Donald McCaig - Rhett Butler’s People

The argonauts are as ready to fight as our Low Country aristocrats, but their reasons are more transparent. There is no prattle about "honor" here.

We Californians say "back in America" to refer to our farmer home. Mr. Clay's clever compromise and Mr. Calhoun's death were hardly noticed here.

Men move faster out here, but are no wiser.

I have not received one letter from you and no longer expect one. You cannot be deceased — I would feel it if you were. I assume Father has forbidden you to write.

Things may improve, even at Broughton, and writing to you refreshes you in my mind and heart. I feel your love as I write and return it to you tenfold

Your faithful correspondent,

Rhett

June 19, 1851

St. Francis Hotel San Francisco, California

Dearest Rosemary, "The Sydney Ducks are cackling tonight." That's what this city's wits say when some honest man is robbed beaten, or shot. While San Francisco has always had rough elements, a recent immigration of freed Australian convicts has made it far more dangerous.

I am not worried for myself, my business, or my drivers. I have a (entirely undeserved) reputation for ferocity.

As Mr. Newton taught us, for every reaction, there's an equal and opposite reaction, and when I was invited to dine with three upstanding citizens, I suspected their motives.

The banker W T. Sherman is older than I, with the triangular face of a praying mantis, a short beard and phenomenally large eyes. Brown eyes are supposed to be soft and revealing of character. Shermans are as revealing as two lumps of coal. He is asthmatic, one of the palest men I've ever seen. Neither he nor anyone else anticipates a long life for him.

He is a practical man, one who does not flinch at necessity.

Collis Huntington is one of those men who believe their own rectitude gives them the right to make other men cower. He is a competitor of Butler General Merchandise and we've crossed swords a time or two.

Dr. Wright, the least of this triumvirate, is nervous, dressed like Beau Brummell, and claims to have invented the phrase "the Paris of the Pacific”

to describe this city. He has, so far as I can make out, no other accomplishments of which to boast.

We dined in a private dining room at the St. Francis, where, after the usual hemming and hawing, they proposed I join their nucleus of a vigilante society, which would, as Huntington elegantly put it, "hang every thief and miscreant on this shore of the Bay. “

Mr. Sherman said civic disorder threatened business interests. He spoke of the "necessity" of action.

I reminded Sherman that necessity is not always just or worthy.

Huntington and Wright were genuinely offended — they'd assumed I was their natural ally: a man who could kill with clean hands.

I told them neither yea nor nay.

Sister, I am not a reflective man, but that night I wondered who I had become. What distinguishes the merchant who hangs a thief to preserve his fortune from the planter who whips a negro to death for insolence? I determined I would not be that man. As I would not be hanged I would not be a hangman.

I have determined to try my fortunes elsewhere. Volunteers are combining to overthrow Cuba's Spanish overlords, and perhaps I'll lend them a hand If you can write, I will pick up my mail do General Delivery, New Orleans.

Your puzzled brother, Rhett

March 14, 1853

Hotel St. Louis

New Orleans

Dear Little Sister, Proper Charlestonians would be shocked by this city. It is so French.

New Orleans' citizens — all good Catholics — are preoccupied with food, drink, and love — though not necessarily in that order. In the old quarter, the Vieux Carr?, the fragrance of sin drifts through the orange and lemon blossoms. I can attend a ball every night: formal, informal, masked or the sort of affair I attend with a pistol in my pocket. I play cards at Mcgarth's, Perritts, or the Boston Club. I enjoy four racetracks, three theaters, and the French Opera House.

The city is the freebooters' home port. These young Americans have taken Manifest Destiny as a personal creed. Their destiny, manifestly, is to conquer and loot any Caribbean or South American nation too weak to defend itself. Most believe Cuba would make a first-class American state once we run off the Spanish.

I have invested in several freebooting expeditions — if demand increases profits, patriotism swells the trickle into a flood. Until now, I haven't been tempted to enlist myself.

New Orleans is a city of beautiful women and its Creole ladies are cultured cosmopolitan, and wise. They have taught me much about love — a pursuit which is second only to the longing for God.

Doubtless my Creole mistress, Didi Gayerre, loves me. She loves me to distraction. After six months together, she is eager to marry, bear my children, and share my uncertain fortunes. She is everything a man could want.

I do not want her.

My initial fascination has turned to boredom and a mild contempt for myself and Didi for pretending to believe what we know is not so.

Love, Dear Sister, can be terribly cruel.

I will not stay with her from pity. Pity is even crueler than love.

The less I love her, the more desperate Didi becomes, and only physical separation will cure our problem.

We were supping with Narciso Lopez, a Cuban General who is organizing an expedition. He already has three or four hundred volunteers — enough, he assured me, to defeat any Spanish army. Once we land Cuban patriots will swell our ranks. He told me with a wink that there is conquistador gold in the Spanish treasury. Havana, he added is a beautiful city.

Didi ignored his barrage of reasons. She was wearing a high-bodiced brocade gown and an astonishingly red hat. She ate nothing. She was pouting.

Our omelettes were perfectly prepared and our champagne chilled but Didi was grumpy and objected to everything the General said. No, the Cubans wouldn't rise up. The Spanish army was more formidable than a few hundred American adventurers.

