To let Lord Dexter bear the sway. When Dexter dies all things shall droop, Lord East, Lord West, Lord North shall stoop, And then Lord South with pomp shall come, And bear his body to the tomb. His tomb most charming to behold, A thousand sweets it doth unfold; When Dexter dies shall willows weep. Timothy is a cowardly young boy who appeared in the episode 'Rushmore Rumble' where he was the catalyst for the episode's events. Biography Rushmore Rumble. Little Timothy is traumatized for life. Dexter's Laboratory Characters. Dexter's Laboratory Wiki is a FANDOM TV Community. The Life of Lord Timothy Dexter, with Sketches of the Eccentric Characters that Composed his Associates, including his own writings, 'Dexter's Pickle for the knowing ones', &c., &c. Dexter, Timothy; Quince, Peter (1881). A pickle for the knowing ones: or, Plain truths in a homespun dress.
- Timothy Dexter Book
- Lord Timothy Dexter
- Pickle For The Knowing One
- Timothy Dexter Book With No Punctuation
- Timothy Dexter Children
One of the most gratifying curiosities of working in this trade is that every now and then you turn up a book that, though it be small in stature and ever so obscure, nonetheless makes an expansively good excuse for a story.
Just so with this lovely copy of “A Pickle for the Knowing Ones”, the august literary debut of Lord Timothy Dexter. Who he? Well…
Timothy Dexter (1748-1806), though born to a lowly station, was by the end of his life to become a prodigious businessman, a lunatic millionaire, a (self-appointed) Lord, a political philosopher and would-be prophet, a local laughing stock and latterly, through the reception of his much-loved memoir the “Pickle”, the comedy cult hero of the American Dream. If you can imagine a cross between Swedenborg and Forrest Gump, you’ve made a good start.
Massachusets born, Dexter worked first as a farm labourer, then as an apprentice leather-dresser. His fortunes changed sharply when he moved to Newburyport and managed to woo and marry a wealthy widow, Elizabeth Frothingham, conferring upon himself a sizeable fortune. He promptly spent a portion of this on a mansion, but then he began a series of business speculations which were as remarkably successful as they seemed ill-advised. These improbably profitable ventures included:
– Sending warming pans to the tropical West Indies (where the captain sold them as ladles for the molasses industry),
– Sending wool mittens to the same (where they were bought by Asian merchants happening by on route to Siberia), and
– Literally, sending coals to Newcastle (their arrival coinciding, as profitably for Dexter as it must have been dumbfounding for his “friends” who had jokingly advised him in this trade venture, with a miner’s strike).
Soon Dexter, whether through genius yoked to an illustrious destiny (as he believed), or through absurdly good luck (as everyone else thought), became one of the richest men in the State.
It is perhaps not surprising that a man so unremittingly blessed by Fortune should begin to consider himself in some way special – Dexter, however, took this tendency to the next level; he decorated his Newburyport mansion with minarets and put a golden eagle on the dome, created a mausoleum for himself and a garden populated by 40 wooden statues of eminent men: George Washington, William Pitt, Thomas Jefferson, Napoleon Bonaparte, and, chiefest amongst these, himself.
His own statue bore the unequivocal legend: “I am the First in the East, the First in the West, and the Greatest Philosopher in the Known World.”
He had a particularly eccentric relation to his wife (who, not forgetting of course his own genius, was in fact the original source of his fortune); at some point in his life, he conceived the notion that she had died, but continued to haunt him as a nagging ghost. In fact, she outlived him – twice; for Dexter once faked his own death and funeral, in order to see how people would react. When his wife (unsurprisingly) did not weep at her husband’s funeral (which was attended by 3,000 people), Dexter returned vengefully from the grave to cane her for not grieving sufficiently.
He actually died, without children, in 1806, and his mansion was ruined by storms; consequently, his main legacy remains his “Pickle”, in which, at the age of 50, he set down his vision of his life and the world in a disarmingly original style and orthography.
