Caxton (14 page)

“L
ately,” said the gentleman, “I have been so befuddled by the demands of this
office that this morning I consulted Dr. Johnson’s definition of Governor. Four
of the five meanings he gives may, in ideal circumstances, be applied to my
duties. But, in fact, I can neither steer a supreme direction, nor wield much
authority, nor exercise my delegated power. I am neither pilot, nor regulator,
nor manager.” The gentleman paused and leaned forward. “Dr. Johnson might have
added a sixth definition of Governor, sir,” he added. “Something witty, on the
order of his definition of oats. Exempli gratia, ‘A Punchinello who presumes
to act for his absentee master.’”

“Dr. Johnson’s
Dictionary
is without peer. Yet, there are in it many
definitions that could have benefited from less wit and more precision.”
“I cannot but agree with you, sir. In my quieter moments, I have annotated and
enlarged on many of his entries, if not corrected them in part or in whole.”
The gentleman shook his head and chuckled. “I am afraid that I have spoiled
my copy of his opus! It is cluttered with my own emendatory marginalia!”
“Then it must be some relief to you that he hasn’t the power to hurl acerbic
thunderbolts across the ocean in retaliation, your honor. I have it our reigning
critic does not brook criticism.”
“Oh, no,” said the gentleman, shaking his head. “I don’t believe he would be
so vindictive. I have heard that he is quite generous in regard to his own fallibility.
He would very likely welcome correction.” He sighed. “Would that their lordships
on the Board of Trade and the Privy Council were less offended and more lenient,
in respect to my actions. They are not so friendly to enlightenment.” He paused
and noticed his visitor’s empty glass. “Will you have another bumper of Armagnac,
sir?”
Hugh Kenrick nodded and volunteered, as his host rose to fill his long-stemmed
glass with Armagnac from a crystal decanter, “A Punchinello, your honor? I believe
you underestimate the esteem in which many persons here hold you. I have heard
little else but praise for your character and conduct.”

* * *

It was inevitable that Francis Fauquier, Esquire, Lieutenant-Governor of Virginia,
would be informed of the permanent presence in the colony of a member of nobility.
His secretary did not pass on to him all the letters addressed to his honor,
but among those he did were several on the subject of Hugh Kenrick, Baron of
Danvers. The Governor, finding the mental time to be curious about why such
a person would refrain from announcing himself, instructed his secretary to
compose for his signature an invitation to the newcomer to present himself at
the Palace in Williamsburg so that His Majesty’s representative could at least
pay his own courtesies. Many of the things said about the young man were profusely
complimentary, while other statements made about him were quite disturbing.
The Governor wished to judge for himself.

Fauquier, aged fifty-seven, an Anglicized Huguenot, was a Fellow of the Royal
Society and a former director of the South Sea Company. His father had been
a colleague of Isaac Newton’s at the Royal Mint and a director of the Bank of
England. The Lieutenant-Governor arrived in June 1758 to assume his post. No
one knew for certain why he was appointed. He was a friend of the Spanish-raiding
George Anson, now First Lord of the Admiralty; it was said by some that he had
lost his inherited fortune to the navigator over a game of cards and that the
appointment was a means of escaping his creditors. Others assumed that it was
a combination of factors: his friendship with George Montagu Dunk, the third
Earl of Halifax and president of the Board of Trade; his popular pamphlet, published
in 1755, on the ways and means of funding the new war and reducing the national
debt; and his knowledge of commercial practices and law, all contributing to
his name’s being put on the list of candidates for colonial Governorships.

He was a short man, with dark, avid eyes set in an oval face. A widow’s peak
atop a broad forehead complemented a long nose. He was the most polished and
urbane Governor the Crown had ever imposed on the Council and the House of Burgesses:
widely read on many diverse subjects, able to read and write Latin and French;
a musician; dabbler in science and economics, gracious; a consummate conversationalist;
wickedly deft at cards; well-meaning; and increasingly torn between his duty
to the Crown and a growing fondness for Virginia.

The burgesses liked and trusted him, chiefly because, outside of the purchase
of two parcels of land in Williamsburg, he did not, as had his predecessors,
evince the least interest in acquiring large tracts of uninhabited wilderness
in the west; this absence of avarice lent substance to his sincerity, honesty,
and devotion to his duties. The Council, composed largely of the wealthiest
planters and landowners in the colony, and which acted as his advisory board,
as a senate, and as the supreme court of the colony, liked him because he seemed
to be what all twelve of them wished to be: independently wealthy and well-connected
in the maze of colonial and imperial influence.

