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Title: The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees

Author: Mary Caroline Crawford

Release Date: May 30, 2007 [EBook #21645]

Language: English

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Little Pilgrimages

The Romance of
Old New England
Rooftrees

By

Mary C. Crawford

Illustrated

Boston
L. C. Page & Company
Mdcccciii

Copyright, 1902
by L. C. Page & Company
(Incorporated)

All rights reserved

Published, September, 1902
Colonial Press
Electrotyped and Printed by C. H. Simonds & Co.
Boston, Mass., U.S.A.

SIR HARRY FRANKLAND (See page 48)

FOREWORD

These little sketches have been written to supply what seemed to the author a real need,—a volume which should give clearly, compactly, and with a fair degree of readableness, the stories connected with the surviving old houses of New England. That delightful writer, Mr. Samuel Adams Drake, has in his many works on the historic mansions of colonial times, provided all necessary data for the serious student, and to him the deep indebtedness of this work is fully and frankly acknowledged. Yet there was no volume which gave entire the tales of chief interest to the majority of readers. It is, therefore, to such searchers after the romantic in New England's history that the present book is offered.

It but remains to mention with gratitude the many kind friends far and near who have helped in the preparation of the material, and especially to thank Messrs. Houghton, Mifflin & Co., publishers of the works of Hawthorne, Whittier, Longfellow, and Higginson, by permission of and special arrangement with whom the selections of the authors named, are used; the Macmillan Co., for permission to use the extracts from Lindsay Swift's "Brook Farm"; G. P. Putnam's Sons for their kindness in allowing quotations from their work, "Historic Towns of New England"; Small, Maynard & Co., for the use of the anecdote credited to their Beacon Biography of Samuel F. B. Morse; Little, Brown & Co., for their marked courtesy in the extension of quotation privileges, and Mr. Samuel T. Pickard, Whittier's literary executor, for the new Whittier material here given.

M. C. C.
Charlestown, Massachusetts, 1902.

Contents

LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS

[Pg 11]

THE ROMANCE OF OLD NEW ENGLAND ROOFTREES

THE HEIR OF SWIFT'S VANESSA

Nowhere in the annals of our history is recorded an odder phase of curious fortune than that by which Bishop Berkeley, of Cloyne, was enabled early in the eighteenth century to sail o'erseas to Newport, Rhode Island, there to build (in 1729) the beautiful old place, Whitehall, which is still standing. Hundreds of interested visitors drive every summer to the old house, to take a cup of tea, to muse on the strange story[Pg 12] with which the ancient dwelling is connected, and to pay the meed of respectful memory to the eminent philosopher who there lived and wrote.

The poet Pope once assigned to this bishop "every virtue under heaven," and this high reputation a study of the man's character faithfully confirms. As a student at Dublin University, George Berkeley won many friends, because of his handsome face and lovable nature, and many honours by reason of his brilliancy in mathematics. Later he became a fellow of Trinity College, and made the acquaintance of Swift, Steele, and the other members of that brilliant Old World literary circle, by all of whom he seems to have been sincerely beloved.

A large part of Berkeley's early life was passed as a travelling tutor, but soon after Pope had introduced him to the[Pg 13] Earl of Burlington, he was made dean of Derry, through the good offices of that gentleman, and of his friend, the Duke of Grafton, then Lord Lieutenant of Ireland. Berkeley, however, never cared for personal aggrandisement, and he had long been cherishing a project which he soon announced to his friends as a "scheme for converting the savage Americans to Christianity by a college to be erected in the Summer Islands, otherwise called the Isles of Bermuda."

In a letter from London to his lifelong friend and patron, Lord Percival, then at Bath, we find Berkeley, under date of March, 1723, writing thus of the enterprise which had gradually fired his imagination: "It is now about ten months since I have determined to spend the residue of my days in Bermuda, where I trust in Providence I may be the mean[Pg 14] instrument of doing great good to mankind. The reformation of manners among the English in our western plantations, and the propagation of the gospel among the American savages, are two points of high moment. The natural way of doing this is by founding a college or seminary in some convenient part of the West Indies, where the English youth of our plantations may be educated in such sort as to supply their churches with pastors of good morals and good learning—a thing (God knows) much wanted. In the same seminary a number of young American savages may also be educated until they have taken the degree of Master of Arts. And being by that time well instructed in the Christian religion, practical mathematics, and other liberal arts and sciences, and early imbued with public-spirited principles and inclinations, they may become the fittest instru[Pg 15]ments for spreading religion, morals, and civil life among their countrymen, who can entertain no suspicion or jealousy of men of their own blood and language, as they might do of English missionaries, who can never be well qualified for that work."

Berkeley then goes on to describe the plans of education for American youths which he had conceived, gives his reasons for preferring the Bermudas as a site for the college, and presents a bright vision of an academic centre from which should radiate numerous beautiful influences that should make for Christian civilisation in America. Even the gift of the best deanery in England failed to divert him from thoughts of this Utopia. "Derry," he wrote, "is said to be worth £1,500 per annum, but I do not consider it with a view to enriching myself. I shall be perfectly[Pg 16] contented if it facilitates and recommends my scheme of Bermuda."

But the thing which finally made it possible for Berkeley to come to America, the incident which is responsible for Whitehall's existence to-day in a grassy valley to the south of Honeyman's Hill, two miles back from the "second beach," at Newport, was the tragic ending of as sad and as romantic a story as is to be found anywhere in the literary life of England.

Swift, as has been said, was one of the friends who was of great service to Berkeley when he went up to London for the first time. The witty and impecunious dean had then been living in London for more than four years, in his "lodging in Berry Street," absorbed in the political intrigue of the last years of Queen Anne, and sending to Stella, in Dublin, the daily[Pg 17] journal, which so faithfully preserves the incidents of those years. Under date of an April Sunday in 1713, we find in this journal these lines, Swift's first mention of our present hero: "I went to court to-day on purpose to present Mr. Berkeley, one of our fellows at Trinity College. That Mr. Berkeley is a very ingenious man, and a great philosopher, and I have mentioned him to all the ministers, and have given them some of his writings, and I will favour him as much as I can."

In the natural course of things Berkeley soon heard much, though he saw scarcely anything, of Mrs. Vanhomrigh and her daughter, the latter the famous and unhappy "Vanessa," both of whom were settled at this time in Berry Street, near Swift, in a house where, Swift writes to Stella, "I loitered hot and lazy after my morning's work," and often dined "out[Pg 18] of mere listlessness," keeping there "my best gown and perriwig" when at Chelsea.

Mrs. Vanhomrigh was the widow of a Dutch merchant, who had followed William the Third to Ireland, and there obtained places of profit, and her daughter, Esther, or Hester, as she is variously called, was a girl of eighteen when she first met Swift, and fell violently in love with him. This passion eventually proved the girl's perdition,—and was, as we shall see, the cause of a will which enabled Dean Berkeley to carry out his dear and cherished scheme of coming to America.

Swift's journal, frank about nearly everything else in the man's life, is significantly silent concerning Esther Vanhomrigh. And in truth there was little to be said to anybody, and nothing at all to be confided to Stella, in regard to this unhappy affair. That Swift was flattered to[Pg 19] find this girl of eighteen, with beauty and accomplishment, caring so much for him, a man now forty-four, and bound by honour, if not by the Church, to Stella, one cannot doubt. At first, their relations seem to have been simply those of teacher and pupil, and this phase of the matter it is which is most particularly described in the famous poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa," written at Windsor in 1713, and first published after Vanessa's death.

Human nature has perhaps never before or since presented the spectacle of a man of such transcendent powers as Swift involved in such a pitiable labyrinth of the affections as marked his whole life. Pride or ambition led him to postpone indefinitely his marriage with Stella, to whom he was early attached. Though he said he "loved her better than his life a thousand millions of times," he kept her[Pg 20] always hanging on in a state of hope deferred, injurious alike to her peace and her reputation. And because of Stella, he dared not afterward with manly sincerity admit his undoubted affection for Vanessa. For, if one may believe Doctor Johnson, he married Stella in 1716,—though he died without acknowledging this union, and the date given would indicate that the ceremony occurred while his devotion to his young pupil was at its height.

Touching beyond expression is the story of Vanessa after she had gone to Ireland, as Stella had gone before, to be near the presence of Swift. Her life was one of deep seclusion, chequered only by the occasional visits of the man she adored, each of which she commemorated by planting with her own hand a laurel in the garden where they met. When all her devotion and her offerings had failed to[Pg 21] impress him, she sent him remonstrances which reflect the agony of her mind:

"The reason I write to you," she says, "is because I cannot tell it you should I see you. For when I begin to complain, then you are angry; and there is something in your looks so awful, that it strikes me dumb. Oh! that you may have but so much regard for me left that this complaint may touch your soul with pity. I say as little as ever I can. Did you but know what I thought, I am sure it would move you to forgive me, and believe that I cannot help telling you this and live."

Swift replies with the letter full of excuses for not seeing her oftener, and advises her to "quit this scoundrel island." Yet he assures her in the same breath, "que jamais personne du monde a étê aimée, honorée, estimée, adorée, par votre ami que vous."[Pg 22]

The tragedy continued to deepen as it approached the close. Eight years had Vanessa nursed in solitude the hopeless attachment. At length (in 1723) she wrote to Stella to ascertain the nature of the connection between her and Swift. The latter obtained the fatal letter, and rode instantly to Marley Abbey, the residence of Vanessa. "As he entered the apartment," to quote the picturesque language Scott has used in recording the scene, "the sternness of his countenance, which was peculiarly formed to express the stronger passions, struck the unfortunate Vanessa with such terror, that she could scarce ask whether he would not sit down. He answered by flinging a letter on the table; and instantly leaving the house, mounted his horse, and returned to Dublin. When Vanessa opened the packet, she found only her own letter to Stella. It was her death-[Pg 23]warrant. She sunk at once under the disappointment of the delayed, yet cherished hopes which had so long sickened her heart, and beneath the unrestrained wrath of him for whose sake she had indulged them. How long she survived this last interview is uncertain, but the time does not seem to have exceeded a few weeks."

Strength to revoke a will made in favour of Swift, and to sign another (dated May 1, 1723) which divided her estate between Bishop Berkeley and Judge Marshall, the poor young woman managed to summon from somewhere, however. Berkeley she knew very slightly, and Marshall scarcely better. But to them both she entrusted as executors her correspondence with Swift, and the poem, "Cadenus and Vanessa," which she ordered to be published after her death.[Pg 24]

Doctor Johnson, in his "Life of Swift," says of Vanessa's relation to the misanthropic dean, "She was a young woman fond of literature, whom Decanus, the dean (called Cadenus by transposition of the letters), took pleasure in directing and interesting till, from being proud of his praise, she grew fond of his person. Swift was then about forty-seven, at the age when vanity is strongly excited by the amorous attention of a young woman."

The poem with which these two lovers are always connected, was founded, according to the story, on an offer of marriage made by Miss Vanhomrigh to Doctor Swift. In it, Swift thus describes his situation:

[Pg 25]

That Swift was not always, however, so Platonic and fatherly in his expressions of affection for Vanessa, is shown in a "Poem to Love," found in Miss Vanhomrigh's desk after her death, in his handwriting. One verse of this runs:

After the poor girl's unhappy decease, Swift hid himself for two months in the south of Ireland. Stella was also shocked by the occurrence, but when some one re[Pg 26]marked in her presence, apropos of the poem which had just appeared, that Vanessa must have been a remarkable woman to inspire such verses, she observed with perfect truth that the dean was quite capable of writing charmingly upon a broomstick.

Meanwhile Berkeley was informed of the odd stroke of luck by which he was to gain a small fortune. Characteristically, his thoughts turned now more than ever to his Bermuda scheme. "This providential event," he wrote, "having made many things easy in my private affairs which were otherwise before, I have high hopes for Bermuda."

Swift bore Berkeley absolutely no hard feeling on account of Vanessa's substitution of his name in her will. He was quite as cordial as ever. One of the witty dean's most remarkable letters, addressed to Lord[Pg 27] Carteret, at Bath, thus describes Berkeley's previous career and present mission:

"Going to England very young, about thirteen years ago, the bearer of this became founder of a sect called the Immaterialists, by the force of a very curious book upon that subject.... He is an absolute philosopher with regard to money, titles, and power; and for three years past has been struck with a notion of founding a university at Bermudas by a charter from the Crown.... He showed me a little tract which he designs to publish, and there your Excellency will see his whole scheme of the life academico-philosophical, of a college founded for Indian scholars and missionaries, where he most exorbitantly proposes a whole hundred pounds a year for himself.... His heart will be broke if his deanery be not taken from him, and left to your Excellency's disposal.[Pg 28] I discouraged him by the coldness of Courts and Ministers, who will interpret all this as impossible and a vision; but nothing will do."

The history of Berkeley's reception in London, when he came to urge his project, shows convincingly the magic of the man's presence and influence. His conquests spread far and fast. In a generation represented by Sir Robert Walpole, the scheme met with encouragement from all sorts of people, subscriptions soon reaching £5,000, and the list of promoters including even Sir Robert himself. Bermuda became the fashion among the wits of London, and Bolingbroke wrote to Swift that he would "gladly exchange Europe for its charms—only not in a missionary capacity."

But Berkeley was not satisfied with mere subscriptions, and remembering what Lord Percival had said about the protection and[Pg 29] aid of government he interceded with George the First, and obtained royal encouragement to hope for a grant of £20,000 to endow the Bermuda college. During the four years that followed, he lived in London, negotiating with brokers, and otherwise forwarding his enterprise of social idealism. With Queen Caroline, consort of George the Second, he used to dispute two days a week concerning his favourite plan.

At last his patience was rewarded. In September, 1728, we find him at Greenwich, ready to sail for Rhode Island. "Tomorrow," he writes on September 3 to Lord Percival, "we sail down the river. Mr. James and Mr. Dalton go with me; so doth my wife, a daughter of the late Chief Justice Forster, whom I married since I saw your lordship. I chose her for her qualities of mind, and her un[Pg 30]affected inclination to books. She goes with great thankfulness, to live a plain farmer's life, and wear stuff of her own spinning. I have presented her with a spinning-wheel. Her fortune was £2,000 originally, but travelling and exchange have reduced it to less than £1,500 English money. I have placed that, and about £600 of my own, in South Sea annuities."

Thus in the forty-fourth year of his life, in deep devotion to his Ideal, and full of glowing visions of a Fifth Empire in the West, Berkeley sailed for Rhode Island in a "hired ship of two hundred and fifty tons."

The New England Courier of that time gives this picture of his disembarkation at Newport: "Yesterday there arrived here Dean Berkeley, of Londonderry. He is a gentleman of middle stature, of an agreeable, pleasant, and erect aspect. He[Pg 31] was ushered into the town with a great number of gentlemen, to whom he behaved himself after a very complaisant manner."

WHITEHALL, NEWPORT, R. I.

So favourably was Berkeley impressed by Newport that he wrote to Lord Percival: "I should not demur about situating our college here." And as it turned out, Newport was the place with which Berkeley's scheme was to be connected in history. For it was there that he lived all three years of his stay, hopefully awaiting from England the favourable news that never came.

In loyal remembrance of the palace of his monarchs, he named his spacious home in the sequestered valley Whitehall. Here he began domestic life, and became the father of a family. The neighbouring groves and the cliffs that skirt the coast offered shade and silence and solitude very soothing to his spirit, and one wonders not[Pg 32] that he wrote, under the projecting rock that still bears his name, "The Minute Philosopher," one of his most noted works. The friends with whom he had crossed the ocean went to stay in Boston, but no solicitations could withdraw him from the quiet of his island home. "After my long fatigue of business," he told Lord Percival, "this retirement is very agreeable to me; and my wife loves a country life and books as well as to pass her time continually and cheerfully without any other conversation than her husband and the dead." For the wife was a mystic and a quietist.

But though Berkeley waited patiently for developments which should denote the realisation of his hopes, he waited always in vain. From the first he had so planned his enterprise that it was at the mercy of Sir Robert Walpole; and at last came the[Pg 33] crisis of the project, with which the astute financier had never really sympathised. Early in 1730, Walpole threw off the mask. "If you put the question to me as a minister," he wrote Lord Percival, "I must and can assure you that the money shall most undoubtedly be paid—as soon as suits with public convenience; but if you ask me as a friend whether Dean Berkeley should continue in America, expecting the payment of £200,000, I advise him by all means to return to Europe, and to give up his present expectations."

When acquainted by his friend Percival with this frank statement, Berkeley accepted the blow as a philosopher should. Brave and resolutely patient, he prepared for departure. His books he left as a gift to the library of Yale College, and his farm of Whitehall was made over to the same institution, to found three scholar[Pg 34]ships for the encouragement of Greek and Latin study. His visit was thus far from being barren of results. He supplied a decided stimulus to higher education in the colonies, in that he gave out counsel and help to the men already working for the cause of learning in the new country. And he helped to form in Newport a philosophical reunion, the effects of which were long felt.

In the autumn of 1731 he sailed from Boston for London, where he arrived in January of the next year. There a bishopric and twenty years of useful and honourable labour awaited him. He died at Oxford, whence he had removed from his see at Cloyne, on Sunday evening, January 14, 1753, while reading aloud to his family the burial service portion of Corinthians. He was buried in the Cathedral of Christ Church.[Pg 35]

Of the traces he left at Newport, there still remain, beside the house, a chair in which he was wont to write, a few books and papers, the organ presented by him to Trinity Church, the big family portrait, by Smibert—and the little grave in Trinity churchyard, where, on the south side of the Kay monument, sleeps "Lucia Berkeley, obiit., the fifth of September, 1731." Moreover the memory of the man's beautiful, unselfish life pervades this section of Rhode Island, and the story of his sweetness and patience under a keen and unexpected disappointment furnishes one of the most satisfying pages in our early history.

The life of Berkeley is indeed greater than anything that he did, and one wonders not as one explores the young preacher's noble and endearing character that the distraught Vanessa fastened upon him, though[Pg 36] she knew him only by reputation, as one who would make it his sacred duty to do all in his power to set her memory right in a censorious world.[Pg 37]

THE MAID OF MARBLEHEAD

Of all the romantic narratives which enliven the pages of early colonial history, none appeals more directly to the interest and imagination of the lover of what is picturesque than the story of Agnes Surriage, the Maid of Marblehead. The tale is so improbable, according to every-day standards, so in form with the truest sentiment, and so calculated to satisfy every exaction of literary art, that even the most credulous might be forgiven for ascribing it to the fancy of the romancer rather than to the research of the historian.

Yet when one remembers that the scene[Pg 38] of the first act of Agnes Surriage's life drama is laid in quaint old Marblehead, the tale itself instantly gains in credibility. For nothing would be too romantic to fit Marblehead. This town is fantastic in the extreme, builded, to quote Miss Alice Brown, who has written delightfully of Agnes and her life, "as if by a generation of autocratic landowners, each with a wilful bee in his bonnet."[1] For Marblehead is no misnomer, and the early settlers had to plant their houses and make their streets as best they could. As a matter of stern fact, every house in Marblehead had to be like the wise man's in the Bible: "built upon a rock." The dwellings themselves were founded upon solid ledges, while the principal streets followed the natural valleys between. The smaller divid[Pg 39]ing paths led each and every one of them to the impressive old Town House, and to that other comfortable centre of social interests, the Fountain Inn, with its near-by pump. This pump, by the bye, has a very real connection with the story of Agnes Surriage, for it was here, according to one legend, that Charles Henry Frankland first saw the maid who is the heroine of our story.

AGNES SURRIAGE PUMP, MARBLEHEAD, MASS.

The gallant Sir Harry was at this time (1742) collector of the port of Boston, a place to which he had been appointed shortly before, by virtue of his family's great influence at the court of George the Second. No more distinguished house than that of Frankland was indeed to be found in all England at this time. A lineal descendant of Oliver Cromwell, our hero was born in Bengal, May 10, 1716, during his father's residence abroad as governor of the[Pg 40] East India Company's factory. The personal attractiveness of Frankland's whole family was marked. It is even said that a lady of this house was sought in marriage by Charles the Second, in spite of the fact that a Capulet-Montague feud must ever have existed between the line of Cromwell and that of Charles Stuart.

Young Harry, too, was clever as well as handsome. The eldest of his father's seven sons, he was educated as befitted the heir to the title and to the family estate at Thirkleby and Mattersea. He knew the French and Latin languages well, and, what is more to the point, used his mother tongue with grace and elegance. Botany and landscape-gardening were his chief amusements, while with the great literature of the day he was as familiar as with the great men who made it.

As early as 1738, when he was twenty-[Pg 41]two, he had come into possession of an ample fortune, but when opportunity offered to go to America with Shirley, his friend, he accepted the opening with avidity. Both young men, therefore, entered the same year (1741) on their offices, the one as Collector of the Port, and the other as Governor of the Colony. And both represented socially the highest rank of that day in America.

"A baronet," says Reverend Elias Nason, from whose admirable picture of Boston in Frankland's time all writers must draw for reliable data concerning our hero,—"a baronet was then approached with greatest deference; a coach and four, with an armorial bearing and liveried servants, was a munition against indignity; in those dignitaries who, in brocade vest, gold lace coat, broad ruffled sleeves, and small-clothes, who, with three-cornered hat and[Pg 42] powdered wig, side-arms and silver shoe buckles, promenaded Queen Street and the Mall, spread themselves through the King's Chapel, or discussed the measures of the Pelhams, Walpole, and Pitt at the Rose and Crown, as much of aristocratic pride, as much of courtly consequence displayed itself as in the frequenters of Hyde Park or Regent Street."

