CHAPTER 4
Fulton’s house at One State Street had a solar loft where he drew portraits and plans for war engines; for three successive afternoons Favian had stood below the skylights, sweating in spite of the paper fan Fulton had given him, while the artist worked with his pastels. An oil painting would come later, whenever there was time; for now Fulton was fixing Favian in his mind and on paper.
“I have fought the British, you know,” Fulton said, his long-fingered hands darting over his pad, working swiftly— it was surprising how swiftly the man worked. The sound of a harp filtered up from below: Fulton’s young wife Harriet, one of the great beauties of New York. She was a young blond girl with a laugh that tinkled like her harp— but her intellect, Favian thought, would not set the world afire.
“I made two attempts to blow up blockading ships with my submarine boat Nautilus,” Fulton said. “That was in the month of Fructidor, the Year Nine. I suppose even in France nowadays they call it September of 1800. Would you turn your head a little to the left, please?”
Favian turned his head. “Was either attempt successful?” he asked.
A brief frown crossed Fulton’s face. “Nay. They must have heard the Nautilus was in the area; they ran away while I was paddling toward them under the water. Later I had to take my boat apart to keep the French from stealing the idea. Bonaparte would not pay a man for an idea, but if he could steal an invention he would not mind having it.”
The words, meant to be spoken pleasantly, had an edge of bitterness that Fulton could not entirely suppress. Favian knew he had been fighting for years to protect his patents and his steamboat monopolies on the rivers of New York state. It seemed that the steamboat had a great many fathers. Favian felt sweat dripping in his eyes and swiped it away.
“Not like you, of course. No real battles,” Fulton said. He smiled lightly. “I never had a talent for subordination. Could never take orders from anybody.” His arm moved with swift precision; it appeared to draw automatically, needing no conscious guidance from Fulton, who seemed entirely free to speak of whatever came to mind. He had spent the afternoons talking charmingly of his intentions, his wife, his friends, and his experiences among the great movers of Europe: Pitt, Bonaparte, Melville, the Duchesse de Gontaut-Biron. He had expressed an interest in Favian’s recording log, but had not been able to offer much in the way of advice: metallurgy was not his field. On the financial side, though, he had counsel to give: “Don’t put your own money into it if you can avoid it,” he’d said. “Find subscribers; sell ’em shares. No reason to assume all the risk yourself.”
“There are many men in the Navy who do not take orders gladly,” Favian said, sweating. The sound of the harp floated delicately in the air.
“Are you among them?” Fulton’s curiosity seemed earnest; Favian wondered if his response would alter the shape of the forthcoming portrait. Was there an interpretation hanging in the balance here, staid senior officer or young flashing-eyed buccaneer?
“I am the Navy’s to command,” Favian said. There was a little pause, filled only by Harriet Fulton’s harp.
“Hm,” said Fulton. He frowned over his pastels. “You are an uncompromising servant of the republic, I see.”
“I am a Navy man,” Favian said. “The pursuit of glory is my avocation.”
Fulton frowned again. Favian fanned himself briskly, thankful he’d been allowed the open collar. Glory, he thought. A wispy concept, bearing images of banners blowing in the wind, the sound of trumpets, portraits of officers with their eyes flashing romantic ardor, arms pointed sternly toward the objective. He’d seen a copy of West’s Death of Wolfe, that triumph of American painting, the mortally wounded general in his red coat lying back in the arms of his staff, officers flanking him in studied, composed groups. The apotheosis of the realistic school: the academicians had been scandalized that Wolfe was not in Roman dress.
Realistic, aye. Wolfe was shot three times; had West known it? Perhaps the general had puked all over his neat silk stockings; that sort of thing happened to bodies outraged by too many wounds. Or maybe his intestines were hanging out of his satin waistcoat. The great man’s staff would not have so calmly watched, either: if they’d had any sense they would have been hugging the muddy ground while the French volleys twittered over their heads. It must have been a confused blundering muck of a battle, for both commanders died because they had to run forward to sort out their troops. Glorious deaths. Honored dead. Glory. A thing immortalized on canvas, in novels, in commemorative verse. “I seek glory”: no one would think it an odd ambition.
