The Fudge Factor
Jonathan Carriel Confesses Instances of Authorial “Cheating” in Exquisite Folly
Chapter 1 – The presence of the historical John Tabor
Kempe on a wharf, in desperate eagerness to acquire the latest news … is a stretch.
Kempe doubtless felt under great pressure as an agent of the Crown, but he
would likely have had subordinates, not to mention sufficient patience. While
it’s not inconceivable that he would be confronted with Marinus Willett
in our hero’s presence, the overt hostility they show to each other might be
overdrawn.
Regarding
Thomas Dordrecht’s financial situation, our premise is that his
extraordinarily lucky winnings, dating back to the 1758 campaign and frugally
husbanded ever since, augmented by his salary during his tenure with the
shipping firm, have finally played out during the long sojourn in Europe. He
has, however, essayed the last of his money on his own importations, a
calculated risk. On his arrival back in New York, however, he is severely
strapped for cash.
The
historical Marinus Willett was one of thirteen children, neither the
youngest nor the oldest. Although we have some record of the hero’s
ancestry and his own marriages and children, there’s little information about
his twelve siblings. So it’s not too great a reach to imagine that he would
have had a younger brother ready for marriage in 1761. We imagine that
Elisabeth Dordrecht and her mother accompanied Thomas to Marinus’ wedding in
1760 and met “Roderick Willett” on that occasion. Naturally, the lad was
smitten!
Chapter 2 – The extraordinary inter-generational
friendship of the Leaverings, the Glasbys, and the cousins Charles Cooper
and Thomas Dordrecht—an on-going feature of the series—is indeed an oddity, but
New York City is famed for its eccentric, unconventional friendships and
coteries. All but Cooper have their business in common; the two couples attend
the same church; the Leaverings’ daughter and grandchildren live in their
native Philadelphia, which they only left in 1759; the Glasbys married late in
life and have no children; but the chief fact is that all six have very lively
and open minds and wide-ranging interests. Whether they would have addressed
each other, even in private, by their given names—another apparent unconventionality—is
dubious; however, formal address by titles and surnames strikes modern ears as
unbearable pretentiousness among intimate friends, which is not a
characteristic of the set!
Knowing
the play’s title would intrigue his friends, Dordrecht boasts of having seen
David Garrick in The Clandestine Marriage … which was first
produced in 1766.
Chapter 3 – There was no such profession as “private
investigator” back in 1765, and it’s a stretch to think that Theodora
Colegrove would venture all her savings to locate a person to pursue the
matter, or that the attorney-general would admit an inability to pursue the
culprit or recommend Dordrecht for the task. We’ve justified the situation
through her fraught relationship with her father; her extraordinary financial
offering—far more than would actually have been needed to secure Dordrecht’s
willingness—is evidence of her total economic ignorance.
The
notion that masters would dream up names for their slaves is not
actually as outlandish as Thomas Dordrecht intimates; it may even have been the
rule. And a common name for a male slave was Caesar. (Colegrove’s slave
Caesar would have been named prior to the execution of a prominent “Caesar”
amid the “Great Negro Conspiracy” of 1741.) One can’t help wondering about this
choice: perhaps a snide put-down of the obvious powerlessness of the
slave?
Chapter 5 – There is no hard-and-fast date for the original
formation of the New York Sons of Liberty. Some historians contend there
was no such organization prior to 1766—after all the action of the novel.
However, there was surely concerted activity among the local opponents
of the Stamp Act, activity that led to carefully staged protests and
confrontations. There are no surviving minutes taken at meetings, no records of
attendance or votes. Some gatherings occurred out of doors, in “the fields”
(now City Hall Park), in all weathers! Thus, the delineated specifics of the
gatherings are entirely fictional.
Your
author has no specific primary source for the currency price of a
freemanship in New York. It was generally hailed as the most liberal voting
franchise of the time—but also derided, given the province’s rejection of
secret balloting. Possession of land or other property valued at £40 was deemed
sufficient by itself. The putative price of £8 in cash (estimated $570 in
today’s money) represents a not insubstantial amount, but one still conceivable
for employed middle-class men.
Chapter 8 – Although Hempstead,
Long Island, New York, has been known for horse raising and horse racing
since colonial times—long before the creation of the Belmont Park racetrack
there in 1905—the posited race in that locality on October 12, 1765, that
distracted many city residents from the Stamp Act crisis … is a fiction.
Chapter 10 – Regarding Aaron Colegrove’s long-forgotten avowal
of intention regarding the disposition of his estate, your author has
fudged his ignorance of how seriously such a piece of paper was regarded in law
then or would be regarded today.
Although
there is some documentation—usually in the form of private
correspondence—regarding the orchestrated protests of November 1, 1765,
and the unbridled riot that followed it, fiction has required considerable
fleshing out. We have some report of numbers of participants, parade routes,
confrontations at City Hall and Fort George, a gallows float, a candlelight
march, the pilfering and destruction of Colden’s private coach and sleigh; but
all the rest is made up.
We
do have one disgruntled observer’s caustic assertion that the effigy of
Governor Colden was treated with “the grossest ribaldry”—surely a welcome
open invitation for any author! This author’s response—the slapstick Punch and
Judy show replete with lewd double entendres—is a fabrication.
Chapter 11 – The circumstances of the midnight attack on
Thomas Dordrecht are far-fetched, in that the attacker would have to have
been extremely lucky to discover his victim in a private and vulnerable
situation in the midst of an on-going mêlée. The medical consequences of the
attack—stitches, four days of delirium, followed by rapid recovery—were
dictated more by plot necessity than any knowledge of plausible physiological
effect.
Chapter 12 – The sharp-eyed and geographically-inclined New
Yorker will have noticed that the 18th Century map provided has no Pearl
Street on which to locate Mr. Fischl’s store. The street was there, in its
current configuration (with slight alterations made over the centuries), but it
was called Queen Street until the British evacuated New York City in
1783. Wherever possible, I’ve tried to locate scenes on streets whose
1765 names are still recognizable today; otherwise, I simply avoid naming them.
Aaron Colegrove’s mansion at “144 Broadway,” for example, was in the block now
bounded by Cedar and Liberty Streets. Would
it help to know that in 1765 they were, respectively, Little Queen and Crown
Streets? I thought not.
Another
not-described item visible on the map is the Oswego Market, which is the
anomalous rectangle that located in the middle of Broadway, right beside the
Colegrove mansion. My guess is that it was a sort of regularly-scheduled (and
regulated) farmer’s market, with no more structure than a roof against the rain.
It was removed before 1773 and reconstituted on Maiden Lane for another couple
decades. Rather than belabor my ignorance, I effectively erased it!
Chapter 13 – Tayvie’s relation of the one-day round-trip excursion that he had with James Colegrove and
three horses, from Mamaroneck across Long Island Sound to Hempstead … is
authorial license. Particularly as the day is described as the summer’s
hottest—which might normally be associated with very little wind to fill the
sails. Though the distance for a crow is only seventeen miles, the water
barrier would have made such a single day trip virtually impossible.
Chapter 15 – The timing of the villain’s arraignment,
indictment, trial, and execution, which seem quite swift by modern reckoning,
are dictated more by the flow of the story than any knowledge of historical
legal procedure. Similarly, the notion that Kempe would have encouraged a quick
resolution in consequence of the personal affront to his family, is apocryphal.
Notices
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