November 20, 1864
Dearest Aggie,
Life is hard as a deserter. Once, not so long ago it seems, I could walk these lands with my head held high. I was a solider, a man in whom the citizenry could place trust with their very lives. There was no table at which I was not welcome, no spare pillow that would not be offered my weary head. Now, I traverse the lands like a common thief, hiding valuable booty under his cloak, one hand always at his dagger’s hilt, one eye always open through the long, lonesome night. These are strange days in America, and the strange days breed strange Americans. I am forced, in my travel, to warily accept charity and seeming charity from people whose reputation and rectitude must vary by hidden degrees. I am not accustomed to this lifestyle, and do not believe I ever shall be, but for now it is all that I have. And I take some consolation in the fact that Lincoln, despite himself, has forged a country with a heart. The future cannot all be lost, for no one man can hold all America on puppet-strings. We are too great a land, too noble a people. We will not go silent into the night. And those who would use us in their dirty schemes, like foolish pawns, will receive their due and proper. Lincoln, in particular, will get his comeuppance.
Venturing through dangerous woods along the Mississippi through Iowa, I came to a makeshift village yesterday, and it is from a tiny barn bereft of livestock that I write you this letter. Indeed, my experiences here hold a perfect example of all the aforementioned, the several dichotomies of the current America: two men, living together out here in the woods – departing, in all likelihood, from the natural use of the woman and engaging in that which is unseemly – and yet generous enough to share their food and lodgings, such as they are, with a total stranger. They were suspicious of my uniform, and hated Lincoln, yet they were not Confeds. One of them, the younger – a startlingly handsome man whose name I am ashamed to say I cannot recall – looked a long time at our Jezebel with such strange emotion in his eyes, somewhere between the pain of longing and the zeal of the battlefield. At first, this made me very nervous, but then he enquired after her mother with such an overwhelming sadness in his voice that I knew this man could not be a murderer. He could not hurt a fly. His companion, partner, however we shall put it, was a fat man, who spoke at a rambling pace of much nonsense, and his personal hygiene left much to be desired, but as I understand it he built this small settlement himself – for him and the younger fellow to cohabitate – and must therefore be a man of hidden pride and depth and love. Such caring people; such great humanity tucked away in such unfriendly pockets of the landscape. The American dream, thriving – if a little confused – in forgotten lands, and in the hearts of the most marginalised people. This is what I fought for.
Agatha, my loveliest, sweetest Aggie-poo…
I would tell you more of the reasons behind my desertion of the Yankee cause and, more importantly, my desertion of you, but to do so would involve a criticism of illustrious personages, with such deeply-penetrating influence, that I dare not commit it to paper or communicate it by post, lest I endanger us all any more than I already have. As it is, I have my suspicions that any communiqués will be intercepted, and that you will never hear from us again. I must also, therefore, be necessarily vague about our travels and our destinations, and come to terms with the awful fact that you will never be able to reply to my letters. Suffice it to say that I had little choice in the matter; that it was demanded of me by cruel sister fate; that I will, one day, reveal the entire truth to you, even if it must be with my dying breath.
When I left you, you were in that sound sleep of near-death; all colour drained from your little face, all light gone from your twinkling eyes. All that remained familiar was your warm breath, and your cosy loins – yet even they became unfamiliar after those silent months by your bedside, until they too were simply parched and barren reminders of what might have been. And then your child – our Jezebel came into this world – and the plans surrounding her precious life began to whir into motion. I couldn’t stand it. I was too much in love. I just wish I could have said goodbye. It was agony.
A thousand, thousand times have I begged the exoneration of the merciful god above us; prayed that my honour would one day be restored; prayed that I could return to my old life with the wind at my back and the sun of a new day on my face; prayed that I would feel your touch, and know the gaze of your loving, forgiving eyes. But I will pray no more on such selfish topics. Those prayers, they all of them mean nothing to me now. All that was once sacred I have thrown now to the cold north wind. I must learn to live with my decisions and their consequences. Life must now, more than ever, be about serving others – those I love – without any promise of reward.
