MAN
OR MONSTER?
© Jeffrey Dane 2001
The famous and the infamous can make their marks in virtually any field - be they statesmen or soldiers, poets or composers, pastors or lovers, artists or critics, jurists or charlatans, scholars or academics. Things aren't always as they seem: the subject of this tract could have been any of these - or he could have been none of these. . . .
* * * * * * * * *
Washington was not
yet our nation's capitol; France was in its Reign of Terror; Beethoven was
making his mark in Vienna; Bach was decades dead and Brahms was decades ahead.
This was the era into which this man was born, though different sources give
conflicting data about the year of his birth. Unfortunately, the conduct of his
own life and career reflects his participation in the darkest sides of the Age
of Enlightenment.
During his life he was alternately hated and revered, even by his own
countrymen: paradoxically reviled as man and revered as monster, he was
worshipped as a national hero by some, and by others considered an abomination.
Despite losing a limb, he remained a strutting egoist with a Napoleonic power
complex, prompting some to refer to him disparagingly but aptly as "The
Immortal Three-Fourths." He was vain enough to have his disembodied limb
placed in a crystal reliquary and interred in a gilded monument, that it might
be revered or even worshipped by others. At times cowardly, at others almost
recklessly daring, he reinforced his courage with a powerful drug.
A scoundrel, gambler, womanizer and lecher, conceited, ruthless, shrewd and
conniving, he was also unprincipled and an opportunist. Within weeks after his
wife died (he was nearly 50), he married a 15-year-old girl.
A man of contradictions, complexities and paradoxes, in keeping with the
magnitude of his most infamous deed, he could also be compassionate and
magnanimous. He was human, just like all of us. Beneath the vanity and ego,
there was an underlying desire to accomplish good. Nearly six feet tall, he
could make an imposing appearance, and some might have called him
charismatic.
With little formal education, he still eventually arrived, when relatively
young, at the pinnacle he sought - but his route was bestrewn with treachery and
betrayal of friends and causes for his own advancement.
An eyewitness described him in his forties: ". . . a melancholy
appearance, decidedly the best-looking and most interesting figure in the group.
. . of sallow complexion, fine dark eyes, soft and penetrating, an interesting
expression of face. . . Knowing nothing of his past history, one would have
thought him a philosopher, living in dignified retirement. . . a veritable
riddle in character. . . How frequently this look of philosophic resignation, of
placid sadness, is seen on the countenances of the most cunning, ambitious,
designing and most dangerous men. . . quiet and gentlemanly in his manners, yet
here sat he, with this air de philosophé, perhaps one of the worst men in the
world: ambitious of power, greedy of money, and unprincipled, having feathered
his nest at the expense of others. . . "
In the era of quills and inkwells, before the railroad, the revolver, the
Industrial Revolution, and arts, sciences and entities we now take for granted,
his personal traveling accouterments included silver teapots & cream
pitchers, monogrammed china, crystal glasses and decanters with gold stoppers,
silk sheets & undergarments, and costly diamond studs. One of his coats
weighed nearly 20 pounds, laden with enough silver for a set of spoons. Today
some of his personal effects are displayed in a museum fittingly devoted to the
memory of people he actually destroyed. The edifice that houses that museum has
a distinctive façade and a campanulate roof, and even in silhouette is one of
the world's most identifiable structures.
Some, from a head of state to the head of a company's department, are drawn more
to evil than to good. In concept and practice, "Power corrupts" is an
unfortunate feature of many in positions of authority and influence, the
manifestation of which is amply reflected in our daily existence, with the
business office as a most worthy example. In this man, it found its most worthy
model. In his youth, his worship of his mentor reinforced the most savage
methods of the worst traits in his own character. Karl Marx admired him. Some of
us experiment with questionable practice at some point in our lives, usually in
immature youth, and then outgrow it. Not this man. He made it a feature of his
life. Ironically, his grandson, named after him, became a Jesuit priest and
lived into the sixth decade of the 20th century.
Van Gogh? "Sunflowers." Brahms? "Lullaby." Dante? "The
Inferno." Da Vinci? "Mona Lisa." Michelangelo? "Moses."
Tolstoy? "War and Peace." Leonard Bernstein? "West Side
Story," etc., ad infinitum. Mention now this man's name, and what
invariably comes to mind is one infamous episode with which he's become
indelibly linked.
* * * * * * * * *
He became anathema to
others after a now-historic incident in which he was effectively responsible for
the death of scores of people. Some of them were actually famous, and they
ultimately became martyrs. His name became fused with that occurrence, which was
arguably the greatest single traumatic event in the early culture of that area.
