Rabble in arms, p.1
Rabble in Arms, page 1
KENNETH ROBERTS
Rabble in Arms
DOWN EAST BOOKS
CAMDEN, MAINE
To Booth Tarkington,
without whose generous guidance
the Chronicles of Arundel would
still he unwritten
Copyright © 1933, 1947 by Kenneth Roberts. All rights reserved.
Published by arrangement with Doubleday, a division of Bantam Doubleday Dell publishing Group, Inc.
ISBN 0-89272-386-6
Cover illustration: Benedict Arnold and Men, oil on canvas, by N. C. Wyeth. Hood Museum of Art, Dartmouth College,
Hanover, N.H. Gift of Kenneth Roberts.
Map by Kathy Bray.
Color separation: Roxmont Graphics
Printed and bound at Capital City Press, Inc., Montpelier, Vt.
8 9 7
Down East Books, Camden, Maine
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Roberts, Kenneth Lewis, 1885-1957.
Rabble in arms / Kenneth Roberts.
p. cm.
ISBN 0-89272-386-6 (pbk.)
1. United States—History--Revolution, 1775-1783--Fiction. 2. Arnold, Benedict, 1774-1801-Fiction. I. Title.
PS3535.0176R33 1996
813‧.52--dc20 96-19617
CIP
“I despise my Countrymen. I wish I could say I was not born in America. I once gloried in it but am now ashamed of it. The Rascally Stupidity which prevails, the Insults and Neglects which the army have met with, Beggars all description. It must go no farther. They can endure it no longer. I am in Rags, have lain in the Rain on the Ground for 40 hours past, & only a Junk of fresh Beef & that without Salt to dine on this day, reed no pay since last December, & all this for my Cowardly Countrymen who flinch at the very time when their exertions are wanted, & hold their Purse Strings as tho they would Damn the World, rather than part with a Dollar to their Army.”
—Colonel Ebenezer Huntington to his brother, 1780.
“Benedict Arnold’s country and the world owe him more than they will ever liquidate; and his defection can never obliterate the solid services and the ample abuse which preceded it.”
—Rev. J. F. Schroeder; Life and Times of Washington.
“We are starving, and unless something very efficacious for the supply of the army is done very speedily, we must disband or turn freebooters—an evil of almost as much magnitude as the first. You have much influence with members of Congress. I entreat you to make them sensible of the risk to which they are exposing their country, and of the double risk to which they expose themselves; for it begins to be a prevailing sentiment, both in the army and in the country, that a party among them has been bribed to drive things into confusion.”
—General St. Clair to Joseph Reed, 1780.
“I see nothing before us but accumulating distress. We have been half our time without provisions and are like to continue so. We have no Magazines nor money to form them. And in a little time we shall have no Men, if we had Money to pay them. We have lived upon expedients until we can live no longer. In a word, the history of the War is a history of false hopes and temporary devices, instead of system and economy.”
—George Washington to Cadwalader, 1780.
“Arnold displayed more real military genius and inspiration than all the generals put together, on both sides, engaged in the war, with the most undaunted personal courage.”
—Charles Knight; History of England, Vol. I, p. 430.
“A rabble in arms, flushed with success and insolence”
—General Burgoyne to Lord Rochfort describing American troops before Boston.
I
IT WAS Cap Huff who said that no business or profession, not even the managing of a distillery, can provide the profusion of delights to be encountered in a good war. I have not found it so; and for my part I want no more of such delights as the powder-blackened faces of the men who died beside us aboard the row-galleys on Lake Champlain, the painted masks of the greasy Indians that laid us by the heels, and the dreadful labors we endured before we stopped the British. Unfortunately I have others to consider; and it is for their sakes that I recall the burdens of those nightmare days.
