Texas by James A. Michener
And then, on the sixteenth of April in that first year of marriage, Gallatin and all of Tennessee were stunned by the news that the delicate and lovely Eliza Allen Houston had for some mysterious reason never to be revealed left the governor’s bed and board, telling her family that she could never return.
‘Impossible!’ the men in the taverns cried, while their wives at home met secretly to explore in hushed conversation the devastating possibilities. That Eliza’s abrupt behavior must have had some dark, sexual cause, there could be no doubt, and since specifically what it had been would never be disclosed, speculation was not only invited but also inventive.
The scandal was intensified when the governor announced that he must, out of respect to his constituency, refuse to stand for reelection, and when his friends implored him not to take such drastic action, he shocked them completely by resigning the balance of the term to which he was already entitled. While they fumed, he boarded a steamer and sailed into lonely exile among the Indians he had known previously. Rarely in American history had a man who had risen so high fallen so low.
His precipitate departure raised far more questions than it answered, for in the silence surrounding the case his partisans launched an explanation, totally unauthorized, which cleared his name. But this could be circulated only at the expense of Eliza Allen, whose irate family had no intention of allowing her to shoulder the blame for this destruction of Houston’s career, so in self-defense the male members of the Allen family engineered a solution unique in American political life.
They nominated a panel of twelve sober citizens of impeccable repute to hold a series of public meetings, the more salacious details kept private, to apportion blame in this affair. At the conclusion a vote would be taken and a determination made as to whether Eliza Allen, of Gallatin, was or was not guilty in even the slightest degree in the scandalous affair of Governor Sam Houston.
When eleven solons had been selected—military heroes, lawyers, clergymen, bankers—one Leonidas Allen, a relative of the abused wife, suggested: ‘I’m glad to see this fellow Quimper back among us. He’s become a man of sober judgment, reputation restored by the courts. I’d like to see him stay here. Let’s signify our acceptance by inviting him to serve on our jury.’ No member of the committee listened to the evidence with closer attention than Quimper, and when the time came for the first crucial vote, he experienced no uncertainty. The question was clearly stated: ‘Was Eliza Allen, at the time of her marriage to Governor Houston, a virgin?’ The vote was eleven-to-one affirmative, and as soon as the man who voted nay was known, one of the colonels challenged him to a duel on the grounds that he had impugned the reputation of a gentlewoman, but the voter justified himself by explaining that he was a lawyer from Virginia who felt that the question as stated could not be answered, since substantive evidence had not been provided. The colonel accepted the apology; the challenge was withdrawn; and the ashen-faced Virginian, aware of how close he had come to being shot, begged permission to alter his vote to affirmative, and when the balloting was announced, Eliza was unanimously found to have been a virgin.
Each of the other possible charges against her was analyzed similarly, and in vote after vote the correctness of her behavior was sustained. When the final tally was made, it was clear that Eliza’s reputation had been not only cleared but also burnished; by the twelve ablest men in Gallatin she was found to have been immaculate in both behavior and spirit.
At the conclusion of the investigation two members of the panel composed a stirring document in which Eliza’s purity was extolled and the governor’s lack of it deplored; it covered all the debatable points and indicated the jury’s vote on each, and it ended with an exhortation to the journals of Tennessee and surrounding states that they give the fullest possible coverage to the voting. But the Virginia lawyer, already frightened by what might have happened as a consequence of that first vote, now advised the committee that whereas the report accurately summarized their debate, and while its decisions were irrefutable, it might be wise to delay publication until the jury could be sure that Sam Houston had left the state.
After prudent delay the report was circulated, and interested newspapers did publish it, but by then Houston was lost in the wilds of Arkansas, living among his beloved Indians and remaining drunk most of the time. A traveler told Quimper: ‘Shortly after Houston arrived in Arkansas, I saw him drunk in a saloon, where a local braggart challenged him to a duel. I was standin’ with Houston when he accepted. Asked me to be his second, so in the mornin’ haze, lengths were stepped off. The two duelists, obviously unsteady, marched, turned, aimed and fired. Nobody got hit for the good reason that me and the other man’s second, realizin’ that our men were drunk and without any sensible basis for a duel, had loaded the pistols with blanks!’
