Excerpt from "Uncle George"

 

 Martha was not so trippingly astir in her role as hostess that she did not notice the weighty absence of the always effervescent Benjamin Franklin—but not to worry: he always pulled through.  At a moment not too long after that very one, from the front door, largely unattended for now, there came the blunt thuds against the commanding black wood of mast-holm on which were postfixed his-&-hers bald eagle knockers of costive brass.  The gay old baldpate had to pound them in three successive levets before Fulton, the only Negro to have risen to the position of vernile drudge to all the underbutlers, at his post by the doretree outside of the cloakroom, heard it over the condign merriment of more than fifty voices talking and, here and there, laughing at once.  When he opened the door, he readily recognized Mr. Franklin, whom he remembered from two of his three visits in the past five years.  His teeth of welcome were as white as his jacket.

 “Ah, Mistah Fwanklen!  Good day, Suh!”

Ben undid the chin strap to the special riding helmet he had invented a month before, removed it from his head, and pointed his finger at the drudge, as though to help jog his memory.

“And you.... are... wait, don’t tell me...  Fulton...?”

“Yes, Suh, you done got it perfick!”

“They say I’m good with names!”  Ben smiled, then raised his eyebrows as Fulton remained dumbstruck in the way of his entry.  “I’m not terribly late am I, I hope...?”

“No, not at all, Mistuh Fwanklen!  Please, step rat in!  Let me take yo coat and... that hat thang o’ yoze...”

Ben laughed and handed them to him, then added:

“When you have the chance, Fulton, could you also retrieve my luggage—really just two leather valises strung together, a small satchel with them, and a device that looks like a baseboard, over by the end of the garden wall to the north side of the manor...”

Fulton’s lower lip hung in gibbous bewilderment as his orbs widened with the question he had to ask:

“But, Suh, Mistah Fwanklen, wheah’s yo carriage, and yo man to bring dem up to de dough...?”

Ben’s grey eyes were slyly atwinkle:  “Come and see, Fulton!”  

He turned and walked out the door the Negro had not yet fully closed.  Having stepped down the three marble steps and over to the edge of the flowerbed, he indicated to Fulton where he should direct his attention, toward the bollings at the end of the arbusted garden wall.  There, he had propped his bike against a birk tree. 

Fulton abased his jaw, leaning sideways as though in the wind.  “What dat, Mistuh Fwanklen...!?”

“Why, that is a little invention of mine which I call the ‘binary cycle’.  I rode all the way here from the town of Alexandria—one hundred miles!”

“Lawdy Mitey!” Fulton shook his head like he’d just had it dunked in a piggin of soapy water.  Then he blinked in disbelief at the contrivance and back at a beaming Franklin.  “Awe by yo self!?”

“Yes, indeedy, Fulton my boy, all by myself!  It only took me thirty-seven hours—stopping along the way once at a publican’s!” 

Looking at the slave cringing forward at the waist as though to get nearer to the object of his fascination, but too timorous to move, he could not suppress his arrision at the drollery of the figure.  He decided he had a few minutes to lead him over to the cycle—not only to let him get a closer look, but even to let him pedal around the lawn a bit!

When twenty or so minutes later, the Man and Wife of the House caught sight of the bald head of the sprightly, lute-backed Ben Franklin in his signature coat of quaker drab entering the salon, they cried out of one accord:

“Benjy!”

“Dear Old Belamy!”

“Someone get him a silver fizz!”

§ § §

Two hours later, the children were given diversions—for the boys, Jack-a-Lent out on the commons; for the girls, a ‘white ballet’ in the dance studio—while the adults too were divided into smaller allotments for new intervals, still a long while before the Grand Supper was to materialize. 

Many, including George and Martha for a time, went off to the Melodeon to hear the Robinson Eutsler Octet perform the Concerto in B Major for tenorino (falsetto tenor), clarone, clarigold, clarichord, apollonicon, harmoniphon, digitorium, and lute.  After a somewhat shaky start—when the lutist thought her magade on her fretpane had come unglued; then the apollonicon’s claribella lost its timbre; and then the singer’s voice cracked a ponticello during his opening solfeggio—it quickly won the favor of all the listeners.  For their second number, Thomas Jefferson was invited to join them on his harpsichord, which he had had transported all the way to Richmond by a second tilbury, for an aubade lentando in which the septimoles in between each faburden, accelerating allegretto staccatissimo, particularly challenged his dexterity.  When he met that challenge, the hall splashed with applause, and he and the Octet resumed for an encore—a medley of dances, including an Allemando, a Varsovienne, and a Sellenger’s Round, which roused many of the couples there, including fathers and daughters, to dance.  When they worked in a Christmas tinternell, it reminded George to note in his journal notebook upon his lap that:

“Martha this Year is more than ever dreaming of one (viz., a white Christmas...)”

