Such the man who sat facing the Cabinet he did not choose—stubborn, suspicious, vain, jealous, courageous, honest, irascible, tempestuous, patriotic, and rising above its members in ability and public service as a mountain above the pebbles at its base.

VI

No student of physiognomy, familiar with the character of Adams, could have glanced at the stern, cold Puritan face of Timothy Pickering, his Secretary of State, without a premonition of certain estrangement. The long, thin, super-serious features were as uncongenial and unresponsive as though carved from granite. The thin, silvery locks and the spectacles combined to create an unpleasant impression of asceticism; and the cold eyes that peered through the glasses spoke of the narrow, uncompromising mind of a follower of Cromwell. There, too, he could read the insatiable ambition, the audacious courage, the relentless will of the Roman conqueror. Seldom did that face soften with a smile; for he had no sense of humor. His portrait, by Stuart, as a frontispiece to a volume of old New England blue laws would have symbolized the spirit of the book. No Indian stoic ever presented a countenance less revealing in repose, or more stone-like in composure. The resemblance to the Roundhead fanatic was accentuated in the extreme simplicity, the Quaker-like plainness of his garb.

Here was clearly a man to whom joyous frivolity was indecent dissipation; with whom the scrutiny of suspicion was a duty; and to whom duties were the sum total of life. But beneath the repellently cold, metallic exterior there were volcanic fires of passion, and when he emerged from the deadly calm of composure it was to storm. It was not in his nature to confer, but to lay down the law. So lacking was he in a sense of humor that he honestly persuaded himself that he always stood at Armageddon and battled for the Lord. Even when he was moved to treachery by an ambition wholly incongruous to his capacity, he really felt that he was detached from all personal considerations and was fighting for the abstract principle of right.[1252] Never once in his long life, even when he was a cheap conspirator planning the destruction of the Union, did he think himself in the wrong. Never once in his voluminous correspondence does he hint at a possible mistake. He was, in his political views and his personal relations, impeccably pure—and he admitted it. Not only did he admit it—he impassionedly proclaimed it, and this alone made him an impossible adviser for John Adams. He was the smug, self-righteous type that would remake the world in its own image. They who disagreed with him were hounds of the devil to be thrown without pity into the uttermost darkness. And he was sincere in it all. He was fond of hymns and psalms, in church devout, at prayer most fervent, and he read the Bible habitually without discovering the passage about the throwing of stones.[1253]

This temperament made him difficult in even ordinary conversation. He had an excellent command of language, but he preferred the harsher words. There was no twilight zone for him. Things were white or black. He was violent in his opinions and violent in the gesticulation with which he tried to force them on his hearers. So little could he see himself as others saw him that, when he once exclaimed, ‘I abhor gesticulation,’ with a powerful sweep of his muscular arms, he could not understand the smile of his auditor.[1254] But for this intemperance, all too much like that of Adams to make harmony possible, he would have been a great conversationalist. He used words with accuracy, was interesting in narrative, and had read widely and wisely; but too frequently to converse with Pickering was to quarrel. This unhappy quality, along with his poverty, explains why he did not figure in the social life of the Federalist capital. His tactlessness and bluntness, which he confused with honesty, were intolerable. In a letter to a friend who had given an acquaintance a note of introduction, he wrote that he should ‘not put myself to the expense nor my family to the trouble of a splendid exhibition at table.’[1255] It must have caused some mirth in the home of the elegant Binghams to read his reply to an invitation to dinner: ‘Mrs. Pickering and I are constrained to forego many pleasures of society, because we cannot persuade ourselves to enter on a career of expenses, which, being far beyond our income, would lead to ruin. For this reason, Mrs. Pickering chooses to dine abroad only at Mrs. Washington’s, as a consequence of my official station; and this as seldom as decency will permit.... But Mrs. Pickering is aware that as a public man I cannot seclude myself ... and therefore often urges, on my part singly, an intercourse which is useful as well as agreeable. I shall, then, with pleasure, dine with you occasionally, but without promising to reciprocate all your civilities.’[1256]

Here we have one of several traits that make him stand out among the other Federalist leaders as an exotic. He was poor, but not so poor as the letter indicates; nor was he so completely shut off from society, despite his frugality. If he gave no fashionable entertainments, his was a home of hospitality, and he who promised no reciprocation for the entertainments of the Binghams was able to entertain at his board a future King of France.[1257] But, unfashionable, and plain as a Yankee huckster, he found the ways of fashion irksome and offensive. Writing his wife disgustedly of the enormous head-dresses of the Philadelphia ladies, he added: ‘But you know, my dear, I have old-fashioned notions. Neither powder nor pomatum have touched my head these twelve months, not even to cover my baldness.’[1258] And the ‘extravagance of the prevailing fashions,’ suggested by the introduction of ‘the odious fashion of hoops’ convinced him that many families would be ruined.[1259] Verily such a creature would have been grotesquely out of place among his fellow Federalists in the gay drawing-rooms of Mrs. Bingham.

