rubbing with vinegar was the usual treatment, slow and painful; too generous use of either removing agent left sores which were slow to heal, despite Anna’s generous use of porter as a balm. For the bruised testicles only compresses were of any use, and they were not of very much use. The mob who enjoyed the spectacle hooted and jeered, for what they saw was a scarecrow, a human chicken, a creature rejected by his peers, and thus a fine object for Cain’s mirth. But the wretch, when he escaped, would never be fully himself again. To be scalped by Indians was preferable, because the flesh from which the topknot had been cut would heal in time, and in a wig-wearing age it could be concealed. But the victim of tar and feathers might think himself lucky to escape with one eye, and a limp, and a broken spirit.

  I was sickened by the scene of James’s humiliation, and tried to close my eyes to it, and found I could not. Whatever power was showing me this film was determined that I should see it all.

  So much of it was strange in ways that had never entered my head. So many of these men and women of the eighteenth century were of low stature, almost to the point of dwarfishness; girls and boys not yet twenty might have no teeth at all, or mouths filled with rotten snags; among the ordinary folk tobacco-chewing was the common solace, and their spitting was indiscriminate and prodigious. Outside Trinity Church on a Sunday morning the pavement was filthy with quids the worshippers had spat out before going in to service. It was through this filth that many of the ladies trailed their long skirts.

  I had seen films of the eighteenth century in my lifetime, and I now became conscious how much they depended on ingenious designers of costume; these people wore clothes that looked as if they had been made not by tailors but by upholsterers who had heard tell of the human figure but had never seen one; many of the poor wore outfits of extraordinary antiquity, for square-cut coats were not unknown, leather breeches were common, and even steeple-crown hats that spoke of a century earlier could be seen; as they were of beaver they were virtually indestructible; these heirlooms were far too good to throw away. The well-to-do were dressed expensively, but not elegantly, except for the officers, British and Hessian, whose uniforms were made abroad. Anna, who was a woman of means, had the best, but her gowns were so stiff they could have stood alone, and she never wore fewer than four petticoats, one of which was invariably of the densest flannel and flaming red. But she wore no drawers, in the manner of her time, and this was made plain in a scene which I would have preferred not to see.

  She was a woman of principle, but she was a young widow; she had a number of suitors, and of these, two or three aroused in her desires and memories of her married state which she could not always fight down. Captain van der Heyden, for instance, was a Hessian of distinguished address, and a killing moustache. He had visited the house on John Street a few times, with friends Anna had made among the occupying force, and on a particular morning he called alone, and what could Anna do but receive him and regale him with the inevitable coffee and some fine “cookies”; the Dutch word for biscuits was already common in America. The Captain grew bold, and Anna did not receive him as coldly as would have been advisable. So she found herself on a sofa beside the Captain, who talked so winningly that she was off her guard when he put his arm, which had been on the back of the sofa, around her neck, and drew her to him and kissed her so pleasantly that she did not draw back when his other hand slipped beneath her heavy skirts and mounted gently to her knee, and then above her garter until it rested warmly on her naked thigh, and mounted to where no widow should have allowed it to be, but to which this widow offered only the most formal resistance.

  A love scene, and nothing to the scenes of naked passion common enough in the movies in the latter part of the twentieth century, so why was I squeamish? Unquestionably because it was a love scene of a sort to which I was unaccustomed, and this overdressed seduction I found both fusty and repellent. In the manner of the day, the Captain wore his hat, and his coat was stiff with braid; Anna wore her widow’s cap, and had not brushed all the cookie crumbs from her bosom, which was rising and falling rapidly as she murmured in what I suppose was Dutch. It was a close call, for when matters had gone so far that the conclusion seemed inevitable, Emmeline tapped at the door and asked if she might carry away the coffee cups. The result was therefore what musicians of the day called a disappointed climax. What would the completed seduction have looked like – hat, cap, buckskin breeches, top boots and Anna’s heavy eighteenth-century shoes and petticoats like bedclothes all milling away in an attempt at an intimate union? Doubtless it was a passionate moment for Anna and the Captain but for me it was absurd and pitiful. I have the usual dash of voyeurism in my nature, but I was forced to realize that I liked to peep only at cleverly managed scenes directed to suit the taste of films as I knew them. I am – or I must say I was – a man of my time, and I found that time and time’s fashions were of first importance in matters that I had foolishly supposed were timeless.

  That evening Anna was particularly strict with her children, and was severe with Elizabeth, whom she accused of lolling in her chair – the child had allowed her back to touch the chairback in defiance of polite custom – in a manner which a guest would certainly consider immodest. Other times, other manners. Should I say, other times, other notions of human nature?

  (10)

  HOW STRANGE THEY looked! How strange the food they ate and the way they ate it, the gentlemen picking their teeth freely in the drawing-room with the same elegance with which they took snuff. How unaccustomed and often repugnant were the smells, for this was not simply a movie and a talkie but also a smellie. Everywhere was the smell of horse, not in itself a bad smell but heavy, and when it mi
ngled with the stench from the drains, down which the maidservants emptied the slops every morning, too insidiously creatural to be ignored, whatever might be done with sprigs of lavender among the linen, and bowls of pot-pourri in the drawing-room. But in New York there was often a relieving breeze from the sea, salty and fishy, to be sure, but a pleasant change from the brown fug of a town where the horse was the common carrier, and voided its dung and its water everywhere.

  Did I witness the rise of the famous American sense of humour? I think I did. What the British laughed at ranged from the polished wit of the playhouse and the best authors to heavy jokes of a clumsy, ill-managed obscenity. The Americans seemed to be forging a humour that was a new weapon to their troops. An ironical, wry fun, a dry mockery which did not call for laughter so often as it demanded the crooked smile. They took “Yankee Doodle” and turned it on the British until the lobster-backs were sick of that sportive tune, played on shrieking fifes as the Americans approached, flying the flag they had made out of the elements in George Washington’s own armorial bearings – the Stars and Stripes. The Americans laughed at themselves, which the British were not inclined to do, and which the Hessians simply did not consider as a possibility. What Yankee wag was it who recalled the song from Polly, the popular ballad opera which followed The Beggar’s Opera:

  Despair leads to battle

  No courage so great;

  They must conquer or die

  Who have no retreat;