An Embarrassment of Riches Read online

  “Reports sometimes reach my desk alleging that the seventeenth Louis, the lost Dauphin of France, is at large here in America. I say he is welcome, but let us hope, gentlemen, for the sake of the national intellect, that he does not reproduce,” our host added in postscript.

  All these calumnies by Jefferson on the monarchs of Europe were delivered in a tone of voice as soft as lambskin, in that Virginia dialect at once tuneful and lulling. His mouth, even in repose, had a slight upturn at the corners that conveyed perpetual delight in its own ingenuity. This was, in fact, the most appealing element of that pale, freckled face. For the hazel eyes, though sparkling with wit, never rested on an object or a person more than a moment. Like the eyes of a great wary bird of prey, they shifted continuously, ever alert to danger. What a contrast to his lulling voice. I admit, its seductive power had already begun to scale the redoubt of my obdurate Hamiltonianism.

  “You see, Samuel,” he turned to me, eyes flitting everywhere about the room, “society simply divides itself between sheep and wolves. Officials of whatever stripe, monarchs or otherwise, tend to become the wolves, so that government, like the wolf pack, becomes an engine perfectly suited for the devouring of sheep. Is it not, therefore, our duty to make a government too weak to aid the wolves in their depredations, and yet strong enough to protect the sheep?”

  “O, absolutely,” I agreed without hesitation. Picturing the soft-fleshed visage of my hero, Alexander Hamilton, sprouting fangs and coarse wolf’s hair, I shuddered.

  “This is why we must keep the ship of state on the Republican tack,” Jefferson concluded the lesson with a flourish. He had finished his asparagus, sampled his risotto, and disdained his meat altogether. “Hector!” he called musically. A servant reappeared, swept all three of our plates into his grasp, like an osprey snatching herrings off the surface of the Sound, and vanished into the pantry. I had barely addressed my meal. Though he was renowned as a gourmet, the President suffered a poor digestion and his interest in cuisine was largely theoretical. “Now,” he resumed, leaning forward over the cleared napery, “what I am about to tell you must be held in the strictest confidence.” He glanced my way, that wry smile upon his lips, eyes darting everywhere. “Do you understand, my boy?”

  I could only wince in reply.

  “Good,” Jefferson said, that single word so drawn out and melodic. He rose from the table, seized a thick volume from his desk, and returned. “You are familiar with Buffon?” he said, more a statement than a question. His referent here was George Louis LeClerc, Comte de Buffon, esteemed philosophe and autocrat of the infant science of zoology. The President did not wait for us to affirm, but went straight to the point: “The opinion advanced by the Comte de Buffon is that (1) the animals common both to the Old and New Worlds are smaller in the latter, (2) that those peculiar to the New are on a smaller scale, (3) that those that have been domesticated in both the Old and New show signs of having degenerated in America, and (4) that on the whole we exhibit fewer species.”

  “Rot!” Uncle said.

  Jefferson opened the heavy volume to a dog-eared page.

  “Listen to this,” he said and proceeded to read aloud. “‘In thinly inhabited regions’—America, he means—‘nature is always rude and sometimes deformed. The air and the earth are overloaded with humid and noxious vapors, unable to purify themselves or profit by the influence of the sun, who darts in vain his most enlivening rays upon this frigid mass.’”

  The President glanced up at us.

  Uncle crossed his arms and pursed his lips. “Twaddle!” he pronounced.

  “A libel!” I affirmed loyally.

  “Ah, there is more. Much more,” our host said with a gleeful smile. “‘All that America can produce are reptiles and insects. The place affords nourishment only for dwarfish men lacking in virility and carrying milk in their breasts. The animals, wild and domestic, are feeble and likewise dwarfed. All are tractable and timid, very few ferocious, and none formidable. There is no North American animal comparable to the elephant, no giraffes, or hippopotami. All animals are smaller in North America than in Europe. Everything shrinks under a niggardly sky in an unprolific land.’”

  Jefferson slapped the volume neatly shut.

  “Scandalous!” I observed.

  “Horsemint!” Uncle muttered.

  The President sighed.

