Steeplechase (4 page)

“Well, no, probably nothing as sensational as that. But I'll bet those pious old church histories don't always tell the whole truth.” Mary clattered the breakfast dishes into the sink. “Come on, let's get away from the phone and chase a few steeples. I'll bet all the churches around here have skeletons of some kind or other in their closets.”

“Good, where shall we start?”

“Right here in Concord. Why not? We can begin with the First Parish. Then we could talk to the Trinitarians. And who else? The rabbi of Temple Emanuel?”

“Temple Emanuel? No, no, Mary dear, think about it. The temple isn't exactly a hatchling from a Protestant chicken yard.”

“Of course not. Moses and Jeremiah sat on that egg. And anyway, temples don't have steeples.”

“Right,” said Homer. “We gotta have steeples.”

1868

Eternal Remembrances

Like a spirit land of shadows

They in silence on me gaze

And I feel my heart is beating

With the pulse of other days;

And I ask what great magician

Conjured forms like these afar?

Echo answers, 'tis the sunshine
,

By its alchemist Daguerre.

—Caleb Lyon, 1850

“Welcome, Ladies and Gents!”

T
he brothers Spratt looked so much alike, people couldn't tell Jake from Jack. But their talents were different.

“My Jackie,” their mother boasted, “he's the artistic one. Jackie can paint you a bouquet so natural, you could pick the posies. His brother, he's just the opposite. Jakie's always a-tinkering.”

Thus it was Jack Spratt who set up the elegant chamber for portrait photography in their horse-drawn mobile studio. And it was Jack who furnished it with a thronelike chair, a balustrade, a hollow column, a carpet-covered table, and a velvet curtain with an imposing tassel.

But it was Jake who understood the wet-plate process and knew how to turn out any number of albumen prints from a single glass negative.

Then it was Jack's turn again. It was his clever scissors that snipped out the images, his nimble fingers that mounted them on pretty pieces of cardboard, and his high-flown eloquence that fluttered down from the basket of the balloon:

Jack and Jacob Spratt

Aerial and Portrait Photographers

Cartes de Visite, cabinet photographs

Men, women, children and babes

Mortuarie images a specialty

On the Saturday in May when the mobile studio of the Spratt brothers pulled up on the green between Concord's Middlesex Hotel and the courthouse, there were no mortuary requirements, although Jack and Jake had made tender images of many a dead baby—Jack arranging the little hands sweetly on the infant's breast, Jake comforting the weeping mother.

This morning, they were not surprised to find customers already waiting. The Spratt brothers were accustomed to success. “All kindsa people want their pitchers taken, Jack,” said Jake.

“Only natural, Jake,” said Jack. “In this cruel world, who knows when a person might take sick and die without no eternal remembrance of their physiognomy while blood still pulsed in their veins?”

Jake jumped down and unhitched the team while Jack shifted the noble appointments into place and pulled back the shade over the skylight. Then, poking his head through the curtains, he lifted his hat. “Welcome, ladies and gents! Who's first?”

It was a small boy. The boy's mother kept an anxious eye on him as Jack helped him up into the wagon. But Horace was on his best behavior. Delighted to have his picture taken, he stood smartly erect and smiled into the camera.

Ida was next. She handed the baby to her mother, climbed into the wagon, and sat down beside the carpet-covered table.

Ida's husband, Alexander, came running up from the North Road to take his turn. He was carrying his doctor's bag because he had been attending the deathbed of the Widow Plankton. It was the widow's fourth deathbed, and doubtless there would be a fifth. As Ida stepped down and took the baby from her mother, Alexander jumped up into the wagon.

In the artistic judgment of the photographer, this client had a noble profile. “Sir,” said Jack, “I recommend you look to the side.”

Alexander obeyed, waited for the flash of light, and then jumped down from the wagon. Once again, the man in the bowler hat stuck out his head. “All right, folks, who desires to be next?”

Eudocia had disappeared with Alice to go shopping on the Milldam. “Your turn, Eben,” said Alexander. “Go ahead. It doesn't hurt a bit.”

Eben had been waiting to take everybody home. “My turn?” he said. “Well, I don't know.”

Jack Spratt looked at Eben, his eyebrows high, his face a question mark. “Sir, would you be pleased to have your likeness taken?”

It was easier to do it than not, so Eben's face, too, was recorded for eternity.

A Philosophical Dispute

T
he Spratt brothers had come to Concord at a good time, because it was the day of the cattle fair. This huge event occupied acres of ground behind the depot on the other side of the railroad tracks, but Concord center was also teeming with visitors. Carriages bustled up and down the Milldam as interested parties arrived from all the surrounding towns.

Some of them had urgent transactions to conduct at the fair, but most were drawn by the general air of excitement. Alert to the opportunity, shopkeepers along the Milldam had stocked their shelves with fancy goods. Bonnets in one shopwindow were decked with ribbons and flowers, and in front of the greengrocer lay baskets of asparagus. At one corner of the green, the Middlesex Hotel was doing a land-office business in West Indian rum, brandy, gin, and cider, and the town was awash in oysters fresh from the train.

