Captain Fabriches Langston reclined on the deck of a northbound

steamship headed to New York City. He was not the captain of this

ship. He was not Navy at all. He was Cavalry. However, he had not

seen action in Mexico 1 and got no further west than New Orleans by

the time that action was resolved in ’48.

From New York, he would take a train to Hartford, Connecticut.

With a calm and agreeable ocean and no delays, the passage from

Charleston to New York City would take seven to eight days. The

ship’s agent in Charleston assured him that the bourbon would hold

out. Then another day on a train from New York to Hartford.

He stared toward the horizon holding his drink aloft to avoid

spillage. The view included occasional glimpses of land and, when

passing Chesapeake Bay, a variety of vessels were seen headed in

all directions, but none of them were engineering marvel the equal of

the “Star of the South” 2 , the ship he was now aboard. It displayed

three masts and a smokestack but no side wheel. The Star had a new

device called a “propeller.” But for the tolerable rumble of the coal fired

engine, it was a quiet innovation. Mrs. Langston did not demur from

telling the ladies of Summerville, South Carolina, that they would be

arriving in New York City, wined and dined, in record time, a time

hitherto dreamed impossible: a mere 6 days.

Pilford, the bank manager in Charleston, advised the captain not

to take his manservant deep into the bowels of abolitionist country.

“The unhinged Sodomite women will catch wind of it and you’ll be

a month in a Yankee courthouse trying to get your property back, if

that is even possible.” The Captain knew the value of trusted advice

and so settled on the company of his wife, for three weeks at most.

Months prior to this voyage, something odd had started to occur

on the plantation, the Captain’s plantation. It started with one of the

field bosses coming to the Big House to show his employer something

he had discovered.

It was a drawing on the back of a bounty bill for a runaway from the

next county over. The damage to the paper, torn from a tree or post,

made the theft of this notice evident. The field boss, illiterate himself,

insisted that “Learnin’ to draw come right before learnin’ to read. The

criminal must be found and whipped, then burnt alive before the whole

bunch of ’em starts to book learnin’, not to mention rippin’ down a white man’s bill.”

In another situation, the Captain might have given his blessing to

this remedy, immediately. Here he did not.

“Keep your eyes peeled, your powder dry and the whip wet.

Please bring me any more of these found on the premises. I shall

make inquiries.” Samuel was rewarded with a tall glass of bourbon

and a handshake of gratitude.

“Man don’t have the sense of a mud turtle,” thought the Captain

as he retired to his “library.”

It was a portrait of a woman holding an infant. A field woman no

doubt, the hands were scarred and swollen, painful even to look at,

but they held the child in strength. Her eyes scanned a future neither

hopeful nor tormented. The babe seemed undernourished but content

in the moment. The detail, probably provided from a pencil, was

breathtaking, if only one looked. In shades of one color, her skin came

alive, eyes focused on their objects, and all the trespasses of a life of

undeserved suffering were spoken by her frozen parted lips.

Nothing and no one had ever set his mind to wonder as did this

image. He sat with it for an hour, maybe more. Minutes became as

irrelevant to him as they were to her. He retrieved a large atlas from a nearby shelf and stored her in there, then returned the atlas to its

shelf. With the drawing out of sight, he began to think again.

When the Master entered the kitchen, which he never did, all

movement stopped. Breath stopped, no one blinked. Dellfy was the

head woman in the kitchen and after a brief perusal of the younger

women, the Captain approached his not so undernourished Dellfy,

“Dellfy, is there anyone in my chattelage who shows an ability to

draw pictures? Tell me true and quick now. I will know who is drawing

pictures on my plantation. Answer!” The Captain made a show of

leering at a young girl assigned to shelling pecans.

“I swear Massuh, nobody here has time for making pictures and

wouldn’t begin to know how if’n they did. We be makin’ you an’ duh

missus dinner, then we clean, then we sleep. No pictures Massuh Sir.”

Captain scanned the room, drinking in the terror his mere

presence created and found no denial on any face present. Turning to

leave, he grabbed some of those pecans on his way out.

