A Buss from Lafayette (20 page)

If the truth be told, I was a bit stunned and overwhelmed myself.

C
HAPTER 35

I was still chuckling over the look on Dickon’s face when I entered the kitchen. I stopped, however, when I saw Joss sitting at the table, his head in his hands.

“Joss! Is everything all right? What happened?”

Joss looked up at me, and a smile lit up his face. “Everything is just fine, Clara. I was just sitting here selfishly wishing that the baby were a boy! Now I am outnumbered. Outnumbered by sisters!” He stood up and gave me a hug. “And it seems that you are the hero—or heroine—of the day.” He released me and stepped away. “Now, you had best go meet our baby sister.”

As I went out of the kitchen, I heard Joss say one more thing:

“And she looks just like you!”

I knocked on my stepmother’s bedroom door and pushed it open.

She was lying in the bed, looking exhausted but happy, her pretty golden hair spread over the pillow. A cradle—the one Joss and I had slept in as infants—stood next to the bed, a thin gauze cover keeping the
flies away. Father was sitting down next to the cradle, a broad smile on his face.

Joss followed me into the room and went to stand on the other side of the bed.

“Clara, my dear,” my stepmother said, taking my hand. “I am so grateful for what you did. You brought Doctor Flagg just in time to welcome this little mite into the world—in a surprisingly professional manner, I might add—and you sent your father home soon thereafter. And you did all this by riding an untrained horse a great distance on a hot, hot day. I thank you, Daughter, so very much.”

I smiled back at her a little sheepishly. “I must confess, ma’am, that I did so wearing Joss’s breeches and riding astride, bareback, bareheaded, and barefoot. Not in a very ladylike manner, I am afraid.”

“I do not care how you did it, Clara. I do not believe any ‘lady’ could have done what you did today. Now, let us introduce you to
this
little lady. Samuel, if you please?”

I walked to the cradle and Father pulled off the gauze cover. Inside was the tiniest being I had ever beheld. Because of the heat, the infant wore only a diaper and a lace cap on her head. I could see that the rest of her was pink, turning red when she started to squall. It was surprisingly loud, coming from such a small source.

“May I hold her?” I asked.

My stepmother nodded. “Of course you may. In fact, you may do more than that. You may decide what her name shall be.”

I reached up, took the rose out of my hair, and gave it to her. “I would like to call her Rose. Caroline Rose. Would that be all right, Mother?”

Father’s wife’s eyes filled with tears, but she took the rose and smelled its fragrance. After this, she reached out and gathered me into her arms. “Yes, my dear. That name pleases me very much. Do you agree, Samuel?”

Father cleared his throat. “Yes, indeed. It is a beautiful name for my beautiful little daughter and was well chosen by my beautiful
bigger
daughter. Thank you, Clara, for all you have done today. Now, meet Caroline Rose Hargraves. Carrie, this is your courageous big sister, Clara Summer Hargraves.”

I carefully gathered my tiny sister into my arms and picked her up, which quieted the child. It was only when I pulled aside the lace cap and nuzzled the soft down on the tiny girl’s head, however, that I noticed its color.

It was the color of rubies, the color of garnets, and the color of strawberries.

“She has hair like my mother’s, Clara. Just as you do,” Mama said softly, as the tiny baby started crying again.

“Shh, now, shh.” I crooned into baby’s tiny ear. “
Ma belle rousse
.”

Mother exclaimed, “Why, Clara! That’s French! Wherever did you learn that?”

“You will be surprised, Mama. You will be so
very
surprised, when I tell you.” I smiled and turned back to the baby in my arms. “You know, little one, that you and I have hair of a very special color. Many great heroes of the Revolution were ‘pumpkin heads’ like the two of us: Thomas Jefferson, Alexander Hamilton, George Washington himself, and, of course, General Lafayette.”

Joss stood up a little straighter. The conversation had taken an unexpected turn and was suddenly of far more interest than a mere newborn sister could be.

