Lord Dexter is a man of fame;
Most celebrated is his name;
More precious far than gold that’s pure,
Lord Dexter shine for evermore.
—Jonathan Plummer.
Yes, Jonathan Plummer wrote that jingle. It is from the only survivor of a gross of eulogies he wrote of Lord Dexter. And quite proper that he should. He was Lord Dexter’s poet laureate, hired, clothed and fed to produce eulogies on demand. His poetry was awful, and the tragedy is that he knew it. Said he didn’t like to read too much good verse because it made his own look sorry. But when a man has given up peddling fish and racy European pamphlets in order to study for the ministry, and neither the ministry nor the melodrama pays, he can’t be blamed, especially if he has the appetite of an ox and the soul of a poet, for going to work for anyone as poet laureate. Lord Dexter outfitted him in a long black cloak with gold stars on the lapels, and fringe, and a black under dress, a huge cocked hat, and a gold-headed cane. There was a great row about the fringe: Jonathan refused to wear it, Lord Dexter pooh-poohed. Pooh-poohed a poet laureate! Still, Maecenas was Maecenas: Jonathan wore the fringe.
Timothy Dexter was a leather-dresser, born in Malden in 1743. Treating leather to simulate “morocco” was a new art, which he mastered, and which, on account of the demand for “morocco” for women’s shoes, built him a nice fortune. He married a thrifty widow, who had a little huckster business of her own. They emerged from the period of the Revolution with a son and daughter, and a few thousand dollars. Continental money had dropped to two-and-sixpence on the pound, and the securities of Massachusetts issued to support the money had tumbled to the same depths. John Hancock and Thomas Russel, Bostonians of large fortunes, bought in many of these securities to oblige their friends and to hearten the public’s morale, which was as low as its money. Timothy Dexter heard of it, and risked every loose dollar he had in the same investment. Then Hamilton’s funding system went into operation and made him a wealthy man, who need never dress another hide as long as he lived.
He had gambled that the United States Constitution was a fixture, and he had won. He played more money on the same color, and won again and again. Charlestown, still convalescing from a severe fire, was not to the liking of this new-laid magnate. He moved to Newburyport, after Salem and Boston the busiest port in the Commonwealth. He bought two fine estates, occupied one for a short time, and then moved to the other. As the property of a prominent merchant it had been one of the fine houses of a community of steady, prosperous people, whose philosophy was drawn from the Old Testament, education from the Three R’s, and deportment from a rigid Puritan ancestry. Into its complacent calm Timothy Dexter came bellowing like a bull in a china shop, and proceeded to build the china shop about him.
You may have wondered about the source of the iron-dog-and-Diana tendency on the lawns of our captains of industry. It dates from Lord Dexter, and in justice to him it should be said that he set a mark that neither posterity nor Adolphus Busch nor Carl Hagenbeck nor Ex-Senator Clark could begin to approach. They may have paid more for their cupolas and summer-houses and plaster-of-Paris bubchen, but Timothy Dexter, the self-made lord, leather-dresser, landscape gardener and architect, finished the race with a permanent world’s record before they were born. He took a square colonial house of straight and dignified proportions, polished it with bright paint, and set gilt balls and railings and minarets upon its roof, till from the sea it looked like a Christmas tree gone mad. There was a magnificent garden between the house and the highway, full of flowers and fruit that were the envy of a community of husbandmen, but mere nature was not allowed to go on unassisted.
“Hear me, good Lord,” he wrote. “I am agoing to let your children know now, good Lord, what has been in the world a great ways back—not old Plymouth, but stop to Adam and Eve.”
Accordingly there rose in the garden clusters of single columns, and groups of wooden arches, about fifteen feet high, and presently the astonished natives of Newburyport saw them capped with wooden effigies. Before the main doorway was a Roman arch, and upon it, reading from left to right, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson—all life size, with John Adams uncovered because Dexter would not permit anyone to stand at Washington’s right with his hat on. Jefferson he thought was a trifle obscure, so he engaged an artist to paint “Declaration of Independence” upon the scroll in its author’s wooden hand. The artist had lashed himself to the column, had spaced the lettering, and had painted the letters “DEC-,” when Lord Timothy, squinting up from below, remarked:
“That’s not the way to spell ‘Constitution’!”
“You don’t want the Constitution,” called the artist. “You want ‘Declaration of Independence’!”
“I want ‘Constitution’!” roared Dexter, “and ‘Constitution’ I will have!”
His recollection of the Declaration of Independence was foggy, but he knew that he had made most of his money by the adhesive properties of the Constitution, and he was not going back on his talisman now. The artist refused to make the statue ridiculous, and Dexter charged into the house, charged out with a loaded pistol, and as the artist left across-country, fired, missed the artist—but hit the house.