The text of the Pickle is divided into chapters, or outbursts, whose headings may give some notion of the book’s character and contents. Here are some:
– Lord Dexter relates how he was created Lord by the People, announces his intention of forming a Museum of great men, that shall be the wonder of the world, and shall confound his enemies.
– Lord Dexter relates how he came to Fortune, by Speculations in Warming-Pans, Whalebone, Bibles, and Government Securities.
– Lord Dexter informs the whole World of the Improvements made and contemplated about his Palace: describes his Tomb, &c.
– The Magnanimity of Lord Dexter
– Lord Dexter against Colleges and Priests
– Quixotana: Lord Dexter’s Pugilism – Rencontre with a Lawyer – the Peer suffers ignominious Defeat.
– Lord Dexter discourses very learnedly on Bridges
The Pickle appears to be the product of a seething brain – a headful of ideas driving him insane. Unobstructed by the dual fetters of an education and an audience, Dexter’s philosophy is bold in its scope, countenancing in its stride a “Dissertation on Man” (“man is the best Annemal and the worst all men are more or Less the Divel…sum Like a Dog sum Lik horses sum bare s Cat sum Lion sum lik ouls sum a monkey sum wild Cat” and so on), and concluding with a rousing vision of the universe and its destiny. But Dexter, as the “Greatest Philosopher in the Known World”, demonstrates an intellectual modesty that would shame Socrates when he asserts his vision as merely one “guess” among the infinite guesses of thinkers past and present. Indeed, his caveat, “Now I suppose I may guess as it is guesing times”, demonstrates a casual awareness of the great intellectual and philosophical ferment in the turbulent age through which Lord Dexter, like a comet, moved, and lived, and guessed.
Lord Dexter’s guess (which, regrettably, has had its spelling and puntuation amended by an editor who has missed the point entirely) merits reprinting in full:
“I guess the world is one very large living creature, and always was and always will be without any end from everlasting to everlasting… What grows on this large creature is trees and many other things. In the room of hair the rocks is moulds. This is called land where the hair grows, the belly the sea – all kinds of fish is the worms in the belly. This large body wants dressing to get our living of this creature and by industry we get a living – We and all the animal creation is less than fleas in comparison on the back or belly of this very large immense body. Among the hairs to work on this great body is that of Nature, past finding out. All we know is we are here, we come into this world crying and gone out groaning. Mankind is the master beadt on the earth – in the sea, the whale is the head fish – the great fish eat up the little ones, and so men not only destroy one another, but they are master over the whole of beasts and fish, even over a lion, therefore men is the masterly beast, and the worst of the whole – they know the most and act the worst according to what they known. Seeing mankind so bad by nature, I think when the candle goes out, men and women is done, they will lay as dirt or rocks till the great gun fires, and when that goes off the gun will be so large that the gun will contain nine hundred million tons of the best of good powder, then that will shake and bring all the bones together, then the world will be to an end. All kind of music will be going on, funding systems will be laid aside, the melody will be very great. Now why can’t you all believe the above written as well as many other things to be true, as welll as what was set forth in the last Centinel concerning digging up a frog twenty feet below the surface, where it was most as hard as a rock – there was his shape like taking a stone out of a rock. This is from a minister. Now why wont you believe me as well[?]”
The first edition (May 1802) was printed without any punctuation, but, after he received complaints, Dexter printed a second edition (1805) with all the punctuation supplied in an Appendix (still extant in this 1848 edition) along with the invitation to the readers that they may “peper and solt it as they plese”, attesting, perhaps, to a rare combination of lunacy with a sense of humour in Lord Dexter.
This lovely copy of the later 1848 edition, which confirmed the passing of Lord Dexter into the annals of local Massachusets “characters”, is published with a biography and commentary notes characterised by an affectionately tongue-in-cheek adulation of Lord Dexter’s unparalleled “sagacity”.