This, then, was the manner of man who, to transact some business connected with Marblehead's picturesque Fort Sewall, then just a-building, came riding down to the rock-bound coast on the day our story opens, and lost his heart at the Fountain Inn, where he had paused for a long draught of cooling ale.

For lo! scrubbing the tavern floor there knelt before him a beautiful child-girl of sixteen, with black curling hair, dark eyes, and a voice which proved to be of bird-[Pg 43]like sweetness when the maiden, glancing up, gave her good-day to the gallant's greeting. The girl's feet were bare, and this so moved Frankland's compassion that he gently gave her a piece of gold with which to buy shoes and stockings, and rode thoughtfully away to conduct his business at the fort.

Yet he did not forget that charming child just budding into winsome womanhood whom he had seen performing with patience and grace the duties that fell to her lot as the poor daughter of some honest, hard-working fisherfolk of the town. When he happened again to be in Marblehead on business, he inquired at once for her, and then, seeing her feet still without shoes and stockings, asked a bit teasingly what she had done with the money he gave her. Quite frankly she replied, blushing the while, that the shoes and stockings were[Pg 44] bought, but that she kept them to wear to meeting. Soon after this the young collector went to search out Agnes's parents, Edward and Mary Surriage, from whom he succeeded in obtaining permission to remove their daughter to Boston to be educated as his ward.

When one reads in the old records the entries for Frankland's salary, and finds that they mount up to not more than £100 sterling a year, one wonders that the young nobleman should have been so ready to take upon himself the expenses of a girl's elegant education. But it must be remembered that the gallant Harry had money in his own right, besides many perquisites of office, which made his income a really splendid one. Certainly he spared no expense upon his ward. She was taught reading, writing, grammar, music, and embroidery by the best tutors the town could[Pg 45] provide, and she grew daily, we are told, in beauty and maidenly charm.

Yet in acquiring these gifts and graces she did not lose her childish sweetness and simplicity, nor the pious counsel of her mother, and the careful care of her Marblehead pastor. Thus several years passed by, years in which Agnes often visited with her gentle guardian the residence in Roxbury of Governor Shirley and his gifted wife, as well as the stately Royall place out on the Medford road.

The reader who is familiar with Mr. Bynner's story of Agnes Surriage will recall how delightfully Mrs. Shirley, the wife of the governor, is introduced into his romance, and will recollect with pleasure his description of Agnes's ride to Roxbury in the collector's coach. This old mansion is now called the Governor Eustis House, and there are those still living who remem[Pg 46]ber when Madam Eustis lived there. This grand dame wore a majestic turban, and the tradition still lingers of madame's pet toad, decked on gala days with a blue ribbon. Now the old house is sadly dilapidated; it is shorn of its piazzas, the sign "To Let" hangs often in the windows, and the cupola is adorned with well-filled clothes-lines. Partitions have cut the house into tenements; one runs through the hall, but the grand old staircase and the smaller one are still there, and the marble floor, too, lends dignity to the back hall. A few of the carved balusters are missing, carried away by relic hunters. In this house, which was the residence of Governors Shirley and Eustis, Washington, Hamilton, Burr, Franklin, and other notables were entertained. The old place is now entirely surrounded by modern dwelling-houses, and the pilgrim who searches[Pg 47] for it must leave the Mount Pleasant electric car at Shirley Street.

Yet, though Agnes as a maid was received by the most aristocratic people of Boston, the ladies of the leading families refused to countenance her when she became a fine young woman whom Sir Harry Frankland loved but cared not to marry. That her protector had not meant at first to wrong the girl he had befriended seems fairly certain, but many circumstances, such as the death of Agnes's father and Frankland's own sudden elevation to the baronetcy, may be held to have conspired to force them into the situation for which Agnes was to pay by many a day of tears and Sir Harry by many a night of bitter self-reproach.

For Frankland was far from being a libertine. And that he sincerely loved the beautiful maid of Marblehead is certain.[Pg 48] He has come down to us as one of the most knightly men of his time, a gentleman and a scholar, who was also a sincere follower of the Church of England and its teachings. Both in manner and person he is said to have greatly resembled the Earl of Chesterfield, and his diary as well as his portrait show him to have been at once sensitive and virile; quite the man, indeed, very effectually to fascinate the low-born beauty he had taught to love him.

The indignation of the ladies in town toward Frankland and his ward made the baronet prefer at this stage of the story rural Hopkinton to censorious Boston. Reverend Roger Price, known to us as rector of King's Chapel, had already land and a mission church in this village, and so, when Boston frowned too pointedly, Frankland purchased four hundred odd acres of him, and there built, in 1751, a commodious[Pg 49] mansion-house. The following year he and Agnes took up their abode on the place. Here Frankland passed his days, contentedly pursuing his horticultural fad, angling, hunting, overseeing his dozen slaves, and reading with his intelligent companion the latest works of Richardson, Steele, Swift, Addison, and Pope, sent over in big boxes from England.

The country about Hopkinton was then as to-day a wonder of hill and valley, meadow and stream, while only a dozen miles or so from Frankland Hall was the famous Wayside Inn. That Sir Harry's Arcady never came to bore him was, perhaps, due to this last fact. Whenever guests were desired the men from Boston could easily ride out to the inn and canter over to the Hall, to enjoy the good wines and the bright talk the place afforded. Then the village rector was always to be[Pg 50] counted on for companionship and breezy chat. It is significant that Sir Harry carefully observed all the forms of his religion, and treated Agnes with the respect due a wife, though he still continued to neglect the one duty which would have made her really happy.

A lawsuit called the two to England in 1754. At Frankland's mother's home, where the eager son hastened to bring his beloved one, Agnes was once more subjected to martyrdom and social ostracism. As quickly as they could get away, therefore, the young people journeyed to Lisbon, a place conspicuous, even in that day of moral laxity, for its tolerance of the alliance libre. Henry Fielding (who died in the town) has photographically described for all times its gay, sensuous life. Into this unwholesome atmosphere, quite new to her, though she was neither maid[Pg 51] nor wife, it was that the sweet Agnes was thrust by Frankland. Very soon he was to perceive the mistake of this, as well as of several other phases of his selfishness.

On All Saint's Day morning, 1755, when the whole populace, from beggar to priest, courtier to lackey, was making its way to church, the town of Lisbon was shaken to its foundations by an earthquake. The shock came about ten o'clock, just as the Misericordia of the mass was being sung in the crowded churches; and Frankland, who was riding with a lady on his way to the religious ceremony, was immersed with his companion in the ruins of some falling houses. The horses attached to their carriage were instantly killed, and the lady, in her terror and pain, bit through the sleeve of her escort's red broadcloth coat, tearing the flesh with her teeth. Frankland had some awful moments for[Pg 52] thought as he lay there pinned down by the fallen stones, and tortured by the pain in his arm.

Meanwhile Agnes, waiting at home, was prey to most terrible anxiety. As soon as the surging streets would permit a foot passenger, she ran out with all the money she could lay hands on, to search for her dear Sir Harry. By a lucky chance, she came to the very spot where he was lying white with pain, and by her offers of abundant reward and by gold, which she fairly showered on the men near by, she succeeded in extricating him from his fearful plight. Tenderly he was borne to a neighbouring house, and there, as soon as he could stand, a priest was summoned to tie the knot too long ignored. He had vowed, while pinned down by the weight of stone, to amend his life and atone to Agnes, if God in his mercy should see fit[Pg 53] to deliver him, and he wasted not a moment in executing his pledge to Heaven. That his spirit had been effectually chastened, one reads between the lines of this entry in his diary, which may still be seen in the rooms of the Massachusetts Historical Society in Boston: "Hope my providential escape will have a lasting good effect upon my mind."

In order to make his marriage doubly sure, he had the ceremony performed again by a clergyman of his own church on board the ship which he took at once for England. Then the newly married pair proceeded once more to Frankland's home, and this time there were kisses instead of coldness for them both. Business in Lisbon soon called them back to the Continent, however, and it was from Belem that they sailed in April, 1750, for Boston, where both were warmly welcomed by their former friends.[Pg 54]

In the celebrated Clarke mansion, on Garden Court Street, which Sir Harry purchased October 5, 1756, for £1,200, our heroine now reigned queen. This house, three stories high, with inlaid floors, carved mantels, and stairs so broad and low that Sir Harry could, and did, ride his pony up and down them, was the wonder of the time. It contained twenty-six rooms, and was in every respect a marvel of luxury. That Agnes did not forget her own people, nor scorn to receive them in her fine house, one is pleased to note. While here she practically supported, records show, her sister's children, and she welcomed always when he came ashore from his voyages her brother Isaac, a poor though honest seaman.

Frankland's health was not, however, all that both might have wished, and the entries in the diaries deal, at this time, al[Pg 55]most entirely with recipes and soothing drinks. In July, 1757, he sought, therefore, the post of consul-general to Lisbon, where the climate seemed to him to suit his condition, and there, sobered city that it now was, the two again took up their residence. Only once more, in 1763, was Sir Harry to be in Boston. Then he came for a visit, staying for a space in Hopkinton, as well as in the city. The following year he returned to the old country, and in Bath, where he was drinking the waters, he died January 2, 1768, at the age of fifty-two.

Agnes almost immediately came back to Boston, and, with her sister and her sister's children, took up her residence at Hopkinton. There she remained, living a peaceful, happy life among her flowers, her friends, and her books, until the outbreak of the Revolution, when it seemed to her[Pg 56] wise to go in to her town house. She entered Boston, defended by a guard of six sturdy soldiers, and was cordially received by the officers in the beleaguered city, especially by Burgoyne, whom she had known in Lisbon. During the battle of Bunker Hill, she helped nurse wounded King's men, brought to her in her big dining-room on Garden Court Street. As an ardent Tory, however, she was persona non grata in the colony, and she soon found it convenient to sail for England, where, until 1782, she resided on the estate of the Frankland family.

At this point, Agnes ceases in a way to be the proper heroine of our romance, for, contrary to the canons of love-story art, she married again,—Mr. John Drew, a rich banker, of Chichester, being the happy man. And at Chichester she died in one year's time.[Pg 57]

The Hopkinton home fell, in the course of time, into the hands of the Reverend Mr. Nason, who was to be Frankland's biographer, and who, when the original house was destroyed by fire (January 3, 1858), built a similar mansion on the same site. Here the Frankland relics were carefully preserved,—the fireplace, the family portrait (herewith reproduced), Sir Harry's silver knee buckles, and the famous broadcloth coat, from the sleeve of which the unfortunate lady had torn a piece with her teeth on the day of the Lisbon disaster. This coat, we are told, was brought back to Hopkinton by Sir Harry, and hung in one of the remote chambers of the house, where each year, till his departure for the last time from the pleasant village, he was wont to pass the anniversary of the earthquake in fasting, humiliation, and prayer. The coat, and all the[Pg 58] other relics, were lost in April, 1902, when, for the second time, Frankland Hall was razed by fire.

The ancient Fountain Inn, with its "flapping sign," and the "spreading elm below," long since disappeared, and its well, years ago filled up, was only accidentally discovered at a comparatively recent date, when some workmen were digging a post hole. It was then restored as an interesting landmark. This inn was a favourite resort, legends tell us, for jovial sea captains as well as for the gentry of the town. There are even traditions that pirates bold and smugglers sly at times found shelter beneath its sloping roof. Yet none of the many stories with which its ruins are connected compares in interest and charm to the absolutely true one given us by history of Fair Agnes, the Maid of Marblehead.[Pg 59]

AN AMERICAN-BORN BARONET

One of the most picturesque houses in all Middlesex County is the Royall house at Medford, a place to which Sir Harry Frankland and his lady used often to resort. Few of the great names in colonial history are lacking, indeed, in the list of guests who were here entertained in the brave days of old.

The house stands on the left-hand side of the old Boston Road as you approach Medford, and to-day attracts the admiration of electric car travellers just as a century and a half ago it was the focus for all stage passenger's eyes. Externally the building presents three stories, the[Pg 60] upper tier of windows being, as is usual in houses of even a much later date, smaller than those underneath. The house is of brick, but is on three sides entirely sheathed in wood, while the south end stands exposed. Like several of the houses we are noting, it seems to turn its back on the high road. I am, however, inclined to a belief that the Royall house set the fashion in this matter, for Isaac, the Indian nabob, was just the man to assume an attitude of fine indifference to the world outside his gates. When in 1837, he came, a successful Antigua merchant, to establish his seat here in old Charlestown, and to rule on his large estate, sole monarch of twenty-seven slaves, he probably felt quite indifferent, if not superior, to strangers and casual passers-by.

His petition of December, 1737, in re[Pg 61]gard to the "chattels" in his train, addressed to the General Court, reads:

"Petition of Isaac Royall, late of Antigua, now of Charlestown, in the county of Middlesex, that he removed from Antigua and brought with him among other things and chattels a parcel of negroes, designed for his own use, and not any of them for merchandise. He prays that he may not be taxed with impost."

The brick quarters which the slaves occupied are situated on the south side of the mansion, and front upon the courtyard, one side of which they enclose. These may be seen on the extreme right of the picture, and will remind the reader who is familiar with Washington's home at Mount Vernon of the quaint little stone buildings in which the Father of his Country was wont to house his slaves. The slave buildings in Medford have re[Pg 62]mained practically unchanged, and according to good authority are the last visible relics of slavery in New England.

The Royall estate offered a fine example of the old-fashioned garden. Fruit trees and shrubbery, pungent box bordering trim gravel paths, and a wealth of sweet-scented roses and geraniums were here to be found. Even to-day the trees, the ruins of the flower-beds, and the relics of magnificent vines, are imposing as one walks from the street gate seventy paces back to the house-door.

The carriage visitor—and in the old days all the Royall guests came under this head—either alighted by the front entrance or passed by the broad drive under the shade of the fine old elms around into the courtyard paved with small white pebbles. The driveway has now become a side street, and what was once an enclosed gar[Pg 63]den of half an acre or more, with walks, fruit, and a summer-house at the farther extremity, is now the site of modern dwellings.

SUMMER-HOUSE, ROYALL ESTATE, MEDFORD, MASS.

This summer-house, long the favourite resort of the family and their guests, was a veritable curiosity in its way. Placed upon an artificial mound with two terraces, and reached by broad flights of red sandstone steps, it was architecturally a model of its kind. Hither, to pay their court to the daughters of the house, used to come George Erving and the young Sir William Pepperell, and if the dilapidated walls (now taken down, but still carefully preserved) could speak, they might tell of many an historic love tryst. The little house is octagonal in form, and on its bell-shaped roof, surmounted by a cupola, there poises what was originally a figure of Mercury. At present, however, the statue, bereft of[Pg 64] both wings and arms, cannot be said greatly to resemble the dashing god.

The exterior of the summer-house is highly ornamented with Ionic pilasters, and taken as a whole is quaintly ruinous. It is interesting to discover that it was utility that led to the elevation of the mound, within which was an ice-house! And to get at the ice the slaves went through a trap-door in the floor of this Greek structure!

Isaac Royall, the builder of the fine old mansion, did not long live to enjoy his noble estate, but he was succeeded by a second Isaac, who, though a "colonel," was altogether inclined to take more care for his patrimony than for his king. When the Revolution began, Colonel Royall fell upon evil times. Appointed a councillor by mandamus, he declined serving "from timidity," as Gage says to Lord Dart[Pg 65]mouth. Royall's own account of his movements after the beginning of "these troubles," is such as to confirm the governor's opinion.

He had prepared, it seems, to take passage for the West Indies, intending to embark from Salem for Antigua, but having gone into Boston the Sunday previous to the battle of Lexington, and remained there until that affair occurred, he was by the course of events shut up in the town. He sailed for Halifax very soon, still intending, as he says, to go to Antigua, but on the arrival of his son-in-law, George Erving, and his daughter, with the troops from Boston, he was by them persuaded to sail for England, whither his other son-in-law, Sir William Pepperell (grandson of the hero of Louisburg), had preceded him. It is with this young Sir William Pepperell that our story particularly deals.[Pg 66]

ROYALL HOUSE, MEDFORD, MASS.

The first Sir William had been what is called a "self-made man," and had raised himself from the ranks of the soldiery through native genius backed by strength of will. His father is first noticed in the annals of the Isles of Shoals. The mansion now seen in Kittery Point was built, indeed, partly by this oldest Pepperell known to us, and partly by his more eminent son. The building was once much more extensive than it now appears, having been some years ago shortened at either end. Until the death of the elder Pepperell, in 1734, the house was occupied by his own and his son's families. The lawn in front reached to the sea, and an avenue a quarter of a mile in length, bordered by fine old trees, led to the neighbouring house of Colonel Sparhawk, east of the village church. The first Sir William, by his will, made the son of his daughter Elizabeth and of Colo[Pg 67]nel Sparhawk, his residuary legatee, requiring him at the same time to relinquish the name of Sparhawk for that of Pepperell. Thus it was that the baronetcy, extinct with the death of the hero of Louisburg, was revived by the king, in 1774, for the benefit of this grandson.

In the Essex Institute at Salem, is preserved a two-thirds length picture of the first Sir William Pepperell, painted in 1751 by Smibert, when the baronet was in London. Of this picture, Hawthorne once wrote the humourous description which follows: "Sir William Pepperell, in coat, waistcoat and breeches, all of scarlet broadcloth, is in the cabinet of the Society; he holds a general's truncheon in his right hand, and points his left toward the army of New Englanders before the walls of Louisburg. A bomb is represented as fal[Pg 68]ling through the air—it has certainly been a long time in its descent."

PEPPERELL HOUSE, KITTERY, MAINE.

The young William Pepperell was graduated from Cambridge in 1766, and the next year married the beautiful Elizabeth Royall. In 1774 he was chosen a member of the governor's council. But when this council was reorganised under the act of Parliament, he fell into disgrace because of his loyalty to the king. On November 16, 1774, the people of his own county (York), passed at Wells a resolution in which he was declared to have "forfeited the confidence and friendship of all true friends of American liberty, and ought to be detested by all good men."

Thus denounced, the baronet retired to Boston, and sailed, shortly before his father-in-law's departure, for England. His beautiful lady, one is saddened to learn, died of smallpox ere the vessel had been[Pg 69] many days out, and was buried at Halifax. In England, Sir William was allowed £500 per annum by the British government, and was treated with much deference. He was the good friend of all refugees from America, and entertained hospitably at his pleasant home. His private life was irreproachable, and he died in Portman Square, London, in December, 1816, at the age of seventy. His vast possessions and landed estate in Maine were confiscated, except for the widow's dower enjoyed by Lady Mary, relict of the hero of Louisburg, and her daughter, Mrs. Sparhawk.

Colonel Royall, though he acted not unlike his son-in-law, Sir William, has, because of his vacillation, far less of our respect than the younger man in the matter of his refusal to cast in his lot with that of the Revolution. In 1778 he was publicly proscribed and formally banished[Pg 70] from Massachusetts. He thereupon took up his abode in Kensington, Middlesex, and from this place, in 1789, he begged earnestly to be allowed to return "home" to Medford, declaring he was "ever a good friend of the Province," and expressing the wish to marry again in his own country, "where, having already had one good wife, he was in hopes to get another, and in some degree repair his loss." His prayer was, however, refused, and he died of smallpox in England, October, 1781. By his will, Harvard College was given a tract of land in Worcester County, for the foundation of a professorship, which still bears his name.

It is not, however, to be supposed that in war time so fine a place as the Royall mansion should have been left unoccupied. When the yeomen began pouring into the environs of Boston, encircling it with a belt of steel, the New Hampshire levies[Pg 71] pitched their tents in Medford. They found the Royall mansion in the occupancy of Madam Royall and her accomplished daughters, who willingly received Colonel John Stark into the house as a safeguard against insult, or any invasion of the estate the soldiers might attempt. A few rooms were accordingly set apart for the use of the bluff old ranger, and he, on his part, treated the family of the deserter with considerable respect and courtesy. It is odd to think that while the stately Royalls were living in one part of this house, General Stark and his plucky wife, Molly, occupied quarters under the same roof.

The second American general to be attracted by the luxury of the Royall mansion was that General Lee whose history furnishes material for a separate chapter. General Lee it was to whom the house's echoing corridors suggested the name, Hob[Pg 72]goblin Hall. So far as known, however, no inhabitant of the Royall house has ever been disturbed by strange visions or frightful dreams. After Lee, by order of Washington, removed to a house situated nearer his command, General Sullivan, attracted, no doubt, by the superior comfort of the old country-seat, laid himself open to similar correction by his chief. In these two cases it will be seen Washington enforced his own maxim that a general should sleep among his troops.

In 1810, the Royall mansion came into the possession of Jacob Tidd, in whose family it remained half a century, until it had almost lost its identity with the timid old colonel and his kin. As "Mrs. Tidd's house" it was long known in Medford. The place was subsequently owned by George L. Barr, and by George C. Nichols, from whose hands it passed to that[Pg 73] of Mr. Geer, the present owner. To be sure, it has sadly fallen from its high estate, but it still remains one of the most interesting and romantic houses in all New England, and when, as happens once or twice a year, the charming ladies of the local patriotic society powder their hair, don their great-grandmother's wedding gowns and entertain in the fine old rooms, it requires only a slight gift of fancy to see Sir William Pepperell's lovely bride one among the gay throng of fair women.[Pg 74]

MOLLY STARK'S GENTLEMAN-SON

Of the quaint ancestral homes still standing in the old Granite State, none is more picturesque or more interesting from the historical view-point than the Stark house in the little town of Dunbarton, a place about five miles' drive out from Concord, over one of those charming country roads, which properly make New Hampshire the summer and autumn Mecca of those who have been "long in populous city pent." Rather oddly, this house has, for all its great wealth of historical interest, been little known to the general public. The Starks are a conserv[Pg 75]ative, as well as an old family, and they have never seen fit to make of their home a public show-house. Yet those who are privileged to visit Dunbarton and its chief boast, this famous house, always remember the experience as a particularly interesting one. Seldom, indeed, can one find in these days a house like this, which, for more than one hundred years, has been occupied by the family for whom it was built, and through all the changes and chances of temporal affairs has preserved the characteristics of revolutionary times.