“How on earth do you know
that,
Clara?” Father raised his eyebrows in surprise.

I gently laid the baby back in the cradle. “Because General Lafayette told me so himself. By the way, Mother, could you teach me how to embroider like this?”

I pulled the handkerchief Lafayette had given me out of my pocket and held it up. I could not resist glancing at my family: their mouths were all frozen in astonished Os.

I leaned over and kissed the baby’s soft cheek.

“And now, my dear little sister Carrie Rose,
ma belle
rousse
,
you
have been bussed by someone who has been bussed by Lafayette.”

T
HE
E
ND

A
FTERWORD

Without Major General Marie-Joseph Paul Yves Roch Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette, there would be no United States. It is really as simple as that. I wrote this story to give young readers a better idea of who he was and what he did for America.

Lafayette toured the United States in 1824-25 as the Guest of the Nation (literally: the local governments of the cities and towns he visited paid all his expenses on the trip). He traveled over six thousand miles during the thirteen months of his journey, and he was mobbed by admirers everywhere he went. Although he was in his late sixties when he visited the United States, all accounts show that age had not diminished the power of Lafayette’s excellent mind, nor his high spirits.

There were many souvenirs sold during that tour, such as fans and gloves, with his face printed on them. Lafayette did think it was funny to kiss his own picture and did sometimes humorously decline to kiss the hands of ladies wearing such gloves. I do not know if he ever refused to shake hands with ladies wearing these gloves, however.

Lafayette did have to stop from time to time and empty flowers out of his carriage. He always did this in secret, so as not to offend the people who had given them to him. His stop at Brown’s Brook is fictional—as far as I know.

He also paused on occasion to talk to people he randomly encountered along his route, such as a little girl he saw in her front yard between Concord and Hopkinton, New Hampshire. She gave him a bouquet of roses she had picked herself and recited a poem in his honor.

The various anecdotes and stories about Lafayette in the American Revolution and on his 1824-25 American tour are as true as anything written about the past can be.

Historians are still debating whether certain stories of the Revolutionary War actually happened. These include the Oneida/Dragoon confrontation at Barren Hill and the music played (if any) during the British surrender at Yorktown. My characters usually preface their recounting of these stories with “some say,” which was true enough!

There are many real people who appear or are referred to in this story, including General Lafayette (of course), General Charles Lee, Major William Weeks, Dr. Ebenezer Lerned, Dr. Samuel Flagg, Mr. Joseph Towne, Mr. Amos Parker, Mr. Nathaniel
Walker, Captain Brinsley Perkins, Mr. Trueworthy Gilman, Captain Nicholas Gilman, Miss Betsey Eaton, Reverend Roger Hatch, and Elder Joseph Putney.

Former British officer General Charles Lee did draw up plans for his British captors on how to attack the Americans most effectively. Such plans were discovered in the papers of Howe, the British General, many years later and not made public until 1857. Thus, even well-read Priscilla Hargraves could not have known of it in 1825. That is one of the fictional parts of the story.

Major William Weeks of Hopkinton was an aidede-camp for Washington and did have the honor of sitting next to Lafayette at the Concord celebration. He had thirteen children, but none named Richard. Dickon is entirely fictional.

Dr. Ebenezer Lerned was a well-respected doctor in Hopkinton. A graduate of Harvard and Dartmouth, he helped found Hopkinton Academy in 1826. There is a tradition in Hopkinton that he was a friend of Lafayette and that the General stopped at the Lerned home on his way through Hopkinton. Lerned was only thirteen years old or so at the start of the war, however, and I cannot find any reference to him in Revolutionary War records. (There was an Ebenezer Lerned who was a Brigadier General, but this was a much older man
and not the good doctor.) On the other hand, Lerned was one of the men who briefly spoke at the Concord dinner for Lafayette.