In the beginning I must say that this is no book for those who swear by old wives’ fables, holding all Americans brave, all Englishmen honorable and all Frenchmen gallant. It cannot please such innocents as are convinced that men in public office always set the nation’s welfare above their own, nor those who think all soldiers patriots. It will disappoint the credulous who cherish the delusion that patriotism burns high in every breast in the hour of a country’s peril. In it there is scant fare for romantics who wish to hear how courage and ability bring greater recognition than mediocrity and bluster, how virtue always triumphs, and how cowards meet a fitting retribution. Those who crave such poppycock must turn to fairy tales for undeveloped minds; for I am obliged to deal with facts and write what I conceive to be the truth.
… My father’s letter was delivered to me in our London lodgings, early on a March evening in 1776. When the letter arrived, my brother Nathaniel and I were on the point of setting out for Ranelagh, the occasion being a special entertainment at that resort of fashion because of somebody’s birthday: the Queen’s, it may have been, or that of one of the King’s innumerable royal relatives in Germany.
We had learned that upon such anniversaries it was usual for the King himself to visit Ranelagh, and that on this account dukes and generals and statesmen who wished to be seen in the train of royalty would be there, making a show that brought women off the street, shopkeepers hunting for new mistresses, shopkeepers’ wives looking for adventure, and young bucks out to make themselves disagreeable to as many people as possible.
We had never been to Ranelagh, Nathaniel and I; and Nathaniel was eager to go, not only because he might see famous folk, but because he could write familiarly about the place to his college classmates in Boston.
When, therefore, Nathaniel caught sight of the name “Capt. Asa Merrill” written above the red seal on the letter’s back, he said, “Put it by, Peter, until we get to Ranelagh. Well never be there if you wait to translate it now!”
He was impetuous, my brother was: airy and a trifle English in his speech from attending Harvard College, where he had associated with Boylstons, Doanes and other codfish aristocrats. It was like him to speak of translating my father’s letter: a little disrespectful, certainly; yet not far from the truth; for my father was a bad speller, able to spell almost any word in several fashions, all of them wrong.
I thrust the letter into my pocket, letting Nathaniel have his way, which I may have done too often for his own good.
The truth was that a large part of my thoughts revolved around Nathaniel—not only because he was my mother s favorite and because he had always looked to me for help and guidance during his younger days, but because I saw in him the instrument by means of which our family might, through its shipping interests, become a power in the Province of Maine, just as had the Hancocks and the Derbys and the Bowditches in Massachusetts, and the Palmers in Connecticut.
He was not cut out for a mariner, to my way of thinking, having an aversion to loneliness and a leaning toward the society of his equals. There is as much of one, on a long cruise, as there is little of the other; and I knew from observation that if he were forced to be a seaman against his will, he would not be the first in that situation to take to the bottle.
This very sociability of his, however, fitted in with my purpose; for men as well as women took to him immediately; and what was more important, he wore well, which is not often the case with those who seem companionable at first sight. Consequently I could ask no better agent for the handling of our freights in some likely port—Canton, say, or Malaga, where fortunes may be made quickly by a shipowner working in conjunction with an agent who has no other interests to serve. It was for this reason that I had interceded with my father to send Nathaniel to Harvard; and now that he had received a proper education, topping it off with a course under me in carrying and disposing of cargoes, I had high hopes for him and the future. My father had a knack for getting stout brigs built, and I knew how to sail them: we had our own shipyard in Arundel—and so, if Nathaniel expressed a wish to do a thing, I humored him, after the fashion of an older brother who has built fond dreams around a younger.
We walked over to the muddy Strand; then off up the river to the gardens and rotunda of Ranelagh.
It was well we walked; for by the time we had covered two-thirds of the mile that separated those winter pleasure-grounds from the central portion of London, the coaches of the pleasure-seekers were so wedged together in the roadway that their occupants, we thought, would be hours in reaching their destination.
… I might say here that people have spoken to me, often, as though it were astonishing for two Americans to be in London at a time when we were at war with England; but their wonderment is due only to their lack of understanding.
England considered herself not at war, but almost at peace with her American colonies, and merely annoyed and disgusted by the rebellious hypocrites with which New England, according to the belief of most Englishmen, was entirely populated.
Why it was that the English regarded us as hypocrites for refusing to submit to their tyranny, I have never exactly understood; but that was the fact of it. We were rebellious, praying hypocrites; and that belief, I fear, will never be allowed to die in stubborn Albion.
