Letters

There was a vandal with a poet’s heart, Andrew uncomfortably replies, to whom the fit response might be another patriotic ode, one that will stir the indignation even of New Englanders. Pen has a natural rhyme in men, for example, does it not, and palm in balm. Shall they give it a go?

Their camaraderie remains on this level, for Key is either ignorant of the actual defense preparations of Baltimore (which information Andrew solicits in the hope of both restoring his credit with Ross and Cochrane and misleading them) or distrustful of his new companion. The combination of pens and statuary suggests to Andrew that graven is a more promising rhyme for Barlow’s raven than the one Lord Byron came up with: he volunteers it to Key and resolves to send it on to Byron as well, for consideration in some future elegy to Sir Peter Parker.

When the fleet turns off the Bay and up into the Potomac on the 8th, they wonder whether they have been yet again deliberately misled; whether a follow-up attack on Washington is the real, at least the first, objective. But on the 9th they meet Captain Gordon’s flotilla returning from Alexandria; the diversion has been a standby for rescuing Gordon if necessary. The combined forces stand back downriver, anchor overnight at the mouth of the Patuxent, and on the 10th run north past frantic A

Say now, Muse, for Henry’s sake, what Key can’t see, nor John Ski

The letter from Prevost to Cochrane is authentic; the one Prevost intercepts from Fosset to Macomb is false. Those 10,000 reinforcements do not exist. The U.S. Secret Service has forged the letter and entrusted its delivery to “an Irishwoman of Cumberland Head” whom they know to be a double agent; as they hope, she dutifully betrays them and delivers it to Prevost instead of to Macomb. Was it you, my darling (Andrew wonders at Rochefort a year later, from the deck of Bellerophon), who forged that letter for the Secret Service, or who posed as that Irishwoman? Were you reversing the little trick we play’d on General Hull at Detroit? May I believe that you too think it time to end the British dallying at Ghent and conclude a treaty, now that our Indian Nation seem’d assured?

Andrée does not reply. He will never know, nor we.

Say on then, Muse, for Henry, what you saw and Andrew didn’t at the Battle of Baltimore, which like the Battle of Plattsburgh never quite took place. It is Monday, September 12th, still warm in Maryland and threatening rain. Ross and Cockburn begin their overland advance, pause for breakfast at a convenient farmhouse, and decline the owner’s cautious invitation to return for di

Can you see, Muse, through the rain of that sodden Tuesday, the letters going back and forth between Brooke and Cochrane, army and navy? Cochrane has written Ross on the Monday afternoon that, as best he can see from the river, the flank of Sam Smith’s earthworks may be turned without a frontal assault. His letter comes back that evening unopened, together with the news of Ross’s death. Unperturbed, perhaps relieved, Cochrane orders the body preserved in a cask of Jamaican rum and dashes off encouragement to Colonel Brooke: Prevost says burn, burn; I will take Fort McHenry (the harbor, alas, is blocked with scuttled privateers); you take the city. On Tuesday morning his bomb and rocket ships open fire, out of range of the guns of the fort. Three hours later he is already wavering; another letter goes down the river and up the North Point Road, this one to Brooke via Admiral Cockburn: It appears we ca