"A female biography," said the Flounder, "that, I believe, the feminist movement should take as an example. Amanda Woyke not only gave taste to our potatoes; with her big farm kitchen she also provided a harbinger of the future, already burgeoning Chinese world food solution. ("And when they really get it working," I said maliciously to Ilsebill, "where will you be with your wishes?")
The said Benjamin Thompson was born in 1753 in the
British colony of Massachusetts. His father died when he was still a child, and was replaced by a stepfather — or, as Thompson wrote to Amanda, "by my poor mother's tyrannical husband." While apprenticed to a merchant, Thompson became interested in methods of storing and shipping salt fish. (In addressing the court, the Flounder did not deny that he had advised the young man—"directly or indirectly; after all, I'm at home in all seven seas.")
Boston just then was aboil with anti-British sentiment. While tinkering with fireworks designed to celebrate a victory of the American colonists over the colonial administration — the Whigs had just defeated the so-called Stamp Act in the British Parliament — Thompson suffered an accident. From that time on he sided with the colonial power, became a spy for the British, and as such tested his latest invention, an invisible ink that showed up after a certain lapse of time.
After his burns had healed, he studied at Harvard College during his spare time and became a schoolmaster at Concord, New Hampshire, which had previously borne the name of Rumford. A rich widow soon took the young teacher as her husband, an event that seems to have had the effect of another premature explosion of fireworks, for he enlisted in the army, was appointed a major in the second New Hampshire regiment, wore a scarlet coat, and looked upon himself for a short time as the father of his daughter Sally. Then, despised by his countrymen, he fled, was arrested by the so-called Minutemen, tried by a Concord court, and released, though still under suspicion of having served the British as a secret agent and written the British governor coded letters in his invisible ink.
On the outbreak of the Revolutionary War, Thompson took the last ship out of besieged Boston. Before the Women's Tribunal, the Flounder justified this flight on the strength of youthful ambition. Thompson, so he claimed, had sought broader fields for his talents. In the Old World, strange to say. In London he was appointed secretary of the colony of Georgia. Regrettably, Thompson had been responsible for suggesting the use of Hessian mercenaries; he had also recruited them and organized their crossing. Still,
his election to the Royal Society shows that he had engaged in scientific activity as well.
To which the prosecutor replied, amid general laughter: "Scientific activity! Let's call it by the right name. Mr. Thompson improved the construction of muskets by figuring out the best place to put the vent. From childhood on he had a thing about gunpowder. When he grew up, he still wanted to play at war. He set up a regiment in New York, though the war was already lost. And let me tell you about his one act of heroism: building a fort in the graveyard at Huntington. Do you know what he built it with? Tombstones Even the oven was made of tombstones. Later on the incised names of the departed-Josiah Baxter, John Miller, Timothy Vanderbilt, Abraham Wells, and so on-could be read in raised mirror-writing on the freshly baked loaves, so bearing witness to Colonel Thompson's scientific enterprise. In recognition of this grandiose achievement, he was pensioned for life at half a lieutenant colonel's pay the moment he arrived back in England. When they wouldn't let him play war games in India, he crossed over to the continent in the hope of European wars. He had his riding horses with him. As ridiculous as ever in a scarlet uniform. Went to Vienna via Strassburg and Munich. Cut a figure wherever he went. But nothing came of the war against the Turks. After getting himself knighted in England, he entered the service of Maximilian, elector of Bavaria, and settled in Munich as
Sir Benjamin.