In the coming weeks, more drawings appeared. One found in the

peach orchard was done on a shred of laundry. Delivered to him in the

library by Custus, his manservant and butler, it was an image of a

stable boy brushing a familiar horse. Clearly, the horse loved the boy.

Later, on a stretched cowhide by the leather shop, was the image of

an old man supporting the expired body of a younger man released

from agony, life, and the whipping post.

By New Year ’55 the atlas proved insufficient to contain the strange

harvest of the Langston plantation.

A letter of invitation was sent to a professor Andersun Douglas,

Lecturer of Classics at a nearby Charleston college. The professor

assumed some dimwitted planter had an equally dimwitted daughter

in need of tutoring in order to enhance her value as a premium bride.

The invitation specified only the carriage ride and lunch.

“No field hand produced this work sir. This is testimony of high

intellect, I’d say even a touch of the divine. I’ve not seen its like in this

country before. Europe, yes, here, not by a damn sight, pardon.” The

professor focused on the drawings as he spoke and the drawings

stared back.

The Captain listened intently, more than intently. Half of the suspect

pool, by the professor’s estimation, had just been summarily

eliminated. His own bosses, tenant farmers and folks from town would

all have to be interviewed. Estimating the size and number of just that

end of the suspect pool he began to consider, who might reasonably

be excluded: himself and the missus, that blind fella, that veteran

without arms, etc. He spoke with the tenants on their premises and

met with the townsfolk in the sheriff’s office. The sheriff tied up the

loafers and drunks out back while the Captain conducted his

investigation. News flies on fast wings. A cobbler came in with a

drawing his Mayellen had done. “You must be very proud,” the

Captain offered. Weary of this process, polite was becoming difficult.

No credible source of the drawings could be found.

A letter arrived from Professor Douglas stating that he had been in

contact with colleagues at the Wadsworth Atheneum 3 in godforsaken

Hartford, Connecticut, America’s first and then only art museum on

European standards – that is, housing no scalps nor any of

Washington’s wooden teeth.

“The curators and learned men there,” on the Professor’s

recommendation, “would be happy to examine the works in question

and share their insights with you at your convenience. Please wire

them as to when they might expect you, if you so choose.”

“What, pray tell me, can be convenient about traveling 1,000 miles

to step into an abolishee hornets’ nest like Connecticut?” Still, the

Captain made his arrangements the following day and there it was.

Skimming over the water at near light speed, he sipped bourbon and

struggled not to tally what this expedition was going to cost.

The level of activity around and in New York Harbor made the

Chesapeake traffic look like three horses grazing in the grass of a

meadow. Madame and the Captain watched the spectacle leaning on

a railing from the deck of the Star. Smoke and soot sat over New York

City like a halo. One might have thought the place was on fire. In

some sense, it was. The Brooklyn side looked nicer and not on fire.

The other shores surrounding the harbor were undeveloped and had

not earned the halo.

Once inside the protective reach of the artillery positions, the Star

of the South was met by a pair of tugboats that cooperatively brought

her into her appointed berth. From a few hundred yards out New York

City looked like a city of spires and masts. From close up, it looked

awful, indeed, hellish. The stench of rotten fish, manure, coal fires and

open sewers lined up in a symphony of smells. Add the yelling, the

bells, ships horns and terrified horses on cobblestones and you had

an opera.

Even though armed as a gentlemen must be, the Captain

considered whether it was safe to even get off the boat. The travel

arrangements provided a carriage for two passengers and their

luggage but after an abrupt meeting with the captain of the Star

(whom they would see again in a week, if they lived), two armed

guards were hired to ride shotgun atop the carriage for the trip to the

train yard.

At some point riding up Broadway, Mrs. Langston said, “God help

us, we are traveling through Sodom.” Later, one of the escorts had to

use his blackjack on a teenager who was going for the luggage.

The area around the train yard had plenty of coppers about and the

two escorts saw them safely onto their rail cars. The Captain did not

take his hand from his pistol until they were past the village of

Haarlem.

Arriving in Hartford near sundown, they settled into their

accommodations and asked the desk to get a note to the museum

informing the “esteemed gentlemen” that Captain Langston would be

by at noon of the following day.

