The Signature of All Things (28 page)

George looked up from his feet and said, quite abruptly, “Your sister’s husband has made some trouble for himself of late.”

Clearly, he had not heard a word she’d spoken. Furthermore, the change of subject surprised Alma. George was not a gossip, and it struck her as odd that he would refer to Prudence’s husband at all. Perhaps, she supposed, he was so distraught by the day’s events that he was not quite himself. She did not wish to make him feel uncomfortable, however, so she took up the conversation, as though she and George always discussed such matters.

“What has he done?” she asked.

“Arthur Dixon has published a reckless pamphlet,” George explained wearily, “to which he was foolish enough to append his own name, expressing his opinion that the government of the United States of America is a beastly bit of moral fraudulence on account of its ongoing affiliation with human slavery.”

There was nothing shocking in this news. Prudence and Arthur Dixon had been committed abolitionists for many years. They were well known across Philadelphia for antislavery views that leaned toward the radical. Prudence, in her spare hours, taught reading to free blacks at a local Quaker school. She also cared for children at the Colored Orphans’ Asylum, and often spoke at meetings of women’s abolition societies. Arthur Dixon produced pamphlets frequently—even incessantly—and had served on the editorial board of the
Liberator
. To be frank about it, many people in Philadelphia had grown rather weary of the Dixons, with their pamphlets and articles and speeches. (“For a man who fancies himself an agitator,” Henry always said of his son-in-law, “Arthur Dixon is an awful bore.”)

“But what of it?” Alma asked George Hawkes. “We all know that my sister and her husband are active in such causes.”

“Professor Dixon has gone further this time, Alma. He not only wishes for slavery to be abolished immediately, but he is also of the opinion we should neither pay taxes nor respect American law until that unlikely event occurs. He encourages us to take to the streets with flaming torches and the like, demanding the instant liberation of all black men.”

“Arthur
Dixon
?” Alma could not help herself from saying the full name of her dull old tutor. “Flaming torches? That doesn’t sound like him.”

“You may read it yourself and see. Everyone has been speaking of it. They say he is fortunate to still hold his position at the university. Your sister, it seems, has spoken in agreement with him.”

Alma contemplated this news. “That is a bit alarming,” she agreed at last.

“We are each of us born to trouble,” George repeated, rubbing his hand over his face in exhaustion.

“Yet we must find the patience and resignation—” Alma began again lamely, but George cut her off.

“Your poor sister,” he said. “And with young children in her house, besides. Please let me know, Alma, if there is anything I can ever do to help your family. You have always been so kind to us.”

Chapter Thirteen

H
er poor sister?

Well, perhaps . . . but Alma wasn’t certain.

Prudence Whittaker Dixon was a difficult woman to pity, and she had remained, over the years, a thoroughly impossible woman to comprehend. Alma pondered these facts the next day, as she examined her moss colonies back at White Acre.

Such a riddle was the Dixon household! Here was another marriage that seemed not at all happy. Prudence and her old tutor had been married now for more than twenty-five years, and had produced six children, yet Alma had never witnessed a single sign of affection, pleasure, or rapport pass between the couple. She had never heard either of them laugh. She had scarcely ever seen them smile. Nor had she ever seen a flash of anger directed by one toward the other. She had never seen emotion of any variety pass between them, in fact. What sort of marriage was this, where people march through the years in diligent dullness?

But there had always been questions surrounding her sister’s married life—beginning with the burning mystery that had consumed all of Philadelphia’s gossips so many years long ago, when Arthur and Prudence had first wed: What happened to the dowry? Henry Whittaker had blessed his adopted daughter with a tremendous sum of money upon the occasion of her marriage, but there was no sign that a penny of it was ever spent. Arthur
and Prudence Dixon lived like paupers on his small university salary. They did not even own their home. Why, they barely
heated
their home! Arthur did not approve of luxuries, so he kept his household as cold and bloodless as his own dry self. He governed his family through a model of abstinence, modesty, scholarship, and prayer, and Prudence had fallen into obedience with it. From the very first day of her career as a wife, Prudence had renounced all finery, and had taken to dressing nearly like a Quaker: flannel and wool and dark colors, and with the most homely imaginable poke bonnets. She did not adorn herself with so much as a trinket or a watch chain, nor would she wear even a speck of lace.