Dr. Samuel Flagg actually was an alcoholic who was reputed to dislike children with red hair. Despite all this, many adults held him in esteem as a physician. He could not have afforded a gig, but I gave him an old and rickety one so he could go along with Clara easily.

Joseph Towne did have a store in Hopkinton Village. The building where it was located has housed a general store since the late 1700s and still does. Now it is called the Cracker Barrel.

Amos Parker was the young editor of the
Statesman
newspaper in Concord, New Hampshire. The State governor appointed him as a special aide, so he was officially representing New Hampshire when he rode to Massachusetts with Nathaniel Walker to escort Lafayette to Concord. Parker later wrote a detailed, often humorous, account of what happened.

Nathaniel Walker was a regular driver of the stagecoach between Boston and Concord, New Hampshire. He did boast to all and sundry that he would be driving Lafayette, and was not happy when the Massachusetts governor interfered with this plan.

A nameless veteran who was stranded in Boston did hitch a ride with Nathaniel Walker and Amos Parker, and people did mistake him for “The Nation’s
Guest”, to Lafayette’s amusement. There is no record of this man coming through Hopkinton or entertaining anyone at Towne’s store with his tale, however.

Captain Brinsley Perkins did run the Perkins Tavern and command the colorful cavalry unit of New Hampshire militia called The Troop. The story about his overly tall guest is true, or at least he said it was.

Trueworthy Gilman ran a store in Hopkinton. I do not know if he was actually related to Captain Nicholas Gilman, Jr., who was in charge of tallying the British surrendering at Yorktown. As he shared a surname with Captain Gilman and had an interesting first name, however, I put him in my story. Captain Gilman’s home in Exeter, New Hampshire, is now a museum about the American Revolution called the American Independence Museum. Besides serving in the Revolutionary War, Captain Gilman was also a signer of the Constitution, and later served as a U.S. Senator.

Miss Betsey Eaton was the schoolmistress at the Hopkinton Village school that summer and reported taking the students to meet Lafayette when he came through the town.

Reverend Roger Hatch was the minister of the First Church in Hopkinton at this time. He apparently did preach on “Keeping the Sabbath Holy” at least once.

Elder Joseph Putney was a veteran of Bunker Hill.
He was the hospitable innkeeper of the Putney Tavern, serving the “truckers” of the day and dispensing free cider and apples. He sometimes talked about the “terrible times” of the Revolution.

There actually was something called a Simeon’s Lead Comb that was reputed to be able to turn red hair into black hair. It was only made until 1815, so I fudged a little on this. Maybe Mr. Towne had old ones still in stock.

Lydia Maria Child’s
The Mother’s Book
, published a few years after
A Buss From Lafayette
takes place, stated the idea that it was better for a girl’s face to be tanned and freckled than to have her mind tanned and freckled by excessive vanity.

Before organs were common in churches, amateur musicians played in church services. A bass viol played in the 1820s at First Church services (and possibly at dances at taverns in town) is in the collection at Hopkinton Historical Society. A seraphim was eventually installed in the church, although the orchestral music continued until 1850.

For further information, please visit
http://www.dorotheajensen.com/
. In addition, background information on the writing of this story is available at
https://www.bublish.com/author/view/5755
. Finally, a study guide can be found at
http://www.abussfromlafayette.com
.

S
ELECTED
B
IBLIOGRAPHY

Auricchio, Laura.
The Marquis: Lafayette Reconsidered
. New York: Knopf, 2014.

Carson, Gerald.
Country Stores in Early New England
. Sturbridge, MA: Old Sturbridge Village, 1955.

Child, Lydia Marie.
The Mother’s Book
. Bedford, MA: Old Sturbridge Village/Applewood Books, 1992. Originally published in 1831.

Dooley, Walter Newman.
Lafayette in New Hampshire
:
A Thesis Submitted to the University of New Hampshire for the Degree of Master of Arts
. Durham, NH: Unpublished Manuscript, 1941.