And so the only things that I pray now are for the strength to do right by our daughter – to raise her a strong and loving woman, as you might have done; to be blessed, if not with your forgiveness, then simply with your acknowledgement that I did what I thought was right – that I acted not out of avarice or cruelty, but out of love of too many contrarian forms; and, finally, that one day I might see you again, and hold you in my arms, and show you our wonderful daughter.
Know that we are safe, and that we love you.
Yours and yours forever,
Winston Radcliffe
ÁÁÁ
October 12, 1871
Dearest Aggie,
I have found employment in Chicago as a meat trader. It is an industry on the rise in Chicago, now more than ever. I think it sad to have to rejoice in the misfortunes of others, but the Great Fire this year burned the resources and warehouses of many of my competitors, leaving my firm well positioned to handle the city’s increased needs.
The Fire was terrible, Aggie. Such loss. Such destruction. It was the war all over again.
The blaze started in a barn out on DeKoven Street, not two miles from where I now write this letter, and burned for two full days and nights. Unquenchable, it decimated bridges, churches, theatres, hotels, even the great City Hall. Hundreds of people fled in terror from Lincoln Park – the irony of which was not wasted on me, even in the heat of the moment, no pun intended – and collapsed on the shores of Lake Michigan, their homes and worldly possessions all reduced to ashes. I was glad to be able to volunteer my military expertise, albeit clandestinely, to my old civil war compatriot Phil Sherdian, who was coordinating the complicated relief efforts. However, this volunteerism brought me even closer to the very heart of the fracas.
I saw children, their faces melted. Old people, wandering the streets lost, smoke billowing from their molten heads and nobody to lend a hand. I saw babies born dead; their lifeless bodies firing like hell’s cannonballs from their mothers’ very wombs, rending the city in a curtain of soot and white fire wherever they fell. Dogs licked at their flaming coats, whereupon the flames only transferred to their tongues, and then into the city’s very water supplies – the only thing that could have ended the suffering sooner – which then burned like oil wells for days and nights on end. The stench of the charred dead reached beyond the city limits. Then a plague settled on those who unfortunate enough to be stuck near the epicentre. Boils the size of oranges grew under their fingernails. Their bile ran freely, black and pink and all hues of horrible. The hospitals overflowed with the senseless and the gibbering and the incontinent.
And yet, we profited! We profited. This is America, I suppose. The America I have helped create with mine own hand. This tragedy will see me become a rich, rich man.
I am, however successful, not well suited to this work or this life. I am glad that Lincoln died those many years ago; it was no better or worse than he deserved. And yet, I feel as if his ghost lingers on in the mendacity of American commerce; this cutthroat world in which double-talk is singularly common, and in which nothing is ever as it first appears. Indeed, even after all these years, some nights I awake, sweating and screaming, tearing away the bedclothes. I have almost a supernatural sense that he is still alive. Lincoln, I mean… Out there… Somewhere… Somehow…
But all that must simply be craziness. It is impossible. John Wilkes Booth, the man they called the Handsomest Coward in All America, put a bullet through his deceitful brains. And so he cannot have lived. It would be impossible! Wouldn’t it?
Anyway.
Our child – our Jezebel – grows more and more beautiful every day. She is six years old now. Virtually a grown up! Or at least she fancies it so. Old women buy her boiled sweets and old men bow in the street just to watch her curtsy. The young boys tease her and pull her hair, and the older ones pick her posies and walk her here and there, each as the highest expression of admiration and affection that they know. She is perfect. Indeed, some days, when the light plays off the porcelain skin of her cheeks to dance in her cobalt eyes, or when her tresses of flaxen hair fly like a flock of golden birds over her shoulder to cascade like Solomon’s waterfalls down her neatly curved back, I wonder that she can possibly be my child; that a man such as myself – who has tarried such rugged war years, wielded the arms of state with such brute limbs, and who has witnessed the death and rebirth and death again of all that he holds dear, only to have the many fardels reflected in his uneven complexion – can have produced an offspring of such finely proportioned features, such stately disposition, such uncompromising charm and such uncommon handsomeness.
But then I remember that you are her mother, and all wonder dissipates. Indeed, all that carries my lowly spirits through these livelong days is the You I see in Her every morning.