Over in a corner of the garden stood an Indian chieftain, next to him William Pitt, and beyond the two the martial figure of General Morgan. Morgan was not quite satisfactory, so a few coats of paint made him over into Bonaparte. The Goddess of Fame, Louis XVI, John Jay, the King of Russia, Solomon, Venus, the Governor of New Hampshire—these were a few of the forty “immortals” in his garden of celebrities. In a prominent position stood a portrait in pine of Lord Dexter himself, labeled “I am the greatest man in the EAST.” Four lions, two couchant, two passant, stood guard beside him to prove it. This caption originally included the North, South and West, and what sudden access of modesty caused him to censor it is a buried secret. When the hurricane of 1815 toppled most of the figures from their pinnacles, they were sold at auction. Pitt brought one dollar, Fame five, the Traveling Preacher fifty cents, the Indian chief was set up in a cornfield to scare crows, and Lord Timothy, the greatest man in the East, found no bidders. That is fame.
His gallery was the product of expert wood-carvers in Newburyport and Salem, men who were turning out creditable work for the figureheads of the vast merchant fleet that made Salem a port known round the world. It cost him not a cent less than $15,000, twice the price he paid for the estate. Upon the interior of the house he lavished the same attention, and imported from France the last word in flamboyant furniture, voluptuous draperies, and generally meretricious objets d’art. His agents had more taste than he, to be sure, but if a worthy piece found its way into the house, it was sure to be stained and damaged in the next carouse. In his business dealings with Hancock and Russel he had caught glimpses of their libraries, and it occurred to him that the greatest man in the East should own fine books, so he bought them by the linear yard in costly bindings. He rarely read them, and guests relieved him of the finer engravings with which they were illustrated. In the same way he filled the house with paintings, which were so bad that not even his guests cared to steal them. The dearest of all his hobbies was a collection of clocks and watches. Once a week they were set running and regulated; each day he visited them all, and gave a word of encouragement or censure to each, from the great Dutch fellow who prophesied approaching rain, to the daintiest enameled chronometer in the hilt of a French fan. The fruits and blossoms of his garden were as keen a source of satisfaction to him as they were to the maidens and urchins of the town. After a few experimental visits had revealed the clumsy vulgarity of his attentions to all women, nice girls never went to see Dexter’s museum. To the small boy, however, he was the personification of all that was grand and fantastic; furthermore, they could scent his berries and plums and melons for a radius of five miles, no matter which way the wind blew.
It is quite right to assume that even a successful speculation in government paper could hardly finance the upkeep of such an outrageously extravagant menâge. Where did the money come from? Everyone in New England, as his notoriety spread, asked the same question. The most picturesque reply is from his own pen—a chapter from a tract called “Pickle for the Knowing Ones,” which he wrote and published, and which, with a few italicized explanatory notes, follows:
HOW DID TIMOTHY DEXTER GET HIS MONEY ye (he) says: bying whale bone for staing (staying) for ships . in grosing (gross) three hundred & 40 tons—bort all in boston, salum and all in Noue york, under Cover . oppenly told them for my ships; they all laffed. so I had at my oan pris. I had four Counning men for Rounners; thay found the horne, as I told them to act the fool . I was full of Cash . I had nine tun of silver on hand at that time—all that time the Creaters (creatures) more or less laffing. it spread very fast . here is the Rub—in fifty days thay smelt a Rat—found where it was gone to Nouebry Port—spekkelaters swarming like hell houns—to be short with it I made seventey five per sent—one tun and a halfe of silver on hand and over—
one more spect—Drole a Nuf—I Dreamed of warming pans three nites; that they would doue in the west inges (Indies) . (He did not dream this, but was put up to it by the chaffing of a group of mischievous ship-clerks about the Port. Warming pans were about as necessary in the West Indies as coals in Newcastle.) I got no more than fortey two thousand—put them in nine vessels for difrent ports. that tuck good hold. (It did: to the astonishment of New England, the warming pans were found to be excellent utensils in which to roast coffee, and the lids equally useful in skimming hot sugar syrup.) I cleared sevinty nine per sent . the pans thay made use of them for Coucking—blessed good in Deade (indeed) missey (monsieur) got nise handel—very good masser (“Massa”) for Coukey (cooking; he here reproduces the dialect of the French and British West Indian negroes.) Now burn my fase the best thing I Ever see in borne days. I found I was very luckky in spekkelation.