Hugh Kenrick received the Lieutenant-Governor’s invitation in late January
1760, and cursed silently when he read the brief missive. At the bottom were
Fauquier’s signature and embossed imprint of the Great Seal of the colony. It
was not an invitation he could ignore. He instructed Mr. Beecroft to compose
a reply for his signature, stating that he would call on the Palace some time
in February, before the next session of the General Assembly. In mid-February,
he donned a heavy coat, secured a traveling bag to his saddle, and rode off
through a light snowfall to the Hove Creek bridge and the road to Williamsburg.

Williamsburg was a larger town than was Caxton, and as neatly laid out. The
sparse buildings of the College of William and Mary stood at one end of the
Duke of Gloucester Street, the imposing, square-cornered Capitol at the other.
In between these points, on both sides of the wide boulevard, stood a few dozen
houses with their gardens, and shops, taverns and hostelries.

Hugh had followed the road from Caxton that let out near the college’s grounds,
and he soon found himself on the boulevard. The hooves of his mount thumped
leisurely on the street’s frozen mud as he made his way in the direction of
the Capitol almost a mile away. He nodded or touched his hat in reply to the
curious glances of some men and women who paused to watch him ride by.

Unlike Caxton, Williamsburg was a sleepy town, this capital of the richest
and most populous of Great Britain’s colonies — a port that might have been,
but for its dead-center location on high ground between two great rivers. But
Hugh sensed that it was now girding itself for the opening of the General Assembly
next month. Then there would be court days in the county courthouse, the arrival
of plaintiffs and defendants and their attorneys, of farmers and artisans and
entertainers, of planters and merchants to see that their bills were introduced
and read in the House by their burgesses, of busy men who came to settle debts
and acquire new ones, of idle gentlemen who came to be diverted by the theater,
by other men’s daughters, by horse racing, card games, cock-fighting, and amusing
company.

Drays and carts were pulled up before many of the shops and taverns, and men
were unloading from them everything from bolts of cloth to sides of beef. Smoke
gushed from the chimney of a smithy, and he heard the persistent, purposeful
hammering of metal from that enterprise. He passed a cumbersome wagon laden
with raw lumber, pulled by a team of oxen. From one of the houses he heard someone
practicing on a violin, and from another a woman singing “Pretty Little Horses,”
a lullaby his mother had sung to him long ago. Many of the shops and taverns
sported modest signboards that winked at him as they rocked in the cold wind;
they reminded him of the Strand in London. He rode as far as the Capitol, just
to see the place that mattered so much in Virginia. He cocked his head in appreciation
of its size and the simplicity of its lines; it was as grand an edifice as any
in Philadelphia.

Also grand, he thought, was the Governor’s Palace midway down the boulevard,
at the end of a long park. After arranging for a room at Raleigh Tavern and
a stall for his mount, he walked the distance to the Palace. At the great iron
gates, he presented his letter from Fauquier to a black footman, who in turn
presented it to the housekeeper. This worthy man, when he read the letter, bid
the unexpected but special guest to wait in a parlor to the right of the foyer.
But Hugh declined, choosing to wait instead in the spacious, marble-floored
hall.

The wheel of muskets fixed to the hall’s ceiling startled him. And everywhere
he looked, he saw arms: pistols, swords, sabers, halberds, pikes, and more muskets,
all arranged on the walls in some ominous effort at decoration. Directly opposite
the entrance, above the arched portal that led to the inner sanctums of the
Palace, were three half-furled banners: the Virginia Regimental, the Great Union,
and the King’s Colors — crossed on polished mahogany staves, draped over a drum.
The foyer alone, he concluded, was more impressive, and perhaps more intentionally
intimidating, than was the whole of St. Stephen’s Chapel that was the House
of Commons. When a secretary rushed in to escort him upstairs to the Governor’s
office, Hugh inquired about the purpose of the arms.

“The Palace, you see, milord,” said the man, “is an extension of the magazine
that is just up the way. There has never been enough room to store all the weapons
owned by the colony, and I suppose it was judged convenient by past Governors
to house them here, too. And, aside from their utilitarian presence, they serve
a symbolic purpose, which is to remind his honor’s visitors and petitioners
of his favors of the power and majesty of the Crown.”