While Jubal was still chuckling over this portrait of the former governor, he was confronted by a great temptation. Leonidas Allen, the man who had sponsored his membership on the Houston jury, invited him twice to dinner in the Aliens’ spacious mansion, and only the most attractive Southern hospitality prevailed, but on a third visit Leonidas took Jubal aside and said in a low voice: ‘Surely you’ve noticed that my older sister, Clara, is quite taken with you.’
Jubal had not noticed, but when he returned to the company of the ladies he could not avoid Clara’s ardent glances. As he left the mansion, Leonidas whispered: ‘We would be most honored, Clara and me, that is, if you’d dine with us tomorrow.’
‘Sir, I’m married. I have a wife in Texas.’
‘Things can always be arranged.’
He spent a feverish night, for with the funds he had received from the settlement, plus those which would accrue to him if he married Miss Clara, who was not at all repulsive, he could own one of the Gallatin mansions. Also, he could hear Mattie saying: ‘I’ll give you your freedom.’ But as he tossed on his straw mattress he thought of the Brazos, and Stephen Austin trying to build a state, and of Texas reaching empty to the horizon, and of Mattie poling her ferry.
Early next morning he went to a bank, arranged for his new wealth to be posted to a New Orleans agent against whom he could draw when he returned home, and headed for the Mississippi without bidding either Leonidas or Clara farewell.
When his boat put in to an Arkansas levee, one of the hands cried: ‘There comes Sam Houston. Meets us every trip.’ And up the gangway came the former governor, already drunk but looking to the steamboat’s bar for replenishment. Jubal, fearing that Houston might have learned about the jury report, hid among the passengers but stayed close enough to hear Houston haranguing the travelers: ‘Let’s all get off the boat and head cross country to Oregon. I’m goin’ there as soon as practical.’ When Houston was safely off the boat and lying immobile beside some cotton bales, Jubal said to a passenger: ‘Look at him! Governor of a state! We don’t need his kind in Texas.’
New Orleans, Nachitoches in Louisiana, Nacogdoches in Texas, El Camino Real and south along the banks of the Trinity to the Goliad Road, this was the pathway of empire, except that other things besides immigrants traveled it. This autumn, cholera made the journey too, meeting up with Jubal Quimper just before he reached the village on the Trinity in which Reverend Harrison hid and from which he conducted his forbidden prayer meetings.
The two men were glad to see each other, and Harrison sat fascinated as Jubal reported upon the doings in Tennessee; it was Harrison’s opinion, delivered from afar, that Governor Houston, a giant of a man, as Quimper reported, must have outraged his gentle wife in some grotesque sexual manner: ‘Your jury rendered the judgment he deserved. You did the work of the Lord.’
On the second day of the visit, Quimper fell into a fit of such violent shaking that the preacher cried: ‘Dear God, Jubal, you must have the plague!’ And as soon as these dire words were spoken they were flashed throughout the small community, and the minister’s house was quarantined.
It was a useless gesture, because by that night four other case
Reverend Harrison, ignoring the pleas of his secret parishioners that he dissociate himself from the stricken man, said: ‘If Jesus Christ could medicine the lepers, I can medicine Quimper,’ and he remained with Jubal, cooling his fevered face with damp towels until convulsive seizures showed that death was imminent.
‘Beloved brother in Christ, Jesus awaits thee in heaven. May the merciful God stay this plague and may the earth be made whole again.’ In the last minutes he bathed the dying man’s face once more, praying frantically, as if to finish his beseeching before his friend died: ‘Dear God, take into Your bosom this traveler. On earth he tried to do Your bidding. In heaven he will grace Your throne.’