To call it an event would be understatement epitomized. One of the most
significant and tragic of any era, the incident soon reached iconic status in
the annals of history, and has since literally become, in a word, legendary. So
complete is his identification with that tragedy that he has become almost
synonymous with it (with the appropriate negative connotation), and the very
mention of his name even today calls to mind that occasion and its sweeping and
extensive aftermath. We remember him more for that one incident than for
anything else, bad or good, in which he was involved during his lifetime.
"The only thing we learn from history is that we do not learn." Thus
spoke Chief Justice Earl Warren at the time of JFK's assassination. His remark
has an application to what had transpired in the previous century. The man
responsible for that earlier catastrophe committed a blunder which in its
stupidity rivals that of the Stamp Act years before, of the Salem witch trials
decades before, and of the Spanish Inquisition centuries before. He's now
remembered, and perplexingly was even admired by some, for his despicability.
Wheels turn. He was ultimately bested by a man after whom a large city was later
named. It's said that he dallied with a young lady, about whom a popular song
was later written. Times change. Even today a hotel named for her is
coincidentally located literally across the street from the site where that
historic tragedy occurred.
Though he lived well into the photography era, he outlived most of his
counterparts and all those who lost their lives in that notorious tragedy. They,
however, were never photographed; they all perished before the advent of the
camera. He showed little foresight in having viewed the occurrence as a kind of
victory.
* * * * * * * * *
On his first visit to
America he spent six days in Washington, DC, conferring with one of our early
presidents. His second American stay, in exile 30 years later, began in New
Jersey when ". . .Abraham Baez, a Jew, conducted me to his house in
Elizabeth Port," he wrote in his memoirs. That his ship docked there may
have prompted later contradictions about whether he actually lived in the state,
and other factors compounded the confusion.
In his native country, he had befriended a Hungarian who in New York invited him
to spend some time on Staten Island, where ". . .I had Baez rent me a
furnished house in New York." He's said to have operated a grocery and
general store for a time, living first on St.Mark's Place and later at West New
Brighton on Manor Road, both on Staten Island. One source claims he had a
penchant for cock-fights and three-card monte, in keeping with his gambling
proclivities. About his Hungarian friend, he later wrote, "He, with some
other businessmen, deceived and robbed me" - a very determined accusation,
considering what he himself had done to others throughout his life.
According to tradition he was instrumental in introducing to the American public
a popular habit, to the ultimate delight of youngsters and to the consternation
of parents and teachers. He had brought with him a tropical substance, chicle,
which produced a whitish fluid. He told a group of businessmen, "When you
cure this liquid, it hardens and assumes a chewy character," adding that
mixing it with sugar and mint gave it a sensational taste.
He had meanwhile hired a secretary and interpreter named James Adams (some
sources say Thomas Adams), who lived in Elizabeth Port. Adams saw how his
employer enjoyed chewing the stuff and asked him about it. When the old man, now
in his 70s, left for his native land, he gave Adams what remained of the supply.
Adams soon experimented and eventually founded his own firm. Even today the
confection has its own modern counterpart: the popular chewing gum Chiclets, for
decades made by The Adams Chewing Gum Co., takes its name from the substance the
old man had brought with him. Interestingly, the product distributed today in
the USA is now manufactured in his native country.
* * * * * * * * *
In
and out of favor during the last three decades of his life, he spent his
literally declining years in failing health, approaching senility and almost
blind. His compulsion to address the masses never left him, and what's come down
to us is the pathetic scene of his wife paying the indigent to listen to him
speak, and then pretend to cheer.
He lived into his eighties, dying infirm, in poverty and virtually unnoticed in
Mexico City on June 21, 1876. Buried at Tepeyac Cemetery, near Guadalupe
Hidalgo, he survived by four decades those he had destroyed at dawn on Sunday,
March 6, 1836 at the Alamo in San Antonio, Texas. The obvious, by its very
nature, can easily escape our attention, so it may be worth noting that Antonio
Lopez de Santa Anna y Peréz de Lebrón was as alive then as we are today.
# # #
Author's Bio:
JEFFREY DANE is a historian, researcher, and essayist whose writing on various subjects appears in the USA and abroad in several languages, and in both print and online publications. He's a contributor to several volumes, including "On The Crockett Trail" by Rod Timanus (Pioneer Press, Union City, Tennessee, November, 1999); "An Illustrated History of Texas Forts," also by Rod Timanus (Republic of Texas Press, Plano, Texas, February, 2001); and "Leonard Bernstein - A Life" by Meryle Secrest (Alfred Knopf, New York, 1994). He was asked to write the Foreword for "The Alamo Story: From Early History to Current Conflicts" by J.R. Edmondson (Rep. of TX Press, February, 2000). He's been called by some a real idealist and by others an ideal realist. Both views have merit. From a historian's perspective, if he had a choice of meeting any iconic European composer of the 19th century, it would be Johannes Brahms - and if he had a choice of meeting any 19th-century icon in the history of the American West, it would be James Bowie.