PART ONE
AMERICA
1
MY NAME IS PAINE
ON A cool, pleasant early fall morning, in the year 1774, Dr. Benjamin Franklin was told that Thomas Paine had been waiting to see him for almost an hour. Dr. Franklin, who had lived in England for many years, who was known through all the civilized world as a great scholar, a witty philosopher, a scientist of no mean parts, and altogether a good deal of a man, was acquainted with everyone in England who mattered, and a good many who did not matter, but whose names did. Yet he could not recall ever having heard of Thomas Paine.
The old man who announced visitors said that Mr. Paine was not a gentleman.
It was no novelty for Dr. Franklin to have visitors who were not gentlemen, yet the curl of the old servantâs lips defined an extreme. Franklin wrinkled his nose to set his glasses a trifle closer to his eyes, moved his big, shaggy head, and said without looking up from the letter he was writing, âWell, show him in, why donât you?â and then added somewhat testily, âWhy didnât you tell me he was waiting? Why didnât you show him in before?â
âHe be dirty,â the old man said sourly, and went out, and then came back a moment later leading the other, who set himself just inside the door, almost defiantly, and said,
âMy name is Paine, sir!â
Dr. Franklin put away his pen, studied his visitor for a moment or two, and then smiled and said, âMine is Franklin, sir. Iâm sorry I kept you waiting,â nodding for the servant to leave the room.
âIâm sorry I waited,â Paine said belligerently. âYou had no other visitors. You can tell me to go to the devil now, and Iâll be off. I didnât want to see the King, only Dr. Franklin. And I didnât have anything to do but to sit there.â
Dr. Franklin continued to smile and look at his visitor. Paine wasnât handsome; he wasnât prepossessing; somewhere between thirty and forty, the doctor thought, his sharp hooked nose adding years if anything. His chin was sharp, his mouth full, his oddly twisted eyes tight with bitterness and resentment; virtue or evil in that face, but no joy for a long time and no hope either. His whiskers were a week on his face, and he needed washing. He was not tall nor short, but of medium height, with the powerful, sloping shoulders of a workman who has put in long hours at a bench, and his hands were from the bench, meaty and broad. His cheap coat had split under both arms and his breeches were paper thin at the knees; his stockings were a shambles and his toes breathed freely in what were never good shoes.
âHow long is it since youâve eaten?â Franklin asked.
âThatâs none of your damn business! I didnât come for charity.â
âSit down, please,â Franklin said quietly, and then went out and came back in a few minutes with a loaf of bread, a piece of meat, and a crock of beer. He set it all down on the table, and then went back to his letter writing, nor did he look up again until Paine had finished and was standing up, uncomfortable and somewhat abashed.
âFeel better?â Franklin asked.
Paine nodded; inside of him, something was burning uneasily; his toes tried to draw into the battered shoes, and with a hand in either pocket, he attempted to stare Franklin down. Drawing out of one pocket a handful of dirty bills and silver, he said, âThereâs thirty guineas. I didnât come for charity.â
âI didnât think you did,â Franklin answered. âWhy donât you sit down? Why donât you let the world roll by, Mr. Paine, instead of trying to hold it on your shoulders? I approve of thrift, and if a man wants thirty guineas in his pocket and not a shillingâs worth on his back, itâs reasonable enough for me. But a manâs bread isnât to be refused, and thereâs no charity in breaking some of it. Who are you, Mr. Paine, and what do you want of me?â
âI want to go to America,â Paine blurted out. âYouâre an American. I heard you were an easy man, even with nobody, and not to begrudge something that wonât cost you a penny. I thought maybe youâd write me a letter for a position.â
âI will.â
Still holding the money in his hand, Paine nodded slowly, put the money away, tried to say something, and succeeded only in muttering a few words that meant practically nothing. Then he sat down and spread his broad hands to cover his threadbare knees. Then he fingered his weekâs growth of beard. Franklin didnât watch him; sealing a letter, glancing up only for a moment, he asked Paineâs trade.