  “I have always admired the French,” he said, “but they are an obdurate race, especially in matters of scientific theory and particularly when they are wrong. When I was ambassador to the court at Versailles, I endeavored to dispute these falsehoods by presenting a specimen of moose to the Comte de Buffon, to show him that the largest European reindeer could easily walk ’neath the belly of our great native ruminant. I asked General Sullivan of New Hampshire to procure one for me. The bones and hide were shipped to Paris and mounted. Unfortunately, the moose in question was a cow of the species and, thinking to correct this deficiency, they had screwed the antlers of a common deer to the beast’s skull. The result was droll. Buffon pretended to be impressed and said he would mention the beast in his revised edition of Histoire Naturelle. He died shortly thereafter and his uncorrected slanders still stand, persisting across Europe to dangerous effect. How, gentlemen, are we to command the respect of other nations in the face of these scurrilities? Milk in our breasts! Feeble? Dwarfed? Tractable? Timid? These lies must be extinguished so that no one will dare mistake America for a land of stunted feeblings!”

  “Hear, hear!” I applauded as though at a performance in the Park Theatre, so persuasive was Jefferson’s oratory. Uncle reproved me with a sharp glance. Jefferson stood staunchly at his place, whitened knuckles pressed against the tabletop, his face firm with determination, as though he were posing for a statue. A moment later that opaquely seductive smile returned to his lips, and he invited us to step across the room.

  Beside his desk was a large box about the size of a sea chest. We gathered ’round it. The President lifted its creaking lid. Inside was a heap of huge bones, gray, dusty, cloaked with grit and sediment. Many were larger than the bones of cattle.

  “Here,” he intoned, “is the colossus that will change the world’s opinion!”

  Uncle bent to inspect the moldering artifacts. He sifted through the contents and withdrew what appeared to be a digit bone, but attached to which was a terrifying claw fully ten inches long.

  “Good heavens above, Thomas!” Uncle gasped. “What monster is this?”

  “Is it not a prodigious wonder, William?”

  “I am stupefied.”

  The President took the gigantic claw from Uncle and held it to the sunlight in the window, running his index finger up the burnished brown, scythelike weapon.

  “A few years ago,” he said, “two neighbors of mine in Albemarle discovered the skeleton of this colossus in a saltpeter cave. There were, in addition, etchings of a lionlike beast upon the walls of the cave—it had been the haunt of Indians some years previous. White men in the locality, hunters of the Blue Ridge, had long reported horrible roaring noises quite unlike the shriek of panthers or the howl of wolves. It seemed evident to me that these bones were the remains of a native cat of the lion family, but”—Jefferson’s voice grew hushed—“but as preeminent over the panther as the mastodon is over the wild pig!”

  “We are astounded, Thomas,” Uncle said.

  “These bones came to light in ’95,” Jefferson went on. “I took the liberty of dubbing the beast ‘megalonyx’—giant claw—but, before I could read my paper at the Philosophical Society, a young Frenchman named Georges Cuvier discovered an identical set of bones in the South American country of Paraguay. This Cuvier asserted that the creature was an herbivore, not a cat but a great lumbering ruminant ground sloth. I shall not bore you with the details, gentlemen, except to say that his arguments were sound. He called it … ‘megatherium.’ Giant beast.”

  “This claw, then, is a digging apparatus and not a weapon of predation,” Uncle adduced
out loud.

  “I suppose so,” Jefferson replied wearily and tossed the fearsome-looking thing back into the chest as though it were a potsherd. He took his seat behind the presidential desk, tilted the chair on its rear legs, clasped his hands behind his head, and gazed dreamily into the ceiling. “If only we could somehow procure a specimen of this beast,” he mused. “What victorious evidence it would be.”

  “It would compare to thy moose as a white-headed eagle to an housefly,” Uncle declared.

  Suddenly, Jefferson tipped upright again, leaned forward across his desk, and looked directly at Uncle, his gaze unwavering for the first time.

  “This is why I have summoned you here, William,” he said gravely. “For it must be accomplished. And you are the best-fitted man I know for the task.”

  “What…! Me? An old herbalist?”

  “You are not so old as you pretend. Why, was it not a year ago that you swam the Niagara River to procure a single specimen of giant purple hyssop (Agastache scrophulariifolia)? Don’t deny it, sir, for I read your account in the society’s minutes.”

