I'm Simon Legree…For Real

By Jackie Rose

His name stands for sadism, sex and slavery…everything that wealthy socialite Emily Sheffield has wanted from a man, since she first read his sordid story in "Uncle Tom's Cabin."

When she sees Simon Legree after the Civil War, playing himself on stage, she decides she has to have him for herself. And when she meets him again performing in a flogging brothel, she is ready to buy what she wants…her right to be his secret, submissive sex slave. His price includes her hand in marriage, which turns the former plantation owner into a rich robber baron.

Now he'll have everything he ever wanted…if only he can forget his passion for Cassy, the world's least submissive slave girl…and escape the vengeance of Uncle Tom's son. Soon the Great Chicago Fire will bring them all together, in some very surprising ways, as they finally learn the startling truth about The Real Simon Legree.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Mojocastle Press
• Release date: Jan 1, 2007
• ISBN: 9781601800190

Jackie Rose

Jackie Rose, the author of two novels, is a celebrity fashion analyst for US Weekly magazine. She holds among her greatest lifetime achievements going cold turkey during her pregnancy-the longest 40 weeks of her life. She lives in Montreal with her husband, 4-year-old daughter and 1-year-old son.

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Dedication:

To Chicago, my home town, and Marshall Field & Co., still my favorite department store. When I learned how they both survived the Great Fire 135 years ago, I realized that Chicago is, indeed, still my kind of town.

Chapter One

Hard and reprobate as I now seem, there has been a time when I have been rocked on the bosom of a mother, cradled with prayers and pious hymns, my now seared brow bedewed with the waters of holy baptism.

Yes, gentle reader, I actually said that with a straight face, night after night. What’s more, I had a lot of competition for speaking the lines that Harriet Beecher Stowe had written for me.

The Boston Bitch had taken away, but then she had given back. The little woman had written the book that had started the big war, just as Mr. Lincoln had said.

For her villain…the living image of slavery’s evils…she had used me as a model. Not that she had ever met me, but apparently her brother had encountered me once. I could have sued, but I probably would have lost. That tends to happen when you are on the losing side of a war, especially if you are the main reason why it started.

Besides, as I said, Mrs. Stowe wound up giving me a way to make a living, once my plantation had been destroyed and my slaves had gone on to bigger and better things. Even before the war, ‘Uncle Tom’s Cabin’ had been acted out on stages all over the country.

After the fighting had ended, everyone but Edwin Booth himself was chewing up the scenery playing my part. Soon I realized that people would pay extra to see the real thing. Reading that a new and lavish touring company was starting in New York, I went to see the producer.

As soon as I had told the theater doorman my business, he took me to see his boss. Once I had made my proposal, he accepted it enthusiastically. What’s more, he offered me top billing. Moving his hand across the air, pointing the words out on an invisible billboard, he proclaimed, Starring Simon Legree as himself!

I am a Union veteran, he added, in a more normal tone. But it’s been five years, and I am trying to share in that spirit of reconciliation now. Let us bind up the nation’s wounds, and all that.

That’s what I’ve been hoping for, I told him. I saw no reason to add that I had been hoping especially ardently during my past five years at sea. Climbing the rigging was a whole lot harder than it had been thirty years before.

You certainly look the part, he assured me. But then, how could you not?

I had to agree with that. My round bullet head, large gray-green eyes, shaggy sandy eyebrows and stiff, wiry, sunburned hair…all were as she had described them eighteen years earlier.

So were my huge, hard, hairy fists. Even though the audience would not see them close up, she had obviously dreamed of them often enough, and that’s being polite to her. More likely, she had been imagining another part of my body entirely. Even at age forty-seven, I flatter myself that none of it would have disappointed her.

And what about Cassy? Mr. Epstein asked, waxing even more enthusiastic, as he poured me a glass of brandy. Could we get your lovely…er, companion…to play herself, too? Tactfully he refrained from mentioning that hiring the original Uncle Tom was out of the question, having died while in my service…a misfortune which, of course, the Boston Bitch had blamed on me.

I’m afraid that she is not available, I told him, as I sat slouching beside his desk in my most Simon-Legree pose. She became a Union Army nurse during the Civil War and is still there, as far as I know.

She must have had some feeling left for me, because she had helped me escape days before I was due to be sent to the Elmira Prison Camp and almost certain death. These sentiments were not likely to be strong enough, though, to encourage her to stand on stage with me, while saying things like, What sweet memories of childhood can thus soften that heart of iron? Mrs. Stowe had had a pretty good ear for dialog, which the scriptwriter obviously did not.