Lifetime editions of Dexter’s “Pickle” are almost inaccessibly scarce, since they were not properly published; Dexter had them printed at his expense, even distributing them freely on the roads to people, many of whom must have cast them, nonplussed, in the ditch. This 1848 edition seems to have been the best distributed and the most retained, being much more usually met with; however, copies as nice as ours are far from common.
Ours also has a pleasing tracable local association, bearing a near-contemporary gift inscription from Dr Francis A. Howe, a prominent Newburyport physician, who treated the poet John Greenleaf Whitter (an acquaintance, incidentally of Dexter’s appointed “poet lauriet” Jonathan Plummer – see picture) and helped to found the local Anna Jacques Hospital in the 1880s. Above the presentation inscription appears the ownership inscription of “W. B. Graves”, likely Natural Sciences Professor W. B. Graves of Phillips Academy, Andover, Mass. This inscription attests pleasingly to the continuing celebrity of Lord Dexter among the “Knowing Ones” of the state of Massachusetts.
Lord Dexter is regrettably little known this side of the pond – perhaps we are satisfied with our own bustling national roster of eccentrics – but he has a thriving cult status in his native land. Any “Knowing Ones” keen to know more would do well to explore www.lordtimothydexter.com
[The Essex Antiquarian was an illustrated monthly magazine devoted to the Biography, Genealogy, History and Antiquities of Essex County, Massachusetts. Printed in Salem, Massachusetts at the turn of the 20th Century, the journal was edited Sidney Perley, renowned researcher/author of Essex County history. Each monthly magazine appears to provide a sequel of different works and the following is a transcript from Volume II, published in July 1903, which corrects several inaccuracies found in prior biographical studies of Timothy Dexter, without prejudice.]
Who has not heard of 'Lord Timothy Dexter,' a citizen of Newburyport, and notorious for his extravagancies and foolish exhibitions? He was a son of Nathan and Esther (Brintnall) Dexter, and was born in Malden, Mass., Jan. 22, 1746-7. He wrote, 'I was born when great powers ruled, on Jan. 22, 1747. On this day, in the morning, a great snow storm; the signs in the seventh house; whilst Mars came forward Jupiter stood by to hold the candle. I was to be one great man.'
He had limited advantages in the way of schooling, and at the age of eight years, May 9, 1755, his father put him with a farmer in Malden, with whom he remained six years and six months. He then went to Charlestown, the then principal center of the skin or leather dressing business of New England, and learned the trade of a leather dresser, dressing skins for leather breeches and gloves. He stayed there eleven months and then went to Boston, where he remained until he was of age. Fourteen days later, he says, 'I went to Newbury Port with A bondel in my hand to A plase all noue to me.'
He engaged in the business of a leather dresser in Newburyport; and in May, 1770, he married a widow who was nine years his senior. This was Elizabeth, daughter of John Lord of Exeter, N. H., and widow of Benjamin Frothingham of Newburyport, a glazier. The widow was industrious and frugal and possessed of a house and lot on the southern corner of Merrimack and Green streets. With her, Timothy Dexter, then twenty-three years old, took up his residence. In the basement of the house Mrs. Dexter conducted a shop for the sale of provisions, vegetables and small fruits; and in the garden Mr. Dexter dug vats, and continued at his trade.
He prospered in business; and entered into speculation in various ways. Among the first was his purchase of land at the Penobscot, and as a proprietor in the Ohio company's purchase, being associated in the latter with Dr. Manasseh Cuttler and other prominent men. He prospered in these land ventures. At about the same time, he was advised, as a joke, it is said, to buy a large quantity of public securities when they were selling at about thirteen per cent of their face value. He followed the advice, and the adoption of the new constitution, followed by the Hamilton funding system, caused the securities to advance in value to nearly par. It is supposed that he profited to the extent of ten thousand dollars by the rise of the market.
Many are the stories that have been told during the past century of the ventures that seemed at the time utterly foolish, but which resulted in great profit to Mr. Dexter. He bought a large quantity of warming pans, and shipped them to the West Indies at the instance of some merchant clerks, as a part of an assorted cargo. The Yankee ingenuity of the young commander of the craft that carried them to the sunny South was aroused, and he took off the covers and had handles attached to them. The covers were readily sold as skimmers, and the pans as ladles, to the various sugar making establishments at a good profit.