He differed from them, too, theoretically at least, on a more vital point. They were thorough aristocrats; he was instinctively a democrat—though he seemed to prefer it as an ideal rather than as a reality. Lodge recognizes this difference and explains that ‘he had all the pride of the Puritan who gloried in belonging to the chosen people of God.’[1260] We can well believe the assertion of his son and biographer that he liked the common people because among them he belonged. Then, too, he inherited a respect for them from his father who ardently espoused the cause of equal rights for all men, and was prone to apologize for the weaknesses of the poor, and to criticize people of wealth and power.[1261] With this inheritance he was to enter the field of controversy at twenty-five in a newspaper battle with the Tories of Salem with a letter which might have been written by Jefferson. ‘For whom was government instituted?’ he wrote. ‘Was it solely for the aggrandizement of the few, who, by some fortunate accident, have been bred in a manner which the world calls genteel? or to protect the lives, liberty and property of the body of the people? Is government supported by the better sort? On the contrary, has not every attack on the laws and constitution proceeded from that class? The very phrase, “friends of government” is invidious and carries with it an impudent insinuation that the whole body of the people, the pretended friends of government excepted, are enemies to government; the suggestion of which is as ridiculous as it is false.’[1262]

The tall, gaunt figure in plain garb, seated in company with the fashionable Hamilton or Morris, was not more incongruous than the mind, capable even in youth of such heretical and ‘demagogic’ thoughts. Stranger still, this liking for the common herd never wholly left him. Thus his experiment in pioneering in the western wilderness—where democracy thrived best. A wholly admirable figure, this Pickering of the frontier, applying brain and brawn to the conquering of the woods, organizing civil government, battling at the peril of his life for law and order, kidnaped and carted away. His own story of this adventure is as thrilling as a dime novel.[1263] Even then his faith in the people was not destroyed.

Thus Pickering finally entered public life—a ‘friend of the people,’ farmer, frontiersman, unsuccessful merchant. About him there was no glamour of success. He had been a failure. At Harvard he had made a fair record, and his meager career as a lawyer was unsuccessful. He had failed as a farmer, failed as a pioneer, failed as a Philadelphia merchant because unfit for commercial life. He had played a spinet and a violin and given lessons in sacred music at Salem and Marblehead, but that could scarcely be deemed success;[1264] and in the army, where he was capable as a trainer of raw recruits, his courage, energy, and promptness might have taken him far but for the handicap of short-sightedness and glasses.[1265] Thus, when he entered the public service at forty-six his career had been one of failure, and he was to get this new chance through importunate applications to a man he little respected—for he had a poor opinion of the ability of Washington. Here again he differed from other Federalists holding a similar opinion; he did not simulate admiration.[1266] The naming of a child after Washington called for his sarcasm.[1267] He was disgusted during the war when a rustic was heard to say, ‘I suppose he [Washington] is the greatest man in the world.’[1268] He criticized Washington as over-cautious[1269] and refused to hail him as a hero because he thought him lacking in ‘eminent military talents.’[1270] He thought the army suffered through his procrastinated decisions.[1271] Serving on the committee at the close of the struggle to formulate the answer of the officers to the ‘Farewell Orders to the Armies of the United States,’ he referred sarcastically to the word ‘Orders,’ and wrote his wife: ‘Though it is rather modest, or in other words does not abound in panegyric, I think it (the reply) will be graciously received.’[1272] To another he boasted that the reply was marked ‘as the Italians do some strains of music—moderato.’[1273]

But land poor, and a failure, he was quite willing to serve under the man he did not appreciate. From the organization of the government, he was an office-seeker, looking, not for a career, but for a job. There was no demand for his services—he urged them. His brother-in-law, a member of Congress, became his broker. He applied to Hamilton for an assistant secretaryship of the Treasury, to find it promised.[1274] In August his broker wrote him of a prospective vacancy in the postmaster-generalship and suggested that he see Washington at once.[1275] A month later, Pickering made application,[1276] but his interview with the President only resulted in a temporary position as a negotiator with the Indian tribes. In May, 1791, he asked Washington for the Comptrollership of the Treasury, to be refused,[1277] and it was not until August, after more than a year of persistent wire-pulling, that he was recognized with the then comparatively unimportant post of Postmaster-General, which was not at that time a Cabinet position.