Yours in undying devotion,
Winston Radcliffe
ÁÁÁ
May 20, 1893
Dear Aggie,
The wonders of this new century abound, and the Windy City is the place to witness them. It seems as if all the burgeoning glories and astounding triumphs of which free men are capable – all the strange, magnificent brainchildren of the twentieth century – have converged early upon this hallowed urban ground. What sights are here to behold, Aggie!
We have just now reached the conclusion of the World’s Columbian Exposition, held to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’ momentous arrival on the shores of what has now grown into the United States. The scale and grandeur of ‘our little carnival’ has excited and enticed people from all over the world – over 27 million men, women and children have trained, rowed or ridden their way in to town to catch a glimpse of our American Exceptionalism.
And we have not disappointed them.
From new mining techniques to groundbreaking architectural principles; from the automobile to the re-fridgerator; from the stereopticon to the Tesla coil; from a crazy contraption they’re calling a ‘Ferris Wheel’ to a string that can carry a human voice over great distances along its copper length; our great Fete had it all. Jezebel took quite a shine to one piece of machinery in particular: the famous cinemagram, which produces images by trapping the power of the sun, I believe.
However, my experiences of the past few weeks have proved to my mind that these are times that demand both excitement and caution: times of great possibility and of great risk.
In conjunction with the festivities, and as one of the city’s wealthiest men, I have been privileged to be privy to several cutting-edge investment opportunities ‘on the ground level’. J.P. Morgan, one of the country’s most famous investment bankers, is in town to help broker the financial arrangements – no doubt skimming a large percentage off the top of each deal for himself. The whole city is mustered with anticipation of who here will some day soon end up a millionaire.
The opportunity which has been generating the most gossip is also, unsurprisingly, the most brainless. Thomas Alva Edison, who claims to be some kind of ‘scientist’, gave a group of us moneyed-up saps a marvellous private demonstration of his ‘research’, and proved himself an excellent orator to boot. After all the whirring and sparkling and zapping and malarky, and the brandishing of a number of pointless, light-producing magic tricks, he insisted that, within ten years, every home in America would not only be wired with his inventions, but would depend upon them for vastly increased quality of life. And that was just the beginning. We could expect to double our money. Double it!
This preposterous rate of return aside, I am convinced that, in a business sense, these are fundamentally foolish notions. Edison and J.P. Morgan’s General Electric will not prove a sound investment for the future. It relies too much on cumbersome, complicated ‘technology’, and not enough on the lasting, reliable force of man’s labour. There is no way that every home in America will be able to afford this frivolous spending, which seems much more a novelty and entertainment than useful, everyday thing, even if they wanted it – which I’m positive that they won’t. What next? A fancy box with talking pictures on it, pictures that float through the very air and into our homes? Will every home have one of them next? And another thing: if this so-called ‘electricity’ were to invade every home in America, would not the heat generated in the process cause the very Earth to heat up? And then, would not the very ice melt and the waters dry up? Whatever would we drink? It seems to me that this idea has been thought through very little in terms of its ultimate conclusions.
No. Instead, I intend to put my considerable fortune into the hands of Wild Bill Cody, one of the greatest showmen and hunters of Injins in all the land. Perhaps you have heard of him? He was refused a place in the Fair itself – too old hat for its facilitators and awed crowds – but has set up camp here anyway, just beyond the limits of the Fair proper. I admire such determination in a man. It is this kind of nous that sees a fellow successful in commerce, not big words like ‘alternating current’ and ‘polyphase current’ and ‘transistor’ and ‘illumination bulb’.
Wild Bill’s idea lies in the extraction of a chemical compound from the oily skins of river otters. When mixed with the distilled liquid of a particular, rare flower that grows in the cooler northlands, it creates a potent elixir that is said to grant men bravery. This, to me, sounds a much more marketable idea than anything Edison or Tesla have had to show for themselves. What man – or woman for that matter – will not want to keep bravery on tap so to speak? The Indians have been doing it for thousands of years. Wild Bill tells me that this is the little-known reason why the young Pawnee and Mohawk men are referred to as ‘braves’. It’s the drink! I can tell you this from experience: the military applications of this wonder-drug alone will be virtually limitless. Imagine if our side had possessed such an advantage twenty years ago! How many young lives could have been spared! Once production is complete, Wild Bill says that he will have no trouble selling them to the audiences of his touring shows, who will no doubt be anxious to possess the same courage he exhibits in the retelling of his magnificent adventures.