Had he ever pursued glory, Favian wondered? When he was seventeen, leaping from boat to boat off Tripoli, slashing at the Moors? Once, in a rage because James Decatur had been killed treacherously, he had led eight men against thirty-five; thirty-three had died at the cost of three men wounded, and the enemy captain had been shot with muskets as he tried to swim to safety; the Tripolitan thwarts had been slippery with gore. That had been glory; he’d known it for certain, had exulted in it. Himself, Richard Somers, the two Decatur brothers: they had all gone for glory and won it, James by dying nobly of a bullet in the brain after hours of agony in Constitution’s orlop, Somers by blowing himself to smithereens on the Intrepid, Decatur with his string of victories, the Philadelphia capture, which even Nelson had called “the boldest act of the age” along with the capture of the Macedonian, Favian with Markham’s Raid and the Teaser. Decatur was a true believer still, seeking the bubble reputation in the cannon’s mouth, but Favian knew he had fallen from grace. There were reasons he fought still, reasons he owed the Navy his duty, reasons many and tangled, but glory was no longer among them.
Another triumph, he supposed, of the realist school.
He shied from admitting this to Fulton. Burrows he might have told, if his friend hadn’t died on the Enterprise; but then Burrows was raised in the school of the Navy, and would have understood. Fulton, despite his adventures with the Nautilus, was not among the band of brothers: he had not seen James Decatur lying pale in the Constitution’s orlop, or seen Macedonian’s well deck ankle deep in bloody brine with arms and legs and tripes men rolling from one bulwark to the other with the motion of the sea. It was sights such as these that bound the Navy men together, sights more compelling than anything painted on canvas.
“You may step down, Captain,” Fulton said. “I have an appointment, and I think I’ve done studies enough to complete a canvas later. I thank you for your patience.”
Favian stepped from his place, thankfully mopping his forehead with his handkerchief. “May I see?” he asked. Fulton looked down at his pad, pursing his lips doubtfully, then held it out.
It was a strange, saturnine Favian, scowling, the eyes glowering and yet somehow haunted: it was disturbingly eloquent, powerful but truly unpleasant. Favian felt his heart lurch. “Is that how I look?” he said.
Fulton cocked an eyebrow at his pad. “I didn’t think you’d like that one,” he said. “I think it’s more of a caricature than anything drawn from life.” He laughed. “Don’t worry, I won’t use it. I find you damnably hard to draw, sir— this was the last attempt. It expresses my own difficulty more than your character, I’m sure; I am not like my friend West, able to bring a man’s personality to the fore with a few strokes. There is something contradictory in you, and I cannot resolve it. Damme, I wish I could!”
He turned to a folio and opened it, showing other sketches, the series he’d done of Favian. They were conventional renderings, differing in approach and in the use of lighting: there were several idealized Favians, romantic fervor glowing in his eyes, a nautical beau sabreur; there were realistic renderings of a tall, long-limbed gentleman, his collar open, twisting a riding crop in his hands, reflective, pensive, or impatient to go about his business. Conventional stuff, but nothing with the power of that last rendering, that strange feral expression, guilt and cunning and something of desperation, a man somehow cornered. It had come as Favian spoke of glory. Terrifying.
“Which do you prefer, Captain Markham?” Fulton asked, genial.
Favian hesitated, then pointed at one of the idealized portraits, this one a little more rugged than the others, a mature man of action rather than a dreamy glory-struck youth. “This, I think,” he said. The Navy would no doubt approve the choice, showing him as a respectable post captain and a leader of men.
Fulton nodded. “I like it myself. After I’ve completed the portrait I will send you these studies, if you wish.”
“I will be happy to have them, sir.”
Fulton held up the last rendering, and Favian received a glimpse of those corrupted, haunted features. “I will destroy this, of course,” he said.
“Keep it, I beg you,” Favian said impulsively. He laughed, carelessly, as Fulton watched him with acute artist’s eyes. “It may help you with the portrait. Resolving, as you say, the contradictions.” Why, he wondered, did he not have the thing destroyed? Horrible, yet there was truth in it. More truth than in the Death of Wolfe and all its ilk.
“Yes, if you like,” Fulton said, thankful, perhaps, that his best work would be preserved. He slipped the sketch into his portfolio.