Originally Dunbarton was Starkstown. An ancestor of this family, Archibald Stark, was one of the original proprietors, owning many hundred acres, not a few of which are still in the Starks' possession. Just when and by whom the place received the name of the old Scottish town and royal[Pg 76] castle on the Clyde, no historian seems able to state with definiteness, but that the present Dunbarton represents only a small part of the original triangular township, all are agreed. Of the big landowner, Archibald Stark, the General John Stark of our Revolution was a son.

Another of the original proprietors of Dunbarton was a certain Captain Caleb Page, whose name still clings to a rural neighbourhood of the township, a crossroads section pointed out to visitors as Page's Corner. And it was to Elizabeth Page, the bright and capable daughter of his father's old friend and neighbour, that the doughty John Stark was married in August, 1758, while at home on a furlough. The son of this marriage was called Caleb, after his maternal grandfather, and he it was who built the imposing old mansion of our story.[Pg 77]

Caleb Stark was a very remarkable man. Born at Dunbarton, December 3, 1759, he was present while only a lad at the battle of Bunker Hill, standing side by side with some of the veteran rangers of the French war, near the rail fence, which extended from the redoubt to the beach of the Mystic River. In order to be at this scene of conflict, the boy had left home secretly some days before, mounted on his own horse, and armed only with a musket. After a long, hard journey, he managed to reach the Royall house in Medford, which was his father's headquarters at the time, the very night before the great battle. And the general, though annoyed at his son's manner of coming, recognised that the lad had done only what a Stark must do at such a time, and permitted him to take part in the next day's fight.

After that, there followed for Caleb a[Pg 78] time of great social opportunity, which transformed the clever, but unpolished New Hampshire boy into as fine a young gentleman as was to be found in the whole country. The Royall house, it will be remembered, was presided over in the troublous war times by the beautiful ladies of the family, than whom no more cultured and distinguished women were anywhere to be met. And these, though Tory to the backbone, were disposed to be very kind and gracious to the brave boy whom the accident of war had made their guest.

So it came about that even before he reached manhood's estate, Caleb Stark had acquired the grace and polish of Europe. Nor was the lad merely a carpet knight. So ably did he serve his father that he was made the elder soldier's aid-de-camp, when the father was made a brigadier-general,[Pg 79] and by the time the war closed, was himself Major Stark, though scarcely twenty-four years old.

STARK HOUSE, DUNBARTON, N. H.

Soon after peace was declared, the young major came into his Dunbarton patrimony, and in 1784, in a very pleasant spot in the midst of his estate, and facing the broad highway leading from Dunbarton to Weare, he began to build his now famous house. It was finished the next year, and in 1787, the young man, having been elected town treasurer of Dunbarton, resolved to settle down in his new home, and brought there as his wife, Miss Sarah McKinstrey, a daughter of Doctor William McKinstrey, formerly of Taunton, Massachusetts, a beautiful and cultivated girl, just twenty years old.

It is interesting in this connection to note that all the women of the Stark family have been beauties, and that they have,[Pg 80] too, been sweet and charming in disposition, as well as in face. The old mansion on the Weare road has been the home during its one hundred and ten years of life of several women who would have adorned, both by reason of their personal and intellectual charms, any position in our land. This being true, it is not odd that the country folk speak of the Stark family with deepest reverence.

Beside building the family homestead, Caleb Stark did two other things which serve to make him distinguished even in a family where all were great. He entertained Lafayette, and he accumulated the family fortune. Both these things were accomplished at Pembroke, where the major early established some successful cotton mills. The date of his entertainment of Lafayette was, of course, 1825, the year when the marquis, after laying the[Pg 81] corner-stone of our monument on Bunker Hill, made his triumphal tour through New Hampshire.

The bed upon which the great Frenchman slept during his visit to the Starks is still carefully preserved, and those guests who have had the privilege of being entertained by the present owners of the house can bear testimony to the fact that the couch is an extremely comfortable one. The room in which this bed is the most prominent article of furniture bears the name of the Lafayette room, and is in every particular furnished after the manner of a sleeping apartment of one hundred years ago. The curtains of the high bedstead, the quaint toilet-table, the bedside table with its brass candlestick, and the pictures and the ornaments are all in harmony. Nowhere has a discordant modern note been struck. The same thing is true[Pg 82] of all the other apartments in the house. The Starks have one and all displayed great taste and decided skill in preserving the long-ago tone that makes the place what it is. The second Caleb, who inherited the estate in 1838, when his father, the brilliant major, died, was a Harvard graduate, and writer of repute, being the author of a valuable memoir of his father and grandfather. He collected, even more than they had done, family relics of interest. When he died in 1865, his two sisters, Harriett and Charlotte, succeeded him in the possession of the estate.

Only comparatively recently has this latter sister died, and the place come into the hands of its present owner, Mr. Charles F. Morris Stark, an heir who has the traditions of the Morris family to add to those of the Starks, being on his mother's side a lineal descendant of Robert Morris,[Pg 83] the great financier of the Revolution. The present Mrs. Stark is the representative of still another noted New Hampshire family, being the granddaughter of General John McNeil, a famous soldier of the Granite State.

Few, indeed, are the homes in America which contain so much which, while of intimate interest to the family, is as well of wide historical importance. Though a home, the house has the value of a museum. The portrait of Major Stark, which hangs in the parlour at the right of the square entrance-hall, was painted by Professor Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the discoverer of the electric telegraph, a man who wished to come down to posterity as an artist, but is now remembered by us only as an inventor.

This picture is an admirable presentation of its original. The gallant major looks down upon us with a person rather[Pg 84] above the medium in height, of a slight but muscular frame, with the short waistcoat, the high collar, and the close, narrow shoulders of the gentleman's costume of 1830. The carriage of the head is noble, and the strong features, the deep-set, keen, blue eyes, and the prominent forehead, speak of courage, intelligence, and cool self-possession.

Beside this noteworthy portrait hangs a beautiful picture of the first mistress of this house, the Mrs. Stark who, as a girl, was Miss Sarah McKinstrey. Her portrait shows her to have been a fine example of the blonde type of beauty. The splendid coils of her hair are very lustrous, and the dark hazel eyes look out from the frame with the charm and dignity of a St. Cecilia. Her costume, too, is singularly appropriate and becoming, azure silk with great puffs of[Pg 85] lace around the white arms and queenly throat. The waist, girdled under the armpits, and the long-wristed mits stamp the date 1815-21.

The portrait of General Stark, which was painted by Miss Hannah Crowninshield, is said not to look so much like the doughty soldier as does the Morse picture of his son, but Gilbert Stuart's Miss Charlotte Stark, recently deceased, shows the last daughter of the family to have fairly sustained in her youth the reputation for beauty which goes with the Stark women.

Beside the portraits, there are in the house many other choice and valuable antiques. Among these the woman visitor notices with particular interest the fan that was once the property of Lady Pepperell, who was a daughter, it will be remembered, of the Royall family, who were[Pg 86] so kind to Major Caleb Stark in his youth. And to the man who loves historical things, the cane presented to General Stark when he was a major, for valiant conduct in defence of Fort William Henry, will be of especial interest. This cane is made from the bone of a whale and is headed with ivory. On the mantelpiece stands another very interesting souvenir, a bronze statuette of Napoleon I., which Lafayette brought with him from France and presented to Major Stark.

Apropos of this there is an amusing story. The major was a great admirer of the distinguished Bonaparte, and made a collection of Napoleonic busts and pictures, all of which, together with the numerous other effects of the Stark place, had to be appraised at his death. As it happened, the appraiser was a countryman of limited[Pg 87] intelligence, and, when he was told to put down "twelve Bonapartes," recorded "twelve pony carts," and it was thus that the item appeared on the legal paper.

The house itself is a not unworthy imitation of an English manor-house, with its aspect of old-time grandeur and picturesque repose. It is of wood, two and a half stories high, with twelve dormer windows, a gambrel roof, and a large two-story L. In front there are two rows of tall and stately elms, and the trim little garden is enclosed by a painted iron fence. On either side of the spacious hall, which extends through the middle of the house, are to be found handsome trophies of the chase, collected by the present master of the place, who is a keen sportsman.

A gorgeous carpet, which dates back fifty years, having been laid in the days of the beautiful Sarah, supplies the one[Pg 88] bit of colour in the parlour, while in the dining-room the rich silver and handsome mahogany testify to the old-time glories of the place. Of manuscripts which are simply priceless, the house contains not a few; one, over the quaint wine-cooler in the dining-room, acknowledging, in George Washington's own hand, courtesies extended to him and to his lady by a member of the Morris family, being especially interesting. Up-stairs, in the sunlit hall, among other treasures, more elegant but not more interesting, hangs a sunbonnet once worn by Molly Stark herself.

Not far off down the country road is perhaps the most beautiful and attractive spot in the whole town, the old family burying-ground of the Starks, in which are interred all the deceased members of this remarkable family, from the Revolutionary Major Caleb and his wife down. Here,[Pg 89] with grim, towering Kearsarge standing ever like a sentinel, rests under the yew-trees the dust of this great family's honoured dead.[Pg 90]

A SOLDIER OF FORTUNE

"The only time I ever heard Washington swear," Lafayette once remarked, "was when he called General Charles Lee a 'damned poltroon,' after the arrest of that officer for treasonable conduct." Nor was Washington the only person of self-restraint and good manners whose temper and angry passions were roused by this same erratic General Lee.

Lee was an Englishman, born in Cheshire in 1731. He entered the British army at the age of eleven years, was in Braddock's expedition, and was wounded at Ticonderoga in 1758. He also served for[Pg 91] a time in Portugal, but certain infelicities of temper hindered his advancement, and he never rose higher in the British service than a half-pay major. As a "soldier of fortune" he was vastly more successful. In all the pages of American history, indeed, it would be difficult to find anybody whose career was more interestingly and picturesquely checkered than was his.

Lee's purpose in coming to America has never been fully explained. There are concerning this, as every other step of his career, two diametrically opposed opinions. The American historians have for the most agreed in thinking him traitorous and self-seeking, but for my own part I find little to justify this belief, for I have no difficulty whatever in accounting for his soldierly vagaries on the score of his temperament, and the peculiar conditions of his early life. A man who, while still[Pg 92] a youth, was adopted by the Mohawk Indians,—who who bestowed upon him the significant name of Boiling Water,—who was at one time aid-de-camp and intimate friend of the King of Poland, who rendered good service in the Russian war against the Turks,—all before interesting himself at all in the cause of American freedom,—could scarcely be expected to be as simple in his us-ward emotions as an Israel Putnam or a General John Stark might be.

General Lee arrived in New York from London, on November 10, 1773, his avowed object in seeking the colonies at such a troublous time being to investigate the justice of the American cause. He travelled all over the country in pursuance of facts concerning the fermenting feeling against England, but he was soon able to enroll himself unequivocally upon the side[Pg 93] of the colonies. In a letter written to Lord Percy, then stationed at Boston, this eccentric new friend of the American cause—himself, it must be remembered, still a half-pay officer in the English army—expressed with great freedom his opinion of England's position: "Were the principle of taxing America without her consent admitted, Great Britain would that instant be ruined." And to General Gage, his warm personal friend, Lee wrote: "I am convinced that the court of Tiberius was not more treacherous to the rights of mankind than is the present court of Great Britain."

It is rather odd to find that General Charles Lee, of whom we know so little, and that little scarcely to his credit, occupied in the military court of the American array a position second only to Washington; he was appointed a major-general on June 17,[Pg 94] 1775, a date marked for us by the fact that Bunker Hill's battle was then fought. Not long after his arrival at the camp, General Lee, with that tendency to independent action which was afterward to work to his undoing, took up his quarters in the Royall house. And Lee it was who gave to the fine old place the name Hobgoblin Hall. From this mansion, emphatically remote from Lee's command, the eccentric general was summarily recalled by his commander-in-chief, then, as ever after, quick to administer to this major-general what he conceived to be needed reproof.

The house in which General Lee next resided is still standing on Sycamore Street, Somerville. When the place was occupied by Lee it had one of those long pitched roofs, descending to a single story at the back, which are still occasionally met with in our interior New[Pg 95] England towns. The house was, however, altered to its present appearance by that John Tufts who occupied it during post-Revolutionary times. From this lofty dwelling, Lee was able to overlook Boston, and to observe, by the aid of a strong field-glass, all the activities of the enemy's camp.

GENERAL LEE'S HEADQUARTERS, SOMERVILLE, MASS.

Lee himself was at this time an object of unfriendly espionage. In a "separate and secret despatch," Lord Dartmouth instructed General Gage to have a special eye on the ex-English officer. That Lee had resigned his claim to emolument in the English army does not seem to have made his countrymen as clear as it should have done concerning his relation to their cause.

Meanwhile, General Lee, though sleeping in his wind-swept farmhouse and watching from its windows the movements of the British, indulged when opportunity[Pg 96] offered in the social pleasures of the other American officers. Rough and unattractive in appearance,—he seems to have been a kind of Cyrano de Bergerac, "a tall man, lank and thin, with a huge nose,"—he had, when he chose, a certain amount of social grace, and was often extremely entertaining.

Mrs. John Adams, who first met General Lee at an evening party at Major Mifflin's house in Cambridge, describes him as looking like a "careless, hardy veteran," who brought to her mind his namesake, Charles XII. "The elegance of his pen far exceeds that of his person," commented this acute lady. In further describing this evening spent at Major Mifflin's home, in the Brattle mansion, Mrs. Adams writes: "General Lee was very urgent for me to tarry in town, and dine with him and the ladies present, but I excused myself. The[Pg 97] general was determined that I should not only be acquainted with him, but with his companions, too, and therefore placed a chair before me, into which he ordered Mr. Spada (his dog) to mount, and present his paw to me for better acquaintance."[2] Lee was very fond indeed of dogs, and was constantly attended by one or more of them, this Spada being a great, shaggy Pomeranian, described by unbiased critics as looking more like a bear than a harmless canine. In this connection, it is interesting to know that Lee has expressed himself very strongly in regard to the affection of men as compared with the affection of dogs.

This love for dogs was, however, one of the more ornamental of General Lee's traits. His carelessness in regard to his[Pg 98] personal appearance was famous, and not a few amusing stories are told of the awkward situations in which this officer's slovenliness involved him. On one of Washington's journeys, in which Lee accompanied him, the major-general, upon arriving at the house where they were to dine, went straight to the kitchen and demanded something to eat. The cook, taking him for a servant, told him that she would give him some victuals directly, but that he must first help her off with the pot—a request with which he readily complied. He was then told to take a bucket and go to the well for water, and was actually engaged in drawing it when found by an aide whom Washington had despatched in quest of him. The cook was in despair when she heard her assistant addressed by the title of "General." The mug fell from her hands, and dropping[Pg 99] on her knees, she began crying for pardon, when Lee, who was ever ready to see the impropriety of his own conduct, but never willing to change it, gave her a crown, and, turning to the aid-de-camp, observed: "You see, young man, the advantage of a fine coat; the man of consequence is indebted to it for respect; neither virtue nor ability, without it, will make you look like a gentleman."[3]

Perhaps the most remarkable episode in all Lee's social career, was that connected with Sir William Howe's famous entertainment at Philadelphia, the Mischianza. This was just after the affair at Monmouth, in the course of which Washington swore, and Lee was taken prisoner. Yet though a prisoner, the eccentric general was treated with the greatest courtesy, and[Pg 100] seems even to have received a card for the famous ball. But, never too careful of his personal appearance, he must on this occasion have looked particularly uncouth. Certainly the beautiful Miss Franks, one of the Philadelphia belles, thought him far from ornamental, and, with the keen wit for which she was celebrated, spread abroad a report that General Lee came to the ball clad in green breeches, patched with leather. To prove to her that entire accuracy had not been used in describing his garb at the ball, the general sent the young lady the very articles of clothing which she had criticised! Naturally, neither the ladies nor their escorts thought any better of Lee's manners after this bit of horse-play, and it is safe to say he was not soon again invited to an evening party. Mrs. Hamilton and Mrs. Mercy Warren both call Lee "a crabbed man." The latter[Pg 101] described him in a letter to Samuel Adams as "plain in his person to a degree of ugliness; careless even to impoliteness; his garb ordinary; his voice rough; his manners rather morose; yet sensible, learned, judicious, and penetrating."

Toward the end of his life, Lee took refuge in an estate which he had purchased in Berkeley County, Virginia. Here he lived, more like a hermit than a citizen of the world, or a member of a civilised community. His house was little more than a shell, without partitions, and it lacked even such articles of furniture as were necessary for the most common uses. To a gentleman who visited him in this forlorn retreat, where he found a kitchen in one corner, a bed in another, books in a third, saddles and harness in a fourth, Lee said: "Sir, it is the most convenient and economical establishment[Pg 102] in the world. The lines of chalk which you see on the floor mark the divisions of the apartments, and I can sit in a corner and give orders and overlook the whole without moving from my chair."[4]

General Lee died in an obscure inn in Philadelphia, October 2, 1782. His will was characteristic: "I desire most earnestly that I may not be buried in any church or churchyard, or within a mile of any Presbyterian or Baptist meeting-house; for since I have resided in this country I have kept so much bad company that I do not choose to continue it when dead." In this will, our singular hero paid a tribute of affectionate remembrance to several of his intimate friends, and of grateful generosity to the humble dependents who had adhered to him and minis[Pg 103]tered to his wants in his retirement. The bulk of his property—for he was a man of no small means—was bequeathed to his only sister, Sydney Lee, to whom he was ever devotedly attached.

THE MESSAGE OF THE LANTERNS

[Pg 104]

CHRIST CHURCH.

PAUL REVERE HOUSE, BOSTON, MASS.

There are many points of view from which this tale of Paul Revere may be told, but to the generality of people the interest of the poem, and of the historical event itself, will always centre around Christ Church, on Salem Street, in the North End of Boston—the church where the lanterns were hung out on the night before the battles of Lexington and Concord. At nearly every hour of the day some one may be seen in the now unfrequented street looking up at the edifice's lofty spire with an expression full of reverence and satisfaction. There upon[Pg 105] the venerable structure, imbedded in the solid masonry of the tower front, one reads upon a tablet:

THE SIGNAL LANTERNS OF

PAUL REVERE

DISPLAYED IN THE STEEPLE

OF THIS CHURCH,

APRIL 18, 1775,

WARNED THE COUNTRY OF

THE MARCH OF THE

BRITISH TROOPS TO LEXINGTON

AND CONCORD.

If the pilgrim wishes to get into the very spirit of old Christ Church and its historical associations, he can even climb the tower——

to look down as sexton Robert Newman did that eventful night on——

The first time I ever climbed the tower I confess that I was seized with an overpowering sense of the weirdness and mystery of those same spectral graves, seen thus from above. It was dark and gloomy going up the stairs, and if Robert Newman had thought of the prospect, rather than of his errand, I venture to say he must have been frightened for all his bravery, in that gloomy tower at midnight.

But, of course, his mind was intent on the work he had to do, and on the signals which would tell how the British were to proceed on their march to seize the rebel stores at Concord. The signals agreed upon were two lanterns if the troops went by way of water, one if they were to go[Pg 107] by land. In Longfellow's story we learn that Newman——

It had been decided that the journey should be made by sea!

The Province of Massachusetts, it must be understood, was at this time on the eve of open revolt. It had formed an army, commissioned its officers, and promulgated orders as if there were no such person as George III. It was collecting stores in anticipation of the moment when its army should take the field. It had, moreover, given General Gage—whom the king had sent to Boston to put down the rebellion there—to understand[Pg 108] that the first movement made by the royal troops into the country would be considered as an act of hostility, and treated as such. Gage had up to this time hesitated to act. At length his resolution to strike a crippling blow, and, if possible, to do it without bloodshed, was taken. Spies had informed him that the patriots' depot of ammunition was at Concord, and he had determined to send a secret expedition to destroy those stores. Meanwhile, however, the patriots were in great doubt as to the time when the definite movement was to be made.

Fully appreciating the importance of secrecy, General Gage quietly got ready eight hundred picked troops, which he meant to convey under cover of night across the West Bay, and to land on the Cambridge side, thus baffling the vigilance of the townspeople, and at the same time con[Pg 109]siderably shortening the distance his troops would have to march. So much pains were taken to keep the actual destination of these troops a profound secret, that even the officer who was selected for the command only received an order notifying him to hold himself in readiness.

"The guards in the town were doubled," writes Mr. Drake, "and in order to intercept any couriers who might slip through them, at the proper moment mounted patrols were sent out on the roads leading to Concord. Having done what he could to prevent intelligence from reaching the country, and to keep the town quiet, the British general gave his orders for the embarkation; and at between ten and eleven of the night of April 18, the troops destined for this service were taken across the bay in boats to the Cambridge side of the river. At this hour, Gage's pickets were[Pg 110] guarding the deserted roads leading into the country, and up to this moment no patriot courier had gone out."

ROBERT NEWMAN HOUSE, BOSTON, MASS.

