A Pickle for the Knowing Ones: Plain Truth in a Homespun Dress
(Lord Timothy Dexter was, by most accounts, a living embod...)
Lord Timothy Dexter was, by most accounts, a living embodiment of irony. Time and time again he beat insurmountable odds (often, it seems, without realizing they existed) and came out on top (and flush with cash). A farm laborer, with little schooling to speak of, Dexter catapulted himself into the 'Who's Who' of 18th Century New England society through numerous trading endeavors of all sorts.
But for all of his quirks, he also seems to have been something of a cruel prankster. Many of the events of his later life would make most men of honor blush with shame. Doubly so when one reviews the treatment his wife endured.
This work was originally published as an exercise in vanity. It became inexplicably popular, however, after Dexter freely handed out the first printing. In the second, he addressed the criticisms of 'lack of punctuation' by ending the work with an entire page devoted solely to it, which he suggested the reader insert anywhere they like within the work. The strange book went on to be formally reprinted eight times.
This book is - and has remained - one of the oddest, most bizarre publications ever brought to public light. It's difficult to enjoy yet, strangely, it is equally difficult to dismiss.
Timothy Dexter was an American merchant, engaged in enterprises which have become legendary.
Background
Timothy Dexter was born on January 22, 1747 in Malden, Massachusetts, United States, where his ancestor, Richard Dexter of County Meath, Ireland, had settled some hundred years before. His parents, Nathan and Esther (Brintnall) Dexter, were indigent and inconspicuous.
Education
Dexter had little schooling and throughout his life ignored the conventional rules of spelling and punctuation.
Career
At the age of nine Dexter was placed on a farm, but, after nearly seven years of service, went to Charlestown, where he “stayed eleven months at Dressin of skins for briches & gloves. ”
Having earned his freedom from apprenticeship, he arrived in Newburyport in 1769, with a “bondel” and “Eight Dolors & 20 sents” in cash. In May 1770, he set up as a leather dresser.
With his wife’s money and what he himself was able to accumulate, he shrewdly bought up depreciated Continental currency during and after the Revolution at a fraction of its face value; and, when Hamilton’s policy of funding and assumption was adopted in 1791, he suddenly found himself a wealthy man. With prosperity, he indulged his vanity and a natural inclination toward eccentricity. Although he soon became an inveterate sot, he transacted his business in the morning when he was comparatively sober.
According to his own statements, he sent 42, 000 warming pans to Cuba, where they passed as cooking utensils; he cornered the market in whalebone, disposing of 342 tons at a large profit; and he bought 21, 000 Bibles, which he sold in the “west inges” at an advance of one hundred per cent. Some of these wild stories may have a basis of fact. It is certain that he owned two vessels.
In 1791 he bought the splendid house of Patrick Tracy, one of Newburyport’s broken-down merchant princes, furnished it luxuriously, and emerged in the role of gentleman. In 1796, annoyed by some practical jokers, he moved to Chester, New Hampshire, but returned in a few months to Newburyport, now styling himself “Lord” Timothy Dexter, with a title “made by the voice of hamsher state, ” and purchased the mansion of Jonathan Jackson, on High St. He engaged Joseph Wilson, a ship carver, to make more than forty life-sized wooden statues, painted in colors, of great personages, including Presidents Washington, Adams, and Jefferson, three of the apostles, —St. Paul, St. John, and St. Peter, —Adam and Eve, Benjamin Franklin, John Jay, Louis XIV, Lord Nelson, and others. These were arranged on the grounds so that they could easily be seen from the street. Most striking of all was an image of himself on a pedestal near the front fence bearing the inscription, “I am first in the East. ”
He subsidized a laureate, Jonathan Plummer, formerly a fish peddler, who composed odes in his honor, and appeared as an author himself in a pamphlet entitled A Pickle for the Knowing Ones, filling twenty-four small pages and privately printed in 1802. The first edition had no marks of punctuation whatever, but at the end of the second Dexter added a whole page of "stops, ” telling his readers to “peper and solt it as they plese. ”
In his old age he was a quaint figure in a wide cocked hat and long blue coat, who strolled aimlessly about his estate, carrying a gold-headed cane and followed by a porcine dog. His eccentricity displayed itself in startling ways, as, for instance, when he had his coffin made and kept on exhibition in his parlor and actually held a mock funeral, after which he beat his wife because of her failure to shed tears.
With an insatiable mania for publicity, he offered a market house to Newburyport on condition that it be called Dexter Hall and agreed to repave High St. if it could be named after him; but the town refused his proposals. He did, however, make gifts to various institutions, including a bell to the Second Presbyterian Church; and, of the $35, 000 which he left at his death, $2, 000 was bequeathed to Newburyport, the income of which is still used for the benefit of the poor.
Many of his images were blown down in the great tempest of 1815, but the three presidents still kept their places on the entrance arch until 1850. The house is still standing (1930), with Dexter’s gilded eagle shining on the roof.
(Lord Timothy Dexter was, by most accounts, a living embod...)
Connections
In 1770 Dexter married Elizabeth (Lord) Frothingham, a widow with four children and a small property. The couple had two children, —Samuel, born in 1772, and Nancy, born in 1776.