âStaymaker,â Paine answered, and then added, âYesâfor ladiesâ corsets and menâs vests. I was an excise man,â he said, âa gauger for fifty pounds a year. Iâm a bad carpenter; I cobbled shoes for sixpence a day because I wanted to live, although God knows why. I swept a weaverâs booth for half of that and sold ribbons for maybe twice. I write sometimes,â he finished.
âWhat do you write?â Franklin asked quietly.
âWhat a man canât say because heâs got no guts in him to say it!â
They had talked for an hour. Paine had put down a quart of the beer. His twisted eyes glittered and his broad hands clenched and unclenched with almost rhythmical nervousness. He had forgotten his clothes, his beard, his unwashed skin, his memories; and lost himself in the fascination of an old man who was strangely young and vibrant, and wise as men said he was.
âWhat is America like?â he asked Franklin.
âLike a promise, or like Scotland or Wales or Sussex, or like none of them, or like a yoke around a manâs neck, depending on the man, or like a bonnet to set on his head.â
âBig?â
âIt goes on,â Franklin said. âItâs not been explored or surveyedââ There was a note of regret in his voice, as if here was one thing he would have liked to do, but had let slip by.
âI thought of it that way.â
âGood wages,â Franklin said. âNobody starves if he wants to work.â
âNobody starves,â Paine repeated.
âYou can burn there.â Franklin smiled. âThe fire wonât singe anybody.â
âIâve had enough of burning,â Paine said stolidly. âI want a coat on my back and a pair of good shoes. I want to be able to walk into a tavern and put down a guinea like I knew what a guinea was instead of just the smell of it, and I donât have to worry about the change.â
âHave you any Latin?â
âA little.â
âYouâre Quaker born and bred, arenât you?â
âI was, I donât know what I am now. I tried to bang out, and I hit my head against the wall. Iâm a little drunk, Dr. Franklin, and thereâs no bridle on my tongue, but this isnât a good country; it stinks, it rots like a pile of dung, and I want to go away and get out of it and not see it again, and aside from that I donât want so much, only some food and a place to sleep and some work to do.â
âYou can have that,â Franklin said thoughtfully. âIâll write you a letter, if it will help you. Donât bang against the wall, but put a penny by here and there and find a piece of land in Pennsylvania, where landâs cheap, and get your hands into it.â
Paine nodded.
âIâll write to my son-in-law, who will do something for you.â
Paine kept nodding, trying to say somehow that Franklin was being good to him, very good. Paine was a little drunk and tired, his sharp head rocking forward, his twisted eyes closing, the whole of him, wretched clothes and dirty skin and beard, and curious pointed features making a disturbing enigma that Franklin remembered for long years afterward whenever he thought of Tom Paine. Franklin had a taste for enigmas, yet this was one he would never solve.
âGet thee to America, if thee will not work,â Paineâs father told him when the boy was thirteen years old, and had had more than enough of schooling and dreaming and wandering in the lush fields of old Thetford and climbing in the ruins of the old castle and building castles of his own and thinking that childhood goes on forever.
âNot stays,â he said stubbornly.
âAnd thee are one to say stays or not stays!â
âNot stays.â
âAnd thee know another trade, thee stubborn, ill-mannered, ill-weaned whelp.â
He was apprenticed to the art and shown how an artist works. Mrs. Hardy, who was some sort of quality, on the borderline in those days when quality was not nearly so rigidly defined as twenty-five years later, had come to have her corset fitted. Mrs. Hardy weighed two hundred pounds, and most of it was in midriff and above, a bosom like the heathered hills of Scotland and a belly that had given passage to more ale than the Dogâs Head Inn. She hadnât bathed in the fourteen months since she had been to the watering place at Bath, and in his first day as a staymaker he had to ram his head against her belly. He had to go into the mysteries and tug and tug, while she squealed like a pig.
âGet thee onto it, Thomas!â his father commanded.
He hung on the laces, while Mrs. Hardy roared, âPaine, you rascal, youâre twelve inches short.â
âYouâre twelve inches long,â the thirteen-year-old thought miserably. He braced a hand, and it sank deep into a monstrous huge breast.