Hugh knew little about Francis Fauquier’s career in Virginia, other than that
he had assented to the tobacco act of a year and a half ago, the riders of which
had become a liability to him. One of his first official vetoes, however, was
of the removal of the colony’s scalp bounty law during the same session of the
General Assembly. Queen Anne County’s major planters praised him, the middle
planters did not fully trust him, while Jack Frake and Thomas Reisdale predicted
that Fauquier would probably be the last popular Governor of the colony. “He
cannot placate the burgesses and London, too,” was Reisdale’s comment one evening.

Hugh repressed a grin when the secretary showed him into the Governor’s office.
Not only was Fauquier a foot shorter than he, but his friendly, almost puppyish
manner contradicted and made ludicrous the Palace’s array of decorative armament.
In the course of their initial cordialities, Hugh tactfully but firmly corrected
the Governor. “My preferred manner of address, your honor, is
sir
,
”
he said. “It saves me the bother of unnecessary protocol, and others the effort
of undue humility.” He then offered his hand to the Governor, something a titled
aristocrat in those times would never have done for a commoner. Francis Fauquier
was but an accomplished and respected commoner.

The Governor was momentarily startled, but smiled and timidly shook the proffered
hand. He waved Hugh to an armchair of crimson silk damask and plopped down on
a similar chair opposite him. In between them was a massive desk piled high
with papers and books. “So,” he had said, “it is true…what some persons have
written to me about you.” A servant knocked on the door then and came in with
a tray of spirits and glasses.

* * *

Lieutenant-Governor Fauquier replenished his own glass with Armagnac, then
set down the decanter. He said, “Thank you…sir. And, I am not unaware of that
praise. However, the persons who praise me do not reside in London. All the
burgesses and the whole Council know my instructions. Even these parsimonious
parsons who bedevil me. If I followed the Board of Trade’s instructions to the
letter, sir, I should become little better than a tyrant. Then I would merit
the opposite of praise. My instructions leave me meager room for discretion
and judgment. The originals I brought with me have been so amended, abridged,
and supplemented, that I cannot be blamed for not knowing any more what they
are. I expect more of that, and more than one rebuke from their lordships on
the Board and the Privy Council.”

Fauquier made an anguished face. “But, if I am to lend some congeniality to
the governing of this place, I cannot but employ my discretion and judgment,
qualities I had presumed were responsible for my commission.”

He paused to sip his Armagnac, then put down the glass and gestured with his
hands. “From Punchinello, I assume the guise of Jason in ancient Greece, caught
between the man-eating monster Scylla — that being the Board — and the whirlpool
of the Charybdis — that being the unending difficulties and concerns associated
with this colony.” Fauquier rose suddenly and paced nervously before his desk.
“If it is not the Cherokees who need presents and wooing, it is the Creeks,
or some other amorphous ‘nation’ of barbarians. If it is not settlers on the
frontier raiding Indians, it is the Indians raiding the settlers. If it is not
the burgesses pressing me for assent to their laws, it is the clergy hounding
me for their veto. If it is not the dearth of specie, it is the cascades of
unsecured paper money. If it is not having money enough to raise an effective
militia for the frontier, it is not enough men to fill the militia when the
money has been voted. Creditors and debtors inveigh against each other. Tobacco
prices are too high or too low. London’s merchants trade accusations of fraud
and sharp practice with the planters. Oh, sir!” sighed Fauquier, sitting down
again. “I could go on, but I fear I should distress you, too!”

Before Hugh could reply, the Governor leaned forward and wagged a finger. “Virginian
lives and money purchased the forks of the Ohio at Pittsburg, but Pennsylvanians
hope to claim them with no risk of men or money, and they are reluctant to take
any action against the savages who imperil their own western frontier. Lastly,
I thought — together with the Council and the burgesses — that we had finished
with the Cherokees in the Carolinas and west of here, and that Governor Lyttleton’s
treaty with them would hold, at least until the French war is concluded. But,
not surprisingly, French agents among the tribes are stirring them up again.
If it pleases you, sir,” added the Governor in a near whisper, and also because
he could not forget that his visitor was of the aristocracy, “that bit of information
may not leave this room. The House must be officially apprised of the situation.”