#Fitzjames is from Houston

[vomittedsoap]

I hope that in all my comics and drawings you read the words in a Southern/Texas Accent. It’s what I would have wanted.

[theherbstorian]

The Terror meets Texas Rev??

My first (public!) AU/fanfic thingy: What if the characters from the Franklin Expedition/The Terror met the Texas Revolutionary-Era people I actually specialize in studying???  Here’s a scene from one of these hypothetical meetings, between James Fitzjames and Texas revolutionary commander Col. James Fannin.  Anyway, I really hope y’all like it, and any comments would be very much appreciated!

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It was almost preternatural how quickly Commander James Fitzjames and Colonel James W. Fannin Jr came to a quiet understanding of each other, realizing that they held in common something Fannin habitually termed their “peculiar situations.”  These high-spirited officers, whose letters so often sparkled with enthusiasm and charm, who had meteorically risen to high ranks, shared the secret of their illegitimacy.  This trust was no small source of attachment between the two men.  In social gatherings, the Texan and the Englishman would exchange faint, knowing smiles, always letting the others believe that their closeness was a result of shared interests in artillery and gunnery.

Fitzjames was tempted, nonetheless, to envy Fannin—his very name testified that he had enjoyed a much different relationship with his natural father. Sure, during his youth he had gone by the surname Walker, that of the maternal grandfather who raised him.  But even then, Isham Fannin had sent for young James to be present at his deathbed.  He acknowledged him in his will and provided $1,000 for his education. And in adulthood, James F. Walker took the name James W. Fannin, and was welcomed with open arms by his father’s family.  Fitzjames, by contrast, could not go by the name Gambier, nor did he particularly want to.  But any jealousies of this nature were subsumed by the other commonalities they shared: those relating to their tragic final commands.  

Fitzjames had known nothing about Fannin before this strange afterlife meeting--he had been in Mesopotamia during the entirety of Texas’ struggle for independence.  By the time he got back, Fannin and the Goliad Massacre had been all but relegated to the background of Texas’ incipient historiography.  Fitzjames vividly remembered the first time Fannin had told him about how the Matamoros Expedition had ground to a halt, how he had garrisoned Fort Defiance until General Houston ordered a retreat, and about how they were overtaken during their retreat at the battle of Coleto:  “I had my men formed in a square, marching toward Coleto Creek and the cover of its trees. But then our ammunition wagon broke down in what was unfortunately the lowest elevation on the entire plain. Understand--we couldn’t have gone on without our ammunition; we would have been a confused and scattered mass of defenseless men if, as some of my officers suggested, we had made a break for the woodline.  But we couldn’t last very long without water for the men and the cannons, either….  In the end, the water was too far, and we couldn’t make it…my dear Commander Fitzjames, it was just too far--that river was just too far….”  Fannin’s voice trailed off.  Fitzjames had put a comforting arm around Fannin and pulled him close.  He understood all too well the significance of a river too far.