Wild Bill says that the sourcing of the flowers themselves and the distillation of their liquid is a very technical and costly exercise, as is the entrapment of the otters, which are far more vicious and cunning than popular wisdom holds, but that it is all the more profitable for its large initial capital outlay. Wild Bill says that this is why more people have not gone after the market yet. But, as they say here in Chicago, and in New York too, you’ve got to spend money to make money.
The plan will take some time to execute, but I am convinced that it will conclude with excellent results, both financial and social. For now, I have given Wild Bill my stake in the plan in cash, and based on a handshake – none of these fancy contracts that so mar the trust between men in our great nation. He has since departed to the north to begin the laborious process of picking the flowers. All in all, it amounted to approximately two thirds of my net worth: money that will seem but pocket change when this is all seen through. Wild Bill is due to return in several months with an update. J.P. Morgan shall be laughing on the other side of his face come next year!
As for our darling Jezebel, she has now grown into as precocious and energetic a young lady as you could hope to meet. On her last birthday, out of nowhere, she proclaimed to me a desire to attend the theatre. Who can say where a young woman gets such notions? In any case, I am always of an inclination to attend her whims and indulge her imagination, though it certainly runs contrary to my own experiences to do so. I was raised so sensibly – just an honest farm boy – and so it is perhaps with silent pleasure that I do things so differently, so freely, with my own child. I believe that I long, in this way, to prove myself a better or at least different father than my own, who never spared me any rod.
At the Chicago Opera House, we saw a performance directed by a man named Samuel Dallas Bayes, quite a famous player, apparently, who is touring from Omaha, and whose claim to fame – aside from rhetorical delivery – is that he once knew John Wilkes Booth. It is this relationship, and his loudmouthed touting of it about town, that draws the crowds as much as his skills on the stage. I have never approved of namedropping. A man should trade on his own name, not the higher names of others. But Jezebel wanted to go, and so we went.
Upon the fall of the curtain, as the fine folks clapped, she turned to me and, above the roar, proclaimed her intention to one day become an actress. And, never one to settle for anything less than the best or grandest or most ambitious, she informed me that she had resolved not just to be any old actress, but the most famous actress that ever there was. “The theatre is in my blood, father,” she told me. “And how is that child,” asked I, “Since I, your father, am but a merchant businessman in the meat packing industry who now holds a large interest in the production of Wild Bill’s Secret Sauce?”
She replied to me: “Some things father, a young woman just knows. Perhaps my mother, whom you have always promised me I shall meet, had something of an actor inside her once upon a time..”
I laughed heartily and hoisted her up into my arms, high above the milling crowd, beaming with the pride that only a true father can know. We were so happy.
I will see to it that her dreams come true, Aggie. They must come before my own, and even before yours. One day, we shall all be reunited: become the great American family that fate intended us to be. For now, however, we must stay in Chicago. I must see these days through. Who knows? Perhaps these latest investments will prove themselves shrewd, and we shall have the means to eventually spend all our waking hours together in prosperity.
Yours truly,
Winston Radcliffe
ÁÁÁ
January 8, 1894
Dear Aggie,
I must be brief.
The stock market has suffered a major correction, sending prices spiralling upwards. In addition, taxes have skyrocketed to compensate for the collapse of a number of high profile, project-back public bonds that will not now vest. I on the brink of financial ruin and Bill Cody – that wolf in sheep’s clothing – is nowhere to be found. It is now a well-known fact that he ran up many debts in town, using my good name as security to his creditors. I have been left to cover the debts, when I can barely meet my own. To make matters worse, the local magistrate tells me that, because I didn’t secure a contract stipulating my input and expected returns to and from his Secret Sauce, my options for recourse are very limited. I suspect now that the scoundrel intends to keep all the profits for himself.
Thankfully, I have managed to lay aside enough currency in my bedroom safe to see us fed and clothed for some time.
I can only hope that it will last.
Yours in haste and love,
Winston Radcliffe
ÁÁÁ
September 6, 1894
Dearest Aggie,
This will be my last letter for some time. All is not well. I have been besieged by misfortune on two fronts at once, both of them thanks to my foolishness and lack of foresight.
