One morning George’s son from his first (legitimate) marriage, the one he had abandoned in England, showed up on his doorstep. He had come to claim damages for his abandonment (he was orphaned early in childhood after watching his mother die in poverty). When George kicked him out he settled down further upriver to plot his revenge. He had his plans. He had carefully studied George’s way of doing business from afar, through the lens of bitterness and envy while living in poverty. He knew how to manipulate land, and people.
Father and son became rivals. Their competition helped to turn that stretch of the river into the world’s foremost source of cotton.
The Henrys’ fortunes grew atop a pile of bodies, buried and forgotten: slaves who were the secret to their success; as well as the local Indians, whose hunting land they stole and whom they hired mercenaries to murder for them.
But that shady character, the eldest of the Henrys, paid his price. George-Jorge was struck by deep depression, a depression so deep it proved impossible to conquer. His soul went into free fall until he reached the very nadir of desperation and lost his mind. In 1794, suffering from a hellish depression that knows no name, George-Jorge Henry tied an iron cauldron around his neck and jumped into a branch of the Mississippi, the Buffalo, whose waters were dark and deep, and which goes by his name to this day: Henry. His youngest daughter, Sarah, was ten.
The cauldron is an important detail for some, because they say it’s the only possession he brought with him across the ocean, and that he used it to earn a living his first few weeks here, selling tasty punch. But that’s a tall tale, an obscure myth that has no roots in reality. How could he have carried such a large, heavy cauldron on his voyage? And the story (and the damage done by gossips) doesn’t end there. Some folks claimed he had crossed the ocean inside the cauldron — captain, sailor, and passenger of his own vessel; now that really takes the cake. A man crossing the ocean in a cauldron? Not even in a fairy tale!
In time Sarah married, twice. The first marriage was rather unfortunate, and better forgotten. She was lucky to be widowed early. When she received the news of her husband’s death she burst into tears. She ran to her room and shut the door. Alone, she stopped crying and began to rejoice. “I’m free! I’m free!” No matter how much she said “free,” it didn’t help her, though. Because she got married again, to a peculiar man, one Lieutenant Ware, who was a well-read, mustachioed widower given to grandiloquence and outlandishness thanks to his travels and adventures — he had explored North Africa, supposedly looking for mines, when in fact he was trying to establish connections for the slave trade; he failed because the Portuguese beat him to it. However he returned full of tales of his exploits, this unsuccessful slave trader.
Lieutenant Ware’s penchant for storytelling was legendary. Some even attributed the story of the seagoing cauldron to him, but those of us who are familiar with his tales know that’s impossible, without the shadow of a doubt. He was a raconteur and a liar, but he wasn’t an imbecile.
Lieutenant Ware and Sarah had two daughters, the future authors — the first of their line — the so-called Sisters from the West.
Catherine Anne was the firstborn. It was four more years before Sarah conceived her next child because Lieutenant Ware was away. When he returned he said he had been in Zacatecas “looking for mines,” but we shouldn’t believe a word of what he said, because in Mexico there were no cheap slaves for sale, which he could resell at a higher price, and that was always his business. We’d do better to believe that he went into alcoholic seclusion during those years.
At the age of 39 Sarah gave birth to her second daughter, Georgette, and promptly fell into a deep depression, nearly losing her mind, the ground beneath her, the roof, the walls, heaven and hell, she even lost herself. There’s not a soul who attributes the story of the cauldron to her, though she did try to drown herself in the river. Lieutenant Ware sent her off to a mental institution.
Once she was locked up, Sarah Henry Ware spent her days pining for her husband and lamenting her abandonment. When Lieutenant Ware visited Sarah didn’t recognize him. Sarah also pined for her daughters, especially baby Georgette, and would cry out for her eldest, Catherine Anne. When the girls came to visit, she didn’t recognize them either, and she was repelled by their desire for affection.
Sarah kept her looks and her beautiful, thick hair. Lieutenant Ware moved her to the home of one of his children from his first marriage, and they locked her away on the top floor like Rapunzel.
By the time the two sisters, Catherine Anne and Georgette, published their first book of poems, Sarah had passed away. We don’t know how she perished. There was no cauldron to jump into the river with, despite the fact some claimed she jumped into the Henry with a cauldron around her neck … but let’s leave it there, because it’s all too absurd. The fact is, she died.
Georgette married a man who doesn’t matter to our story; he said he had plantations in Virginia but that was probably a lie. Outwardly she appeared to be happy. They had a son who nearly died at birth from an infection of the umbilicus, and about whom she became so anxious that her milk dried up; her husband had to hire a Negro wet nurse. Then she had two girls, though some folks say the girls were nieces who went to live with them, turning her girls into nieces before their time (when she died they went to live with their aunt). The eldest was named Sarah, after her grandmother. When the second was born she had a huge falling-out with her sister, Catherine Anne, and fell into the same deep depression that had claimed her grandfather and her mother; then she caught yellow fever and died. Of course there are idiots who say she ended her life in the river with a cauldron around her neck, and others who say she filled the pockets of her dress with stones, but she never had the chance.
But let’s get back to our story. En route to New York, Catherine Anne has stopped in Bruneville; the new steamboat to New York embarks from Point Isabel instead of New Orleans (one of Stealman’s little machinations: he was planning to sell tracts of land in Point Isabel and needed to inject some life into the region). Catherine Anne is on her way to sign the contract for publication of her novel and, at the request of her editor, she will stay in New York until the novel comes out, to promote it. She wrote it as “A Southern Lady.” She’s traveling with her two nieces. The eldest is quite a character.
Neals, the Ranger who runs the jailhouse in the center of Bruneville, has not been invited to the Stealmans’ party. He knows all about the party and the other gatherings they’ve had; people always ask him, “You going to the Stealmans’, Neals?” He thinks it’s downright shameful they never remember to include him.
Neals is one of the few folks on the town payroll, most of the Rangers are free agents. He was given this “honor” in recognition of his service to his country, that’s his reward for being one of the “Texan Devils.”
Overheard at Mrs. Big’s: “‘Texan Devils’ is what those greasy Mexicans shouted at us when we rode victorious through the streets of their capital. A motley crew, some of us on mules, others on mustangs, and others on thoroughbreds; some of us standing in the saddle, some of us looking back, some riding side-saddle like the ladies, others with their arms around their mounts’ necks, others lying back on their animals like they were dodging bullets. Everyone wore hats, caps, and berets made from the hides of dogs, cats, raccoons, wildcats, and even Comanches. The Mexicans said we were only a half-civilized species, part human and part demon, with a touch of lion, devil, and snapping turtle (the huge ones from Florida that live in the mud) mixed in. They were more afraid of us than the devil himself. When we returned to Port Lavaca, Texas, we were received like heroes, because we had conquered a country that had repressed freedom, deprived the rights of men, and for the past twenty years interfered with our manifest destiny to rule these shores.”