At all events, England reasoned that hypocrites would succumb more readily to force than to justice; and while she stabbed at the rebels with one hand, she held out an olive branch with the other; and on all sides there was constant expectation that the olive branch would be gratefully accepted—either through poverty or timidity.
London was sprinkled with Americans—a thousand of them, maybe: wealthy and influential persons who had come to England to escape lawless English-haters in America. I had avoided them, my feelings being what they were; for I wanted no arguments with any man until my fathers specie was safely home; but I’m bound to say they were fine people except as regards their admiration for England.
There were even Englishmen who sympathized with our rebels, as I well knew from repeated readings of Dr. Price’s book on Civil Liberty—a book that had come to seem as valuable to me as the other small volumes I carried on all my voyages: the Bible, Tristram Shandy, Don Quixote, Roderick Random and Gulliver’s Travels: books which, if read with care and fully digested, will give a man more learning than he can get from a score of colleges put together.
Dr. Price’s book had recently been published in London, and had been widely read by the English, though it maintained that England could commit no greater folly than to seek to keep our liberty from us. Consequently even a rebellious American could live peaceably in England, provided he was judicious in his speech, and kept his mouth shut when tempted to speak impulsively—which, after all, is a requisite of peace everywhere.
… The English are easily satisfied with their own belongings, I have found, and still more easily amused by matters amusing to no one else; so I was prepared to be disappointed in the Ranelagh rotunda, which every Londoner considers more magnificent than anything in Egypt or Greece. But when I found myself under that great inverted bowl and looking up into it, I was amazed and full of admiration. Its airy space was so enormous that the throng of finely dressed folk who strolled slowly about its floor had the dwarfed look of ants moving aimlessly on the bottom of a vast round box. The roof was supported by a tremendous eight-sided column, hollow. Within the column a bright fire flamed and danced, so that the place had warmth.
All around the room were arcades, a table set in each one; and above the arcades were boxes, similarly equipped with tables. At one side of the main entrance was an elevated platform, and over it a sounding board; and on the platform was an orchestra of fifty pieces, all playing away for dear life. The place was filled with the gay and stirring sound, though there was nothing happening save hundreds of people walking slowly around and around, ignoring each other.
It had cost us a guinea to get into this pleasure resort, which seemed to me enough to pay for a night’s entertainment; but Nathaniel, who had little regard for money, never having had to earn much of it, was of a. different mind.
As we stood at the entrance, staring about us, Nathaniel plucked at my sleeve and pointed to an arcade-box done out in red brocade.
“The royal box!” he exclaimed.
He dragged me across the circular floor, walked boldly to the box beside the royal enclosure and made as though to enter. A lackey jumped up in it, his nose in the air, and said, “Resarved for Lard Jarge Germain.”
Nathaniel swung me into the adjoining box, and almost before I knew what had happened he had pushed me into a chair at its table and dropped into a seat across from me.
A waiter came in and stared at us angrily. But Nathaniel, who was skilled at aping the English, turned to him and said haughtily, “What is it, my man?”
On this the waiter became ill at ease, and mumbled that the box was reserved.
Nathaniel seemed pained. “I won t be spoken to in such a way!” He appealed to me. “Do you suppose the clown doesn’t know who I am? Throw five shillings on the floor for him, Sir Peter! Not another farthing, mind! And have him bring us a bit of ham, eh, Sir Peter? And a quart of rack punch, by Ged!”
The waiter, at once obsequious, took the five shillings I tossed liim and darted from the box with such alacrity that he tripped over the curtains.
“Look here!” I told Nathaniel. “You’ll get us into trouble if you call me Sir Peter; and we can’t be spending like a couple of dukes.”
Nathaniel smiled at me affectionately. “The ham’s a shilling a plate, and the punch seven shillings a quart. Only two dollars, Peter, for sitting in a box beside the box that’s next to the box where sat the King of England, and having an experience your grandchildren will be bragging about a hundred years from now!”