The first is that our savings, which were meant to last us through the better part of the next five years, will fail to see us through even one more. Thanks to the forces of inflation and rising interest rates, the money, which I had kept in cash in my own safe rather than invested in the property markets or in interest-bearing accounts, is now barely worth the paper it is printed on. Meanwhile that pompous oaf Edison spends his way insanely across the country without thought, smug and rich beyond any man’s wildest dreams. Each and every time a picture appears in the newspapers of his lunching with Rockefeller and clay-shooting with Gould, I feel so terribly vexed. Who could have thought that ‘electricity’ would catch on like such madness? Who, I ask? Would a smarter man than myself have invested in that hair-brained scheme of his? Surely not! And yet here I am, nigh on destitute, with nought by my own arrogance to blame it on! If I ever see Wild Bill Cody, I will slay him where he stands.
The second is troubling on a far deeper level.
I found our daughter Jezebel in the arms of a young man. Kissing as young people do when their intention is to progress beyond it, stripped to her bodice, her young body – which now bears all the countenance of a woman’s – almost exposed. The young man’s hand were wandering, exploring its final lacy barriers…
A rage filled me. The young man I dealt with as a man should, but I am ashamed to say that I also struck Jezebel for the first time. I am compelled to proclaim it the last, and to ensure that I keep my word by firm, decisive action. It is clear to me that our young Jezebel requires the influence of a woman, one who can teach her the frank feminine propriety that a father – particularly a man of the sword such as I – cannot hope impart.
I have, therefore, arranged her lodgings and tuition in a reputable inn near the heart of the city. It was recommended me by a fellow I know well from the glory days of the meat packing boom. The establishment is owned and run by a well-respected and wealthy French widow by the name of Mme Olivia Bouvoix. She was hesitant to agree to my request at first, as she already lodges several young ladies under such agreements with absentee parents, but upon seeing our Jezebel, she grew more enthusiastic. Indeed, I think she was quite seduced – nay, bewitched – by our daughter’s fetching appearance and excellent dimensions. I told her discretely of the trouble we had had with the young man. She was not surprised.
“’Tis the modern age,” she told me in a heavy French accent. “Silly girls!”
“Perhaps,” I said. “But I am old fashioned in the several things wherein I deem it prudent to be so. I was compelled to make the young man pay for his… transgression. I made him pay, you understand?”
“Mais oui,” said Mme Bouvoix.
I told her I didn’t need to go right at that moment, thanking her all the same, at which she let out a tremendous laugh.
“Non, non, non Monsieur, you misunderstand me: ‘mais oui’ – but of course! Here at La Blanchisserie Chinoise de Gregory Chin, we teach our girls to always make the men pay!”
Needless to say, I was satisfied with her answer.
She further assured me that our daughter was not only welcome, but would receive a fine, “useful” cosmopolitan education and would, in her work, “be privileged to service some of the city’s finest gentry”; men of valour, class and distinction. When I let her know of Jezebel’s particular ambitions for the stage, she promised me that there would be opportunities to “perform daily, often in costume”, and perhaps even make some pocket money doing so. And so all shall perhaps still come to good. I left her with a kiss and a good luck, and a tear in my eye, the day before yesterday. She will, no doubt, blossom into the fabulous young woman she was always destined to become.
As for me, I shall have to take to the road once more. My prospects as a businessman have dried up in Chicago; it is a town, these days, that too often favours the young and university educated, or those who are all too willing to compromise their ethics in favour of wiliness, over old men with hard heads and any sense of right and wrong. I shall instead hold a rifle in my hands once more, and attempt to pay our Jezebel’s board and tuition by guiding rich men on hunts further south. The noble buffalo shall give up his life, that Jezebel may see hers become fruitful.
Perhaps, through such dangerous wanderings, I shall one day find myself on your doorstep, poor but devoted. Though, after all these years, who can say whether such thoughts are anything more than the foolish fancies of an old soldier who cannot let go?
Yours in fond memory, I hope,
Winston Radcliffe
SOUTHERN COMFORT - BY HUGO CHIARELLA AND JASON CHILDS
amazing! historiographical metafiction is evident here in all it's glory...
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