Newman with his signals and Paul Revere on his swift horse were able, however, to baffle successfully the plans of the British general. The redcoats had scarcely gotten into their boats, when Dawes and Paul Revere started by different roads to warn Hancock and Adams, and the people of the country-side, that the regulars were out. Revere rode by way of Charlestown, and Dawes by the great highroad over the Neck. Revere had hardly got clear of Charlestown when he discovered that he had ridden headlong into the middle of the British patrol! Being the better mounted, however, he soon distanced his pursuers, and entered Medford, shouting like mad, "Up and arm! Up and arm! The regulars are out! The regulars are out!"[Pg 111]

Longfellow has best described the awakening of the country-side:

The Porter house in Medford, at which Revere stopped long enough to rouse the captain of the Guards, and warn him of the approach of the regulars, is now no longer standing, but the Clark place, in Lexington, where the proscribed fellow-patriots, Hancock and Adams, were lodging that night, is still in a good state of preservation.

The room occupied by "King" Han[Pg 112]cock and "Citizen" Adams is the one on the lower floor, at the left of the entrance. Hancock was at this time visiting this particular house because "Dorothy Q," his fiancée, was just then a guest of the place, and martial pride, coupled, perhaps, with the feeling that he must show himself in the presence of his lady-love a soldier worthy of her favour, inclined him to show fight when he heard from Revere that the regulars were expected. His widow related, in after years, that it was with great difficulty that she and the colonel's aunt kept him from facing the British on the day following the midnight ride. While the bell in the green was sounding the alarm, Hancock was cleaning his sword and his fusee, and putting his accoutrements in order. He is said to have been a trifle of a dandy in his military garb, and his points, sword-knot, and lace, were[Pg 113] always of the newest fashion. Perhaps it was the desire to show himself in all his war-paint that made him resist so long the importunities of the ladies, and the urgency of other friends! The astute Adams, it is recounted, was a little annoyed at his friend's obstinacy, and, clapping him on the shoulder, exclaimed, as he looked significantly at the weapons, "That is not our business; we belong to the cabinet."[5]

It was Adams who threw light on the whole situation. Half an hour after Revere reached the house, the other express arrived, and the two rebel leaders, being now fully convinced that it was Concord which was the threatened point, hurried the messengers on to the next town, after allowing them barely time to swallow a few mouth[Pg 114]fuls of food. Adams did not believe that Gage would send an army merely to take two men prisoners. To him, the true object of the expedition was very clear.

Revere, Dawes, and young Doctor Prescott, of Concord, who had joined them, had got over half the distance to the next town, when, at a sudden turning, they came upon the second redcoat patrol. Prescott leaped his horse over the roadside wall, and so escaped across the fields to Concord. Revere and Dawes, at the point of the pistol, gave themselves up. Their business on the road at that hour was demanded by the officer, who was told in return to listen. Then, through the still morning air, the distant booming of the alarm bell's peal on peal was borne to their ears.

It was the British who were now uneasy. Ordering the prisoners to follow them, the troop rode off at a gallop toward Lexington,[Pg 115] and when they were at the edge of the village, Revere was told to dismount, and was left to shift for himself. He then ran as fast as his legs could carry him across the pastures back to the Clark parsonage, to report his misadventure, while the patrol galloped off toward Boston to announce theirs. But by this time, the Minute Men of Lexington had rallied to oppose the march of the troops. Thanks to the intrepidity of Paul Revere, the North End coppersmith, the redcoats, instead of surprising the rebels in their beds, found them marshalled on Lexington Green, and at Concord Bridge, in front, flank, and rear, armed and ready to dispute their march to the bitter end.[Pg 116]

HANCOCK'S DOROTHY Q.

The Dorothy Q. of our present interest is not the little maiden of Holmes's charming poem—

but her niece, the Dorothy Q. whom John Hancock loved, and was visiting at Lexington, when Paul Revere warned him of the redcoats' approach. This Dorothy hap[Pg 118]pened to be staying just then with the Reverend Jonas Clark, under the protection of Madam Lydia Hancock, the governor's aunt. And it was to meet her, his fiancée, that Hancock went, on the eve of the 19th of April, to the house made famous by his visit.

CLARK HOUSE, LEXINGTON, MASS.

One imaginative writer has sketched for us the notable group gathered that April night about the time-honoured hearthstone in the modest Lexington parsonage: "The last rays of the setting sun have left the dampness of the meadows to gather about the home; and each guest and family occupant has gladly taken seats within the house, while Mrs. Jonas Clark has closed the shutters, added a new forelog, and fanned the embers to a cheerful flame. The young couple whom Madam Hancock has studiously brought together exchange sympathetic glances as they take[Pg 119] part in the conversation. The hours wear away, and the candles are snuffed again and again. Then the guests retire, not, to be sure, without apprehensions of approaching trouble, but with little thought that the king's strong arm of military authority is already extended toward their very roof."[7]

Early the next morning, as we know, the lovers were forced to part in great haste. And for a time John Hancock and his companion, Samuel Adams, remained in seclusion, that they might not be seized by General Gage, who was bent on their arrest, and intended to have them sent to England for trial.

The first word we are able to find concerning Hancock's whereabouts during the interim between his escape from Lexington, and his arrival at the Continental[Pg 120] Congress, appointed to convene at Philadelphia, May 10, 1775, is contained in a long letter to Miss Quincy. This letter, which gives a rather elaborate account of the dangers and triumphs of the patriot's journey, concludes: "Pray let me hear from you by every Post. God bless you, my dear girl, and believe me most Sincerely, Yours most Affectionately, John Hancock."

A month later, June 10, 1775, we find the charming Dorothy Q., now the guest at Fairfield, Connecticut, of Thaddeus Burr, receiving this letter from her lover:

"My Dear Dolly:—I am almost prevail'd on to think that my letters to my Aunt & you are not read, for I cannot obtain a reply, I have ask'd million questions & not an answer to one, I beg'd you to let[Pg 121] me know what things my Aunt wanted & you and many other matters I wanted to know but not one word in answer. I Really Take it extreme unkind, pray, my dear, use not so much Ceremony & Reservedness, why can't you use freedom in writing, be not afraid of me, I want long Letters. I am glad the little things I sent you were agreeable. Why did you not write me of the top of the Umbrella. I am sorry it was spoiled, but I will send you another by my Express which will go in a few days. How did my Aunt like her gown, & let me know if the Stockings suited her; she had better send a pattern shoe & stocking, I warrant I will suit her.... I Beg, my dear Dolly, you will write me often and long Letters, I will forgive the past if you will mend in future. Do ask my Aunt to make me up and send me[Pg 122] a Watch String, and do you make up another and send me, I wear them out fast. I want some little thing of your doing. Remember me to all my Friends with you, as if named. I am Call'd upon and must obey.

"I have sent you by Doctor Church in a paper Box Directed to you, the following things, for your acceptance, & which I do insist you wear, if you do not I shall think the Donor is the objection:

"I wish these may please you, I shall be gratified if they do, pray write me, I will attend to all your Commands.[Pg 123]

"Adieu, my dear Girl, and believe me with great Esteem & affection,

"Yours without reserve,
"John Hancock."[8]

DOROTHY Q. HOUSE, QUINCY, MASS.

It is interesting to know that while Miss Quincy was a guest in Fairfield, Aaron Burr, the nephew of her host, came to the house, and that his magnetic influence soon had an effect upon the beautiful young lady. But watchful Aunt Lydia prevented the charmer from thwarting the Hancock family plans, and on the 28th day of the following August there was a great wedding at Fairfield. John Hancock, president of the Continental Congress, and Miss Dorothy Quincy were joined in marriage in style befitting the family situations.

The noted couple went at once to Phila[Pg 124]delphia, where the patriot lived at intervals during the remainder of the session. Mrs. Hancock seems to have been much of the time in Boston, however, and occasionally, in the course of the next few years, we catch delightful glimpses through her husband's letters of his great affection for her, and for their little one.

Under date of Philadelphia, March 10, 1777, we read: "I shall make out as well as I can, but I assure you, my Dear Soul, I long to have you here, & I know you will be as expeditious as you can in coming. When I part from you again it must be a very extraordinary occasion. I have sent everywhere to get a gold or silver rattle for the child with a coral to send, but cannot get one. I will have one if possible on your coming. I have sent a sash for her & two little papers of pins for you. If you do not want them you can give them away[Pg 125].

"... May every blessing of an Indulgent Providence attend you. I most sincerely wish you a good journey & hope I shall soon have the happiness of seeing you with the utmost affection and Love. My dear Dolly, I am yours forever,

"John Hancock."

After two years and a half of enforced absence, the President of the Continental Congress returned home to that beautiful house on Beacon Street, which was unfortunately destroyed in 1863, to make room for a more modern building. Here the united couple lived very happily with their two children, Lydia and Washington.

Judging by descriptions that have come down to us, and by the World's Fair reproduction of the Hancock House, their mansion must have been a very sumptuous one. It was built of stone, after the manner[Pg 126] favoured by Bostonians who could afford it, with massive walls, and a balcony projecting over the entrance door, upon which a large second-story window opened. Braintree stone ornamented the corners and window-places, and the tiled roof was surrounded by a balustrade. From the roof, dormer windows provided a beautiful view of the surrounding country. The grounds were enclosed by a low stone wall, on which was placed a light wooden fence. The house itself was a little distance back from the street, and the approach was by means of a dozen stone steps and a carefully paved walk.

At the right of the entrance was a reception-room of spacious dimensions, provided with furniture of bird's-eye maple, covered with rich damask. Out of this opened the dining-room, sixty feet in length, in which Hancock was wont to entertain.[Pg 127] Opposite was a smaller apartment, the usual dining-room of the family. Next adjoining were the china-room and offices, while behind were to be found the coach-house and barn of the estate.

The family drawing-room, its lofty walls covered with crimson paper, was at the left of the entrance. The upper and lower halls of the house were hung with pictures of game and with hunting scenes. The furniture, wall-papers and draperies throughout the house had been imported from England by Thomas Hancock, and expressed the height of luxury for that day. Passing through the hall, a flight of steps led to a small summer-house in the garden, near Mount Vernon Street, and here the grounds were laid out in ornamental box-bordered beds like those still to be seen in the beautiful Washington home on the Potomac. A highly interesting corner[Pg 128] of the garden was that given over to the group of mulberry-trees, which had been imported from England by Thomas Hancock, the uncle of John, he being, with others of his time, immensely interested in the culture of the silkworm.

Of this beautiful home Dorothy Quincy showed herself well fitted to be mistress, and through her native grace and dignity admirably performed her part at the reception of D'Estaing, Lafayette, Washington, Brissot, Lords Stanley and Wortley, and other noted guests.

On October 8, 1793, Hancock died, at the age of fifty-six years. The last recorded letter penned in his letter volume was to Captain James Scott, his lifelong friend. And it was to this Captain Scott that our Dorothy Q. gave her hand in a second marriage three years later. She outlived her second husband many years,[Pg 129] residing at the end of her life on Federal Street in Boston. When turned of seventy she had a lithe, handsome figure, a pair of laughing eyes, and fine yellow ringlets in which scarcely a gray hair could be seen. And although for the second time a widow, she was as sprightly as a girl of sixteen. In her advanced years, Madam Scott received another call from Lafayette, and those who witnessed the hearty interview say that the once youthful chevalier and the unrivalled belle met as if only a summer had passed since their social intercourse during the perils of the Revolution.[Pg 130]

BARONESS RIEDESEL AND HER TORY FRIENDS

The most beautiful example of wifely devotion to be found in the annals connected with the war of the Revolution is that afforded by the story of the lovely Baroness Riedesel, whose husband was deputed to serve at the head of the German mercenaries allied to the king's troops, and who was herself, with the baron and her children, made prisoner of war after the battle of Saratoga.

Riedesel was a gallant soldier, and his wife a fair and fascinating young woman at this time. They had not been long married when the war in America broke out,[Pg 131] and the wife's love for her husband was such as to impel her to dare all the hardships of the journey and join him in the foreign land. Her letters and journal, which give a lively and vivid account of the perils of this undertaking, and of the pleasures and difficulties that she experienced after she had succeeded in reaching her dear spouse, supply what is perhaps the most interesting human document of those long years of war.

The baroness landed on the American continent at Quebec, and travelled amid great hardships to Chambly, where her husband was stationed. For two days only they were together. After that she returned with her children to Three Rivers. Soon, however, came the orders to march down into the enemy's country.

The description of this journey as the baroness has given it to us makes, indeed,[Pg 132] moving reading. Once a frightful cannonade was directed against the house in which the women and the wounded had taken refuge. In the cellar of this place Madam Riedesel and her children passed the entire night. It was in this cellar, indeed, that the little family lived during the long period of waiting that preceded the capitulation made necessary by Burgoyne's inexcusable delay near Saratoga. Later the Riedesels were most hospitably entertained at Saratoga by General Schuyler, his wife and daughters, of whom the baroness never fails to speak in her journal with the utmost affection.

The journey from Albany to Boston was full of incident and hardship, but of it the plucky wife writes only: "In the midst of all my trials God so supported me that I lost neither my frolicsomeness nor my spirits...." The contrast be[Pg 133]tween the station of the Americans and of the Germans who were their prisoners, is strikingly brought out in this passage of the diary: "Some of the American generals who were in charge of us on the march to Boston were shoemakers; and upon our halting days they made boots for our officers, and also mended nicely the shoes of our soldiers. They set a great value upon our money coinage, which with them was scarce. One of our officers had worn his boots entirely into shreds. He saw that an American general had on a good pair, and said to him, jestingly, 'I will gladly give you a guinea for them.' Immediately the general alighted from his horse, took the guinea, gave up his boots, put on the badly-worn ones of the officer, and again mounted his horse."

The journey was at length successfully accomplished, however, and in Massachu[Pg 134]setts the baroness was on the whole very well treated, it would seem.

"We remained three weeks in wretched quarters at Winter Hill," she writes, "until they transferred us to Cambridge, where they lodged us in one of the most beautiful houses of the place, which had formerly been built by the wealth of the royalists. Never had I chanced upon any such agreeable situation. Seven families, who were connected with each other partly by the ties of relationship and partly by affection, had here farms, gardens, and magnificent houses, and not far off plantations of fruit. The owners of these were in the habit of meeting each other in the afternoon, now at the house of one, and now at another, and making themselves merry with music and the dance—living in prosperity united and happy, until, alas! this ruinous war severed them, and left[Pg 135] all their houses desolate except two, the proprietors of which were also soon obliged to flee....

"None of our gentlemen were allowed to go into Boston. Curiosity and desire urged me, however, to pay a visit, to Madam Carter, the daughter of General Schuyler, and I dined at her house several times. The city throughout is pretty, but inhabited by violent patriots, and full of wicked people. The women especially were so shameless, that they regarded me with repugnance, and even spit at me when I passed by them. Madam Carter was as gentle and good as her parents, but her husband was wicked and treacherous. She came often to visit us, and also dined at our house with the other generals. We sought to show them by every means our gratitude. They seemed also to have much friendship for us; and yet at the same[Pg 136] time this miserable Carter, when the English General Howe had burned many hamlets and small towns, made the horrible proposition to the Americans to chop off the heads of our generals, salt them down in small barrels, and send over to the English one of these barrels for every hamlet or little town burned down. But this barbarous suggestion fortunately was not adopted.

"... I saw here that nothing is more terrible than a civil war. Almost every family was disunited.... On the third of June, 1778, I gave a ball and supper in celebration of the birthday of my husband. I had invited to it all the generals and officers. The Carters also were there. General Burgoyne sent an excuse after he had made us wait until eight o'clock in the evening. He invariably excused himself on various pretences from coming to see[Pg 137] us until his departure for England, when he came and made me a great many apologies, but to which I made no other answer than that I should be extremely sorry if he had gone out of his way on our account. We danced considerably, and our cook prepared us a magnificent supper of more than eighty covers. Moreover, our courtyard and garden were illuminated. As the birthday of the King of England came upon the following day, which was the fourth, it was resolved that we would not separate until his health had been drank; which was done with the most hearty attachment to his person and his interests.

"Never, I believe, has 'God Save the King,' been drunk with more enthusiasm or more genuine good will. Even both my oldest little daughters were there, having stayed up to see the illumination. All eyes were full of tears; and it seemed as[Pg 138] if every one present was proud to have the spirit to venture to this in the midst of our enemies. Even the Carters could not shut their hearts against us. As soon as the company separated, we perceived that the whole house was surrounded by Americans, who, having seen so many people go into the house, and having noticed also the illumination, suspected that we were planning a mutiny, and if the slightest disturbance had arisen it would have cost us dear....

"The Americans," says the baroness, further on, "when they desire to collect their troops together, place burning torches of pitch upon the hilltops, at which signal every one hastens to the rendezvous. We were once witnesses of this when General Howe attempted a landing at Boston in order to rescue the captive troops. They learned of this plan, as usual, long before[Pg 139]hand, and opened barrels of pitch, whereupon for three or four successive days a large number of people without shoes and stockings, and with guns on their backs, were seen hastily coming from all directions, by which means so many people came together so soon that it would have been a very difficult thing to effect a landing.

"We lived very happily and contented in Cambridge, and were therefore well pleased at remaining there during the captivity of our troops. As winter approached, however, we were ordered to Virginia [because of the difficulty of providing provisions], and in the month of November, 1778, set out.

"My husband, fortunately, found a pretty English wagon, and bought it for me, so that as before I was enabled to travel comfortably. My little Gustava[Pg 140] had entreated one of my husband's adjutants, Captain Edmonston, not to leave us on the way. The confiding manner of the child touched him and he gave his promise and faithfully kept it. I travelled always with the army and often over almost impassable roads....

"I had always provisions with me, but carried them in a second small wagon. As this could not go as fast as we, I was often in want of everything. Once when we were passing a town called Hertford [Hartford, Connecticut], we made a halt, which, by the by, happened every fourth day. We there met General Lafayette, whom my husband invited to dinner, as otherwise he would have been unable to find anything to eat. This placed me in rather an awkward dilemma as I knew that he loved a good dinner. Finally, however, I managed to glean from what[Pg 141] provisions I had on hand enough to make him a very respectable meal. He was so polite and agreeable that he pleased us all very much. He had many Americans in his train, though, who were ready to leap out of their skins for vexation at hearing us speak constantly in French. Perhaps they feared, on seeing us on such a friendly footing with him, that we would be able to alienate him from their cause, or that he would confide things to us that we ought not to know.

"Lafayette spoke much of England, and of the kindness of the king in having had all objects of interest shown to him. I could not keep myself from asking him how he could find it in his heart to accept so many marks of kindness from the king when he was on the point of departing in order to fight against him. Upon this observation of mine he appeared somewhat[Pg 142] ashamed, and answered me: 'It is true that such a thought passed through my mind one day, when the king offered to show me his fleet. I answered that I hoped to see it some day, and then quietly retired, in order to escape from the embarrassment of being obliged to decline, point blank, the offer, should it be repeated.'"

The baroness's own meeting with the king soon after her return to England, in the autumn of 1780, when the prisoners were exchanged, is thus entertainingly described: "One day when we were yet seated at table, the queen's first lady of honour, my Lady Howard, sent us a message to the effect that her Majesty would receive us at six o'clock that afternoon. As my court dress was not yet ready, and I had nothing with me proper to wear, I sent my apologies for not going at that time, which I again repeated when we had[Pg 143] the honour of being presented to their Majesties, who were both present at the reception. The queen, however, as did also the king, received us with extraordinary graciousness, and replied to my excuses by saying, 'We do not look at the dress of those persons we are glad to see.'

"They were surrounded by the princesses, their daughters. We seated ourselves before the chimney-fire,—the queen, the princesses, the first lady of honour, and myself,—forming a half-circle, my husband, with the king, standing in the centre close to the fire. Tea and cakes were then passed round. I sat between the queen and one of the princesses, and was obliged to go over a great part of my adventures. Her majesty said to me very graciously, 'I have followed you everywhere, and have often inquired after you; and I have always heard with[Pg 144] delight that you were well, contented, and beloved by every one.' I happened to have at this time a shocking cough. Observing this, the Princess Sophia went herself and brought me a jelly made of black currants, which she represented as a particularly good remedy, and forced me to accept a jar full.

"About nine o'clock in the evening the Prince of Wales came in. His youngest sisters flocked around him, and he embraced them and danced them around. In short, the royal family had such a peculiar gift for removing all restraint that one could readily imagine himself to be in a cheerful family circle of his own station in life. We remained with them until ten o'clock, and the king conversed much with my husband about America in German, which he spoke exceedingly well."

From England the baroness proceeded (in 1783), to her home in Brunswick, where she was joyfully received, and where, after her husband's triumph, they enjoyed together respite from war for a period of four years. In 1794, General Riedesel was appointed commandant of the city of Brunswick, where he died in 1800. The baroness survived him eight years, passing away in Berlin, March 29, 1808, at the age of sixty-two. She rests beside her beloved consort in the family vault[Pg 145] at Lauterbach.

RIEDESEL HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

Her Cambridge residence, which formerly stood at the corner of Sparks Street, on Brattle, among the beautiful lindens so often mentioned in the "journal," has recently been remodelled and removed to the next lot but one from its original site. It now looks as in the picture, and is numbered 149 Brattle Street. A little street at the right has been appropriately[Pg 146] named Riedesel Avenue. Yet even in history-loving Cambridge there is little familiarity with the career of the baron and his charming lady, and there are few persons who have read the entertaining journal, written in German a century and a quarter ago by this clever and devoted wife.[Pg 147]

DOCTOR CHURCH: FIRST TRAITOR TO THE AMERICAN CAUSE

Very few old houses retain at the present time so large a share of the dignity and picturesqueness originally theirs, as does the homestead whose chief interest for us lies in the fact that it was the Revolutionary prison of Doctor Benjamin Church, the first-discovered traitor to the American cause. This house is on Brattle Street, at the corner of Hawthorn. Built about 1700, it came early into the possession of Jonathan Belcher, who afterward became Sir Jonathan, and from 1730 till 1741 was[Pg 148] governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Colonel John Vassall the elder was the next owner of the house, acquiring it in 1736, and somewhat later conveying it, with its adjoining estate of seven acres, to his brother, Major Henry, an officer in the militia, who died under its roof in 1769.