âGet thee onto it, Thomas,â his father repeated, stony and secure in his shell, then stepping out of the room for a moment. Thomas was lost; he sank deeper and deeper into the ocean of flesh; caught in terror and hot misery, he forgot the laces and the corset snapped open and the flesh rolled out at him. Snickering, âYou little rascal, you little rascal,â she caught him in her arms. He struggled, sank deeper, fought for his life, then broke loose and ran from the shop, across the fields, panting like a dog until he threw himself down in the shadow of the old ruins.
Twelve of the best laid his behind open and bleeding; he was going to be a staymaker; his father had been a staymaker. Otherwise, get thee to America. Old Paine wasnât a hard man, but there was a way of things, and what you were your son was; the world was a bitter, angry place, and if you earned your honest shilling, that was all God gave you reason to expect. Now Tom Paine was going to America, leaving more broken things behind him than a set of stays, and no man really remembers what was here and what was there at the age of thirteen. He had dozed off, and he looked up now to hear Benjamin Franklin reading the letter he had written so kindly to his son-in-law, Richard Bache, a person of influence in a far-off place called Philadelphia:
ââthe bearer, Mr. Thomas Paine (and that was America for you, titled Mr. Paine, this dirty raggle-taggle, and not by nobody or anybody, but by Dr. Benjamin Franklin, the wisest man in the world) is very well recommended to me as an ingenious worthy young manâ(and hear that, worthy young man). He goes to Pennsylvania with a view of settling there. I request you to give him your best advice and countenance, as he is quite a stranger there. If you can put him in the way of obtaining employment as a clerk, or assistant tutor in a school, or assistant surveyor, of all of which I think him very capable, so that he may procure a subsistence at least, till he can make acquaintance and obtain a knowledge of the country, you will do well and much oblige your affectionate fatherââ
âI want to do something,â Paine said. âNo one was so good to me; I have no friends. If I thought to give you some money, you would laugh at me.â
âGive it to someone else,â Franklin said evenly. âStop pitying yourself. Wash and shave off your beard, and donât think the world has knocked you harder than anyone else.â
2
AMERICA IS THE PROMISED LAND
THIS was the great crossing, east to west for nine weeks, and then off the edge of the world, as the old folks back in Thetford believed, having never gotten more than a mile or two from their native heath. But he was Tom Paine the traveler and adventurer, not the staymaker and weaverâs assistant, and he had sailed for nine weeks on a fever-ridden ship. Now he was dying; no one knew and no one cared, and the captain was too sick himself to be bothered. The ship gently rocked in the placid sunshine that flooded the Delaware River, with the red roofs of Philadelphia only a stoneâs throw off, while in the blackness of the sick-hold Tom Paine groaned away his life.
He didnât care, he told himself. Franklin had said, âStop pitying yourself.â He cursed Franklin; well enough for Franklin, who lived like a fat old toad in England; the world was good for some, but you could count them on the fingers of a hand, and for the others it was a pen and a jail and a desolation. Like a pinned-down fly on a board, a man struggled for a time and then died, and then there was nothing, as in the beginning there had been nothing. Why should Tom Paine fight it? Why should he fight disease and hunger and loneliness and misery?
He wouldnât fight it, now he would die, and his pity was such an enormous thing that he was thrilled and amazed by the spectacle of himself. He wept for himself, and then wiped away the tears and allowed sunny memories of long ago to creep in. A child in Thetford walked on a flower-decked hillside. May Adams, who had long braids, ran before him into the vine-grown ruins and fell and hurt her knee, and he licked out the dirt and then kissed her. Wrong, she said, and when he asked why, only repeated, wrong, wrong; yet for all that they became lovers and no one knew. She died of the pox when he was not much older and he held the sorrow inside of him, sitting at his bench and making a corset for Jenny Literton, not eating, not stopping, his father saying, âThereâs a boy with industry, and a change from the rascal he was.â
Everything died; now he was dying because Franklin had sent him off to America.
The fever ship held the spotlight at the waterfront, and in the twenty-four hours after she docked almost half the people in Philadelphia came down to have a look at her. It was told how five bod...