David Crockett_ The Lion of the West - Michael Wallis [110]
Elizabeth briefly returned to Buncombe County, North Carolina, to visit other family members, including her father, Robert Patton, now a widower. When she returned to Tennessee, her father decided to go back with her and take up residence on some of the land he still owned there. Shortly after arriving, the prosperous yeoman farmer purchased another 1,200 acres and distributed the land among his five daughters and sons-in-law living in the area.9 Described as “a sturdy Presbyterian” and a “fond and beneficent parent,” Patton only lived in Tennessee for about a year; he died on November 11, 1832, and was buried on a bluff overlooking the Obion River.10 The elder Patton maintained his fondness of Crockett, despite the conflict between his son-in-law and daughter. Crockett always addressed Patton as “Father,” and it was no surprise that both Crockett and George Patton, a son of the deceased, were named as executors of Robert’s last will and testament drafted just prior to his death.11
Throughout 1832, Crockett lived a solitary life at the cabin he built on the leased land, dabbled a bit in farming, and took to the canebrakes and thickets as often as possible, his hounds the uncomplaining companions his wife could no longer be. Occasionally visitors and family stopped for a visit, and he made a few forays out in the district and further just to stay connected to political friends and allies.
Guided solely by his natural instincts, Crockett had become, in the words of Shakespeare, the wise fool. From his failures, he learned not to fear the contempt and derision of others but to mock his enemies as well as himself. He recognized that, in many instances, the untutored could penetrate to more profound truths and insights than those burdened with learning and convention. Crockett embodied the Shakespearean truth, “The fool doth think he is wise, but the wise man knows himself to be a fool.”12
Ironically, while Crockett contemplated his future and continued, almost single-handedly, to reduce the black bear population in West Tennessee, his star was rising higher and higher back east. Tantalized by the many newspaper accounts, most of them outrageous and exaggerated tales planted by political opponents and seldom denied by Crockett, the press and the public, as if he had become a broadsheet celebrity, clamored for more. Crockett was clearly missed. His rapidly growing audience of fans and followers hungered for his return to the limelight of Jacksonian society. There was a steady buzz about Crockett from the plush Indian Queen Hotel in Washington City, where lobbyists treated lawmakers to lavish meals, to the phalanx of steamboats flanking the docks on the tawny Mississippi at St. Louis.
One newspaper, lamenting Crockett’s absence from Congress, labeled him “an object of universal notoriety” and went on to report that “to return to the capitol without having seen Col. Crockett, betrayed a total destitution of curiosity and a perfect insensibility to the Lions of the West.”13 Prior to the last election, a man in the galleries of Congress who had heard the Tennessean speak from the floor flatly stated, “Crockett was then the lion of Washington. I was fascinated with him.” Others who knew Crockett believed, however, that perhaps “Sly Fox of the West” would have been a more appropriate moniker.
The American public had no knowledge of the private Crockett and his lifelong struggle to rise above his station and remain debt free. They saw only the Crockett that appealed to them—the new kind of American who embodied the most attractive qualities of the literary heroes created by James Fennimore Cooper and Sir Walter Scott.
Crockett’s growing fame was further demonstrated on April 25, 1831, when a farce in two acts, written by James Kirke Paulding and entitled The Lion of the West,