When Quimper died, Harrison closed the eyelids and arranged the sweat-drenched bedclothes. Then he left his house, but others in the village were afraid to move near him.
Quimper’s clothes had to be burned, of course, but a few durable possessions like coins remained, and these the minister gathered, proposing to carry them the sixty miles to Quimper’s Ferry, for he felt that it would be improper for Mattie to learn of her husband’s sudden death from strangers. He was delayed, however, by the necessity of burying four others who had fallen to the plague, and when this was finished he wondered whether it was proper for him to move into another community, lest he carry the cholera with him.
Waiting six days, he concluded that he was not going to be stricken, so down the Goliad Road he went on his mission of compassion. As he neared the ferry he wondered how he should speak to Mattie, for her husband had been far too young to die, but even when he stood at the pole that carried the flag travelers were instructed by a signboard to raise if they wanted the ferry to fetch them, he was undecided. He heard young Yancey shouting: ‘Mom! The ferry!’ and he wondered why this growing boy did not himself come across to get him, but since Yancey did not, Mattie appeared, wiping her hands on her apron and heading for the heavy pole.
With the skill acquired from many crossings, she brought the raft to its landing and shouted: ‘Welcome, Pastor! Jubal will be coming home any time now.’
When he climbed into the ferry he sat silent for so long that Mattie asked abruptly: ‘What is it, Reverend? Bad news?’ and he said simply: ‘Jubal died. Cholera.’
She did not interrupt her poling. Pushing the heavy post into the bottom mud, she walked along the edge of her craft, shoving the ferry forward, then dragging the pole in the water as she strode forward to push once more. Working and keeping her eyes upon the swirling water, she said nothing till she brought her craft home safely to its resting place. Then, helping the minister to negotiate the steep bank, she said: ‘Father Clooney’s here. Six weddings set for this afternoon.’
They walked to the dog-run, where the priest was sitting in the shade at the far end of the porch. ‘Hello, Reverend,’ he said, and Harrison replied: ‘I bring heavy news. Jubal … the plague.’
Father Clooney had helped bury many plague victims, but never could he adjust to the incredible swiftness with which this terrible malady struck, and to have it take a man to whom he, Clooney, was so much indebted was a burden trebly heavy.
‘Let us not tell the others,’ he suggested. ‘It’s their wedding.’ So the three agreed that not even Yancey would be told until after the ceremony.
‘I’ll move along,’ Harrison said. ‘I couldn’t attend the wedding.’
‘You could if you wished,’ Father Clooney said. He wanted to add, so that Harrison would join, that such weddings were formalities demanded by the Mexican government, but he could not frame the words. No wedding was a formality, not any, not under any conceivable circumstances.
Harrison, unwilling to participate in or bear witness to such an improper mixture of politics and faith, moved sullenly away, but Clooney, on the other hand, became more excited and devout as the holy moments approached. Taking a nip now and then to encourage himself, he was feeling at the height of his power by the time the six couples had gathered, and he surprised them by saying with deep solemnity: ‘Let us gather at the river,’ and he led them to a plateau adorned by oak trees where the couples could look down forty feet to the Brazos as it carried mud to the sea. He had not chosen this spot by accident, for when the farmers stood with their brides and their children, he cried in a kind of chant:
‘When storms strike far inland, that little stream down there can rise in fury and sweep across this land which seems so safe up here. Forty feet of sudden turbulence, and who can believe that? It will be the same with your marriages, an unexpected storm can overwhelm you, and who would believe that?
‘Wise men and women, when they enter into marriage, do so with some religious blessing, with God’s most precious sanction, for they know they need that extra help. If the families of the Brazos did not protect their homes up here, the stormy river would sweep them away. And if you do not call upon God to consecrate your marriages, they too can be swept away.