Before the days of Wall street, he practised (sic) its methods, buying articles when beginning to be scarce and cornering the market. As an illustration of this, the whalebone story is told. Some one told him that the whales were all dying off, and he bought at once all that could be found in the market, and disposed of it at a large profit. He kept his eyes open for chances of this sort, and at one time made a good thing out of a similar speculation in opium. After awhile shrewd merchants were slow in selling their stock in trade to him, being apprehensive from his mere desire to purchase that the goods were about to rise in value, though they could see no reason for such a conclusion. A shipment of red woollen (sic) night caps to the coast of Guinea, suggested as a joke, turned out greatly to his benefit. The same is said of sending Bibles to the West Indies. He was sharp at a bargain but met all his engagements promptly and squarely. In all his speculations, he is said to have had conferences first with Madam Hooper of Newburyport, and after her decease with Moll Pitcher of Lynn before he engaged in them. Such a man as he would naturally be superstitious. He had dream and fortune telling books of his own. Both of the above named sorceresses were shrewd, and their advice, aside from any occult ability they may have possessed, was valuable.
Having secured what was estimated in his time and place an independent fortune, Mr. Dexter turned his attention from money making to money spending, and an endeavor to achieve notoriety. He gave liberally to the poor and religious societies. In June, 1800, he presented to St. Paul's and the Presbyterian church in Newburyport one hundred pounds each for the purchase of a bell for each of their houses of worship; and in October, 1800, he gave an elegant standard to the artillery company of Newburyport. He offered to build a market house and to pave certain parts of the town; and in his will he gave to his native town three hundred dollars for a bell for the meeting house, and two thousand dollars for the support of the gospel there, and two thousand dollars to Newburyport for the benefit of the poor outside of the alms house.
With the acquirement of wealth and desire for notoriety and probably popularity, he changed his abode. April 8, 1791, he purchased, for fourteen hundred pounds, the stately Tracy house, now [and still, ed.] the public library. Here he lived for five years, and April 9, 1796, conveyed the estate to John Greenleaf. He removed to Chester, N. H., where he purchased an extensive country seat. In that new section of the country, he first gave rein to his desire for notoriety. He ornamented his new house in the most fastidious manner, and built 'magnificent' stables. He styled himself 'King of Chester,' and undertook to exercise kingly prerogatives over his neighbors; but they put an end to his audacity and impudence by the aid of the horsewhip.
In 1798, Mr. Dexter returned to Newburyport, and August 15th of the same summer he bought the large house on High street that had been erected by Jonathan Jackson in 1771. Its situation is high, and commands an extensive view of the coast and the Isles of Shoals. The grounds were laid out by intelligent landscape gardeners. Everything about the house was in excellent order; but not to his wish. He raised minarets on the roof, and surmounted them with gilt balls. He caused it to assume a gaudiness and cheapness that was most undesirable to a person of taste.
Directly before the front door of the house, on a Roman arch, he erected a figure of Washington in his military garb, and on his left, a figure of Jefferson, and on his right one of Adams, the latter being hatless. On columns erected in the garden were figures of Indian chiefs, generals, philosophers, politicians, statesmen, and goddesses of Fame and Liberty. He changed the name of the statues by the aid of the painter's brush as he pleased. General Morgan was thus transformed into Bonaparte, and to the latter Dexter always touched his, hat. There were more than forty of these figures, including four lions, two couchant, and two passant. These images were of wood, life size, and fairly well carved. The lions were open-mouthed and looked fierce. The figures were made by a young ship carver who had just come to Newburyport, named Joseph Wilson, and were gaudily painted. The images were all in good condition when Dexter died, and the first to fall was an Indian. The remainder stood until the great September gale of 1815, when all but the presidents were cast prostrate upon the earth. The images were sold at auction, the specimen that brought the most money, five dollars, was the goddess of Fame. William Pitt was sold for a dollar, and the 'Travelling Preacher,' fifty cents. It is said that the arch and figures of the three presidents, all the presidents there had been in Dexter's day, cost at least two thousand dollars, the lions two hundred dollars apiece, and the other images a similar amount.
