The Sun and the Moon: The Remarkable True Account of Hoaxers, Showmen, Dueling Journalists, and Lunar Man-Bats in Nineteenth-Century New York by Matthew Goodman Page B
Authors: Matthew Goodman
Ads: Link
set about restoring order. By the break of day hundreds of Bristolians lay dead and wounded
– 61 –
0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 62
the sun and the moon
by sword and fire. It was, wrote a nineteenth-century British historian,
“the most disastrous outbreak of popular violence which has occurred in this country during the present century.”
The glow from the fires burning in Queen Square could be seen for forty miles around, and East Brent, where Richard Adams Locke and his family were living, was just thirty miles from Bristol. The riot’s epicenter was only four blocks from the shop where he had edited the Cornucopia, and he had surely strolled often through that beautiful square, now reduced to ashes, surely taken a drink in those tidy pubs now pillaged and burned. Two years earlier Bristol had endured some anti-Catholic riots, but this time the rioters were overwhelmingly Irish. In a single night, Catholics had demolished the goodwill that the long emancipation campaign had managed to foster; now, surely, would come the backlash.
What future would there be for a writer who had opposed the claims of Anglican and Catholic alike? He had left Somerset once before, as soon as he had the chance, but over time the ties of familiarity had pulled him back; now, though, those ties were badly frayed. His parents were both dead; the estate would not be coming to him; no reasonable job prospects were on the horizon. He was not a young man anymore, and leaving would get harder with each passing year. They could always go back to London, but he found that his thoughts kept drifting toward America, that beacon of the Republicans: the land of economic opportunity, freed from the weight of aristocracy and prelacy, where he might shed some of the burdens of his own history.
In November 1831, Richard and Esther gathered their belongings into five bags, as much as they could expect to carry, plus the family’s bedding; after bundling up Adelaide against the cold, they climbed aboard their hired coach. Bristol was nearly a day’s journey, even on the newly tar-macked roads. When they arrived, the coach dropped them at the shipping office. The office was crowded with families like theirs; it was warm from the heat of the bodies. Bags were piled everywhere. Outside, a pall seemed to have settled over the city.
He booked passage on the James Cropper, embarking at Bristol, bound for New York.
At sea, the nights were always worst. He lay sleepless in the narrow berth, no more than boards and sacking; his sides ached from the incessant rolling, the sudden, stomach-clenching plunges. Of all the transat-
– 62 –
0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 63
Bearer of the Falcon Crest
lantic trips a ship could make, this one—winter westbound—was the roughest. The trade winds had long since grown frigid, gathering strength as they swept across the ocean, and they seemed to run straight at the face of the ship no matter which way it tacked: the sailors said that a westward passage was like running uphill the whole way. His wife and baby daughter were in the women’s cabin at the other end of the ’tweendeck. At least some of his fellow cabin passengers were managing some sleep; the snores, like the waves, rose and fell, maintaining a steady rhythm and then, unexpectedly, turning loud and agitated. At such moments, at least, they drowned out the cries of the pigs and geese and chickens housed in makeshift pens on deck, the animals obviously terrified, as if cognizant of the fate that awaited them downstairs in the galley, sometime before the ship made landfall in New York. Worse still were the nighttime sounds of the ship itself, the rale of the wind as it streamed through the riggings, the creak of the masts twisting, the groans of the hull, its joints wracked by dozens of such hard ocean crossings: a dowager’s complaints and, for one listening, a grim reminder of mortality.
Richard Adams Locke was now
– 61 –
0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 62
the sun and the moon
by sword and fire. It was, wrote a nineteenth-century British historian,
“the most disastrous outbreak of popular violence which has occurred in this country during the present century.”
The glow from the fires burning in Queen Square could be seen for forty miles around, and East Brent, where Richard Adams Locke and his family were living, was just thirty miles from Bristol. The riot’s epicenter was only four blocks from the shop where he had edited the Cornucopia, and he had surely strolled often through that beautiful square, now reduced to ashes, surely taken a drink in those tidy pubs now pillaged and burned. Two years earlier Bristol had endured some anti-Catholic riots, but this time the rioters were overwhelmingly Irish. In a single night, Catholics had demolished the goodwill that the long emancipation campaign had managed to foster; now, surely, would come the backlash.
What future would there be for a writer who had opposed the claims of Anglican and Catholic alike? He had left Somerset once before, as soon as he had the chance, but over time the ties of familiarity had pulled him back; now, though, those ties were badly frayed. His parents were both dead; the estate would not be coming to him; no reasonable job prospects were on the horizon. He was not a young man anymore, and leaving would get harder with each passing year. They could always go back to London, but he found that his thoughts kept drifting toward America, that beacon of the Republicans: the land of economic opportunity, freed from the weight of aristocracy and prelacy, where he might shed some of the burdens of his own history.
In November 1831, Richard and Esther gathered their belongings into five bags, as much as they could expect to carry, plus the family’s bedding; after bundling up Adelaide against the cold, they climbed aboard their hired coach. Bristol was nearly a day’s journey, even on the newly tar-macked roads. When they arrived, the coach dropped them at the shipping office. The office was crowded with families like theirs; it was warm from the heat of the bodies. Bags were piled everywhere. Outside, a pall seemed to have settled over the city.
He booked passage on the James Cropper, embarking at Bristol, bound for New York.
At sea, the nights were always worst. He lay sleepless in the narrow berth, no more than boards and sacking; his sides ached from the incessant rolling, the sudden, stomach-clenching plunges. Of all the transat-
– 62 –
0465002573-Goodman.qxd 8/25/08 9:57 AM Page 63
Bearer of the Falcon Crest
lantic trips a ship could make, this one—winter westbound—was the roughest. The trade winds had long since grown frigid, gathering strength as they swept across the ocean, and they seemed to run straight at the face of the ship no matter which way it tacked: the sailors said that a westward passage was like running uphill the whole way. His wife and baby daughter were in the women’s cabin at the other end of the ’tweendeck. At least some of his fellow cabin passengers were managing some sleep; the snores, like the waves, rose and fell, maintaining a steady rhythm and then, unexpectedly, turning loud and agitated. At such moments, at least, they drowned out the cries of the pigs and geese and chickens housed in makeshift pens on deck, the animals obviously terrified, as if cognizant of the fate that awaited them downstairs in the galley, sometime before the ship made landfall in New York. Worse still were the nighttime sounds of the ship itself, the rale of the wind as it streamed through the riggings, the creak of the masts twisting, the groans of the hull, its joints wracked by dozens of such hard ocean crossings: a dowager’s complaints and, for one listening, a grim reminder of mortality.
Richard Adams Locke was now
Similar Books