—while Martha turned to Mr. and Mrs. Conzemius just over her left shoulder to tell them that:

“You shall have to revisit us at that time of Season, for your children to bobsleigh...”

For those who stayed in the Melodeon long enough, they would have been able to profit from getting an earful of Ben Franklin reprise his younger years as a member of the Passapatanzy Barber Shop Quartet, soloing a capella for now, but no less engaging in its uniquely burlesque and jocose way.

Other divertissements included a three-act play in the indoor theater, titled The Letterer’s Carnet, by the Welsh playwright Fred Gwynne, where the audience is surprised every time by the corpsed scene at the end.

Or, some of the gentlemen and not a few ladies as spectators wandered off to the Turnhalle (a building for gymnastics in the east wing) for some fencing, there to feast their eyes on Alexander Hamilton rather dashing in his auricome and cherry wine ascot, showing off his ‘montanto’ (the upward stroke) and his ‘flanconnade’ (a thrust to the side) to fend off every quarte or venny of his opponent—skills he learned, among other more flagitious pursuits, from his father, George Hamilton: that wencher and debaucher from a sago plantation in Florida, whose creole mistress had sired his son in a shack in the shade of the palmers of a mangrove swamp, with the help of a toothless hoodoo hag paid off at the price of two silver simoleons.  “Attainted in Bastardy, acquitted therefrom”—as the saying went.  Alexander never did give a tick what others thought of him, and by the end of the afternoon (perhaps due to his concurrent and increasing bibulition of portified Barbados water throughout the day along with cane sugar rum), became embroiled in contention with Maxwell Quain, who not only called him an ‘unentitled impostor’—which Alexander did not mind and rather wore as a mark of distinction—but also lathered on the insults thickly:

“You, sir, are nothing but a purloiner, a lidderon, and a rushbuckler!”

Alexander might have backjawed him something fierce, had he been in the mood for talk and no action.  At that moment, however, he threw down his white fencing glove and declared:

“And you, pitiful chouse that you be, shall not see the morrowing sun before your dester finds you at the ravenstone!”

Not by any mere quinte—and most certainly not through further poldway of gasconaders—was Alexander to have this settled: for this was no matter of a larcener or poisoner being bludgeoned by a Welshman.  This, in his mind, was nothing short of perduellion demanding that a manqueller come forth to the sound of blatant horns at dawn; and as the ornithomantist snares the lark with a daring-glass, so too will he transfix his opponent and send him to his doom before the instant his gunflint sparks...

“So they were arraigned on a mutual chance-medley when the prebendary anticipated their Duel by a good Half-hour and coming upon the one of them from out of a Mulberry bush made fit to strike him with his Bible, had not Alexander, at the stir of a footfall, whirled around an instant before he shot him dead.”

Luckily for all concerned, Alexander had soon drunk one toby too many of cherry rum—far more than he could handle, and it did not take much to restrain him in a special strait-waistcoat for epileptics and lay him down on a French pallet in the tablinum, hopples on his wrists, with Gus Rudnicky standing guard whilst the harman beak from town was waited on to take him away into custody, for his own good as well as for the good of the party.  His solvency in the little matter of the bankruptcy for which Ben Franklin had credited his guaranty, in the mean while, would have to await an indeterminate date.

This minor hickup aside, the day proceeded swimmingly for the hours remaining until the Grand Supper.

Some of the couples went off to play badminton or tennis, though George today was not fit to indulge either sport—which did nothing to inhibit him from relating the anecdote, for the hundredth time, of the mixed doubles match in 1788 between Ben Franklin and his daughter Dawn Franklin on one side, versus himself and Aaron Burr’s sister Cecelia Burr on the other; and how, of course, George’s team won hands down.  Neither his partner nor her brother were present to corroborate or dispute the facts, for Aaron had lost his life a few years ago in a comic accident involving a misstep on some scaffolding; while his sister had long since emigrated to the land of Australia.

§ § §

George and Martha therefore took it upon themselves to lead an agreeably conformable walk around the property for as many guests as wished to tag along—which amounted to some nineteen souls in all, not counting Douglas their golden retriever, Wilkinson their Labrador, Newkirk their Great Dane, Bradshaw their Shelty, Gig their Basset Hound, and Moll their Aberdeen.  About the lattermost, George had noted in his journal just the other day:

“Moll, our Aberdeen, gave out quite the litter of pups, scil. thirteen—if we may believe Charlton’s report of the Matter—, the other day...”

And as a consequence had penned this postscript to be hand-delivered to Mr. Metcalf of Wittens Mills, Virginia:

“As the pleasure surely was ours, we trust this Invitation will find you and the wife receptive in the sharing with us of it, as proud witnesses of the bringing forth to the light of God’s Day her litter, as well so too the christening of said for an apportionment of suitable Names thereto,

We are,

George & Mrs. Washington,

your Servants in Friendship and Loyalty,

& Hail our former Queen.”

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