In the group of presidents, Jefferson held in his hand a scroll partly unrolled, which represented the Declaration of Independence. The painter was an artist named Babson, and when he painted the inscription for Jefferson he proceeded to write upon the scroll the words 'The Declaration of Independence,' but when the second word was begun, Dexter ordered him to write 'Constitution.' To this the artist objected, but a random shot from a pistol brought the painter to terms, and the scroll ever afterwards read, 'The Constitution.' The three presidents occupied their positions upon the arch until about 1850.
He had a stable well filled with good horses, and frequently procured new animals, having owned a number of spans. He rode in a gaudily painted coach, which had a Dexter coat of arms emblazoned upon it, with the baronial supporters. He also had a footman. He desired to have a library of books that would indicate a literary taste; and he procured the best bound volumes be could find, having little regard for their contents. He rarely read in them. The leaves in many of them were turned down at attractive places, and numerous cuts were taken from the volumes by his curious visitors. Pictures were also suspended upon the walls of the house in profusion, gaudy daubs being most numerous.
Having completed his new house and provided it with appurtenances suitable to a grandee of his stamp, he announced himself, this former dresser of skins, as 'Lord Dexter, the first in the east, the first in the west, and the greatest philosopher in the western world.' One thing he lacked, however: he must have some one to sing his praises, a poet laureate. Over in Newbury he found the man he wanted. This was Jonathan Plummer, who was fourteen years younger than himself. The man was suitable for the position, the choice was indeed a wise one. For the sake of the notoriety he would gain and the good material things of life given him he was entirely willing to be Dexter's fool. His employment consisted in writing rhymes to the glory of 'his lord's ' power, wisdom and wealth, and as long as Dexter lived all went well with him. William Barley, a strong man, six feet, seven inches in height, called 'Dwarf Billy,' was in Dexter's employ as the protector of his orchard at one time.
There was no dullness about 'Lord' Dexter. He could not be still, and having little to occupy his mind he fluttered from folly to folly. Liquor was indulged in too freely. He said of himself that he could no more be still than a devil's needle. He had an idea that he would like to be buried, when he died, in his garden. He built a tomb, not a lightless vault, but a basement story, so to speak, of a pleasant summer house. He then had his coffin prepared. He searched for, and found here and there, mahogany boards full of knots, gnarls, and richly colored veins. The coffin was beautifully made lined and pillowed. Massive silver handles were employed. He was delighted with it, and tried it. He then placed it on exhibition in one of his rooms. Now he had his coffin and tomb, he turned his attention to his funeral. But the only thing he could do about that was to hold a rehearsal. Cards were sent to certain persons inviting them to his funeral; and his wife and children were dressed in mourning. Some wag read the burial service and pronounced a eulogy. The procession moved to the tomb, the coffin was deposited therein and the door locked. The mourners returned to the house, and filled up on the choicest wines. Soon, cries were heard in the kitchen; Dexter was caning his wife, because she had shed no tears.
Timothy Dexter Book
'Lord' Dexter wrote a pamphlet entitled 'A Pickle for the Knowing Ones.' It is a unique production and in his best style. It principally concerns himself and begins as follows: 'Ime the first Lord in the younited States of A mercary Now of Newburyport it is the voise of the peopel and I cant Help it and so Let it goue Now as I must be Lord there will foller many more Lords pretty Soune for it Dont hurt A Cat Nor the mouse Nor the son Nor the water Nor the Eare then goue on all is Easey Now bons broaken all is will all in Love Now I be gin to Lay the corner ston and the kee ston with grat Remembrence of my father Jorge Washington the grate herow 17 sentreys past.'
