—Jonathan Plummer.
Yes, Jonathan Plummer wrote that jingle. It is from the only survivor of a gross of eulogies he wrote of Lord Dexter. And quite proper that he should. He was Lord Dexter’s poet laureate, hired, clothed and fed to produce eulogies on demand. His poetry was awful, and the tragedy is that he knew it. Said he didn’t like to read too much good verse because it made his own look sorry. But when a man has given up peddling fish and racy European pamphlets in order to study for the ministry, and neither the ministry nor the melodrama pays, he can’t be blamed, especially if he has the appetite of an ox and the soul of a poet, for going to work for anyone as poet laureate. Lord Dexter outfitted him in a long black cloak with gold stars on the lapels, and fringe, and a black under dress, a huge cocked hat, and a gold-headed cane. There was a great row about the fringe: Jonathan refused to wear it, Lord Dexter pooh-poohed. Pooh-poohed a poet laureate! Still, Maecenas was Maecenas: Jonathan wore the fringe.
Timothy Dexter was a leather-dresser, born in Malden in 1743. Treating leather to simulate “morocco” was a new art, which he mastered, and which, on account of the demand for “morocco” for women’s shoes, built him a nice fortune. He married a thrifty widow, who had a little huckster business of her own. They emerged from the period of the Revolution with a son and daughter, and a few thousand dollars. Continental money had dropped to two-and-sixpence on the pound, and the securities of Massachusetts issued to support the money had tumbled to the same depths. John Hancock and Thomas Russel, Bostonians of large fortunes, bought in many of these securities to oblige their friends and to hearten the public’s morale, which was as low as its money. Timothy Dexter heard of it, and risked every loose dollar he had in the same investment. Then Hamilton’s funding system went into operation and made him a wealthy man, who need never dress another hide as long as he lived.
He had gambled that the United States Constitution was a fixture, and he had won. He played more money on the same color, and won again and again. Charlestown, still convalescing from a severe fire, was not to the liking of this new-laid magnate. He moved to Newburyport, after Salem and Boston the busiest port in the Commonwealth. He bought two fine estates, occupied one for a short time, and then moved to the other. As the property of a prominent merchant it had been one of the fine houses of a community of steady, prosperous people, whose philosophy was drawn from the Old Testament, education from the Three R’s, and deportment from a rigid Puritan ancestry. Into its complacent calm Timothy Dexter came bellowing like a bull in a china shop, and proceeded to build the china shop about him.
You may have wondered about the source of the iron-dog-and-Diana tendency on the lawns of our captains of industry. It dates from Lord Dexter, and in justice to him it should be said that he set a mark that neither posterity nor Adolphus Busch nor Carl Hagenbeck nor Ex-Senator Clark could begin to approach. They may have paid more for their cupolas and summer-houses and plaster-of-Paris bubchen, but Timothy Dexter, the self-made lord, leather-dresser, landscape gardener and architect, finished the race with a permanent world’s record before they were born. He took a square colonial house of straight and dignified proportions, polished it with bright paint, and set gilt balls and railings and minarets upon its roof, till from the sea it looked like a Christmas tree gone mad. There was a magnificent garden between the house and the highway, full of flowers and fruit that were the envy of a community of husbandmen, but mere nature was not allowed to go on unassisted.
“Hear me, good Lord,” he wrote. “I am agoing to let your children know now, good Lord, what has been in the world a great ways back—not old Plymouth, but stop to Adam and Eve.”
Accordingly there rose in the garden clusters of single columns, and groups of wooden arches, about fifteen feet high, and presently the astonished natives of Newburyport saw them capped with wooden effigies. Before the main doorway was a Roman arch, and upon it, reading from left to right, John Adams, George Washington, Thomas Jefferson—all life size, with John Adams uncovered because Dexter would not permit anyone to stand at Washington’s right with his hat on. Jefferson he thought was a trifle obscure, so he engaged an artist to paint “Declaration of Independence” upon the scroll in its author’s wooden hand. The artist had lashed himself to the column, had spaced the lettering, and had painted the letters “DEC-,” when Lord Timothy, squinting up from below, remarked:
“That’s not the way to spell ‘Constitution’!”
“You don’t want the Constitution,” called the artist. “You want ‘Declaration of Independence’!”
“I want ‘Constitution’!” roared Dexter, “and ‘Constitution’ I will have!”