"So much, defendant Flounder, for the early life of your magnificent protege Mr. Thompson. A hidebound reactionary. A spy. An adventurer and a charlatan. A conceited fop. A morose philanthropist, morose because he'd been deprived of his war games; not untalented, quick to learn languages, for by the autumn of his first year in Bavaria he wrote the farm cook Amanda Woyke a stilted letter asking for advice: how, he asked, might the benefits of potato culture, as exemplified in Pomerania and West Prussia, be conferred upon the people of Bavaria?" The prosecutor quoted: " 1, no, the world knows of your agronomic achievements, thanks to which war-sick Prussia has recovered so admirably.' "
Believe me, Ilsebill, it wasn't the Flounder, it was I who gave Thompson Amanda's address. But since the Women's Tribunal recognized only my particular incarnations and not my obstinate survival, I was not allowed to appear as a witness. Too bad. I'd have told the girls a thing or two. They wouldn't have cut me down to manikin size. Why, it was me with my dragoons who brought seed potatoes to the state farms in West Prussia at the king's orders. Whereupon I (as a nine-times-wounded veteran) was appointed inspector. I invigorated Prussia with potatoes. I organized the transportation and marketing of the surpluses. I brought order into the Polish economy. My balance sheets were mentioned with praise at the Chamber of Crown Lands. I traveled widely; why, I went as far as Hanover. And at meetings with fellow veterans I discussed Thompson's experiments with gunpowder to measure recoil and muzzle velocity and determine the best place to put the vent in the common musket.
So I wrote to the Royal Society. (Or a soldier friend who knew English wrote.) And Thompson answered from Munich. Promising precise data on vents for Prussian muskets, he asked in return for information about potato culture in Kashubia after the partitions of Poland. So then, in addition to pointers on farm management, I was so foolishly kind as to send him Amanda's address. By return mail he told me how to improve our musket. Their high-and-mightinesses in Potsdam failed, however, to act on his advice — a bit of negligence that was to be dearly paid for at Jena and Auerstedt. But nobody would ever listen to me. They all ran to her. She knew. She remembered. She prophesied. She saw the future. She had visions.
Unfortunately, I lost all my baggage, including Thompson's letters, after a solid night's drinking in Leipzig, where I had gone for the Fair. Only his letters to Amanda and her answers were quoted before the Women's Tribunal. When asked to account for this correspondence, the Flounder explained that through intermediaries he had sent Sir Benjamin a detailed account of the king of Prussia's October 1778 visit to the state farm at Zuckau. That was how the British American in the service of Bavaria had learned of the memorable
conversation between the Kashubian farm cook and Frederick II of Prussia. Indeed, Thompson speaks of the meeting in his first letter to Amanda: "It has come to our attention, honored friend of the useful potato, with what admiration His Majesty has spoken of your accomplishments. In the document before me, the Great Frederick writes, 'A Kassu-bian female cooks a potato potage, which should make peace delicious for our peoples.' But what amazes me, dear friend, is how quickly you have succeeded. How were you able in so short a time to move the countryfolk to grow potatoes? Here superstition and Catholic fears prevail. Our beneficial tuber is said to induce rickets and consumption, leprosy and cholera. Can you perchance advise me? By the elector's favor I am in command of a cavalry regiment consisting of young peasants impressed into military service. They are lying about on garrison duty, doing nothing, for since the curious War of the Austrian Succession, here known as the 'Potato War,' nothing has happened in Bavaria; only the curse of beggary has increased."
Addressing the Tribunal, the Flounder was able to prove that Amanda's advice, as adapted by Sir Benjamin Thompson, had provided the impetus for the introduction of potato culture in Bavaria. The land donation wrested from the Crown Lands Administration (and from me), the leasing of plots of fallow land to the landless serfs of the Zuckau farm on condition that they grow nothing but potatoes — presents I later took back — all these ideas were adopted by Thompson, who divided the wasteland that was later to become the English Gardens into military garden plots. Every private soldier and corporal, during his period of service, enjoyed the use of 365 square feet of potato field. The harvest belonged to him alone, and every discharged peasant returned home with sacks full of seed potatoes, to the amazement of his fellow villagers. (When I took the serfs' plots away from them so we could plant on a large scale, Amanda said, "The sweet Lord won't like it.") She also communicated her panacea for plague, cholera, and leprosy — rubbing the whole body with potato flour — to her pen pal, who must have smiled.