“I might beg an indulgence, Captain Markham,” Fulton said, taking Favian’s arm, leading him downstairs to a study. He smiled nervously. “You are a nautical gent; you know the worth of my designs. May I ask you to sign a paper testifying to the usefulness of Demologos? Commodore Decatur has already signed— so have Captains Jones, Perry, Warrington, and Biddle.”
“I will be honored, sir, to set my name alongside theirs,” Favian said. Fulton smiled as Favian picked up a pen and signed the paper.
“And if, sir, you have some prize money at hand, I can recommend no safer investment than my steamboats,” Fulton said heartily. “We have built twenty-one steamboats in seven years— there are four on the Mississippi, seven on the Hudson, others in Jersey or used as ferries. We are returning eight percent per year on investments. Solid as the rock of Gibraltar, sir, solid as a rock.”
Favian remembered what Fulton had said earlier: “Don’t put your own money into it. Sell ’em shares.” It was to the man’s credit, Favian supposed, that he followed his own advice.
“I shall consider it, sir,” Favian said. Fulton brightened, and escorted Favian to the door. “I shall see you, I hope, before you leave. We’ll talk about the steamboat business— the way of the future, y’know.”
Two days later Favian was dining with Charles Stewart near the Navy yard, the both of them drying out by the fire after a short, drenching gale, when the alarm bells in the yard began to clatter, calling up the marines. It seemed Fulton’s turtle boat, on its maiden voyage, had got in trouble with a British frigate.
Favian jumped for his horse and rode full-tilt for the Long Island shore, and from a nearby hill he saw the turtle boat beached on the sand— a victim of the gale, it appeared— with the frigate Maidstone, Captain Burdett, anchored in the offing. Red-coated marines were coming ashore in their boats; New York militia were forming up to meet them. Favian rode down to help the militia dress their lines, seeing the pale part-time soldiers, shopkeepers and wheelwrights and schoolteachers, clasping their muskets white-knuckled and staring at their weapons as if they had never seen their like before. Fulton was there, his eyes savage. Favian wished for his pistols or at least a sword as he rode behind their line, back and forth, bawling hearty professional phrases: “I’ve fought these redcoats, and they’re nothing much. Keep your ranks, and when you fire aim low.”
The British boats struck the beach, rocking in the surf, their swivel guns and carronades banging out canister that wailed high overhead, not touching a man. The militia got out one rattling good volley as the British tumbled from their boats. Favian, still riding behind the lines brandishing his riding crop, smelled powder and heard the rattle of ramrods as he watched the redcoats forming on the beach, most of them sopped to the waist in brine. Most of the balls would go high, Favian knew, and it was foolish to stay on horseback; but he wanted the militia to see him. Foolish, to die in a fight for an iron rowboat. Not even his fight. The volley came, ragged and high, the bullets whistling about Favian’s ears, and then the lobsterbacks lowered their bayonets and charged, coming on in ragged clumps, wailing like Irishmen. The militia paused for a paralyzed second and then turned.
Favian ran with them, galloping in the pack with his whip in his teeth, knowing there was no point in rallying them.
From his hill he watched as the turtle boat fell prize to the Maidstone. No one seemed to have been hurt. The Battle of the Rowboat, Favian thought, 25 June, 1814. British casualties: nought. American casualties: the rowboat. The turtle boat was set alight; in a few hours nothing was left of the world’s first iron war vessel but scorched timbers and glowing iron plates. The lobsterback pickets chatted with some local men and a few bold ladies: not treasonous correspondence, Favian knew, just curiosity.
The marines from the yard came up at a loping run, out of breath, Lieutenant Twiggs in front with his sword bared, Charles Stewart trotting among them on horseback.
“Shall I attack, Captain?” Twiggs asked.
“The boat is lost,” Favian said. “Your men are tired. But do what you want.”
Twiggs waved his blade and led his leathernecks forward with a laughing smile, seizing his chance for glory. The militia, rallied now, came down behind them, brave enough with federal troops between them and the enemy. There was a little skirmish on the sand as the British scattered back to their boats, leaving a few redcoats lying like sacks on the beach: Twiggs had his glory and a few enemy dead. Maidstone had the turtle boat. Both had reason to be happy with the day.
Favian saw the inventor afterwards, staring pensively down at the ruin, his thoughts unguessable. Stern war, rather than art, Favian thought, had produced another triumph of the realist school.