  “’Tis true, Thomas,” Uncle admitted with a sigh, secretly proud but never boastful. “But, sir, such an undertaking as thee proposes might take months, a year! And who is to mind my affairs at Owl’s Crossing whilst I am upon it?”

  “And who minds Monticello whilst I drudge in this sinkhole of politics?” the President peevishly countered. But his point was unmistakable. A momentous pause ensued. I held my breath.

  “I am thine obedient servant, Mr. President,” Uncle at last pronounced.

  “Bravo, William!” Jefferson cried. “A grateful republic embraces you!” And so saying, the President hurried around his massive desk and clapped his long arms around Uncle’s casklike trunk, patting his back with affection. “Now, here is the plan.” He released Uncle. “You are to proceed directly to the Treasury headquarters. Secretary Gallatin is waiting with an hundred dollars currency to secure the necessaries of your expedition—”

  “An hundred dollars! Thomas—”

  “Do not protest. You must have the very best in equipments. Now, come here.”

  Jefferson withdrew a large, crinkly parchment from behind his desk and brought it to the luncheon table, pushing aside the water glasses. It was a map of the wilderness between the Ohio River and the Gulf of Mexico, including those two barely settled states, Kentucky and Tennessee. Uncle bent over it making noises of cogitation.

  “I believe this is where we are likely to find our megatherium.” The President pointed a slender finger at the terra incognita that today comprises the states of Mississippi and Alabama. On this map, of course, it was practically a blank, save for a few squiggly postulated tributaries of the Mississippi River. “Here is the habitat of our shy colossus.”

  “A logical place to look, by heaven,” Uncle avouched unconvincingly.

  “Take this, then, old friend,” the President said, rolling up the map. “Samuel—”

  “Sir…?”

  “I am told that you are a formidable artist of the brush and paintbox species.”

  “A dabbler,” I answered modestly.

  “Your reputation as a miniaturist has proceeded you here.”

  (I, of course, was ignorant of the correspondence between Uncle and Jefferson that had preceded this interview.)

  “I—”

  “Here is what I want you to do, young man,” the President said, handing me a printed monograph. “Take the Cuvier back to your lodgings tonight. It contains a sketch of the skeleton as he found it in Paraguay. See if you might contrive a fleshed-out likeness of the creature based upon its bone structure. I should like to see it myself, and no doubt it will be a great aid upon your mission.”

  “I do not think that we are liable to mistake such a beast for a chipmunk,” I remarked brashly, in an attempt to display my wit. For an instant the President glared at me. But a moment later his eyes were flitting about the room as always, and the smile had returned to his face. “I shall be honored to prepare a portrait of our quarry,” I corrected myself and bowed.

  “And I shall be honored to receive it, and yourselves, tomorrow, for I shall like to see it.” He edged us toward the door. “Remember, William, years ago when I was conducting my experiments with the hessian fly?”

  “Yes…?”

  “O, how I long to be free for such pursuits instead of the detestable toils that keep me here! Politics is a grim duty. Natural philosophy—that is my soul’s passion. How I envy the two of you!”

  Uncle and I exchanged an uncertain glance.

  “A demain, dear friends,” Jefferson said and showed us out the door. His antechamber was now quite packed with waiting petitioners. Watching them watch us depart filled me with a feeling of importance for the first time in my life. The grandeur of the presidential office had temporarily altered my vision. Everything seemed to glow. And the unfinished mansion itself appeared no longer ignoble, but a monument to Diablo’s uncompromising genius.

  It was after a supper of oyster flitters and boiled crabs in the public room of Rupert and MacSneed’s Hotel that we spied those selfsame officers we had seen earlier that day leaving the President’s office, viz., the fair, upright Lieutenant Clark and the broad-shouldered, gloomy Captain Lewis. Whether by chance or intention, they joined us at the fireside where Uncle and I were enjoying a rum punch in celebration of the day’s events.

  “Ah, gentlemen,” Uncle greeted them heartily. “I trust your business with Mr. Jefferson was agreeable. Art lately dispatched to some solitary outpost beyond the setting sun?”

  The two exchanged a guarded glance.

  “And you, sir?” the fair one replied without answering Uncle’s question, “Have you just been named envoy to some glittering capital beyond the rising sun?”