Lopez, who is a pompous man, explained how conquering Cuba would make us rich. "It's the white mans duty, Butler, " he advised.

"I'd become rich?" I teased him.

"Our duty to transform a primitive, superstitious, authoritarian country into a modern democracy. “

That theory prompted a torrent of Didi's angry French, whose precise meaning Lopez may not have understood but he certainly got the gist.

He leaned forward and with a condescending smile said "Butler, are you one of those fellows whose wench tells him what to do?”

Didi stood so abruptly she knocked over the champagne bucket. She stabbed pins into her bright red hat. "Rhett?" she insisted "Please...”

"You must excuse us, General," I said.

Didi was rigid on my arm. The St. Louis's doorman summoned our cab.

A filthy woman beggar limped toward us, mumbling her feeble entreaty.

Lopez followed us onto the sidewalk, apologizing "Senor Butler, I did not intend to insult you, nor your lovely companion.

"Madre de Dios!" The beggar had come close enough to offend his nostrils. She was one of those desperate creatures that service Irish stevedores behind the levees. Her hand trembled with entreaty.

"Leave us!" The General raised his cane.

"Don't, General "As I went into my pocket for a dime, I recognized a familiar face beneath her grime. "Dear God, are you ... are you Belle Watting?”

It was she, Dear Sister, a woman I had never thought to see again, John Haynes had financed Belle's escape from the Low Country. I hadn't known she'd come to New Orleans.

Some weeks later Belle told me, "I always loved the sea. I thought things would be different here." Apparently, Belle fell in with a cardsharp who used her as collateral when the pasteboards failed him. Belle's son is in the Asylum for Orphan Boys.

I will try to improve her circumstances before General Lopez and I embark for Cuba.

Belle begs you not say anything to her father, Isaiah. She is as thoroughly disowned as I am.

All my love, Rhett

July 1853

Cuba

Beloved Sister Rosemary, The beach at Bahia Hondo is the most beautiful I have ever seen. Silver sand and cerulean sea seem as endless as eternity — a destination certain Spanish officers are hastening me toward The Spanish forces were not defeated The Cubans did not welcome us as liberators. Ah well Fleeing Didi's arms into a Spanish firing squad was not my cleverest maneuver.

I've set a gamble into motion and may yet escape my fate, but the odds are long and time is short.

A corporal promises to post this letter. As with the bottle the marooned sailor tosses into the sea, I pray it will find some reader.

How dear is soft, warm sand How tender the sandpipers wading in the shallows. Though their lives are only a few seasons, they are no less God's creatures than we.

Sister, if I leave you with one piece of advice, it is: Live your life. Let no other live it for you.

The Spaniards ordered us to dig our graves for the afternoon entertainment.

As American gentlemen, naturally we refused. Ha, ha. Let the peasants dirty their hands!

Rosemary, of all those I have known on this gracious earth, I regret only leaving you...

Think of me sometimes, Rhett

Rosemary's head was spinning. "My father burned my brother's letters? My letters, too?”

"I sees Solomon in the fish market one day — your houseman Solomon — and we gets to talkin'. Ol' Solomon, he hates to hand over them letters to Master Langston, but he got to do what he been told.”

Rosemary felt sick. She asked the question that, as Langston's dutiful daughter, she had never dared. "Tunis, why does my father hate his son? Tunis Bonneau was a free colored — free to walk the streets without a pass; free to gather for worship services at the First African Baptist (provided one white man was present at the service); free to marry another free colored or a slave he bought out of servitude. He could not vote nor hold office, but he could keep his own money and own property. He could legally learn to read.

Because they were neither property nor white men, free coloreds made the Masters nervous.

Hence, Tunis Bonneau didn't see what he saw, didn't speak of what he knew, and pretended an ignorance so profound that it defied penetration.

When white men questioned him, Tunis would reply, "Mr. Haynes, he tells me to do it." Or "You have to ask Mr. Haynes 'bout that.”

Although she knew this perfectly well, Rosemary was too upset to think clearly, and she grasped Tunis's sleeve as if to shake the answers out of him. "Why does Langston hate Rhett?”

Tunis sighed and told Rosemary everything she had never before wanted to know.

While Tunis was informing Rosemary about Will, the trunk master, the hurricano, and that summer, long ago, when her brother became a full-task rice hand, her father, Langston Butler, was losing a horse race.

The Washington Racecourse was a four-mile flattened oval bordered by Charleston's oldest live oaks. Its white stucco clubhouse was reserved for Jockey Club members, but its clapboard grandstand and the great meadow were free to all. White and black, free and slave alike, witnessed Langston Butler's defeat.

Virginia and Tennessee horses came to Charleston for the fastest track and richest purses in the South. Horses, grooms, and trainers boarded in great wooden stables whose wide center aisles accommodated horse and negro sales.

The noon race had been a rematch between Langston Butler's Gero and Colonel Jack Ravanel's Chapultapec. The horses were evenly matched, betting was brisk, and the pair started to a roar from the stands. Although Chapultapec was behind at the far turn, he passed the tiring Gero in the straight and won by two lengths. In the winner's circle, Colonel Jack jigged with pleasure.