The author wisely provided for the punctuation of the book by the reader by placing a sufficient quantity of periods, commas, semi-colons, and other points at the end of the book with instructions to pepper and salt it to suit their tastes. It was printed at the office of the Salem Register, and a large edition was issued. He sent them as presents to 'the knowing ones' and others. The book had a frontispiece that was engraved by James Atkins of Newburyport. The peculiar dog is said to be a good likeness of the canine companion of his 'titled' master. The portrait of 'Lord ' Dexter was engraved originally by Doyle from a wax figure of Dexter in the Columbian museum, in or before 1810.
'Lord' Dexter wrote many occasional pieces, and the following is, given as a good specimen of his style. This was an advertisement printed and circulated upon the robbery of his peach orchard. 'Whereas I, Lord Timothy Dexter, having been truly informed that several audacious, atrocious, nefarious, intrepid, night walking, garden violating, immature, peach stealing rascals, all the spawns of the devil, and cubs of Satan, do frequently, villainously, and burglariously assemble themselves together in my garden, therein piping, fighting, swearing, roguing, duck egg hunting, with many other shameful and illicit acts which the modesty of my pen cannot express. This is to give you all notice Delicarians, Capinicarians, Talarminarians, base born scoundrels, and old rascals, of whatever nation you may be, return ye my fruit and property, or, by the Gods, the Heathen Gods, I swear, I will send my son Sam to Babylon, for bloodhounds fiercer than tigers, and fleeter than the winds; and mounted on my noted horse Lily, with my cutting sabre in my hand, I will hunt you through Europe, Asia, Africa, and America, until I can enter you in a cavern under a great tree in Newfoundland, where Beelzebub himself can never find you.
'Hear! ye tatterdernallions, thieves, vagabonds, lank jawed, herring gutted, and tun-bellied plebeians, that if ye, or any of ye, dare set your feet in my house or garden, I will deliver you to Charon, who will ferry you across the River Styx, and deliver you to the Royal Arch Devil Lucifer, at the place of his infernal cauldron, there to be dredged with the sulphur of Caucassus, and roasted forever before the burning crater of AEtna.
LORD TIMOTHY DEXTER.'
Lord Timothy Dexter
Dexter had no definite ideas of religion. He sometimes apparently held a peculiar philosophy, similar to transmigration, and again expressed sentiments closely allied to deism. His death was hastened by his intemperate habits, being intoxicated a large portion of the time during his latter years. His will was a wise one in spite of his extravagant life. Reason left him two days before his death, which occurred peacefully in his house Oct. 23, 1806, at the age of fifty-nine. His remains were not allowed to repose in his tomb, and they still lie where they were placed in the Old Hill burying ground by the side of the Mall. A simple marble slab marks his resting place. Near the top is the picture of an urn, the initials, 'T. D.' being engraved upon it. The inscription reads as follows:
Pickle For The Knowing One
In memory of
Mr TIMOTHY DEXTER,
who died October 23'
A. D. 1806.
AEtatis 60
He gave liberal Donations,
For the support of the Gospel:
For the benefit of the Poor,
And for other benevolent purposes.
Timothy Dexter Book With No Punctuation
His wife survived him until July 3, 1809 and lies buried at his side. Her plain marble gravestone is inscribed as follows:
In Memory of
Elizabeth Dexter
who died July 3, 1809
AEt. 72
The Dexter house still stands, and is a stately mansion, with extensive and beautiful grounds. Mr. and Mrs. Dexter had two children, a son and daughter. The son was Samuel Lord Dexter, and he was baptized Oct. ,6, 1772. He lived at home and died July 20, 1807, without issue. The daughter was named Nancy. She was born Aug. 16, 1776; and married Abraham Bishop of New Haven, Conn. It proved to be an unhappy marriage; and they separated. She became a drunkard and finally an imbecile, and died in Newburyport Sept 30, 1851, leaving a daughter.
Timothy Dexter Children
Source: The Essex Antiquarian Volume VII, Salem, Massachusetts, published July, 1903, No. 3