There was a new war memorial in the center of the green, an obelisk adorned with bronze tablets. One of the tablets listed the names of the Concord men who had never come back, including the name of Ida's first husband, Seth Morgan. The other tablet was a tribute:

THE TOWN OF CONCORD

BUILDS THIS MONUMENT

IN HONOR OF

THE BRAVE MEN

WHOSE NAMES IT BEARS:

AND RECORDS WITH GRATEFUL PRIDE

THAT THEY FOUND HERE

A BIRTHPLACE, HOME OR GRAVE.

Eben leaned against the pedestal. He was waiting for the rest of his family to be photographed, but it looked to be a long wait. By the time his mother and little sisters came back from the Milldam, a line of other customers had collected in front of the mobile studio of the brothers Spratt.

“Oh, dear,” said Eudocia, “we shouldn't have gone shopping.” They took their places at the end of the line, Sallie in a new bonnet, Alice in a new pinafore. Through the open windows of the Middlesex Hotel came the sound of drunken guffaws, and on the hotel porch a knot of men in top hats stood in a cloud of tobacco smoke. Eben watched the knot dissolve and trickle across the road. They were like iron filings drawn by the magnet of the painted sign advertising the photographic services of Jack and Jacob Spratt.

With baby Gussie whimpering on her shoulder, Eben's sister Ida was trying to keep track of Horace, but he kept darting away, skipping up and down the line, smiling up at the men in stovepipe hats. One of them handed him a sticky black gumdrop. “Here, boy, want a nigger baby?”

“No, no, Horace,” called Ida, running up to take his hand. But Horace was nearly bursting with the excitement of the crowded green, the men with candy in their pockets, the horses, the carriages, the noise, the fat boy playing a tin whistle. When Ida pulled him away, his excitement boiled over and he began to bawl. Inspired by his example, Gussie bawled, too.

“Here,” said Eben, “let me take him.” Swiftly, he picked up Horace, tossed him up on his shoulders, and bore him away to the place in front of the courthouse where he had left Mab and the spring wagon. Somehow, the entire family had crowded into the buggy—Eben driving, Sallie with Alice on her lap, Eudocia with Horace, and Ida holding the baby. Now Mab was waiting sleepily with her head down beside the curb, but she perked up when she saw Horace.

“Look, Horace,” said Eben, lifting his nephew up on the front seat, “you can see everything better from here.”

Uncle Eben was right. Horace bounced on the high seat and looked around happily at the waiting crowd, the green trees, the barking dog, the cat slinking across the street, the photographer poking his head out of his wagon, the baker's cart.

And there was excitement here, too. As Uncle Eben climbed up to sit beside him, they heard an explosion of cursing on the road, a squawking of chickens, a stamping of horses. It was a near collision. A dray loaded with hen coops was blocking the way of a carriage occupied by two gentlemen and three ladies. Chickens screeched and feathers flew, but the driver of the carriage refused to budge. The sulky drayman had to back his team out of the way to permit the two carriage horses to step smartly into the empty space beside Eben's wagon.

At once, Eben was aware of the presence of Isabelle Shaw. She was wedged in the back of the carriage between her mother and Mrs. Biddle. In front sat Isabelle's father, Josiah Gideon, and the Reverend Horatio Biddle. The two men were in heated argument. Behind them, the women sat shocked and silent. Both disputants were clergymen, but the peace of God was not in evidence. Eben said a polite good morning and nodded at the ladies, but only Isabelle's mother gave him a wan smile. When the three women began gathering their skirts to descend, he jumped down to help, but Isabelle was too quick for him. Before he could take her hand, she was standing in the road, assisting Mrs. Biddle. Isabelle's mother took Eben's hand gratefully, but the two men on the forward seats made no move to step down. They were still in hot dispute.

Isabelle looked around as though she had forgotten why they had come. Julia took her arm and together they walked across the green toward the studio of the photographers. Mrs. Biddle followed, tugging off her gloves and popping up her parasol, her lips compressed.

Disappointed, Eben climbed back on the wagon, pretending not to hear the tempest of dialectic beside him, but Horace stared openmouthed. The faces of the two men were red with anger, their voices passionate and loud. Yet the content of their disagreement was purely philosophical. It was a classic argument, like the debates of Eben's student days. Listening, keeping his eyes on Mab's cocked ears, he soon had a title for this one—“Query: whether the truths of science and the revelations of religion be not fundamentally opposed.”

Debater Josiah had taken the negative: No, they were not opposed, and only at its peril might religion ignore the great new truths of science.

Reverend Horatio argued vehemently for the positive. The so-called truths of the new science were not true at all, but false. They were undermining the faith of the fathers, spreading doubt and confusion in the hearts of Christian believers.

“Sir,” said Josiah, “you must have heard of Mr. Darwin's great book?”

“Sir,” replied Horatio, “you must have read Professor Agassiz's reply?”

It was a standoff. Eben kept his eyes fixed on the men lounging on the steps of the courthouse, but he listened with all his might. Horace gaped and stared. Even Mab flicked her ears, as if she were listening, too.

“Don't Tell!”