  “Why, hardly, sir,” Uncle scoffed at the notion. Then, he leaned forward and in a confidential whisper said, “We are about to undertake a presidential mission of … reconnaissance.” Uncle had consumed a bottle of Madeira (the Malmsy) with his supper, and he was, frankly, tipsy.

  “Who? You and the boy?” the baleful Lewis asked.

  Boy! thought I. I refilled my pipe and lit it with a splinter from the hearth. Uncle cleared his throat.

  “How large is your party, sir?” the sunny Clark persisted pleasantly.

  “O, quite substantial,” Uncle confided. “And thee, sir? Art bound for Ontario or some such?”

  “Louisiana,” the dark Lewis said tersely.

  “French Louisiana?” I exclaimed, alert to the scent of a military adventure.

  “French no longer,” Lewis said dryly. “It is American Louisiana now. We have purchased it from Bonaparte.”

  “O, la!” Uncle rejoined merrily, thinking it all a jest. “That is rich, my boys!”

  “You haven’t heard the news?”

  “I hear it now, ha ha….”

  “Our government has bought the tract entire,” Clark declared sincerely. “It is a fait accompli.”

  This time it was Uncle and I exchanged the wary glance.

  “Yes, it shall be announced publicly any day now. The size of our republic has doubled overnight. Monroe has been bargaining at Paris for weeks. I suppose the little dictator decided to sell while the selling was good. Of course, they had no chance of sustaining their claim over time. Sooner or later it would have been overwhelmed by sheer force of numbers. Already the little outpost at St. Louis is three-quarters American. The wonder is that we paid anything at all.”

  “The French are our staunchest friends amongst the bestiary of nations,” I remarked naively. “We could hardly steal their territory and remain so.”

  “A noble sentiment, lad,” Clark responded, and I could not tell whether he was making a joke at my expense. “Where was it you said you were bound for?” he changed the subject without altering his jovial tone.

  “We are oof—”

  “We didn’t say,” Uncle cut me off, boring his elbow into my ribs.
<
br />   “Ah,” Clark said. “And how large did you say your party was?”

  “Fifty men,” Uncle told them without flinching. “And your party, sirs?”

  “About the same,” Clark said. “Perhaps a few less. Yours sounds like quite the corps.”

  “O, ’tis, ’tis.” Uncle agreed and sipped his punch. “Might I inquire how much in the way of supporting funds has the President requisitioned for thee?”

  “Twenty-five hundred dollars,” Clark said.

  I dropped my pipe.

  “And you, sirs?” Lewis asked.

  “In that range,” Uncle said.

  “The President is not one for half-measures when it comes to matters of … reconnaissance, eh?” Lewis said. “A toast to our far-sighted chief!”

  “Why, ho! Indeed!” Uncle said, trying to sustain his mask of merriment. We lifted our cups in salute. I could not fathom what demon of vanity had pushed Uncle to such a skein of fabrication. I suppose he simply did not want to be outdone.

  “You are not, by any chance, bound also for Louisiana?” Lewis next inquired. Though I did not know it at the time, he had served for some years as personal secretary to Jefferson, and few were better acquainted with the master’s ever-devious mind than this melancholy fellow-Virginian.

  “This much I may tell you,” Uncle addressed the pair. “In thy foot-tracks I shall not tread.”

  “It is Mexico, then,” Lewis muttered to his partner.

  “Poof! Not that land o’ rats and cockatrices!” said I.

  “Nephew!” Uncle remonstrated, “thou art about to catch flies. Close thy mandible. Gentlemen, it has been a pleasure. Come, Sammy. Good luck to thee and may the Lord smile on your endeavor—er, has it a name, by any chance?”

  “Why, yes,” the fair lieutenant said. “The Corps of Discovery.”

  “And yours?” Lewis inquired.

  “’Tis a secret,” Uncle said with a pained smile. Clark beamed brightly. Lewis scowled. “I trust thy discoveries will be happy ones. Goodnight to you. Come, Sammy….”

  “Corps of Discovery! Piffle!” Uncle fumed when we reached our room upstairs. “Fifty men! At twenty-five hundred dollars! Whilst we are a mere pair, at an hundred! O, shame, Thomas, that thee should use thy old friend at such a penury!” Uncle shook his fist at the wall in the direction of the President’s house.