The Loyal Son by Daniel Mark Epstein

Author:Daniel Mark Epstein
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2017-05-29T16:00:00+00:00

This letter must have put the fear of God in Joseph Galloway and his friend the governor of New Jersey, arriving when it did, only days before the carnage at Lexington and Concord, and weeks before the appearance of the old wizard himself, in his doublet jacket and cocked hat, on the Market Street wharf. It never occurred to them that his would be anything other than a voice of reason.

TREVOSE, THE ANCESTRAL HOME of the Galloway family, commanded a hilltop in Bucks County above the bend of Neshaminy Creek. More than a century old in 1775, the two-story mansion of pointed fieldstone with its high-pitched roof, nine windows wide, enjoyed a view of forests, fields, and orchards. The traveler could see it from miles away.

The air was sweet with apple blossoms. As the carriage rolled and jolted along the curving lane between columns of chestnut trees, Benjamin Franklin admired the classic façade, the white portico and pillars of the venerable dwelling. There were few houses in America older than he was, and this was a very fine one. He had fond memories of his friend’s hospitality in an easier time. Mrs. Galloway’s grandfather had built the house in 1680, and she had inherited it from her father in 1770. As the law prohibited wives from owning property while their husbands lived, it became Joseph’s. So the great estate would be held hostage to his political choices.

After the coachman reined his horses to a halt, got down, and offered a hand to help his famous passenger to the door, the old man stretched his limbs and paused. His friend Cadwalader Evans had informed him that Galloway had collapsed from sunstroke while working in his father-in-law’s fields some time ago. He had not recovered from the shock to his nervous system, the vertigo, the anxiety. Perhaps this explained his erratic behavior, his self-sabotage in politics, his ranting in the press. Franklin really had no idea what to expect more than the warmth of friendship in the handshake, the embrace, the smile of welcome. He had a great gift for friendship and believed the man would still care for him, even after a decade of confusion.

He was unprepared for the change in Galloway’s appearance. Hollow-eyed, gaunt, and pallid, his cheeks sunken, the forty-four-year-old still had his hair, now silver, lank, and carelessly unbound; his face had narrowed strangely, as if it had been pressed in an invisible vise, the wide-set eyes somehow too close together. As they stood together in the high center hall, the lord of the manor greeted his old mentor. Franklin was a vigorous gentleman of nearly seventy, with an air of confidence and humorous serenity in his blue eyes, a figure that stood in awkward contrast to the younger man’s premature frailty and agitation.

The men were fond of wine, and after the long carriage ride Franklin would not have declined a glass as he took his ease in the airy parlor. Mrs. Galloway and her pretty fourteen-year-old daughter Elizabeth came and went, smiled and curtsied, and retired.

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