Prudence’s restrictions were not limited to her wardrobe, either. Her diet became as simple and restricted as her mode of dress—all cornbread and molasses, by the looks of things. She was never seen to take a glass of wine, or even tea or lemonade. As her children came along, Prudence had raised them in the same miserly manner. A pear plucked from a nearby tree constituted a treat for her boys and girls, whom she trained to turn their faces away from more alluring delicacies. Prudence dressed her children in the same manner in which she dressed herself: in humble clothing, neatly patched. It was as though she wanted her children to look poor. Or perhaps they genuinely were poor, though they had no cause to be.

“What in the deuce has she gone and done with all her gowns?” Henry would sputter, whenever Prudence came to visit White Acre adorned in rags. “Has she stuffed her mattresses with them?”

But Alma had seen Prudence’s mattresses, and they were stuffed with straw.

The wags of Philadelphia had a great sport speculating about what Prudence and her husband had done with the Whittaker dowry. Was Arthur Dixon a gambler, who had squandered the riches on horse races and dog fights? Did he keep another family in another city, who lived in luxury? Or was the couple sitting on a buried treasure of unspeakable wealth, hiding it behind a facade of poverty?

Over time, the answer emerged: all the money had gone to abolitionist causes. Prudence had quietly turned over most of her dowry to the Philadelphia Abolitionist Society shortly after her marriage. The Dixons had also used the money to purchase slaves out of captivity, which could cost upwards of $1,300 per life. They had paid for the transport of several escaped
slaves to safety in Canada. They had paid for the publication of innumerable agitating pamphlets and tracts. They had even funded black debating societies, which helped train Negroes to argue their own cause.

All these details were revealed back in 1838, in a story that the
Inquirer
had published about Prudence Whittaker Dixon’s peculiar living habits. Spurred by a lynch mob’s burning of a local abolitionist meeting hall, the newspaper had been looking for interesting—even diverting—stories about the antislavery movement. A reporter had been pointed in the direction of Prudence Dixon when a prominent abolitionist made mention of the quiet generosity of the Whittaker heiress. The newspaperman had been immediately intrigued; the Whittaker name, hitherto, had not exactly been associated around Philadelphia with boundless acts of generosity. What’s more, of course, Prudence was vividly beautiful—a fact that always draws attention—and the contrast between her exquisite face and her plain mode of living only made her a more fascinating subject. With her elegant white wrists and delicate neck peeking from within those dreary clothes, she had every appearance of being a goddess in captivity—Aphrodite trapped in a convent. The reporter had been unable to resist her.

The story appeared on the front page of the paper, along with a flattering engraving of Mrs. Dixon. Most of the article was familiar abolitionist material, but what captured the imagination of Philadelphians was that Prudence—brought up in the palatial halls of White Acre—was quoted as having declared that for many years she had denied herself and her family any bit of luxury that was produced by a slave’s hands.

“It may seem innocent to wear South Carolina cotton,” her quote continued, “but it is not innocent, for this is how evil seeps into our home. It may seem a simple pleasure to spoil our children with a treat of sugar, but that pleasure becomes a sin when the sugar was grown by human beings held in unspeakable misery. For that same reason, in our household, we take no coffee or tea. I urge all Philadelphians of good Christian conscience to do the same. If we speak out against slavery, yet continue to enjoy its plunders, we are naught but hypocrites, and how can we believe that the Lord smiles upon our hypocrisy?”

Later in the article, Prudence went further still: “My husband and I live next door to a family of freed Negroes, consisting of a good and decent man named John Harrington, his wife, Sadie, and their three children. They are
impoverished, and thus they struggle. We see to it that we live no richer than they. We see to it that our house is no finer than theirs. Often the Harringtons work alongside us in our home, and we work in theirs. I scrub my hearth alongside Sadie Harrington. My husband cuts wood alongside John Harrington. My children learn their letters and numbers alongside the Harringtons’ children. They often dine with us at our own table. We eat the same fare they eat, and we wear the same clothing they wear. In the winters, if the Harringtons have no heat, we ourselves go without heat. We are kept warm by our absence of shame, and by our knowledge that Christ would have done the same. On Sundays, we attend the same services as the Harringtons do, at their humble Negro Methodist church. Their church has no comforts—so why should ours? Their children sometimes have no shoes—why should ours?”