The Captain had come North with two examples of the enigma;

the Madonna with Weeping Hands and a landscape showing men and

women at harvest. He kept them in a leather attaché and there was

hardly ever much space between the Captain and his paramour.

From their lodgings, the museum was only a stroll away at most.

Hartford was a lovely city, without the industry or mongrel inter-

racialism that made New York such a godless abyss. They might have

walked but instead, they hired a carriage with a proper driver sporting

a top hat. In front of the museum, the Captain asked the driver to wait.

“Sir, if these works were signed by Rubens for himself, we would be

no less enchanted.” Clearing her throat, Mrs. Langston asked, “Pardon sir but, Rubin

who?”

Assembled there were three men representing the museum, plus

the Langstons, and none of these [Langston’s]? men welcomed the

interjection of a woman. That the abolition matter did not come to fore

in this encounter was as difficult as it was deliberate. The assembly

was positively awestruck in the presence of what seemed a perfect

miracle of creation. The handkerchiefs came out as the wise men

began to sweat. The humanity of the hands left their hearts shattered,

in pieces on the floor.

“Sir, may we inquire please, who did these and, are there more?”

“I prefer not to say gentlemen. I prefer not to say.” The professors

interpreted this as him being cagey. None presumed honesty.

“While you visit here a few days, may we keep these works for

study? They will be seen only by ourselves and senior members of the

museum council and we pledge our reputations on their absolute

safekeeping. Would that be all right with you?” Appreciating their

appreciation of the work as similar to his own, Captain Langston

consented to leave the drawings. To his surprise, he was given a

consent form to sign, it being a formality required by the insurance

underwriters of the museum. Skimming, then signing the document,

the Captain mumbled, “You know we started this tedium in Charleston

don’choo?” They did not know.

Captain and Mrs. Langston returned to their waiting carriage and

requested the driver take a scenic route for their return trip. He

obliged. Not far from the museum was the State House. “This is where

they tried the Amistad boys 6 and Mrs. Crandall. 7 ” The Captain turned his head and spat in the direction of the Courthouse, something

manners should have prohibited in the company of a lady. “She had it

coming. Drive on sir.”

Though Mrs. Langston could not make sense of the notion that all

those myriad citizens seen to and fro at their various labors were

recompensed for their work, she thought it a lovely locale. There were

beautiful stately homes and the appearance of a dense community

where the lower classes seemed somehow elevated compared to

their counterparts back in Charleston. This struck her as charming.

The Captain however, thought two “darkies” leaning on a lamp post,

talking and laughing, a disgusting sight, one that might promote

similar arrogance in others.

There were attractive shopping streets where a fashionable woman

might spend her husband’s money freely, in service to him, of course.

The Captain stopped his wondering as to why his wife had brought an

empty trunk.

“You paid one of those fugitives to stitch a dress?” Smoke came

from the Captain’s ears.

“I paid one of those fugitives to fit a dress and I would pay her

again, with pleasure, to come South and teach our house girls to sew

like this!!”

The Captain wished to be headed home on the steamer again,

home where things made sense. He found the North to be an

unendurable captivity, a lawless place pocked with incivility and

cruelty.

On the day before their departure, the Captain asked the same

driver and horse to wait for them in front of the museum. A butler with

a German accent brought them, this time, to a boardroom with a

larger assembly than before, though the three gentlemen they had

first met were part of the new larger group. Hearing the names of the

men he now shook hands with did not make the introductions a

friendly matter.

The guest position was assumed by the Captain as the rest took

their usual assigned seats around the table, and Madame was seated

on the periphery. The curator who had spoken those days ago was

seated directly across from the Captain. Before anything was said, he

slid a document across the table towards a perplexed Captain

Fabriches Langston.

There, before him, lay a check for $20,000. He did not wish to

engage with the abolitionists as they did not wish to do business with

a slaver. He spoke only to the curator in front of him.

“I don’t understand, sir. Did something happen to my drawings?”

Now, the Captain started to sweat.

“No, sir. They are as they were when you entrusted them to us.