Major Henry Vassall had married Penelope, sister of Isaac Royall, the proprietor of the beautiful place at Medford, but upon the beginning of hostilities, this sprightly widow abandoned her spacious home in such haste that she carried along with her, according to tradition, a young companion whom she had not time to restore to her friends! Such of her property as could be used by the colony forces was given in charge of Colonel Stark, while the rest was allowed to pass into Boston. The barns and roomy outbuild[Pg 149]ings were used for the storage of the colony forage.

HOUSE WHERE DOCTOR CHURCH WAS CONFINED, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

It is highly probable that the Widow Vassall's house at once became the American hospital, and that it was the residence, as it was certainly the prison, of Doctor Benjamin Church. Church had been placed at the head of an army hospital for the accommodation of twenty thousand men, and till this time had seemed a brave and zealous compatriot of Warren and the other leading men of the time. Soon after his appointment, he was, however, detected in secret correspondence with Gage. He had entrusted to a woman of his acquaintance a letter written in cipher to be forwarded to the British commander. This letter was found upon the girl, she was taken to headquarters, and there the contents of the fatal message were deciphered and the defection of Doctor[Pg 150] Church established. When questioned by Washington he appeared utterly confounded, and made no attempt to vindicate himself.

The letter itself did not contain any intelligence of importance, but the discovery that one, until then so high in the esteem of his countrymen, was engaged in a clandestine correspondence with the enemy was deemed sufficient evidence of guilt. Church was therefore arrested at once, and confined in a chamber looking upon Brattle Street. Some of his leisure, while here imprisoned, he employed in cutting on the door of a closet:

"B Church, jr."

There the marks still remain, their significance having after a half century been interpreted by a lady of the house to whom[Pg 151] they had long been familiar, but who had lacked any clue to their origin until, in the course of a private investigation, she determined beyond a doubt their relation to Church. The chamber has two windows in the north front, and two overlooking the area on the south.

Church's fall was the more terrible because from a height. He was a member of a very distinguished family, and he had been afforded in his youth all the best opportunities of the day. In 1754 he was graduated at Harvard, and after studying with Doctor Pynchon rose to considerable eminence as a physician and particularly as a surgeon. Besides talents and genius of a sort, he was endowed with a rare poetic fancy, many of his verses being full of daintiness as well as of a very pretty wit. He was, however, somewhat extravagant in his habits, and about 1768 had[Pg 152] built himself an elegant country house near Boston. It was to sustain this, it is believed, that he sold himself to the king's cause.

To all appearance, however, Church was up to the very hour of his detection one of the leading patriots of the time. He had been chosen to deliver the oration in the Old South Meeting-House on March 5, 1773, and he there pronounced a stirring discourse, which has still power to thrill the reader, upon the massacre the day celebrates, and the love of liberty which inspired the patriots' revolt on that memorable occasion. Yet two years earlier, as we have since discovered from a letter of Governor Hutchinson, he had been anonymously employing his venal pen in the service of the government!

In 1774, when he was a member of the Provincial Congress, he was first suspected[Pg 153] of communication with Gage, and of receiving a reward for his treachery. Paul Revere has written concerning this: "In the fall of '74 and the winter of '75 I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics, who formed themselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the movements of the British soldiers and gaining every intelligence of the Tories. We held our meetings at the Green Dragon Tavern. This committee were astonished to find all their secrets known to General Gage, although every time they met every member swore not to reveal any of their transactions except to Hancock, Adams, Warren, Otis, Church, and one or two others."

The traitor, of course, proved to be Doctor Church. One of his students who kept his books and knew of his money embarrassment first mistrusted him. Only[Pg 154] treachery, he felt, could account for his master's sudden acquisition of some hundreds of new British guineas.

The doctor was called before a council of war consisting of all the major-generals and brigadiers of the army, beside the adjutant-general, Washington himself presiding. This tribunal decided that Church's acts had been criminal, but remanded him for the decision of the General Court, of which he was a member. He was taken in a chaise, escorted by General Gates and a guard of twenty men, to the music of fife and drum, to Watertown meeting-house, where the court sat. "The galleries," says an old writer, "were thronged with people of all ranks. The bar was placed in the middle of the broad aisle, and the doctor arraigned." His defence at the trial was very ingenious and able:—that the fatal letter was designed[Pg 155] for his brother, but that since it was not sent he had communicated no intelligence; that there was nothing in the letter but notorious facts; that his exaggerations of the American force could only be designed to favour the cause of his country; and that his object was purely patriotic. He added, in a burst of sounding though unconvincing oratory: "The warmest bosom here does not flame with a brighter zeal for the security, happiness, and liberties of America than mine."

These eloquent professions did not avail him, however. He was adjudged guilty, and expelled from the House of Representatives of Massachusetts. By order of the General Congress, he was condemned to close confinement in Norwich jail in Connecticut, "and debarred from the use of pen, ink, and paper," but his health failing, he was allowed (in 1776) to leave[Pg 156] the country. He sailed for the West Indies,—and the vessel that bore him was never afterward heard from.

Some people in Church's time, as well as our own, have been disposed to doubt the man's treachery, but Paul Revere was firmly convinced that the doctor was in the pay of General Gage. Revere's statement runs in part as follows:

"The same day I met Doctor Warren. He was president of the Committee of Safety. He engaged me as a messenger to do the out-of-doors business for that committee; which gave me an opportunity of being frequently with them. The Friday evening after, about sunset, I was sitting with some or near all that committee in their room, which was at Mr. Hastings's house in Cambridge. Doctor Church all at once started up. 'Doctor[Pg 157] Warren,' said he, 'I am determined to go into Boston to-morrow.' (It set them all a-staring.) Doctor Warren replied, 'Are you serious, Doctor Church? They will hang you if they catch you in Boston.' He replied, 'I am serious, and am determined to go at all adventures.' After a considerable conversation, Doctor Warren said, 'If you are determined, let us make some business for you.' They agreed that he should go to get medicine for their and our wounded officers."

Naturally, Paul Revere, who was an ardent patriot as well as an exceedingly straightforward man, had little sympathy with Church's weakness, but to-day as one looks at the initials scratched by the prisoner on the door of his cell, one's heart expands with pity for the man, and one wonders long and long whether the vessel[Pg 158] on which he sailed was really lost, or whether he escaped on it to foreign shores, there to expiate as best he could his sin against himself and his country.[Pg 159]

A VICTIM OF TWO REVOLUTIONS

In the life of Colonel James Swan, as in that of Doctor Benjamin Church, money was the root of all evil. Swan was almost a fool because of his pig-headedness in financial adversity, and Church was ever a knave, plausible even when proved guilty. Yet both fell from the same cause, utter inability to keep money and avoid debt.

Colonel Swan's history reads very like a romance. He was born in Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1754, and came to America in 1765. He found employment in Boston, and devoted all his spare time to books. While a clerk of eighteen, in a[Pg 160] counting-house near Faneuil Hall, he published a work on the African slave trade, entitled, "A Discussion of Great Britain and Her Colonies from the Slave Trade," a copy of which, preserved in the Boston Public Library, is well worth reading for its flavour and wit.

While serving an apprenticeship with Thaxter & Son, he formed an intimate friendship with several other clerks who, in after years, became widely known, among them, Benjamin Thompson, afterward made Count Rumford, and Henry Knox, who later became the bookseller on Cornhill, and finally a general in the Continental army.

Swan was a member of the Sons of Liberty, and took part in the famous Boston tea-party. He was engaged in the battle of Bunker Hill as a volunteer aid of Warren, and was twice wounded. He also[Pg 161] witnessed the evacuation of Boston by the British, March 17, 1776. He later became secretary of the Massachusetts board of war, and was elected a member of the legislature. Throughout the whole war he occupied positions of trust, often requiring great courage and cool judgment, and the fidelity with which every duty was performed was shown by the honours conferred upon him after retiring to civil life. By means of a large fortune which fell to him, he entered mercantile business on a large scale, and became very wealthy. He owned large tracts of land in different parts of the country, and bought much of the confiscated property of the Tories, among other lands the estate belonging to Governor Hutchinson, lying on Tremont Street, between West and Boylston Streets.

His large speculations, however, caused him to become deeply involved in debt.[Pg 162] In 1787, accordingly, he started out anew to make a fortune, and through the influence of Lafayette and other men of prominence in Paris, he secured many government contracts which entailed immense profit. Through all the dark days of the French Revolution, he tried to serve the cause of the proscribed French nobility by perfecting plans for them to colonise on his lands in America. A large number he induced to immigrate, and a vast quantity of the furniture and belongings of these unfortunates was received on board his ships. But before the owners could follow their furniture, the axe had fallen upon their heads.

When the Reign of Terror was at its height, the Sally, owned by Colonel Swan, and commanded by Captain Stephen Clough, of Wiscasset, Maine, came home with a strange cargo and a stranger story.[Pg 163] The cargo consisted of French tapestries, marquetry, silver with foreign crests, rare vases, clocks, costly furniture, and no end of apparelling fit for a queen. The story was that, only for the failure at the last moment of a plot for her deliverance, Marie Antoinette would also have been on the sloop, the plan being that she should be the guest at Wiscasset of the captain's wife until she could be transferred to a safer retreat.

However true may be the rumour of a plot to bring Marie Antoinette to America, it is certain that the furniture brought on the Sally, was of exceptional value and beauty. It found its resting-place in the old Swan house of our picture, to which it gave for many years the name of the Marie Antoinette house. One room was even called the Marie Antoinette room, and the bedstead of this apartment, which[Pg 164] is to-day in the possession of the descendants of Colonel Swan, is still known as the Marie Antoinette bedstead. Whether the unhappy queen ever really rested on this bed cannot, of course, be said, but tradition has it that it was designed for her use in America because she had found it comfortable in France.

SWAN HOUSE, DORCHESTER, MASS.

Colonel Swan, having paid all his debts, returned in 1795 to the United States, accompanied by the beautiful and eccentric gentlewoman who was his wife, and who had been with her husband in Paris during the Terror. They brought with them on this occasion a very large collection of fine French furniture, decorations, and paintings. The colonel had become very wealthy indeed through his commercial enterprises, and was now able to spend a great deal of money upon his fine Dorchester mansion, which he finished about the[Pg 165] year 1796. A prominent figure of the house was the circular dining-hall, thirty-two feet in diameter, crowned at the height of perhaps twenty-five feet by a dome, and having three mirror windows. As originally built, it contained no fireplaces or heating conveniences of any kind.

Mrs. Swan accompanied her husband on several subsequent trips to Paris, and it was on one of these occasions that the colonel came to great grief. He had contracted, it is said, a debt claimed in France to be two million francs. This indebtedness he denied, and in spite of the persuasion of his friends he would make no concession in the matter. As a matter of principle he would not pay a debt which, he insisted, he did not owe. He seems to have believed the claim of his creditor to be a plot, and he at once resolved to be a martyr. He was thereupon arrested, and[Pg 166] confined in St. Pélagie, a debtor's prison, from 1808 to 1830, a period of twenty-two years!

He steadfastly denied the charge against him, and, although able to settle the debt, preferred to remain a prisoner to securing his liberty on an unjust plea.... He gave up his wife, children, friends, and the comforts of his Parisian and New England homes for a principle, and made preparations for a long stay in prison. Lafayette, Swan's sincere friend, tried in vain to prevail upon him to take his liberty.[9]

Doctor Small, his biographer, tells us that he lived in a little cell in the prison, and was treated with great respect by the other prisoners, they putting aside their little furnaces with which they cooked, that he might have more room for exercise. Not a day passed without some kind act[Pg 167] on his part, and he was known to have been the cause of the liberation of many poor debtors. When the jailor introduced his pretended creditor, he would politely salute him, and say to the former: "My friend, return me to my chamber."

With funds sent by his wife, Swan hired apartments in the Rue de la Clif, opposite St. Pélagie, which he caused to be fitted up at great expense. Here were dining and drawing rooms, coaches, and stables, and outhouses, and here he invited his guests and lodged his servants, putting at the disposal of the former his carriages, in which they drove to the promenade, the ball, the theatre—everywhere in his name. At this Parisian home he gave great dinners to his constant but bewildered friends. He seemed happy in thus braving his creditors and judges, we are told, allowed his beard to grow, dressed[Pg 168] à la mode, and was cheerful to the last day of his confinement.

His wife died in 1825, and five years later the Revolution of July threw open his doors in the very last hour of his twenty-second year of captivity. His one desire upon being released was to embrace his friend Lafayette, and this he did on the steps of the Hôtel de Ville. Then he returned, July 31, to reinstate himself in prison—for St. Pélagie had after twenty-two years come to stand to him for home. He was seized almost immediately upon his second entrance into confinement with a hemorrhage, and died suddenly in the Rue d'Échiquier, aged seventy-six. In his will, he donated large sums of money to his four children, and to the city of Boston to found an institution to be called the Swan Orphan Academy. But the estate was found to be hopelessly insolvent,[Pg 169] and the public legacy was never paid. The colonel's name lives, however, in the Maine island he purchased in 1786, for the purpose of improving and settling,—a project which, but for one of his periodic failures, he would probably have successfully accomplished.

THE WOMAN VETERAN OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY

[Pg 170]

DEBORAH SAMPSON GANNETT.

Deborah Sampson Gannett, of Sharon, has the unique distinction of presenting the only authenticated case of a woman's enlistment and service as a regular soldier in the Revolutionary army.

The proof of her claim's validity can be found in the resolutions of the General Court of Massachusetts, where, under date of January 20, 1792, those who take the trouble may find this entry: "On the petition of Deborah Gannett, praying compensation for services performed in the late army of the United States.[Pg 171]

"Whereas, it appears to this court that Deborah Gannett enlisted under the name of Robert Shurtleff, in Captain Webb's company in the Fourth Massachusetts regiment, on May 21, 1782, and did actually perform the duties of a soldier in the late army of the United States to the twenty-third day of October, 1783, for which she has received no compensation;

"And, whereas, it further appears that the said Deborah exhibited an extraordinary instance of female heroism by discharging the duties of a faithful, gallant soldier, and at the same time preserved the virtue and chastity of her sex unsuspected and unblemished, and was discharged from the service with a fair and honourable character; therefore,

"Resolved, that the treasurer of the Commonwealth be, and hereby is, directed to issue his note to said Deborah for the[Pg 172] sum of £34, bearing interest from October 23, 1783."

Thus was the seal of authenticity set upon as extraordinary a story as can be found in the annals of this country.

Deborah Sampson was born in Plympton, Plymouth County, December 17, 1760, of a family descended from Governor Bradford. She had many brothers who enlisted for service early in the war, and it was their example, according to some accounts, which inspired her unusual course.

If one may judge from the hints thrown out in the "Female Review," a quaint little pamphlet probably written by Deborah herself, and published in 1797, however, it was the ardent wooing of a too importunate lover which drove the girl to her extraordinary undertaking. Two copies of this "Review" are now treasured in the Boston Public Library.[Pg 173]

In the first chapters, the author discourses upon female education and the like, and then, after a sympathetic analysis of the educational aspirations of the heroine (referred to throughout the book as "our illustrious fair"), and a peroration on the lady's religious beliefs, describes in Miss Sampson's own words a curious dream she once had.

The young woman experienced this psychic visitation, the author of the "Review" would have us believe, a short time before taking her final step toward the army. In the dream, a serpent bade her "arise, stand on your feet, gird yourself, and prepare to encounter your enemy." This, according to the chronicler's interpretation, was one underlying cause of Deborah's subsequent decision to enlist as a soldier.

Yet her mother's wish that she should[Pg 174] marry a man for whom she felt no love is also suggested as a cause, and there is a hint, too, that the death in the battle of Long Island, New York, of a man to whom she was attached, gave the final impulse to her plan. At any rate, it was the night that she heard the news of this man's death that she started on her perilous undertaking.

"Having put in readiness the materials she had judged requisite," writes her chronicler, "she retired at her usual hour to bed, intending to rise at twelve.... There was none but the Invisible who could take cognisance of her passion on assuming her new garb."

She slipped cautiously away, and travelled carefully to Bellingham, where she enlisted as a Continental soldier on a three years' term. She was mustered into the army at Worcester, under the name of[Pg 175] Robert Shurtleff. With about fifty other soldiers she soon arrived at West Point, and it there fell to her lot to be in Captain Webb's company, in Colonel Shepard's regiment, and in General Patterson's brigade.

Naturally the girl's disappearance from home had caused her friends and her family great uneasiness. Her mother reproached herself for having urged too constantly upon the attention of her child the suit of a man for whom she did not care, and her lover upbraided himself for having been too importunate in his wooing. The telephone and telegraph not having been invented, it was necessary, in order to trace the lost girl, to visit all the places to which Deborah might have flown. Her brother, therefore, made an expedition one hundred miles to the eastward among some of the family relations, and her[Pg 176] suitor took his route to the west of Massachusetts and across into New York State.

In the course of his search he visited, as it happened, the very place in which Deborah's company was stationed, and saw (though he did not recognise) his lost sweetheart. She recognised him, however, and hearing his account to the officers of her mother's grief and anxiety, sent home as soon as opportunity offered, the following letter:

"Dear Parent:—On the margin of one of those rivers which intersects and winds itself so beautifully majestic through a vast extent of territory of the United States is the present situation of your unworthy but constant and affectionate daughter. I pretend not to justify or even to palliate my clandestine elopement. In[Pg 177] hopes of pacifying your mind, which I am sure must be afflicted beyond measure, I write you this scrawl. Conscious of not having thus abruptly absconded by reason of any fancied ill treatment from you, or disaffection toward any, the thoughts of my disobedience are truly poignant. Neither have I a plea that the insults of man have driven me hence: and let this be your consoling reflection—that I have not fled to offer more daring insults to them by a proffered prostitution of that virtue which I have always been taught to preserve and revere. The motive is truly important; and when I divulge it my sole ambition and delight shall be to make an expiatory sacrifice for my transgression.

"I am in a large but well regulated family. My employment is agreeable, although it is somewhat different and more[Pg 178] intense than it was at home. But I apprehend it is equally as advantageous. My superintendents are indulgent; but to a punctilio they demand a due observance of decorum and propriety of conduct. By this you must know I have become mistress of many useful lessons, though I have many more to learn. Be not too much troubled, therefore, about my present or future engagements; as I will endeavour to make that prudence and virtue my model, for which, I own, I am much indebted to those who took the charge of my youth.

"My place of residence and the adjoining country are beyond description delightsome.... Indeed, were it not for the ravages of war, of which I have seen more here than in Massachusetts, this part of our great continent would become a paradisiacal elysium. Heaven condescend[Pg 179] that a speedy peace may constitute us a happy and independent nation: when the husband shall again be restored to his amiable consort, to wipe her sorrowing tear, the son to the embraces of his mourning parents, and the lover to the tender, disconsolate, and half-distracted object of his love.

"Your affectionate
"Daughter."

Unfortunately this letter, which had to be entrusted to a stranger, was intercepted. But Deborah did not know this, and her mind at rest, she pursued cheerfully the course she had marked out for herself.

The fatigue and heat of the march oppressed the girl soldier more than did battle or the fear of death. Yet at White Plains, her first experience of actual warfare, her left-hand man was shot dead in[Pg 180] the second fire, and she herself received two shots through her coat and one through her cap. In the terrible bayonet charge at this same battle, in which she was a participant, the sight of the bloodshed proved almost too much for her strength.

At Yorktown she was ordered to work on a battery, which she did right faithfully. Among her comrades, Deborah's young and jaunty appearance won for her the sobriquet "blooming boy." She was a great favourite in the ranks. She shirked nothing, and did duty sometimes as a common soldier and sometimes as a sergeant on the lines, patrolling, collecting fuel, and performing such other offices as fell to her lot.

After the battle of White Plains she received two severe wounds, one of which was in her thigh. Naturally, a surgeon was sent for at once, but the plucky girl,[Pg 181] who could far more easily endure pain than the thought of discovery, extracted the ball herself with penknife and needle before hospital aid arrived.

In the spring of 1783 General Patterson selected her for his waiter, and Deborah so distinguished herself for readiness and courage that the general often praised to the other men of the regiment the heroism of his "smock-faced boy."

It is at this stage of the story that the inevitable dénouement occurred. The young soldier fell ill with a prevailing epidemic, and during her attack of unconsciousness her sex was discovered by the attendant physician, Doctor Bana. Immediately she was removed by the physician's orders to the apartment of the hospital matron, under whose care she remained until discharged as well.

Deborah's appearance in her uniform[Pg 182] was sufficiently suggestive, as has been said, of robust masculinity to attract the favourable attention of many young women. What she had not counted upon was the arousing in one of these girls of a degree of interest which should imperil her secret. Her chagrin, the third morning after the doctor's discovery, was appreciably deepened, therefore, by the arrival of a love-letter from a rich and charming young woman of Baltimore whom the soldier, "Robert Shurtleff," had several times met, but whose identity with the writer of the letter our heroine by no means suspected. This letter, accompanied by a gift of fruit, the compiler of the "Female Review" gives as follows:

"Dear Sir:—Fraught with the feelings of a friend who is doubtless beyond your conception interested in your health[Pg 183] and happiness, I take liberty to address you with a frankness which nothing but the purest friendship and affection can palliate,—know, then, that the charms I first read on your visage brought a passion into my bosom for which I could not account. If it was from the thing called LOVE, I was before mostly ignorant of it, and strove to stifle the fugutive; though I confess the indulgence was agreeable. But repeated interviews with you kindled it into a flame I do not now blush to own: and should it meet a generous return, I shall not reproach myself for its indulgence. I have long sought to hear of your department, and how painful is the news I this moment received that you are sick, if alive, in the hospital! Your complicated nerves will not admit of writing, but inform the bearer if you are necessitated for anything that can con[Pg 184]duce to your comfort. If you recover and think proper to inquire my name, I will give you an opportunity. But if death is to terminate your existence there, let your last senses be impressed with the reflection that you die not without one more friend whose tears will bedew your funeral obsequies. Adieu."