I Dreamed that the good book was Run Down in this Countrey nine years gone, so low as halfe prise and Dull at that—the bibel I means. I had the Ready Cash. by holl sale I bort twelve per sent under halfe pris: thay cost fortey one sents Each bibbel—twentey one thousand—I put them into twenty one vessels for the west inges and sent a text that all of them must have one bibel in every family, or if not thay would goue to hell—and if thay had Dun wiked, flie to the bibel and on thare Neas and kiss the bibel three times and look up to heaven annest (and ask) for forgivnes, my Captteins all had Compleat orders—here Coms the good luck: I made one hundred per sent & littel over, then I found I had made money anuf. I hant (haven’t) speckalated sence old time, by government secourities I made forty seven thousands Dolors—that is the old afare. Now I toald the all, the sekrett. Now be still, let me A lone; Dont wonder Noe more houe I got my money, boaz (boys).
If there were space it could be devoted to his successful corner of the opium market, to his land speculations, and to other sounder investments, such as the Essex Merrimack bridge, which kept his coffers full. But there is not, if we are to have a glimpse of the motley crew who fawned about him and lived at his expense. Plummer, the poet laureate and jingle-monger we have seen, Plummer, who told Dexter that the Druids crowned their laureates with mistletoe, and whom Dexter duly crowned, amidst great ceremony, with parsley, there being no mistletoe in the garden. Then there was a Newburyport schoolmaster who fell out of the graces of the town because he took his pupils to walk in the fields and taught them the names of the birds and flowers, used charts and globes in geography lessons, performed simple chemical experiments which the parents soundly suspected were tricks, and believed in the lecture system more than in the birch rod. With a smattering of astronomy and a fertile imagination this man attached himself to Dexter in the capacity of astrologer and chief confidant. He was probably in league with Madam Hooper and Moll Pitcher, two seeresses of rich local reputation, for Dexter often called upon them to solve his future. There was Burley, called Dwarf Billy, a giant wrestler who stood six-feet-and-seven-inches in his socks when he wore them; Dexter hired him as a sort of watchman, porter and body-guard, to do his fighting for him. It was Dwarf Billy whom Dexter called upon to put a tipsy sea-captain off the place, after he had wagered that no two men Dexter had could put him out. Looking up to Burley’s summit, the sailor put his guinea in his lordship’s hands, saying: “By Jupiter, if this is your dwarf, how big are your giants?”
Hogarth never drew a stranger company. It was downright Elizabethan in its romantic depravity. Barred from the company of intelligent, modest people by the pride which would not permit him to play the hypocrite, Dexter brought his society to him, and cared very little about its ancestry, so long as it gave him adulation and echoed his tipsy amiability. The house was infested with shady adventurers and blowzy females from the ports, come to gather a little money and pass on; no fine day went by but travelers came to see this remarkable man at close hand, to flatter him, to hear him tell the story of conferring upon himself the title of “Lord”; to carry some souvenir of his tireless eccentricity back to the folks at home, and you may believe that it lost nothing in the telling. The riff-raff of the town attended a funeral which he advertised in his honor, and which he watched from behind the curtains of an upper window while a heavy mahogany coffin he had bought was borne to the summer house where he expected some day to rest. He was annoyed that his epileptic son, being drunk enough to weep lavishly, was the only one who mourned, and that Plummer did not put enough genuine fire into the funeral oration.
Once in a while a visitor crossed him, and he rushed to the house for a pistol; one such adventure cost him a term in the Ipswich gaol, though his aim was so poor that he never hit anyone. For a time he held public office, that of “informer of deer,” which carried the duty of arousing the town when deer were seen in the vicinity. Even the beasts of the wilderness laughed at him—no deer ever ventured near during his term. With books to read but no mind to read them with, his wife long since fled from his home, his son half-mad and his daughter wholly so, Dexter, feigning a feverish interest in affairs of which he knew absolutely nothing, became an object of contemptuous amusement even to the gypsies of Dogtown who passed his house to peddle berries. Today the rankness and the nearness of him has passed, and it is hard to find for Timothy Dexter any emotion beyond that of profound pity.
He died in 1806 and was buried in a simple grave in a public cemetery. A sensible, methodical will disposed of his property, and the house passed into other hands, which cleared out his forest of statuary, tore down the gilt balls, and took the masquerade costume off the building whose dignity he had so unceremoniously insulted. In the process Timothy Dexter, “Lord” by his own acclamation, has been sunk without trace. The house today is quite the most imposing in a town unusually blessed with Colonial homes, but it is not Dexter’s. Dexter is wholly dead.
His greatest work, the “Pickle for the Knowing Ones,” must never die. Superlatives can damn it here forever, and any attempt to dissect its philosophy must await the collaboration of a specialist in the psychology of insanity, a student of Chaucerian spelling, and an apostle of tolerance. When those three meet, we shall understand the man. Meanwhile, the “Pickle” is worth reading.
To his second edition he added this postscript:
fouder (further) mister Printer the Nowing ones complane of my book the fust edition had no stops I put in A Nuf here and thay may pepper and salt it as thay plese