However, we wish to purchase them. $10,000 is what we paid for a de

Hooch 8 just last year. This would put your anonymous artist in rather

good company, I’d say. Is this agreeable to you?” In 1856 20,000

dollars was a fortune.

His neck turned red. He started to choke. Mrs. Langston jumped

to his aid while scanning the document with her free eye. The Captain

and Mrs. Langford left the Museum again with the attaché that once

contained the souls of black folks but now, a check for $20,000 was

tucked into a vest pocket close to where his pistol slept.

Back on the deck of the Star of the South, the Captain’s

calculations were not about what the trip had cost. In fact, an

anonymous party had signed off on the hotel stay, meals and livery

expenses. His calculations now were to what the aggregate value of

the contents of “Cary’s New and Correct English Atlas” might be.

Every piece contained there was inventoried with accuracy in his

head, and $10,000 seemed an easy enough figure to multiply, but he

just could not figure it. Or refused to. He did not try to calculate it on

paper since that, if found, might reveal what he was bringing back to

Charleston. So he drank some more and studied the flight of the gulls.

Docking at Charleston in late afternoon, the Captain resolved it

would be best to send his wife home in a carriage posthaste and he

would stay in town to deposit “the thing” in the morning. The twirl of her parasol vanishing in a carriage up Meeting Street brought a smile

to his heart. He whistled “Hard Times” as he strolled up Beresford

Street to Miss Grace’s Big Brick.

Savvy as she was buxom, Miss Grace made it her business to

know her clientele. Greeting the Captain, already ensconced in a

parlor chair, drink in hand, she inquired about the plantation, the trip,

and Mrs. Langston. All, he assured, were splendid. “Leave this one alone. When he wants something, he’ll ask.” And Miss Grace was correct.

The man at the piano did not play plantation songs or anything like

that. Light-skinned to white, he was one of those New Orleans Creole

types who thought themselves European. He played Mr. Beethoven

and a new fella named Chopin. Hearing this music only rarely, THE

CAPTAIN … it saturated the Captain’s brain like a downpour in the desert. His eyes roamed the candle-lit room and the pearls that vanished between buttressed breasts did not pique his interest that night. Instead, it was the parlor walls, covered in paintings he had not noticed before.

As quickly as he could focus on them, he dismissed them as

rubbish. Fleshy peasant women, bowls of fruit, and impossible horses,

works not worth their paint and probably bought by the pound, like

most of the books in his library. These dull impersonations of art did

not make the Big Brick an elevated place, only a brothel. He dozed.

Grace took his drink and put his feet up on an ottoman. In the

morning, she put a cup of strong coffee in his hand. He put down the

coffee and checked his pockets.

Mr. Pilford sat up straight quick when he caught sight of the check.

“May I inquire how you came into such a windfall, Sir? I only ask for

curiosity’s sake.”

“The sale of a parcel of property up north, left to me by a

deceased relative. And, might I add, you would have to pay me that again to ever, I say ever, venture into that disgusting den of abolishee

insurrection. Devil take them insurrection all. Pardon.”

The Captain extracted a pledge of secrecy from Mr. Pilford

promising that no one would get wind of this deposit. His WHOSE?

left hand fell on a copy of “Putnam’s Monthly” freshly opened to a

story called “Benito Cereno.” 11 He raised his other hand and did

swear. Then he gave the Captain a receipt for the deposit and

informed him the funds would be available in 28 business days. “Out-

of-state checks are complicated. You do understand, sir.”

“May I ask, how are Mrs. Pilford and the children?”

Mr. Pilford was back to his magazine before the Captain was out

the door.

The plantation house was a spacious brick mansion built and

enlarged by two generations of Langstons, the current Langstons

being the third. The Captain really did not know the extent of his

home. Upstairs there was his, the Master’s, bedroom and guest rooms

and parlors, closets, and a nursery yet unoccupied. Downstairs was

even larger by way of extensions. There were pantries below ground,

accessible from the large kitchen. Then, by way of grand double

doors, you were in the dining room with a table that sat twenty. In a

word, it was a mansion. The Captain was more familiar with the

stables, the planting fields, the slave shacks, and the various sheds

and shops where things were repaired or fabricated. He knew the

orchards and the streams where he had fished as a boy and fished

still. But he didn’t know the big brick house. So, Custus, who knew the

house well, took him on a tour of every last inch of it.