Here, Prudence had gone too far.

Over the following days, the newspaper had been flooded with angry responses to Prudence’s words. Some of these letters came from appalled mothers (“Henry Whittaker’s daughter keeps her children without shoes!”), but most came from enraged men (“If Mrs. Dixon loves Black Africans as much as she claims, let her marry off her prettiest little white daughter to her neighbor’s inkiest-skinned son—I stand eager to see it done!”).

As for Alma, she could not help but find the article irritating. There was something about Prudence’s manner of living that looked, to Alma’s eyes, suspiciously like pride, or even vanity. It was not that Prudence possessed the vanity of normal mortals (Alma had never even caught her peeking in a mirror), but Alma felt Prudence was being vain in some other way here—in a more subtle way, through these excessive demonstrations of austerity and sacrifice.

Look how little I need
, Prudence seemed to be saying.
Behold my goodness.

What’s more, Alma could not help but wonder if perhaps Prudence’s black neighbors, the Harringtons, might wish to eat something more than cornbread and molasses one night—and why couldn’t the Dixons simply buy it for them, instead of also going hungry themselves in such an empty gesture of solidarity?

The newspaper exposure brought trouble. Philadelphia may have been a free city, but this did not mean its citizens loved the mingling of poor Negroes and fine white ladies. At first, there were threats and attacks on the
Harringtons, who were so harassed that they were forced to move. Then Arthur Dixon was pelted with horse dung on his way to work at the University of Pennsylvania. Mothers refused to allow their children to play any longer with the Dixon children. Strips of South Carolina cotton kept appearing on the Dixons’ front gate, and small piles of sugar on their doorstep—strange and inventive warnings, indeed. And then one day in mid-1838, Henry Whittaker had received an unsigned letter in the post, which read, “You’d best stop up your daughter’s mouth, Mr. Whittaker, or you will soon see your warehouses burned to the ground.”

Well, Henry could not stand for this. It was insult enough that his daughter had squandered her generous dowry, but now his commercial property was in danger. He’d summoned Prudence up to White Acre, where he intended to drive some sense into her.

“Be gentle with her, Father,” Alma had warned, in advance of the encounter. “Prudence is likely shaken and anxious. She has been much plagued by the events of recent weeks, and she is probably more concerned for the safety of her children than you are for the safety of your warehouses.”

“I doubt it,” Henry had growled.

But Prudence did not seem cowed or dismayed. Rather, she strode into Henry’s study like Joan of Arc, and stood before her father undaunted. Alma tried for a pleasant greeting, but Prudence showed no interest in pleasantries. Nor did Henry. He launched into the conversation with an immediate charge. “See what you have done! You have brought disgrace to this family, and now you bring a lynch mob to your father’s doorstep? That’s the reward you offer me, for all that I have given you?”

“Pardon me, but I see no lynch mob,” Prudence said evenly.

“Well, there may be one soon!” Henry thrust the threatening letter to Prudence, who read it without reaction. “I tell you, Prudence, I will not be happy, operating my business from the charred shell of a destroyed building. What do you think you are at, playing these games? Why are you putting yourself in the newspapers like this? There is no dignity in it. Beatrix would have disapproved.”

“I am proud that my words were recorded,” Prudence said. “I would proudly speak those same words again, in front of every newspaperman in Philadelphia.”

Prudence was not helping the situation.

“You come here dressed in rags,” Henry said, in a voice of increasing anger. “You come here penniless, despite my generosity. You come here from the confines of your husband’s insolvent hell, expressly to be miserable in our presence and to make us all miserable around you. You meddle where you have no business meddling, and you incite agitation in a cause that will pull this city apart—and destroy my trade with it! And there is no reason for it, besides! There is no slavery within the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, Prudence! So why do you continue to argue the point? Let the South solve her own sins.”