Once Mr. Epstein had gotten the bit between his teeth, though, there was no taking it out again. Topsy could take Cassy’s part, he enthused. She is starring in a minstrel act right now, as part of a vaudeville show.

I thought that Negroes were not allowed to work with white actors in blackface, I could not resist saying…as my subtle way of pointing out that the Northern laws were only slightly kinder to that particular race than the Old South had been. Mr. Epstein apparently failed to see the irony.

It’s one of those new groups that really use Negroes, rather than made-up whites. They bill her as ‘The Real Topsy,’ so she is really the star. We could put in a dance for her.

Well, they say that great minds run in the same channels. Obviously, The Real Topsy had had the same idea as The Real Simon Legree. But Mrs. Stowe had always said the girl was clever, so I could not feel too surprised.

Growing more serious, he went on, But are you willing to work with your old servant?

She was never my servant, I assured him. In fact, I never met her. Or Little Eva. Or Eliza, who crossed the ice. But so many people got that wrong, I can’t blame you for doing it. I suppose it’s flattering to think that I loom so large in their imaginations, they assume I was in the book from the very start. In fact, I showed up in Chapter Thirty, for the last third of the story.

Well, you live and learn, he said, shaking his head at this unbelievable information. So you won’t have to work with any of your former servants after all.

Sambo might be available, I told him. I will not mind working with him at all. In fact, I’d be proud to do it. He was a war hero on your side.

The producer looked surprised at that, but it was true. Having distinguished himself in the Glory Brigade--also called the 54th Massachusetts Volunteers--my old overseer was probably now one of those Buffalo Soldiers who were busy fighting the Indians. With his enlistment almost up, he might find it much easier to trod the boards, rather than chasing Comanches.

And what about his old partner Quimbo? the impresario asked.

He died at Olustee, I answered shortly. To my great embarrassment, I found that tears were almost filling my grey-green eyes, at the memory of how the two had sang and danced for me. When Sambo had later helped me escape from his fellow Yankees in the prison camp, it had suddenly struck me that those two were the closest thing to friends I had ever known.

You can put in a song and dance for Sambo, I told him, hoping that my voice had a suitably casual tone. He’ll like that. One of those new tap dances, perhaps.

I had thought that his music was more, well, primitive, my new employer cautiously said.

That’s what the Boston--I mean, Mrs. Stowe told you. She said they were just whooping and upsetting chairs. But then, she never saw them perform. Actually, they were quite gifted.

Good enough for singing hymns?

Only one character would have to do that. So Sambo would play the leading role…as Uncle Tom. But I knew that, as always, I would steal the show.

* * * * * *

I stole the top billing, too.

‘The Real Simon Legree as himself!’ The poster proclaimed, above my photograph. I had posed very much in character…brandishing a whip and snarling. Under that, in smaller but still impressive letters, it went on to read, The Real Sambo…as Uncle Tom. The Real Topsy…as Cassy.

Epstein and I had gone to hear Topsy at the minstrel show, and we knew she would be terrific in advance. When she sang ‘Blue-Tail Fly,’ you were in no doubt of what the words meant…she had killed old master herself, and was not at all sorry about it.

He died and the jury wondered why…

Then she grinned and winked her most devilish before she added,

The verdict was…the blue-tail fly.

The good Mrs. Stowe had seen her as a devilish little creature, and watching her on stage I felt that she was right, at least, on that score. The difference was…the real Topsy had grown into such a tempting little demon, I was sorry that I could no longer buy her. We would have had some wild and wicked nights. But, as the lyrics said…while she danced to the music…

"Jimmy Crack Corn and I don’t care,

Jimmy Crack Corn and I don’t care

Jimmy Crack Corn and I don’t care…

My master’s gone away."

And he had…into our post-war, post-slavery, pro-industrial nation. Thinking of that, I sighed and applauded when her song ended…although not as enthusiastically as the rest of the crowd. I was as much a Yankee as they were, born and bred in New England, but I had gone South for the pleasure of owning girls like her…a joy they had never dreamed of.

Or, if they did dream of it, they kept it to themselves.

At least they did in public. I had heard other actors whispering about a new breed of authors, who wrote fantasy novels where men carried off women to enslave them...in Indian camps, on pirate ships and even other planets. I flatter myself, though, that no matter how many of these romances are written--and how long they are read--when anyone thinks