Second floor, southwest corner was Mrs. Langston’s upstairs

parlor, used when the ladies came to call.

“Empty it. Except that chair. That was my Daddy’s chair. And get

rid of that damnable wallpaper. Paint it all white, but not the wood. And

the curtains. Get rid of those curtains. Give ’em to your women to make dresses for church. Start today and inform me when I can move in. Thank you, Custus.”

Mrs. Langston was not amused by her husband’s requisition of her

upstairs parlor and further incensed by his refusal to explain himself.

As was her habit, she took her rage out on others.

With the boon of the art sale, Mrs. Langston got her parlor back by

way of another extension on the house. The plantation too, was

enlarged by buying out small adjacent farms and making their former

owners tenant farmers. Most of those arrangements worked well and

most, except for the souls who did all the work, prospered.

The carpentry shed was directed to making frames, as per the

master’s specifications. He wanted simple frames, not the gold-plated

monstrosities the likes of the Hartford Museum or Miss Grace’s. He

had a decorative carpenter from Charleston come to show his shop

boys some new skills for the framing work.

The Captain started seeding the woods with sheets of paper or

crayons or brushes sent to him by the Hartford Board. It was their

hope to acquire more works for the Museum, but to no avail. The

materials became as offerings to some ubiquitous forest deity. The

Captain paid the Board for what they sent from Connecticut, but did

not sell any more work to them. Every piece had taken on a value to

the Captain far above money. He regretted deeply having parted with

the two pieces that now resided up north. He even told the Board, in a

letter, that the supplies went to the missus who had, herself, taken up

painting after the Hartford trip. This, he hoped, would dispel their

relentless inquiries.

Captain Fabriches Langston’s life was on a new trajectory. Once

the keeper, now the kept. Clearly, he was always adept in his

business. By creating practical management strategies, he

disengaged himself from daily operation of the expanding plantation.

He gave increased responsibility and reward to his most capable

managers. Wealth came and the plantation grew but those were not

his objectives. To sit in his gallery, solitary and without distraction, was

the desired result. Having never exercised self-reflection, he did not

now question how strange his new behaviors might appear to those

around him and none of those around him could begin to gauge the depth of the Captain’s obsession. Emotional diagnosis was not a thing then.

It must be said here that the regular cruelty upon the enslaved

workforce decreased at the Captain’s request. He worried, still

unaware of who the artist was, that that individual might be hobbled or

killed due to a whipping for a crime like stealing an egg.

Now he could spend his days sitting in his ancestral chair

surrounded by the artwork that loved him and he loved so deeply. As works were found and brought to the big house, the deliverer was rewarded, or beaten near to death for trying to pass off a fake. That stopped quickly.

His drinking abated effortlessly. Away from his gallery he might

tipple as before, but in his room, he was just happy to see the images

and be washed over by them. Had he socialized more, sure he would

have drunk more, but the hours a day spent in his cloister were, he thought, socializing.

As to his marital obligations, likely the nursery would not find an

occupant anytime soon but, maybe. They went to church on Sunday,

but he spent that time scanning the congregation in hopes of spotting

the artist. This too, produced no result.

His life was becoming monastic and he devoted hours and hours a

day to being alone in his room. If a new piece was found, the hours

might tick up. No one understood this behavior. Certainly not his wife,

though maybe the butler did. Custus had a heart, the Captain came to

understand.

This went on for years, tough years. The plantation was sound

and solvent but the nation was not. Would Mr. Buchanan have managed the affairs of state half as well as Capt. Langston

soberly managed his estate? That would have been a better state

indeed. When the murdering pirate abolitionist John Brown attempted

to vandalize the agriculture producing Southern states, now referred

to as “slave states,” his actions were quickly suppressed, but a great

chill wind blew across the land.

No one really ever cared who was making pictures in the woods,

but now, now suspicion of any conspiratorial secret — anything

—could get a slave killed. Or a white man. As the great friction heated

up, militias formed overnight. In letters to the Connecticut boys who

were petitioning to come down for a visit, the Captain assured them, if

they ventured down now, they would not be going home with fingers

and toes, if at all.