What he said was probably true; for a king is a king, even though weak in the head. Therefore I made no further protest and we listened to the orchestra and watched the throngs parading slowly around and around, like a school of pollock following one another’s tails in and out of a cove in the Arundel River, each one goggle-eyed with brain-lessness.
How the paraders could imagine they were taking pleasure was beyond me; for the entire gathering had the air of despising everything and everyone. Yet for Nathaniel and myself it was as exciting as a play at Drury Lane; and as the evening went on it became more so.
Our platter of ham arrived, and the bowl of rack punch; and the thinness of the slices of ham was something remarkable—something that proved the carver a master craftsman, both with knife and niggardliness. As soon as Nathaniel saw the ham before him, he examined it with an air of incredulity; then said, “Peter, where’s Father’s letter?”
As I felt in my pocket for it, I was conscious of a perfume so sweet and so arresting that I looked up suddenly, as if the scent of violets that filled the air had been a hand laid upon me to gain my attention. My eyes went beyond Nathaniel, and encountered, standing before the adjoining box, which we had been told was Germain’s, a lady in a dress of pink brocade, and a tall, languid gentleman in black.
The lady was beautifully slender and rounded. A pink turban bound her head, and from under it two half moons of golden hair curved down, lying tight upon her cheeks and concealing her ears. Her eyes were blue, the blue of a summer sea in the morning; and beneath her eyes was a dust of freckles that made her look too young and innocent to be in such a place as this.
Beautiful as she was, her companion was equally striking. He was all in black satin: black coat, black knee breeches, black vest and stockings and shoes; but he wore a white wig; and at his throat was a cascade of white lace. In this white frame was set a placid, olive-tinted face: a face that seemed to slumber, because of the way in which its eyelids drooped. There was no look of weariness to him, despite those drooping lids: merely a sort of quiet relaxation: a kind of suspended animation.
Even as Nathaniel took the letter from me, I heard the girl in pink speaking to the lackey in the next box. I couldn’t hear the words; but her voice was soft; and when the answer came, she turned a little doubtfully in our direction.
It was then that Nathaniel, having opened the letter, picked up a paper-thin slice of ham and held it before his face, so that he appeared to be reading the letter through it. Since the orchestra ceased playing at that moment, his words must have been clearly heard by the lady and her escort.
“Dated from Arundel in the Province of Maine,” Nathaniel announced. “My dear sons:—I hope while you are in England you will go to Ranelagh and learn how to cut one ham into slices so thin there’ll be a slice for every man in the army.”
I reached over and took the letter from him none too gently. He winked at me and whisked the slice of ham into his mouth. The lady’s escort raised a sleepy eyelid at my sudden movement; but the lady herself stared frankly, as if fascinated by what Nathaniel had said.
I looked at the letter, and saw Nathaniel had been joking. The words that met my eyes were not about ham, but were ominous, and so not difficult to read, despite my father’s dreadful spelling:
The winter finds us well, and still something to eat and it is the hoap of your mother and me that these Fue lines find you the saim. I have a change of hart about your staing in England until the rebellion should be over, as it now appeers God knows when that will be. Thare is talk on all sides that America must be a sepperate country by itself. Those who are suspecktit of wishing to come to a peaceabil arranjement with England are in danger of losing thare property, thare hoams and thare verry lives. Thare are some who suspeckt us because you still remane in England. Tharefour if you can come saif home with the speshie, I would say come. I will leave it to Peter’s judgement. God knows we need the speshie. Thare is no money to be had anywhere, only paper money not worth mutch. Everyboddy is pore except those who become ritch out of our distress, and thare is no money to provide our army with powder or unaforms or pay. The British burnt Falmouth, leaving near 2000 women and children without rooves, cloathes or food for the winter whitch was a hard one. Steven Nason is hoam from Que-beck, where Nathaniel Lord was killt, and 18 men from Arundel capti-vatit by the British, among them Noah Cluff, who workt in our shipyard. Steven says the men not killt or captivatit will go on fiting, even if they fite with nothing but axes….