‘In this solemn moment when you start your new lives I give you the balm of God’s love. I anoint you. I bless you. I give you the gentle kiss of Jesus. Above all, I give you protection against the great storms of life. In life and in death …’
Here he chanced to look across the fields to the house so recently struck by untimely death, and his throat began to close up and his eyes to fill with tears. He lost track of what he was saying and almost began to blubber, so great was his anguish over the fate of Mattie Quimper, and he became so incoherent that the wiser men among the grooms winked at one another: ‘The old man’s drunk again.’
He wasn’t, not then, but when he returned to sit with Mattie on the porch, endeavoring to console her, he did start to drink heavily, so that when Reverend Harrison returned, eligible to rejoin them now that the Romish ceremony was ended, Clooney was ready to embrace him as a brother: ‘Harrison, we must both give consolation to this good Christian woman.’
As evening approached he became quite drunk, and at one point he said to Harrison, as if he had never seen him before: ‘Me name’s Father Clooney, of Ballyclooney on Clooney Bay, in County Clare,’ but when the stiff Protestant ignored him, he realized his foolishness and said hastily: ‘You’re Reverend Harrison! You and I must look after Yancey now. He’ll need a father,’ and he began calling: ‘Yancey, Yancey!’ When there was no answer, he looked hazily at Harrison, lay down upon the porch, and passed easily into a deep sleep that would last through the night.
‘God blessed me in one thing,’ Mattie said as darkness fell. ‘He allowed me to know four good men. You. That one down there. Stephen Austin. And Jubal. Many women never know none.’
Harrison said boldly: ‘You must take a new husband, Mattie. You’ll need help to run the inn and the ferry.’
At this moment, on the far shore, a late traveler hallooed: ‘Can you fetch me? I have no food, no blankets.’
She left the porch, went down to the Brazos, and poled sturdily across the narrow river to where the pilgrim waited. When the boat was loaded she shoved off, and in the moonlight brought him to the warmth of her inn.
… TASK FORCE
We experienced the first open break in our Task Force when we met in October 1983 to plan our impending meeting in Tyler, where the topic was to be ‘Religion in Texas.’ We found it difficult to agree upon an appropriate speaker, for although none of us had strong convictions regarding specific theologies, and certainly we did not want to intrude on clerical matters, we were aware that sectarianism had played a recurrent role in forming Texas attitudes. But we did not know whom to invite, and because there were differences among us we postpo
The blowup involved not religion but the successful American invasion of the little Caribbean island of Grenada. Rusk and Quimper, as gung-ho Texans, applauded the action. ‘We should of done it years ago,’ Quimper said. ‘And since we have a running start, let’s move on to Nicaragua and Cuba.’
Miss Cobb, descendant of Democratic senators, voiced a much different view: ‘President Reagan, having seen how much the invasion of the Falklands helped Maggie Thatcher win reelection in Great Britain, is pulling the same trick in the United States.’
‘And succeeding,’ Rusk snapped, and she agreed: ‘He is. Brilliantly. If the election were held tomorrow, he’d win in a landslide. America does love its successful little wars, but tires quickly of its big unsuccessful ones.’
‘That’s communist talk,’ Rusk said, and Quimper agreed: ‘If you got strength, you got to show it, or they don’t believe you have it.’
Dr. Garza tried to slow down the animosities by advancing a more sober theory: ‘America must proceed very carefully. In every Latin country there’s latent memory of Marines invading at will. If we run rampant in the Caribbean, we’ll engender a profound revulsion. We must go slow.’
Rusk spoke like a letter-to-the-editor of a Texas newspaper when he said: ‘We shouldn’t give a damn what they think about us. We should discipline Cuba, right now. And if Nicaragua is in the Cuban camp, we should knock it out too. We’ve had enough liberal shilly-shallying.’
‘Do you want to nuke Nicaragua?’ Miss Cobb asked, and Rusk replied: ‘If necessary,’ to which Garza asked: ‘And risk Armageddon?’