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.And sometimes, all done up in her regal finery, Mrs.Moore wouldventure out into backwoods Kentucky to inspect her domain in a car-riage drawn by silver-caparisoned horses.On one of these tours, saysNation s biographer Robert Lewis Taylor, she was preceded by herhusband s  choicest slave, a giant called Big Bill, who wore  a scarlethunting coat and carried  a brass hunting horn to announce his royalmistress.[She] set off to call on the King of Belgium, but failed could not, in fact,locate the palace and on another she bawled out the Duke of Bucking-ham, who was hoeing a patch of onions.She knighted three or four farm-ers, one of whom struck back, and stripped an itinerant tinker of all hislands in Sussex.The man s first reaction was good-humored, not to saybawdy, but he later threatened to take her into court and get the prop-erty back.The queen s paraphernalia, the crown and robes and horses, wereprovided by her husband, who had been selling more cattle and tobaccothan usual of late, turning a nice profit, and who, although quite baffledby his mate s masquerades, spent his money so cheerfully on them thattoday s psychobabblers would dismiss him out of hand as an enabler.ToCarry, not burdened with such insights, he was the best father imag-inable. I have met many men who had lovable characters, she laterwrote,  but none equaled him in my estimation.He was not a saint, buta man one of the noblest works of God.His wife thought highly of him, too; she named him Prince Consort.In time, Carry became weary of palace life and began to keep to her-self.She left home for a while to serve as a nurse in the Civil War andfinally decided on a permanent escape at age nineteen by marrying aveteran named Charles Gloyd, a doctor who  was as much scholar asphysician, and spoke and read several languages. Gloyd had decidedto give up medicine to become a schoolteacher, and met his intendedwhen he arranged for room and board at the Moore residence shortlybefore taking up his first position in the classroom.In addition, he met the queen, who was troubled by Gloyd from theoutset, and not just because of his status as commoner.She sensed inhim both an undercurrent of violence and a disregard for the teachingsof the church.She warned her daughter that a union with such a mancould not possibly come to any good.In fact,  she issued a royal banagainst his speaking to Carry; also, the two were prohibited from being130 Chapter 6alone together in a room.The decree set up an awkward situation; thehouse was of limited size, and the young pair often had to skirmish,with quick dashes and sorties, to avoid finding themselves tete-a-tete inan unoccupied chamber.But the monarch s daughter, headstrong even then, did not listen.She and her intended set a date and went through with the ceremonyas planned, young Carry Moore becoming a Gloyd and eagerly antici-pating a new life in different, more romantic places.Her mother, though, was right.It seemed that the groom had longbeen a heavy drinker, addicted to the bottle before the war broke outand driven deeper into liquid dependency by his experiences under fire.He even showed up in an inebriated state for his nuptials, so much sothat his breath reeked and his skin was flushed and he could barely re-main upright, teetering as the preacher asked for his responses and ut-tering them thickly.Later in the day, after continuing to imbibe andalmost passing out two or three times, Gloyd regained enough controlof himself to impregnate his new wife.Then he collapsed in a heap andwas out for the rest of the night.His bride, on the other hand, barely slept at all, and we may imagineher terror: a young woman lying in a marriage bed for the first time nextto a vile stranger who smelled of decay and indifference and had handledher roughly, the darkness in the room seeming to shut her off from allthat she had ever known and perhaps all she had ever dreamed.Shewas no longer a child, nor merely a daughter; she could not go homeagain [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]