As the county’s leading citizen with a reputation for organizational

genius and some military training, Captain Langston was made

executive officer of the newly established county militia, “the Carolina

Emancipators.” Riders brought official directives from Charleston or

Richmond right to his door. How many men? Guns, men with military

experience, horses, cannon if any? There were procedures and drills

now required so that disparate militias might function effectively in a

larger centralized fighting force.

The Captain understood and executed the initiatives, but he did not

care a great deal. He thought, even if this Lincoln miscreant got into

office, he would not be so stupid as to go to war with that part of the

country that puts food on the table and clothes on the nation’s backs.

The Captain did as he was requested of him and when asked for an

opinion, he responded, “Opinions abound here, you won’t suffer from

the lack of mine.”

Some days, after the regimental drilling, he would ride about the

plantation, now too vast to cover in a morning or a day. He dismissed

the notion that this agrarian Promised Land could be erased by a

godless Yankee horde set on getting a bigger piece of the peach pie.

“Never going to happen. Never.”

By default, the plantation, and indeed the big house, had become

the de facto center of command for the county. More worried about

local hotheads starting a war than an invasion from the North, the

Captain resolved that arms and munitions should be arsenaled on his

premises. The rifles were kept in a guarded barn and the gunpowder

stored underground in the pantries of the big house. Here, he felt, they

would be safe. Many small barrels were neatly stacked beneath and

as far from the kitchen as possible.

Some were more than alarmed about this arrangement, but the

Captain assured them that this was temporary, until proper bunkers

could be built, and nothing bad ever happened down there before, and

that he would not put himself or his wife at risk.

No longer just a gallery or salon, the room with the art became his

refuge in these times of considerable trouble. He called it his

“Chamber of Consolation” and discussed it with no one.

Then Lincoln was elected and escaped WHY? into Washington.

Then Sumter and First Manassas. The war would be over soon, and

upon gentleman’s terms. The South was elated and simultaneously

furious that Confederate generals did not, then and there, march into

Washington and end it when they had the chance. Many in the South

were madder’n hornets.

Having lost the bulk of his daylight hours in his chamber, he took to

spending his nights there, to make up the difference. Sometimes,

drink and dread pulled a blanket up to and around his neck.

Of course, no one lived to account how it happened. The

gunpowder blew up. The house, its inhabitants and everything inside

was simply and completely gone. Captain Fabriches Langston and his

collection of works by an unknown creator were gone as though they

never existed. There was not enough left of anybody to bait a hook.

The blast was heard in town three miles away. Those folks thought the

North actually was attacking.

After two or three years of losing a war despite superior numbers,

President Lincoln in a desperate last-ditch effort to get reelected,

unleashed three rabid Dogs of War 13 who then ran over the South

like a plague of locusts on a wheat field. They burned cities, tore up

the railroad tracks, murdered innocents and freed what would become

the new citizens of these re-united States. All that and more. The captain said it would never happen due to simple exercise of common

sense. It happened, Captain, sleep well.

So, who made the drawings and, later paintings? The list of

suspects is not exhaustive; the local white trash, enslaved

blacks, store owners, farm owners, teachers and ministers, redskins,

and loafers. In all fairness, Captain and Mrs. Langston and even the

banker Pilford should be included in that list. But in truth, none were

credible candidates.

The Captain had ceased to dwell on the question. To a man whose

life became a silent devotion to each and every representation of

struggle and soul and humanity, the identity of the creator no longer

mattered. The images were. That is all. That’s what mattered. Had he

been told on good authority that these images were the actual Tears

of God, he would have dismissed the notion and gone to bed.

Nothing was left and the war took the rest. The drawings stopped

turning up around the time of Gettysburg and the Emancipation. No

one was looking because no one cared. What they combed the woods

for then were things they could eat.

The war, as it generally does, brought out the worst in people.

Suffering can be different. What came out of those sacred woods

around Summerville, South Carolina, in those years before and during

the war was very different. Then it was gone. Back into the ether.

Back into the ground.