The distressed invalid replied to this note that "he" was not in need of money. The same evening, however, another missive was received, enclosing two guineas. And the like favours were continued throughout the soldier's stay at the hospital.

Upon recovery, the "blooming boy" resumed his uniform to rejoin the troops. Doctor Bana had kept the secret, and there seemed to Deborah no reason why she[Pg 185] should not pursue her soldier career to the end.

The enamoured maid of Baltimore still remained, however, a thorn in her conscience. And one day, when near Baltimore on a special duty, our soldier was summoned by a note to the home of this young woman, who, confessing herself the writer of the anonymous letter, declared her love. Just what response was made to this avowal is not known, but that the attractive person in soldier uniform did not at this time tell the maid of Baltimore the whole truth is certain.

Events were soon, however, to force Deborah to perfect frankness with her admirer. After leaving Baltimore, she went on a special duty journey, in the course of which she was taken captive by Indians. The savage who had her in his[Pg 186] charge she was obliged to kill in self-defence, after which there seemed every prospect that she and the single Indian lad who escaped with her would perish in the wilderness, a prey to wild beasts. Thereupon she wrote to her Baltimore admirer thus:

"Dear Miss ——:—Perhaps you are the nearest friend I have. But a few hours must inevitably waft me to an infinite distance from all sublunary enjoyments, and fix me in a state of changeless retribution. Three years having made me the sport of fortune, I am at length doomed to end my existence in a dreary wilderness, unattended except by an Indian boy. If you receive these lines, remember they come from one who sincerely loves you. But, my amiable friend, forgive my imper[Pg 187]fections and forget you ever had affection for one so unworthy the name of

"Your Own Sex."

No means of sending this letter presented itself, however, and after a dreary wandering, Deborah was enabled to rejoin her soldier friends. Then she proceeded to Baltimore for the express purpose of seeing her girl admirer and telling her the truth. Yet this time, too, she evaded her duty, and left the maiden still unenlightened, with a promise to return the ensuing spring—a promise, she afterward declared, she had every intention of keeping, had not the truth been published to the world in the intervening time.

Doctor Bana had been only deferring the uncloaking of "Robert Shurtleff." Upon Deborah's return to duty, he made the culprit herself the bearer of a letter to[Pg 188] General Patterson, which disclosed the secret.

GANNETT HOUSE, SHARON, MASS.

The general, who was at West Point at the time, treated her with all possible kindness, and commended her for her service, instead of punishing her, as she had feared. Then he gave her a private apartment, and made arrangements to have her safely conducted to Massachusetts.

Not quite yet, however, did Deborah abandon her disguise. She passed the next winter with distant relatives under the name of her youngest brother. But she soon resumed her proper name, and returned to her delighted family.

After the war, she married Benjamin Gannett, and the homestead in Sharon, where she lived for the rest of her life, is still standing, relics of her occupancy, her table and her Bible, being shown there to-day to interested visitors.[Pg 189]

In 1802 she made a successful lecturing tour, during which she kept a very interesting diary, which is still exhibited to those interested by her great-granddaughter, Mrs. Susan Moody. Her grave in Sharon is carefully preserved, a street has been named in her honour, and several patriotic societies have constituted her their principal deity. Certainly her story is curious enough to entitle her to some distinction.[Pg 190]

THE REDEEMED CAPTIVE

Of all the towns settled by Englishmen in the midst of Indians, none was more thoroughly peaceful in its aims and origin than Deerfield, in the old Pocumtuck Valley. Here under the giant trees of the primeval forest the whitehaired Eliot prayed, and beside the banks of the sluggish stream he gathered as nucleus for the town the roving savages upon whom his gospel message had made a deep impression. Quite naturally, therefore, the men of Pocumtuck were not disquieted by news of Indian troubles. With the natives about them they had lived on peaceful terms for many years, and it was[Pg 191] almost impossible for them to believe that they would ever come to shudder at the mere presence of redskins. Yet history tells us, and Deerfield to-day bears witness to the fact, that no town in all the colonies suffered more at the hands of the Indians than did this peaceful village in Western Massachusetts.

In 1702 King William died, and "good" Queen Anne reigned in his stead. Following closely upon the latter event came another war between France and England, a conflict which, as in the reign of William and Mary, renewed the hostilities between the French and English colonies in America. At an early date, accordingly, the settlement of Deerfield discovered that it was to be attacked by the French. At once measures were taken to strengthen the fortifications of the town, and to prepare, so far as possible, for the dreaded event.[Pg 192]

The blow fell on the night of the twenty-ninth of February, 1704, when Major Hertel de Rouville, with upwards of three hundred and forty French and Indians, arrived at a pine bluff overlooking Deerfield meadow, about two miles north of the village—a locality now known as Petty's Plain. Here he halted, to await the appropriate hour for an attack, and it was not until early morning that, leaving their packs upon the spot, his men started forward for their terrible work of destruction. Rouville took great pains not to alarm the sentinels in his approach, but the precaution was unnecessary, as the watch were unfaithful, and had retired to rest. Arriving at the fortifications, he found the snow drifted nearly to the top of the palisades, and his entire party entered the place undiscovered, while the whole population were in profound sleep.[Pg 193] Quietly distributing themselves in parties, they broke in the doors of the houses, dragged out the astonished inhabitants, killed such as resisted, and took prisoner the majority of the remainder, only a few escaping from their hands into the woods.

WILLIAMS HOUSE, DEERFIELD, MASS.

The house of Reverend John Williams was assaulted at the beginning of the attack. Awakened from sleep, Mr. Williams leaped from his bed, and running to the door found the enemy entering. Calling to two soldiers who lodged in the house, he sprang back to his bedroom, seized a pistol, cocked it, and presented it at the breast of an Indian who had followed him. It missed fire, and it was well, for the room was thronged in an instant, and he was seized, bound without being allowed the privilege of dressing, and kept standing in the cold for an hour. Meanwhile, the savages amused themselves by taunting him,[Pg 194] swinging their hatchets over him and threatening him. Two of his children and a negro woman were then taken to the door and butchered. Mrs. Williams was allowed to dress, and she and her five children were taken captives. Other houses in the village were likewise attacked, one of them being defended by seven men, for whom the women inside cast bullets while the fight was in progress. But the attacking force was an overpowering one, and De Rouville and his men had by sunrise done their work most successfully with torch and tomahawk. The blood of forty-nine murdered men, women and children reddened the snow. Twenty-nine men, twenty-four women, and fifty-eight children were made captive, and in a few hours the spoil-encumbered enemy were en route for Canada.

Through the midwinter snow which cov[Pg 195]ered the fields the poor captives marched out on their terrible pilgrimage. Two of the prisoners succeeded in escaping, whereupon Mr. Williams was ordered to inform the others that if any more slipped away death by fire would be visited upon those who remained. The first night's lodgings were provided for as comfortably as circumstances would permit, and all the ablebodied among the prisoners were made to sleep in barns. On the second day's march Mr. Williams was permitted to speak with his poor wife, whose youngest child had been born only a few weeks before, and to assist her on her journey.

"On the way," says the pastor, in his famous book, "The Redeemed Captive", "we discoursed on the happiness of those who had a right to an house not made with hands, eternal in the heavens; and God for a father and friend; as also it was our[Pg 196] reasonable duty quietly to submit to the will of God, and to say, 'The will of the Lord be done.'" Thus imparting to one another their heroic courage and Christian strength and consolation, the captive couple pursued their painful way.

At last the poor woman announced the gradual failure of her strength, and during the short time she was allowed to remain with her husband, expressed good wishes and prayers for him and her children. The narrative proceeds: "She never spake any discontented word as to what had befallen her, but with suitable expressions justified God in what had happened.... We soon made a halt, in which time my chief surviving master came up, upon which I was put into marching with the foremost, and so made my last farewell of my dear wife, the desire of my eyes, and companion in many mercies and afflictions. Upon our[Pg 197] separation from each other, we asked for each other grace sufficient for what God should call us to."

For a short time Mrs. Williams remained where her husband had left her, occupying her leisure in reading her Bible. He, as was necessary, went on, and soon had to ford a small and rapid stream, and climb a high mountain on its other side. Reaching the top very much exhausted, he was unburdened of his pack. Then his heart went down the steep after his wife. He entreated his master to let him go down and help her, but his desire was refused. As the prisoners one after another came up he inquired for her, and at length the news of her death was told to him. In wading the river she had been thrown down by the water and entirely submerged. Yet after great difficulty she had succeeded in reaching the bank, and had penetrated[Pg 198] to the foot of the mountain. Here, however, her master had become discouraged with the idea of her maintaining the march, and burying his tomahawk in her head he left her dead. Mrs. Williams was the daughter of Reverend Eleazer Mather, the first minister of Northampton—an educated, refined, and noble woman. It is pleasant, while musing upon her sad fate, to recall that her body was found and brought back to Deerfield, where, long years after, her husband was laid by her side. And there to-day sleeps the dust of the pair beneath stones which inform the stranger of the interesting spot.

Others of the captives were killed upon the journey as convenience required. A journal kept by Stephen Williams, the pastor's son, who was only eleven years old when captured, reflects in an artless way every stage of the terrible journey:[Pg 199] "They travelled," he writes, "as if they meant to kill us all, for they travelled thirty-five or forty miles a day.... Their manner was, if any loitered, to kill them. My feet were very sore, so I thought they would kill me also."

When the first Sabbath arrived, Mr. Williams was allowed to preach. His text was taken from the Lamentations of Jeremiah, the verse in which occurs the passage, "My virgins and my young men have gone into captivity."

Thus they progressed, the life of the captives dependent in every case upon their ability to keep up with the party. Here an innocent child would be knocked upon the head and left in the snow, and there some poor woman dropped by the way and killed by the tomahawk. Arriving at White River, De Rouville divided his forces, and the parties took separate[Pg 200] routes to Canada. The group to which Mr. Williams was attached went up White River, and proceeded, with various adventures, to Sorel in Canada, to which place some of the captives had preceded him. In Canada, all who arrived were treated by the French with great humanity, and Mr. Williams with marked courtesy. He proceeded to Chambly, thence to St. Francis on the St. Lawrence, afterward to Quebec, and at last to Montreal, where Governor Vaudreuil accorded him much kindness, and eventually redeemed him from savage hands.

Mr. Williams's religious experiences in Canada were characteristic of the times. He was there thrown among Romanists, a sect against which he entertained the most profound dislike—profound to the degree of inflammatory conscientiousness, not to say bigotry. His Indian master was deter[Pg 201]mined he should go to church, but he would not, and was once dragged there, where, he says, he "saw a great confusion instead of any Gospel order." The Jesuits assailed him on every hand, and gave him but little peace. His master at one time tried to make him kiss a crucifix, under the threat that he would dash out his brains with a hatchet if he should refuse. But he did refuse, and had the good fortune to save his head as well as his conscience. Mr. Williams's own account of his stay in Canada is chiefly devoted to anecdotes of the temptations to Romanism with which he was beset by the Jesuits. His son Samuel was almost persuaded to embrace the faith of Rome, and his daughter Eunice was, to his great chagrin, forced to say prayers in Latin. But, for the most, the Deerfield captives proved intractable, and were still aggressively Protestant[Pg 202] when, in 1706, Mr. Williams and all his children (except Eunice, of whom we shall say more anon), together with the other captives up to the number of fifty-seven, embarked on board a ship sent to Quebec by Governor Dudley, and sailed for Boston.

A committee of the pastor's people met their old clergyman upon his landing at Boston, and invited him to return to the charge from which he had, nearly three years before, been torn. And Mr. Williams had the courage to accept their offer, notwithstanding the fact that the war continued with unabated bitterness. In 1707 the town voted to build him a house "as big as Ensign Sheldon's, and a back room as big as may be thought convenient." This house is still standing (1902), though Ensign Sheldon's, the "Old Indian House in Deerfield," as it has been popularly[Pg 203] called, was destroyed more than half a century ago. The Indian House stood at the northern end of Deerfield Common, and exhibited to its latest day the marks of the tomahawk left upon its front door in the attack of 1704, and the perforations made by the balls inside. The door is still preserved, and is one of the most interesting relics now to be seen in Memorial Hall, Deerfield.

For more than twenty years after his return from captivity, Mr. Williams served his parish faithfully. He took into his new house a new wife, by whom he had several children; and in this same house he passed peacefully away June 12, 1729, in the sixty-fifth year of his age, and the forty-fifth of his ministry.

Stephen Williams, who had been taken captive when a lad of eleven, was redeemed in 1705 with his father. In spite of the[Pg 204] hardships to which he had been so early exposed, he was a fine strong boy when he returned to Deerfield, and he went on with his rudely interrupted education to such good effect that he graduated from Harvard in 1713 at the age of twenty. In 1716 he settled as minister at Longmeadow, in which place he died in 1772. Yet his manhood was not passed without share in the wars of the time, for he was chaplain in the Louisburg expedition in 1745, and in the regiment of Colonel Ephraim Williams in his fatal campaign in 1755, and again in the Canadian campaign of 1756. The portrait of him which is here given was painted about 1748, and is now to be seen in the hall of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, within four-score rods of the place where the boy captive was born, and from which he was carried as a tender child into captivity.[Pg 205]

REVEREND STEPHEN WILLIAMS.

It has been said that one of the greatest trials of Mr. Williams's stay in Canada was the discovery that his little daughter, Eunice, had been taught by her Canadian captors to say prayers in Latin. But this was only the beginning of the sorrow of the good man's life. Eunice was a plastic little creature, and she soon adopted not only the religion, but also the manners and customs of the Indians among whom she had fallen. In fact and feeling she became a daughter of the Indians, and there among them she married, on arriving at womanhood, an Indian by whom she had a family of children. A few years after the war she made her first visit to her Deerfield relatives, and subsequently she came twice to Massachusetts dressed in Indian costume. But all the inducements held out to her to remain there were in vain. During her last visit she was the subject of many[Pg 206] prayers and lengthy sermonising on the part of her clerical relatives, an address delivered at Mansfield August 1, 1741, by Solomon Williams, A. M., being frankly in her behalf. A portion of this sermon has come down to us, and offers a curious example of the eloquence of the time: "It has pleased God," says the worthy minister, "to incline her, the last summer and now again of her own accord, to make a visit to her friends; and this seems to encourage us to hope that He designs to answer the many prayers which have been put up for her."

But in spite of these many prayers, and in spite, too, of the fact that the General Court of Massachusetts granted Eunice and her family a piece of land on condition that they would remain in New England, she refused on the ground that it would endanger her soul. She lived and died in[Pg 207] savage life, though nominally a convert to Romanism. Out of her singular fate has grown another romance, the marvel of later times. For from her descended Reverend Eleazer Williams, missionary to the Indians at Green Bay, Wisconsin, who was in 1851 visited by the Duc de Joinville, and told that he was that Dauphin (son of Louis XVI. and Marie Antoinette), who, according to history, died in prison June 9, 1795. In spite of the fact that the evidence of this little prince's death was as strong as any which can he found in history in relation to the death of Louis, his father, or of Marie Antoinette, his mother, the strange story—first published in Putnam's Magazine for February, 1853—gained general credence, even Mr. Williams himself coming gradually to believe it. As a matter of fact, however, there was proved to be a discrepancy of[Pg 208] eight years between the dates of Williams's and the Dauphin's birth, and nearly every part of the clergyman's life was found to have been spent in quite a commonplace way. For as a boy, Eleazer Williams lived with Reverend Mr. Ely, on the Connecticut River, and his kinsman, Doctor Williams, of Deerfield, at once asserted that he remembered him very well at all stages of his boyhood.

Governor Charles K. Williams, of Vermont, writing from Rutland under date February 26, 1853, said of the Reverend Eleazer and his "claims" to the throne of France, "I never had any doubt that Williams was of Indian extraction, and a descendant of Eunice Williams. His father and mother were both of them at my father's house, although I cannot ascertain definitely the year. I consider the whole story a humbug, and believe that it will[Pg 209] be exploded in the course of a few months." As a matter of fact, the story has been exploded,—though the features of the Reverend Eleazer Williams, when in the full flush of manhood, certainly bore a remarkable resemblance to those of the French kings from whom his descent was claimed. His mixed blood might account for this, however. Williams's paternal grandfather was an English physician,—not of the Deerfield family at all,—and his grandmother the daughter of Eunice Williams and her redskin mate. His father was Thomas Williams, captain in the British service during the American Revolution, and his mother a Frenchwoman. Thus the Reverend Eleazer was part English, part Yankee, part Indian, and part French, a combination sufficiently complex to account, perhaps, even for an unmistakably Bourbon chin.[Pg 210]

NEW ENGLAND'S FIRST "CLUB WOMAN"

Even to-day, in this emancipated twentieth century, women ministers and "female preachers" are not infrequently held up to derision by those who delight to sit in the seat of the scornful. Trials for heresy are likewise still common. It is not at all strange, therefore, that Mistress Ann Hutchinson should, in 1636, have been driven out of Boston as an enemy dangerous to public order, her specific offence being that she maintained in her own house that a mere profession of faith could not evidence sal[Pg 211]vation, unless the Spirit first revealed itself from within.

Mrs. Hutchinson's maiden name was Ann Marbury, and she was the daughter of a scholar and a theologian—one Francis Marbury—who was first a minister of Lincolnshire and afterward of London. Naturally, much of the girl's as well as the greater part of the woman's life was passed in the society of ministers—men whom she soon learned to esteem more for what they knew than for what they preached. Theology, indeed, was the atmosphere in which she lived and moved and had her being. Intellectually, she was an enthusiast, morally an agitator, a clever leader, whom Winthrop very aptly described as a "woman of ready wit and bold spirit."

While still young, this exceptionally gifted woman married William Hutchin[Pg 212]son, a country gentleman of good character and estate, whose home was also in Lincolnshire. Winthrop has nothing but words of contempt for Mrs. Hutchinson's husband, but there is little doubt that a sincere attachment existed between the married pair, and that Hutchinson was a man of sterling character and worth, even though he was intellectually the inferior of his remarkable wife. In their Lincolnshire home the Hutchinsons had been parishioners of the Reverend John Cotton, and regular attendants at that celebrated divine's church in Boston, England. To him, her pastor, Mrs. Hutchinson was deeply attached. And when the minister fled to New England in order to escape from the tyranny of the bishops, the Hutchinsons also decided to come to America, and presently the whole family did so. Mrs. Hutchinson's daughter, who had mar[Pg 213]ried the Reverend John Wright Wheelwright—another Lincolnshire minister who had suffered at the hands of Archbishop Laud—came with her mother. Besides the daughter, there were three grown sons in the family at the time Mrs. Hutchinson landed in the Boston she was afterward to rend with religious dissension.

So it was no young, sentimental, unbalanced girl, but a middle-aged, matured, and experienced woman of the world who, in the autumn of 1634, took sail for New England. During the voyage it was learned that Mrs. Hutchinson came primed for religious controversy. With some Puritan ministers who were on the same vessel she discussed eagerly abstruse theological questions, and she hinted in no uncertain way that when they should arrive in New England they might expect to hear more from her. Clearly, she regarded herself as one[Pg 214] with a mission. In unmistakable terms she avowed her belief that direct revelations are made to the elect, and asserted that nothing of importance had ever happened to her which had not been revealed to her beforehand.

OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE, SITE OF THE HUTCHINSON HOUSE.

Upon their arrival in Boston, the Hutchinsons settled down in a house on the site of the present Old Corner Book Store, the head of the family made arrangements to enter upon his business affairs, and in due time both husband and wife made their application to be received as members of the church. This step was indispensable to admit the pair into Christian fellowship and to allow to Mr. Hutchinson the privileges of a citizen. He came through the questioning more easily than did his wife, for, in consequence of the reports already spread concerning her extravagant opinions, Mrs. Hutchinson was subjected to a[Pg 215] most searching examination. Finally, however, she, too, passed through the ordeal safely, the examining ministers, one of whom was her old and beloved pastor, Mr. Cotton, declaring themselves satisfied with her answers. So, in November, we find her a "member in good standing" of the Boston church.

From this time forward Mrs. Hutchinson was a person of great importance in Boston. Sir Harry Vane, then governor of the colony and the idol of the people, was pleased, with Mr. Cotton, to take much notice of the gifted newcomer, and their example was followed by the leading and influential people of the town, who treated her with much consideration and respect, and were quick to recognise her intellectuality as far superior to that of most members of her sex. Mrs. Hutchinson soon came, indeed, to be that very remarkable[Pg 216] thing—a prophet honoured in her own community. Adopting an established custom of the town, she held in her own home two weekly meetings—one for men and women and one exclusively for women—at which she was the oracle. And all these meetings were very generously attended.

