I'd like to introduce you, for the introduction of the next piece, to Glenn Campbell, a senior historian here at historic Annapolis.
As David said, never trust a historian.
Well, it was an afternoon in April 2015. I was out taking a lunchtime walk, as I often do, partway through the day, and wandered into a used bookshop on Main Street in Annapolis.
I know the owner there very well. I saw on a countertop in the bookshelf he had a few boxes of loose papers, different pieces of ephemera, and sticking out of one of the boxes I saw about this much of this piece.
It's handwritten, and the title is a new song, so I pulled this out of the box and started trying to make it out and asked the owner, Rock Taves, what he knew about it.
I learned from Rock that he had acquired it from the former owner of a different Annapolis bookstore, which has since shut down.
And that gentleman had acquired it from Ann Jensen, who was a descendant of the Sands family, and the Sands family had been in their own house on Prince George Street since 1770.
One possibility, Ann said, is Wicked Uncle Jackie. He had a reputation for being a bit of a rake or something, so that's a possibility that maybe Wicked Uncle Jackie, Sands, was the author of these words, because they're very humorous.
It's a very satirical look at high society. It's the lyrics to a song. Again, there's no tune associated with it.
I contacted David Hildebrand to say, do you know anything about this? Have you come across the song?
This is within the last year, and this is maybe the third time we've performed this in public.
What 18th century melodies might this fit?
It does work really well with a tune called the Libra Lera, an old Irish tune, and it seems, I know it's hard for us in modern times to follow this many verses, but they're all so good.
I'm going to do 15 of the 16 verses, because there was only one I could edit out at all.
He posed and he bells of Annapolis City, where the girls are all handsome and men are all witty.
Come listen awhile in your heel, but fell out. A few nights ago at the Governor's Routes.
The Routes was an evening party or reception, and so a big question I had was, well, who was the Governor?
I worked at the William Paca House, a historic Annapolis property, and William Paca was Governor of Maryland from 1782 to 1785.
So a big question I had was, could this possibly have been written during Paca's governorship?
Paca is at this point living in the former home of Governor Robert Eden. He was the last British governor of Maryland.
Eden certainly hosted events at his house when he lived there, and I have no doubt that Paca would have continued that practice.
Paca was the third state governor to live there.
That house is no longer standing. That was over on what is now Naval Academy property.
It stood about where one of the parking lots to the side of Dahlgren Hall is located.
And so I was looking in the manuscript for clues as to its dating, and there are two names.
Dr. Murray was a professionally trained physician. He ran the military hospital in Annapolis from 1780 to 1783.
The other name of William Logan, he's actually a barber.
From February 1783 to April 1784, he places 52 ads in the Maryland Gazette saying that he can cure all sorts of ailments.
So I think this is a commentary on this barber who is advertising these miraculous cures and then the real professionally trained physician who is taking issue with his claims.
So the question then is what would have brought people together to celebrate? Why might the governor have hosted this route?
And that was the time when Americans were celebrating the news that a provisional peace treaty had been reached with England.
When news arrived in April 1783, people up and down the former colonies now, the new United States celebrated.
At this governor's route, whether it's real or fictional, everybody is there and high and low are dancing and celebrating together.
Even senators thought it no harm for to play, that cards were just first for a drum the next day, the speaker himself with a full-bottomed wing, with Betsy the peddler was dancing a jig.
Even the traditional order of the dances is inverted in the song.
Typically they would start with minuets and then go on to reels and eventually the more energetic jigs.
In the song, they're starting with the jigs and then the reels and then the minuets.
So the idea is that all of society has been turned on its head by the success of the revolution, kind of the old ways of life are done.
And we're seeing society operate in a new way here.
There are allusions to two plays, farces written by David Garrick.
The first one mentioned is a play called Miss in Her Teens and that was performed in Baltimore in January 1783.
And then later on, one of the stanzas mentions a Justice Guttel and Justice Guttel was a character in another David Garrick play called The Lying Valet.
And we know that play was performed in Annapolis on April 19, 1783.
So, given all these clues of Logan and Murray and these two David Garrick farces, I think I can pretty confidently date it to spring 1783.
Justice Guttel with napkin tucked into his throat, fearing the grease would spoil his best coat, crammed down a whole turkey and half of a chime, and tart's most delicious with pudding so fine.
The rest didn't part, they'd well that they could, for who could refrain from such excellent food?
With knives sharp as razors and stomachs as king, they may have made their passage through fat and through a nail in the nail.
At night, having laid a solid foundation, the drink was prepared to keep up vexation.
Good health to the founder went briskly about, for the wine it was good, but the toddy was stout.
But some, I am told, kept it up for a whole night, for the leave of the creature they thought it's not right.
So at last the cup, crawling in day-keeping out, put it into my song and the galvanized bow.
