MDDM Ch. 72 Dixon and the slave driver

[jbor]

Baltimore, June or July 1768.

695-6 The episode opens with a reprise of the parlour debate between Ives
and Wicks: Ives claiming there is "no proof" and accusing Wicks of
"Irresponsible Embellishment"; Wicks countering that the tale derives from
"Family stories [...] perfected in the hellish Forge of Domestick Recension,
generation 'pon generation, till what survives is the pure truth, anneal'd
to Mercilessness about each Figure, no matter how stretch'd, nor how
influenced over the years by all Sentiments from unreflective love to
inflexible Dislike", which is the "common Duty of Remembering", contrasting
"our Sentiments" (i.e. our opinions, attitudes, feelings) with "poor cold
Chronologies". 

I'm not sure either point of view actually "wins" this debate. In this sense
it's a dialectic much like the discussion between Saure and Gustav in GR
over Rossini and Beethoven, and what these two artists represent vis à vis
art (and much better done, in terms of literary craftsmanship, in the later
novel, imo). But it certainly sets the scene for (the interpretation of) the
climactic events which ensue.

696-7 Anyway, the initial focus is the whip, what its appearance discloses
about its particular use, and potential uses. Dixon, in his Quaker hat and
red coat, had met up with the slave-driver at the inn the night before, had
been repulsed by the man's spruiking for the slave-auction on the morrow, to
the point where Jere "[s]everal times ... feels the need, strong as thirst,
to get up, walk over to the fellow, and strike him." (696.19) Dixon also has
a premonition that he will see (Austra?) again. When the slave-driver does
address him Jere puts on a cloak of insane cheeriness which is quite at odds
with the malevolent portent of his words ("Sooner or later ... a Slave must
kill his Master. It is one of the Laws of Springs." 697.3). Slave-driver
soon exits, stage left.

697-8 A fairly straight historical paragraph recounting the retreat of
settlers in the wake of Braddock's defeat sets up something of the tenor of
fear and mistrust prevailing along the east American seaboard at the time,
then a biographical prelude conveys that the incident with the slave-driver
about to be recalled was the spur for Mason's onset of affection, even love
("passion"), or admiration at least, for the Dixon who, without being
obliged to, "chose to act" (698.7) that day in the muddy Baltimore street.

A sardonic and self-effacing remark of Dixon's ("Rustick Joakery") downplays
his partner's adulation. What it does reinforce is the *active* and
thoroughly uncharacteristic nature of Dixon's intervention: Jere asks
whether, in the light of Chas's veneration of him, he should have a special
hero's uniform which provides "access to my Pistol" (698.14).

698-9 The scene itself, "unavoidable in the Street", is presented. The
slave-driver has not sold all his slaves, is swearing at them, blames them
for his ill fortune, and strikes at them six times with his whip as he
rants.

While Chas cringes Jere intervenes, seizes the whip, punches the
slave-driver hard in the nose as the man tries to take it back from him.
Dixon then lashes the cowering slave-drive with his own whip eight times
while he berates him. He takes the keys from the man's belt, frees the
slaves (is the "tall woman in a brightly strip'd Head-Cloth" 699.10 perhaps
Austra?), only some of whom will seek freedom, and then, on their advice, he
and Chas flee the scene as a "not at all friendly crowd" begins to gather.

699-700 Dixon souvenirs the whip and, mounting his horse, recalls "what
Christopher Maire must have meant long ago" when he had described Jere as an
"Instrument of God". He has taken the corporal punishment of another man
into his own hands, justly, and he vows now to himself to "keep Silence on
the Topick" henceforward.

As they ride out of town, outsiders again, even renegades of sorts, "they",
but primarily Mason, are afforded a sudden and depressing vision of the
urban American nightmare to come.

best