Mrs. Hutchinson seems to have been New England's first clubwoman. Never before had women come together for independent thought and action. To be sure, nothing more lively than the sermon preached the Sunday before was ever discussed at these gatherings, but the talk was always pithy and bright, the leader's wit was always ready, and soon the house at the corner of what is now School Street came to be widely celebrated as the centre of an influence so strong and far-reaching as to make the very ministers jealous and fearful. At first, to be sure, the parsons[Pg 217] themselves went to the meetings. Cotton, Vane, Wheelwright, and Coddington, completely embraced the leader's views, and the result upon Winthrop of attendance at these conferences was to send that official home to his closet, wrestling with himself, yet more than half persuaded.

Hawthorne's genius has conjured up the scene at Boston's first "parlour talks," so that we too may attend and be one among the "crowd of hooded women and men in steeple hats and close-cropped hair ... assembled at the door and open windows of a house newly-built. An earnest expression glows in every face ... and some press inward as if the bread of life were to be dealt forth, and they feared to lose their share."

In plain English Ann Hutchinson's doctrines were these: "She held and advocated as the highest truth," writes Mr.[Pg 218] Drake, "that a person could be justified only by an actual and manifest revelation of the Spirit to him personally. There could be no other evidence of grace. She repudiated a doctrine of works, and she denied that holiness of living alone could be received as evidence of regeneration, since hypocrites might live outwardly as pure lives as the saints do. The Puritan churches held that sanctification by the will was evidence of justification." In advancing these views, Mrs. Hutchinson's pronounced personal magnetism stood her in good stead. She made many converts, and, believing herself inspired to do a certain work, and emboldened by the increasing number of her followers, she soon became unwisely and unpleasantly aggressive in her criticisms of those ministers who preached a covenant of works. She seems to have been led into speaking her[Pg 219] mind as to doctrines and persons more freely than was consistent with prudence and moderation, because she was altogether unsuspicious that what was being said in the privacy of her own house was being carefully treasured up against her. So she constantly added fuel to the flame, which was soon to burst forth to her undoing.

She was accused of fostering sedition in the church, and was then confronted with charges relative to the meetings of women held at her house. This she successfully parried.

It looked indeed as if she would surely be acquitted, when by an impassioned discourse upon special revelations that had come to her, and an assertion that God would miraculously protect her whatever the court might decree, she impugned the position of her judges and roused keen resentment. Because of this it was that[Pg 220] she was banished "as unfit for our society." In the colony records of Massachusetts the sentence pronounced reads as follows: "Mrs. Hutchinson (the wife of Mr. William Hutchinson) being convented for traducing the ministers and their ministry in this country, shee declared voluntarily her revelations for her ground, and that shee should bee delivred and the Court ruined with their posterity; and thereupon was banished, and the meanwhile she was committed to Mr. Joseph Weld untill the Court shall dispose of her."

Mrs. Hutchinson passed next winter accordingly under the watch and ward of Thomas Weld, in the house of his brother Joseph, near what is now Eustis Street, Roxbury. She was there until March, when, returning to Boston for further trial, she was utterly cast out, even John[Pg 221] Cotton, who had been her friend, turning against her.

Mr. Cotton did not present an heroic figure in this trial. Had he chosen, he might have turned the drift of public opinion in Mrs. Hutchinson's favour, but he was either too weak or too politic to withstand the pressure brought to bear upon him, and he gave a qualified adhesion to the proceedings. Winthrop did not hesitate to use severe measures, and in the course of the struggle Vane, who deeply admired the Boston prophetess, left the country in disgust. Mrs. Hutchinson was arraigned at the bar as if she had been a criminal of the most dangerous kind. Winthrop, who presided, catechised her mercilessly, and all endeavoured to extort from her some damaging admission. But in this they were unsuccessful. "Mrs. Hutchinson can tell when to speak and when to[Pg 222] hold her tongue," commented the governor, in describing the court proceedings. Yet when all is said, the "trial" was but a mockery, and those who read the proceedings as preserved in the "History of Massachusetts Under the Colony and Province," written by Governor Hutchinson, a descendant of our heroine, will be quick to condemn the judgment there pronounced by a court which expounded theology instead of law against a woman who, as Coddington truly said, "had broken no law, either of God or of man."

Banishment was the sentence pronounced, and after the church which had so lately caressed and courted Mrs. Hutchinson had in its turn visited upon her the verdict of excommunication, her husband sold all his property and removed with his family to the island of Aquidneck, as did also many others whose opinions had[Pg 223] brought them under the censure of the governing powers. In this connection it is worth noting that the head of the house of Hutchinson stood right valiantly by his persecuted wife, and when a committee of the Boston church went in due time to Rhode Island for the purpose of bringing back into the fold the sheep which they adjudged lost, Mr. Hutchinson told them bluntly that, far from being of their opinion, he accounted his wife "a dear saint and servant of God."

The rest of Mrs. Hutchinson's story is soon told. Upon the death of her husband, which occurred five years after the banishment, she went with her family into the Dutch territory of New Netherlands, settling near what is now New Rochelle. And scarcely had she become established in this place when her house was suddenly assaulted by hostile Indians, who, in their[Pg 224] revengeful fury, murdered the whole family, excepting only one daughter, who was carried away into captivity. Thus in the tragedy of an Indian massacre was quenched the light of the most remarkable intellect Boston has ever made historic by misunderstanding.

Hawthorne, in writing in his early manhood of Mrs. Hutchinson ("Biographical Sketches"), humourously remarked, Seer that he was: "There are portentous indications, changes gradually taking place in the habits and feelings of the gentler sex, which seem to threaten our posterity with many of those public women whereof one was a burden too grievous for our fathers."

Fortunately, we of to-day have learned to take our clubwomen less tragically than Winthrop was able to do.

[Pg 225]

IN THE REIGN OF THE WITCHES

OLD WITCH HOUSE, SALEM, MASS.

One of the most interesting of the phenomena to be noted by the student of historical houses is the tenacity of tradition. People may be told again and again that a story attributed to a certain site has been proven untrue, but they still look with veneration on a place which has been hallowed many years, and refuse to give up any alluring name by which they have known it. A notable example of this is offered by what is universally called the Old Witch House, situated at the corner of Essex and North Streets, Salem. A dark, scowling building, set far enough back from the street[Pg 226] for a modern drugstore to stand in front of it, the house itself is certainly sufficiently sinister in appearance to warrant its name, even though one is assured by authorities that no witch was ever known to have lived there. Its sole connection with witchcraft, history tells us, is that some of the preliminary examinations of witches took place here, the house being at the time the residence of Justice Jonathan Corwin. Yet it is this house that has absorbed the interest of historical pilgrims to Salem through many years, just because it looks like a witch-house, and somebody once made a muddled statement by which it came to be so regarded.

This house is the oldest standing in Salem or its vicinity, having been built before 1635. And it really has a claim to fame as the Roger Williams house, for it was here that the great "Teacher" lived[Pg 227] during his troubled settlement in Salem. The people of Salem, it will be remembered, persistently sought Williams as their spiritual pastor and master until the General Court at Boston unseated the Salem deputies for the acts of their constituents in retaining a man of whom they disapproved, and the magistrates sent a vessel to Salem to remove Mr. Williams to England. The minister eluded his persecutors by fleeing through the wintry snows into the wilderness, to become the founder of the State of Rhode Island.

Mr. Williams was a close friend and confidential adviser of Governor Endicott, and those who were alarmed at the governor's impetuosity in cutting the cross from the king's colours, attributed the act to his [Williams's] influence. In taking his departure from the old house of the picture to make his way to freedom, Williams[Pg 228] had no guide save a pocket compass, which his descendants still exhibit, and no reliance but the friendly disposition of the Indians toward him.

But it is of the witchcraft delusion with which the house of our picture is connected rather than with Williams and his story, that I wish now to speak. Jonathan Corwin, or Curwin, who was the house's link to witchcraft, was made a councillor under the new charter granted Massachusetts by King William in 1692, and was, as has been said, one of the justices before whom the preliminary witch examinations were held. He it was who officiated at the trial of Rebecca Nourse, of Danvers, hanged as a witch July 19, 1692, as well as at many other less remarkable and less revolting cases.

Rebecca Nourse, aged and infirm and universally beloved by her neighbours, was[Pg 229] accused of being a witch—why, one is unable to find out. The jury was convinced of her innocence, and brought in a verdict of "not guilty," but the court sent them out again with instructions to find her guilty. This they did, and she was executed. The tradition is that her sons disinterred her body by stealth from the foot of the gallows where it had been thrown, and brought it to the old homestead, now still standing in Danvers, laying it reverently, and with many tears, in the little family burying ground near by.

REBECCA NOURSE HOUSE, DANVERS, MASS.

The majority of the persons condemned in Salem were either old or weak-witted, victims who in their testimony condemned themselves, or seemed to the jury to do so. Tituba, the Indian slave, is an example of this. She was tried in March, 1692, by the Justice Corwin of the big, dark house. She confessed that under threats[Pg 230] from Satan, who had most often appeared to her as a man in black, accompanied by a yellow bird, she had tortured the girls who appeared against her. She named accomplices, and was condemned to imprisonment. After a few months she was sold to pay the expenses of her lodging in jail, and is lost to history. But this was by no means the end of the matter. The "afflicted children" in Salem who had made trouble before now began to accuse men and women of unimpeachable character. Within a few months several hundred people were arrested and thrown into jails. As Governor Hutchinson, the historian of the time, points out, the only way to prevent an accusation was to become an accuser oneself. The state of affairs was indeed analogous to that which obtained in France a century later, when, during the Reign of[Pg 231] Terror, men of property and position lived in the hourly fear of being regarded as "a suspect," and frequently threw suspicion on their neighbours the better to retain their own heads.

We of to-day cannot understand the madness that inspired such cruelty. But in the light of Michelet's theory,—that in the oppression and dearth of every kind of ideal interest in rural populations some safety-valve had to be found, and that there were real organised secret meetings, witches' Sabbaths, to supply this need of sensation,—the thing is less difficult to comprehend. The religious hysteria that resulted in the banishment of Mrs. Hutchinson was but another phase of the same thing. And the degeneration to be noted to-day in the remote hill-towns of New England is likewise attributable to Michelet's "dearth of ideal interest."[Pg 232]

The thing once started, it grew, of course, by what it fed upon. Professor William James, Harvard's distinguished psychologist, has traced to torture the so-called "confessions" on which the evil principally throve. A person, he says, was suddenly found to be suffering from what we to-day should call hysteria, perhaps, but what in those days was called a witch disease. A witch then had to be found to account for the disease; a scapegoat must of necessity be brought forward. Some poor old woman was thereupon picked out and subjected to atrocious torture. If she "confessed," the torture ceased. Naturally she very often "confessed," thus implicating others and damning herself. Negative suggestion this modern psychologist likewise offers as light upon witchcraft. The witches seldom cried, no matter what their anguish[Pg 233] of mind might be. The inquisitors used to say to them then, "If you're not a witch, cry, let us see your tears. There, there! you can't cry! That proves you're a witch!"

Moreover, that was an age when everybody read the Bible, and believed in its verbal inspiration. And there in Exodus (22:18), is the plain command, "Thou shalt not suffer a witch to live." Cotton Mather, the distinguished young divine, had published a work affirming his belief in witchcraft, and detailing his study of some bewitched children in Charlestown, one of whom he had taken into his own family, the better to observe the case. The king believed in it, and Queen Anne, to whose name we usually prefix the adjective "good," wrote to Governor Phips a letter which shows that she admitted witchcraft as a thing unquestioned.[Pg 234]

It is in connection with the witchcraft delusion in Salem that we get the one instance in New England of the old English penalty for contumacy, that of a victim's being pressed to death. Giles Corey, who believed in witchcraft and was instrumental in the conviction of his wife, so suffered, partly to atone for his early cowardice and partly to save his property for his children. This latter thing he could not have done if he had been convicted of witchcraft, so after pleading "not guilty," he remained mute, refusing to add the necessary technical words that he would be tried "by God and his country."

The arrest of Mrs. Corey, we learn, followed closely on the heels of that of Tituba and her companions. The accused was a woman of sixty, and the third wife of Corey. She seems to have been a person of unusual strength of character, and from[Pg 235] the first denounced the witchcraft excitement, trying to persuade her husband, who believed all the monstrous stories then current, not to attend the hearings or in any way countenance the proceedings. Perhaps it was this well-known attitude of hers that directed suspicion to her.

At her trial the usual performance was enacted. The "afflicted girls" fell on the floor, uttered piercing shrieks, and cried out upon their victim. "There is a man whispering in her ear!" one of them suddenly exclaimed. "What does he say to you?" the judge demanded of Martha Corey, accepting at once the "spectral evidence". "We must not believe all these distracted children say," was her sensible answer. But good sense was not much regarded at witch trials, and she was convicted and not long afterward executed. Her husband's evidence, which went[Pg 236] strongly against her, is here given as a good example of much of the testimony by which the nineteen Salem victims of the delusion were sent to Gallows Hill.

"One evening I was sitting by the fire when my wife asked me to go to bed. I told her that I would go to prayer, and when I went to prayer I could not utter my desires with any sense, nor open my mouth to speak. After a little space I did according to my measure attend the duty. Some time last week I fetched an ox well out of the woods about noon, and he laying down in the yard, I went to raise him to yoke him, but he could not rise, but dragged his hinder parts as if he had been hip shot, but after did rise. I had a cat some time last week strongly taken on the sudden, and did make me think she would have died presently. My wife bid me knock her in the head, but[Pg 237] I did not, and since she is well. My wife hath been wont to sit up after I went to bed, and I have perceived her to kneel down as if she were at prayer, but heard nothing."

Incredible as it seems to-day, this was accepted as "evidence" of Mrs. Corey's bewitchment. Then, as so often happened, Giles Corey, the accuser, was soon himself accused. He was arrested, taken from his mill, and brought before the judges of the special court appointed by Governor Phips to hear the witch trials in Salem. Again the girls went through their performance, again there was an endeavour to extort a confession. But this time Corey acted the part of a man. He had had leisure for reflection since he had testified against his wife, and he was now as sure that she was guiltless as that he himself was. Bitter, indeed, must have been[Pg 238] the realisation that he had helped convict her. But he atoned, as has been said, to her and to his children by subjecting himself to veritable martyrdom. Though an old man whose hair was whitened with the snows of eighty winters, he "was laid on his back, a board placed on his body with as great a weight upon it as he could endure, while his sole diet consisted of a few morsels of bread one day, and a draught of water the alternate day until death put an end to his sufferings." Rightly must this mode of torture have been named peine forte et dure. On Gallows Hill three days later occurred the execution of eight persons, the last so to suffer in the Colony. Nineteen people in all were hanged, and one was pressed to death in Salem, but there is absolutely no foundation for the statement that some were burned.[Pg 239]

The revulsion that followed the cessation of the delusion was as marked as was the precipitation that characterised the proceedings. Many of the clergy concerned in the trials offered abject apologies, and Judge Sewall, noblest of all the civil and ecclesiastical authorities implicated in the madness, stood up on Fast Day before a great congregation in the South Church, Boston, acknowledged his grievous error in accepting "spectral evidence," and to the end of his life did penance yearly in the same meeting-house for his part in the transactions.

Not inappropriately the gloomy old house in which the fanatical Corwin had his home is to-day given over to a dealer in antique furniture. Visitors are freely admitted upon application, and very many in the course of the year go inside to feast their eyes on the ancient wainscoting and[Pg 240] timbers. The front door and the overhanging roof are just as in the time of the witches, and from a recessed area at the back, narrow casements and excrescent stairways are still to be seen. The original house had, however, peaked gables, with pineapples carved in wood surmounting its latticed windows and colossal chimneys that placed it unmistakably in the age of ruffs, Spanish cloaks, and long rapiers.[Pg 241]

LADY WENTWORTH OF THE HALL

On one of those pleasant long evenings, when the group of friends that Longfellow represents in his "Tales of the Wayside Inn" had gathered in the twilight about the cheery open fire of the house at Sudbury to tell each other tales of long ago, we hear best the story of Martha Hilton. We seem to catch the poet's voice as he says after the legend from the Baltic has been alluringly related by the Musician:

[Pg 242]

And then, as the others leaned back to listen, there followed the beautiful ballad which celebrates the fashion in which Martha Hilton, a kitchen maid, became "Lady Wentworth of the Hall."

The old Wentworth mansion, where, as a beautiful girl, Martha came, served, and conquered all who knew her, and even once received as her guest the Father of his Country, is still in an admirably preserved state, and the Wayside Inn, rechristened the Red Horse Tavern, still entertains glad guests.

REBECCA NOURSE HOUSE, DANVERS, MASS.

This inn was built about 1686, and for almost a century and a half from 1714 it was kept as a public house by generation after generation of Howes, the last of the name at the inn being Lyman Howe, who served guests of the house from 1831[Pg 243] to about 1860, and was the good friend and comrade of the brilliant group of men Longfellow has poetically immortalised in the "Tales." The modern successor of Staver's Inn, or the "Earl of Halifax," in the doorway of which Longfellow's worthy dame once said, "as plain as day:"

is also standing, and has recently been decorated by a memorial tablet.

In Portsmouth Martha Hilton is well remembered, thanks to Longfellow and tradition, as a slender girl who, barefooted, ragged, with neglected hair, bore from the well

Nor do the worthy people of Portsmouth fail to recall the other actor in this mem[Pg 244]orable drama, upon which the Earl of Halifax once benignly smiled:

There are even those who can perfectly recollect when the house was very venerable in appearance, and when in its rooms were to be seen the old spinet, the Strafford portrait, and many other things delightful to the antiquary. Longfellow's description of this ancient domicile is particularly beautiful:[Pg 245]

The place thus prettily pictured is at the mouth of Sagamore Creek, not more than, two miles from the town of Portsmouth. The exterior of the mansion as it looks to-day does not of itself live up to one's preconceived idea of colonial magnificence. A rambling collection of buildings, seemingly the result of various "L" expansions, form an inharmonious whole[Pg 246] which would have made Ruskin quite mad. The site is, however, charming, for the place commands a view up and down Little Harbour, though concealed by an eminence from the road. The house is said to have originally contained as many as fifty-two rooms. If so, it has shrunk in recent years. But there is still plenty of elbow space, and the cellar is even to-day large enough to accommodate a fair-sized troop of soldiery.

As one enters, one notices first the rack in which were wont to be deposited the muskets of the governor's guard. And it requires only a little imagination to picture the big rooms as they were in the old days, with the portrait of Strafford dictating to his secretary just before his execution, the rare Copley, the green damask-covered furniture, and the sedan-chair, all exhaling an atmosphere of old-time[Pg 247] splendour and luxury. Something of impressiveness has recently been introduced into the interior by the artistic arrangement of old furniture which the house's present owner, Mr. Templeton Coolidge, has brought about. But the exterior is "spick-span" in modern yellow and white paint!

GOVERNOR WENTWORTH HOUSE, PORTSMOUTH, N. H.

Yet it was in this very house that Martha for seven years served her future lord. There, busy with mop and pail——

she grew from childhood into the lovely woman whom Governor Wentworth wooed and won.

In the March of 1760 it was that the host at Little Harbour exclaimed abruptly to the good rector of St. John's, who had been dining sumptuously at the manor-house:[Pg 248]

"This is my birthday; it shall likewise be my wedding-day, and you shall marry me!" No wonder the listening guests were greatly mystified, as Martha and the portly governor were joined "across the walnuts and the wine" by the Reverend Arthur Brown, of the Established Church.

And now, of course, Martha had her chariot, from which she could look down as disdainfully as did the Earl of Halifax on the humble folk who needs must walk. The sudden elevation seems, indeed, to have gone to my lady's head. For tradition says that very shortly after her marriage Martha dropped her ring and summoned one of her late kitchen colleagues to rescue it from the floor. But the colleague had quickly become shortsighted, and Martha, dismissing her hastily, picked up the circlet herself.

Before the Reverend Arthur Brown was[Pg 249] gathered to his fathers, he had another opportunity to marry the fascinating Martha to another Wentworth, a man of real soldierly distinction. Her second husband was redcoated Michael, of England, who had been in the battle of Culloden.

This Colonel Michael Wentworth was the "great buck" of his day, and was wont to fiddle at Stoodley's far into the morning for sheer love of fiddling and revelry. Stoodley's has now fallen indeed! It is the brick building marked "custom-house," and it stands at the corner of Daniel and Penhallow Streets.

To this Lord and Lady Wentworth it was that Washington, in 1789, came as a guest, "rowed by white-jacketed sailors straight to their vine-hung, hospitable door." At this time there was a younger Martha in the house, one who had grown up to play the spinet by the long, low[Pg 250] windows, and who later joined her fate to that of still another Wentworth, with whom she passed to France.

A few years later, in 1795, the "great buck" of his time took to a bankrupt's grave in New York, forgetting, so the story goes, the eternal canon fixed against self-slaughter.

But for all we tell as a legend this story of Martha Hilton, and for all her "capture" of the governor has come down to us almost as a myth, it is less than fifty years ago that the daughter of the man who fiddled at Stoodley's and of the girl who went barefooted and ragged through the streets of Portsmouth, passed in her turn to the Great Beyond. Verily, we in America have, after all, only a short historical perspective.[Pg 251]

AN HISTORIC TRAGEDY

One hundred years ago there was committed in Dedham, Massachusetts, one of the most famous murders of this country, a crime, some description of which falls naturally enough into these chapters, inasmuch as the person punished as the criminal belonged to the illustrious Fairbanks family, whose picturesque homestead is widely known as one of the oldest houses in New England.

In the Massachusetts Federalist of Saturday, September 12, 1801, we find an editorial paragraph which, apart from its intrinsic interest, is valuable as an example of the great difference between[Pg 252] ancient and modern journalistic treatment of murder matter. This paragraph reads, in the quaint old type of the time: "On Thursday last Jason Fairbanks was executed at Dedham for the murder of Miss Elizabeth Fales. He was taken from the gaol in this town at eight o'clock, by the sheriff of this county, and delivered to the sheriff of Norfolk County at the boundary line between the two counties.

"He was in an open coach, and was attended therein by the Reverend Doctor Thatcher and two peace officers. From the county line in Norfolk he was conducted to the Dedham gaol by Sheriff Cutler, his deputies, and a score of cavalry under Captain Davis; and from the gaol in Dedham to the place of execution was guarded by two companies of cavalry and a detachment of volunteer infantry.

"He mounted the scaffold about a[Pg 253] quarter before three with his usual steadiness, and soon after making a signal with his handkerchief, was swung off. After hanging about twenty-five minutes, his body was cut down and buried near the gallows. His deportment during his journey to and at the place of execution was marked with the same apathy and indifference which he discovered before and since his trial. We do not learn he has made any confession of his guilt."

As a matter of fact, far from making a confession of his guilt, Jason Fairbanks denied even to the moment of his execution that he killed Elizabeth Fales, and his family and many other worthy citizens of Dedham believed, and kept believing to the end of their lives, that the girl committed suicide, and that an innocent man was punished for a crime he could never have perpetrated.[Pg 254]

In the trial it was shown that this beautiful girl of eighteen had been for many years extremely fond of the young man, Fairbanks, and that her love was ardently reciprocated. Jason Fairbanks had not been allowed, however, to visit the girl at the home of her father, though the Fales place was only a little more than a mile from his own dwelling, the venerable Fairbanks house. None the less, they had been in the habit of meeting frequently, in company with others, en route to the weekly singing school, the husking bees and the choir practice. Both the young people were extremely fond of music, and this mutual interest seems to have been one of the several ties which bound them together.

In spite, therefore, of the stern decree that young Fairbanks should not visit Miss Fales at her home, there was considerable[Pg 255] well-improved opportunity for intercourse, and, as was afterward shown, the two often had long walks together, apart from the others of their acquaintance. One of their appointments was made for the day of the murder, May 18, 1801. Fairbanks was to meet his sweetheart, he told a friend, in the pasture near her home, and it was his intention at that time to persuade her to run away with him and be married. Unfortunately for Fairbanks's case at the trial, it was shown that he told this same friend that if Elizabeth Fales would not run away with him he would do her harm. And one other thing which militated against the acquittal of the accused youth was the fact that, as an inducement to the girl to elope with him, Fairbanks showed her a forged paper, upon which she appeared to have declared legally her intention to marry him.[Pg 256]

One tragic element of the whole affair was the fact that Fairbanks had no definite work and no assured means of support. Young people of good family did not marry a hundred years ago without thinking, and thinking to some purpose, of what cares and expense the future might bring them. The man, if he was an honourable man, expected always to have a home for his wife, and since Fairbanks was an invalid, "debilitated in his right arm," as the phrasing of the time put it, and had never been able to do his part of the farm work, he had lived what his stern forebears would have called an idle life, and consequently utterly lacked the means to marry. That he was something of a spoiled child also developed at the trial, which from the first went against the young man because of the testimony of the chums to whom he had confided his[Pg 257] intention to do Elizabeth Fales an injury if she would not go to Wrentham and marry him.

The prisoner's counsel were two very clever young lawyers who afterward came to be men of great distinction in Massachusetts—no others, in fact, than Harrison Gray Otis and John Lowell. These men advanced very clever arguments to show that Elizabeth Fales, maddened by a love which seemed unlikely ever to end in marriage, had seized from Jason the large knife which he was using to mend a quill pen as he walked to meet her, and with this knife had inflicted upon herself the terrible wounds, from the effect of which she died almost instantaneously. The fact that Jason was himself wounded in the struggle was ingeniously utilised by the defence to show that he had received murderous blows from her hand, for the very[Pg 258] reason that he had attempted (unsuccessfully, inasmuch as his right arm was impaired) to wrest the mad girl's murderous weapon from her.

The counsel also made much of the fact that, though it was at midday and many people were not far off, no screams were heard. A vigorous girl like Elizabeth Fales would not have submitted easily, they held, to any such assault as was charged. In the course of the trial a very moving description of the sufferings such a high-strung, ardent nature as this girl's must have undergone, because of her hopeless love, was used to show the reasons for suicide. And following the habit of the times, the lawyers turned their work to moral ends by beseeching the parents in the crowded court-room to exercise a greater vigilance over the social life of their young people, and so prevent the[Pg 259] possibility of their forming any such attachment as had moved Elizabeth Fales to take her own life.

Yet all this eloquent pleading was in vain, for the court found Jason Fairbanks guilty of murder and sentenced him to be hanged. From the court-room he was taken to the Dedham gaol, but on the night of the seventeenth of August he was enabled to make his escape through the offices of a number of men who believed him innocent, and for some days he was at liberty. At length, however, upon a reward of one thousand dollars being offered for his apprehension, he was captured near Northampton, Massachusetts, which town he had reached on his journey to Canada.

The gallows upon which "justice" ultimately asserted itself is said to have been constructed of a tree cut from the old Fairbanks place.[Pg 260]

The Fairbanks house is still standing, having been occupied for almost two hundred and seventy-five years by the same family, which is now in the eighth generation of the name. The house is surrounded by magnificent old elms, and was built by Jonathan Fairbanks, who came from Sowerby, in the West Riding of Yorkshire, England, in 1633. The cupboards are filled with choice china, and even the Fairbanks cats, it is said, drink their milk out of ancient blue saucers that would drive a collector wild with envy.

The house is now (1902) the home of Miss Rebecca Fairbanks, an old lady of seventy-five years, who will occupy it throughout her lifetime, although the place is controlled by the Fairbanks Chapter of the Daughters of the Revolution, who hold their monthly meetings there.

FAIRBANKS HOUSE, DEDHAM, MASS.

The way in which this property was[Pg 261] acquired by the organisation named is interesting recent history. Miss Rebecca Fairbanks was obliged in 1895 to sell the house to John Crowley, a real estate dealer in Dedham. On April 3, 1897, Mrs. Nelson V. Titus, asked through the medium of the press for four thousand, five hundred dollars, necessary to purchase the house and keep it as a historical relic. Almost immediately Mrs. J. Amory Codman and Miss Martha Codman sent a check for the sum desired, and thus performed a double act of beneficence. For it was now possible to ensure to Miss Fairbanks a life tenancy of the home of her fathers as well as to keep for all time this picturesque place as an example of early American architecture.

Hundreds of visitors now go every summer to see the interesting old house, which stands nestling cosily in a grassy dell just at the corner of East Street and the short[Pg 262] "Willow Road" across the meadows that lie between East Street and Dedham. This road is a "modern convenience," and its construction was severely frowned upon by the three old ladies who twenty years ago lived together in the family homestead. And though it made the road to the village shorter by half than the old way, this had no weight with the inflexible women who had inherited from their long line of ancestors marked decision and firmness of character. They protested against the building of the road, and when it was built in spite of their protests they declared they would not use it, and kept their word. Constant attendants of the old Congregational church in Dedham, they went persistently by the longest way round rather than tolerate the road to which they had objected.

That their neighbours called them "set[Pg 263] in their ways" goes, of course, without saying, but the women of the Fairbanks family have ever been rigidly conscientious, and the men a bit obstinate. For, much as one would like to think the contrary true, one seems forced to believe that it was obstinacy rather than innocency which made Jason Fairbanks protest till the hour of his death that he was being unjustly punished.

INVENTOR MORSE'S UNFULFILLED AMBITION

[Pg 264]

EDES HOUSE, BIRTHPLACE OF PROFESSOR MORSE, CHARLESTOWN, MASS.

The first house erected in Charlestown after the destruction of the village by fire in 1775 (the coup d'état which immediately followed the battle of Bunker Hill, it will be remembered), is that which is here given as the birthplace of Samuel Finley Breese Morse, the inventor of the electric telegraph. The house is still standing at 203 Main Street, and in the front chamber of the second story, on the right of the front door of the entrance, visitors still pause to render tribute to the memory of the babe that there drew his first breath on April 27, 1791.[Pg 265]

It was, however, quite by accident that the house became doubly famous, for it was during the building of the parsonage, Pastor Morse's proper home, that his little son came to gladden his life. Reverend Jedediah Morse became minister of the First Parish Church on April 30, 1789, the very date of Washington's inauguration in New York as President of the United States, and two weeks later married a daughter of Judge Samuel Breese, of New York. Shortly afterward it was determined to build a parsonage, and during the construction of this dwelling Doctor Morse accepted the hospitality of Mr. Thomas Edes, who then owned the "oldest" house. And work on the parsonage being delayed beyond expectation, Mrs. Morse's little son was born in the Edes house.

Apropos of the brief residence of Doctor[Pg 266] Morse in this house comes a quaint letter from Reverend Jeremy Belknap, the staid old doctor of divinity, and the founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, which shows that girls over a hundred years ago were quite as much interested in young unmarried ministers as nice girls ought ever to be. Two or three months before the settlement of Mr. Morse in Charlestown, Doctor Belknap wrote to his friend, Ebenezer Hazard, of New York, who was a relative of Judge Breese:

"You said in one of your late letters that probably Charlestown people would soon have to build a house for Mr. Morse. I let this drop in a conversation with a daughter of Mr. Carey, and in a day or two it was all over Charlestown, and the girls who had been setting their caps for him are chagrined. I suppose it would be something to Mr. Morse's advantage[Pg 267] in point of bands and handkerchiefs, if this report could be contradicted; but if it cannot, oh, how heavy will be the disappointment. When a young clergyman settles in such a town as Charlestown, there is as much looking out for him as there is for a thousand-dollar prize in a lottery; and though the girls know that but one can have him, yet 'who knows but I may be that one?'"[10]

Doctor Morse's fame has been a good deal obscured by that of his distinguished son, but he seems none the less to have been a good deal of a man, and it is perhaps no wonder that the feminine portion of a little place like Charlestown looked forward with decided interest to his settling among them. We can even fancy that the girls of the sewing society studied[Pg 268] geography with ardour when they learned who was to be their new minister. For geography was Doctor Morse's passion; he was, indeed, the Alexis Frye of his period. This interest in geography is said to have been so tremendous with the man that once being asked by his teacher at a Greek recitation where a certain verb was found, he replied, "On the coast of Africa." And while he was a tutor at Yale the want of geographies there induced him to prepare notes for his pupils, to serve as text-books, which he eventually printed.

Young Morse seconded his father's passion for geography by one as strongly marked for drawing, and the blank margin of his Virgil occupied far more of his thoughts than the text. The inventor came indeed only tardily to discover in which direction his real talent lay. All his youth he worshipped art and followed (at[Pg 269] considerable distance) his beloved mistress. His penchant for painting, exhibited in much the same manner as Allston's, his future master, did not meet with the same encouragement.

A caricature (founded upon some fracas among the students at Yale), in which the faculty were burlesqued, was seized during Morse's student days, handed to President Dwight, and the author, who was no other than our young friend, called up. The delinquent received a severe lecture upon his waste of time, violation of college laws, and filial disobedience, without exhibiting any sign of contrition; but when at length Doctor Dwight said to him, "Morse, you are no painter; this is a rude attempt, a complete failure," he was touched to the quick, and could not keep back the tears.

The canvas, executed by Morse at the[Pg 270] age of nineteen, of the landing of the Pilgrims, which may be seen at the Charlestown City Hall, is certainly not a masterpiece. Yet the lad was determined to learn to paint, and to this end accompanied Allston to Europe, where he became a pupil of West, and, it is said, also of Copley.

West had become the foremost painter of his time in England when our ambitious young artist was presented to him, but from the beginning he took a great interest in the Charlestown lad, and showed him much attention. Once in after years Morse related to a friend this most interesting anecdote of his great master: "I called upon Mr. West at his house in Newman Street one morning, and in conformity to the order given to his servant Robert always to admit Mr. Leslie and myself even if he was engaged in his private studies, I was shown into his studio.[Pg 271]

"As I entered a half-length portrait of George III. stood before me on an easel, and Mr. West was sitting with his back toward me copying from it upon canvas. My name having been mentioned to him, he did not turn, but pointing with the pencil he had in his hand to the portrait from which he was copying, he said, 'Do you see that picture, Mr. Morse?'

"'Yes, sir,' I said, 'I perceive it is the portrait of the king.'

"'Well,' said Mr. West, 'the king was sitting to me for that portrait when the box containing the American Declaration of Independence was handed to him.'

"'Indeed,' I answered; 'and what appeared to be the emotions of the king? What did he say?'

"'His reply,' said Mr. West, 'was characteristic of the goodness of his heart: "If they can be happier under the govern[Pg 272]ment they have chosen than under me, I shall be happy."'"[11]

Morse returned to Boston in the autumn of 1815, and there set up a studio. But he was not too occupied in painting to turn a hand to invention, and we find him the next winter touring New Hampshire and Vermont trying to sell to towns and villages a fire-engine pump he had invented, while seeking commissions to paint portraits at fifteen dollars a head. It was that winter that he met in Concord, New Hampshire, Miss Lucretia P. Walker, whom he married in the autumn of 1818, and whose death in February, 1825, just after he had successfully fulfilled a liberal commission to paint General Lafayette, was the great blow of his young manhood.

The National Academy of Design[Pg 273] Morse helped to found in New York in 1826, and of this institution he was first president. About the same time we find him renewing his early interest in electrical experiments. A few years later he is sailing for Europe, there to execute many copying commissions. And on his return from this stay abroad the idea of the telegraph suggested itself to him.

Of the exact way in which Morse first conceived the idea of making electricity the means of conveying intelligence, various accounts have been given, the one usually accepted being that while on board the packet-ship Sully, a fellow passenger related some experiments he had witnessed in Paris with the electro-magnet, a recital which made such an impression upon one of his auditors that he walked the deck the whole night. Professor Morse's own statement was that he gained his knowledge[Pg 274] of the working of the electro-magnet while attending the lectures of Doctor J. Freeman Dana, then professor of chemistry in the University of New York, lectures which were delivered before the New York Atheneum.

"I witnessed," says Morse, "the effects of the conjunctive wires in the different forms described by him in his lectures, and exhibited to his audience. The electro-magnet was put in action by an intense battery; it was made to sustain the weight of its armature, when the conjunctive wire was connected with the poles of the battery, or the circuit was closed; and it was made to 'drop its load' upon opening the circuit."

Yet after the inventor had made his discovery he had the greatest difficulty in getting a chance to demonstrate its worth. Heartsick with despondency, and with his[Pg 275] means utterly exhausted, he finally applied to the Twenty-seventh Congress for aid to put his invention to the test of practical illustration, and his petition was carried through with a majority of only two votes! These two votes to the good were enough, however, to save the wonderful discovery, perhaps from present obscurity, and with the thirty thousand dollars appropriated by Congress Morse stretched his first wires from Washington to Baltimore—wires, it will be noted, because the principle of the ground circuit was not then known, and only later discovered by accident. So that a wire to go and another to return between the cities was deemed necessary by Morse to complete his first circuit. The first wire was of copper.

The first message, now in the custody of the Connecticut Historical Society, was dictated by Miss Annie G. Ellsworth, and[Pg 276] the words of it were "What hath God wrought?" The telegraph was at first regarded with superstitious dread in some sections of the country. In a Southern State a drought was attributed to its occult influences, and the people, infatuated with the idea, levelled the wires to the ground. And so common was it for the Indians to knock off the insulators with their rifles in order to gratify their curiosity in regard to the "singing cord," that it was at first extremely difficult to keep the lines in repair along the Pacific Railway.

To the man who had been so poor that he had had a very great struggle to provide bread for his three motherless children, came now success. The impecunious artist was liberally rewarded for his clever invention, and in 1847 he married for his second wife Miss Sarah E. Griswold, of Poughkeepsie, the daughter of his cousin.[Pg 277] She was twenty-five when they were married, and he fifty-six, but they lived very happily together on the two-hundred acre farm he had bought near Poughkeepsie, and it was there that he died at the age of seventy-two, full of honours as an inventor, and loving art to the end.

Even after he became a great man, Professor Morse, it is interesting to learn, cherished his fondness for the house in which he was born, and one of his last visits to Charlestown was on the occasion when he took his young daughter to see the old place. And that same day, one is a bit amused to note, he took her also to the old parsonage, then still standing, in what is now Harvard Street, between the city hall and the church—and there pointed out to her with pride some rude sketches he had made on the wall of his sleeping-room when still a boy. So, though[Pg 278] it is as an inventor we remember and honour Samuel Finley Breese Morse to-day, it was as a painter that he wished first, last, and above all to be famous. But in the realm of the talents as elsewhere man proposes and God disposes.[Pg 279]

WHERE THE "BROTHERS AND SISTERS" MET

No single house in all Massachusetts has survived so many of the vicissitudes of fickle fortune and carried the traditions of a glorious past up into the realities of a prosperous and useful present more successfully than has Fay House, the present home of Radcliffe College, Cambridge. The central portion of the Fay House of to-day dates back nearly a hundred years, and was built by Nathaniel Ireland, a prosperous merchant of Boston. It was indeed a mansion to make farmer-folk stare when, with its[Pg 280] tower-like bays, running from ground to roof, it was, in 1806, erected on the highroad to Watertown, the first brick house in the vicinity.

To Mr. Ireland did not come the good fortune of living in the fine dwelling his ambition had designed. A ship-blacksmith by trade, his prospects were ruined by the Jefferson Embargo, and he was obliged to leave the work of construction on his house unfinished and allow the place to pass, heavily mortgaged, into the hands of others. But the house itself and our story concerning it gained by Mr. Ireland's loss, for it now became the property of Doctor Joseph McKean (a famous Harvard instructor), and the rendezvous of that professor's college associates and of the numerous friends of his young family. Oliver Wendell Holmes was among those who[Pg 281] spent many a social evening here with the McKeans.

The next name of importance to be connected with Fay House was that of Edward Everett, who lived here for a time. Later Sophia Willard Dana, granddaughter of Chief Justice Dana, our first minister to Russia, kept a boarding and day school for young ladies in the house. Among her pupils were the sisters of James Russell Lowell, Mary Channing, the first wife of Colonel Thomas Wentworth Higginson, and members of the Higginson, Parkman, and Tuckerman families. Lowell himself, and Edmund Dana, attended here for a term as a special privilege. Sophia Dana was married in the house, August 22, 1827, by the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes, to Mr. George Ripley, with whom she afterward took an active part in the Brook Farm Colony, of[Pg 282] which we are to hear again a bit later in this series. After Miss Dana's marriage, her school was carried on largely by Miss Elizabeth McKean—the daughter of the Doctor Joseph McKean already referred to—a young woman who soon became the wife of Doctor Joseph Worcester, the compiler of the dictionary.

Delightful reminiscences of Fay House have been furnished us by Thomas Wentworth Higginson, who, as a boy, was often in and out of the place, visiting his aunt, Mrs. Channing, who lived here with her son, William Henry Channing, the well-known anti-slavery orator. Here Higginson, as a youth, used to listen with keenest pleasure, to the singing of his cousin, Lucy Channing, especially when the song she chose was, "The Mistletoe Hung on the Castle Wall," the story of a bride shut up in a chest. "I used firmly to believe,"[Pg 283] the genial colonel confessed to the Radcliffe girls, in reviving for them his memories of the house, "that there was a bride shut up in the walls of this house—and there may be to-day, for all I know."

For fifty years after June, 1835, the house was in the possession of Judge P. P. Fay's family. The surroundings were still country-like. Cambridge Common was as yet only a treeless pasture, and the house had not been materially changed from its original shape and plan. Judge Fay was a jolly gentleman of the old school. A judge of probate for a dozen years, an overseer of Harvard College, and a pillar of Christ Church, he was withal fond of a well-turned story and a lover of good hunting, as well as much given to hospitality. Miss Maria Denny Fay, whose memory is now perpetuated in a Radcliffe scholarship, was the sixth of Judge Fay's[Pg 284] seven children, and the one who finally became both mistress and owner of the estate. A girl of fourteen when her father bought the house, she was at the time receiving her young-lady education at the Convent of St. Ursula, where, in the vine-covered, red-brick convent on the summit of Charlestown, she learned, under the guidance of the nuns, to sing, play the piano, the harp, and the guitar, to speak French, and read Spanish and Italian. But her life on Mt. Benedict was suddenly terminated when the convent was burned. So she entered earlier than would otherwise have been the case upon the varied interests of her new and beautiful home. Here, in the course of a few years, we find her presiding, a gracious and lovely maiden, of whom the venerable Colonel Higginson has said: "I have never, in looking back, felt more grateful to any[Pg 285] one than to this charming girl of twenty, who consented to be a neighbour to me, an awkward boy of seventeen, to attract me in a manner from myself and make me available to other people."

Very happy times were those which the young Wentworth Higginson, then a college boy, living with his mother at Vaughan House, was privileged to share with Maria Fay and her friends. Who of us does not envy him the memory of that Christmas party in 1841, when there were gathered in Fay House, among others, Maria White, Lowell's beautiful fiancée; Levi Thaxter, afterward the husband of Celia Thaxter; Leverett Saltonstall, Mary Story and William Story, the sculptors? And how pleasant it must have been to join in the famous charades of that circle of talented young people, to partake of refreshments in the quaint dining-room, and[Pg 286] dance a Virginia reel and galop in the beautiful oval parlour which then, as to-day, expressed ideally the acme of charming hospitality! What tales this same parlour might relate! How enchantingly it might tell, if it could speak, of the graceful Maria White, who, seated in the deep window, must have made an exquisite picture in her white gown, with her beautiful face shining in the moonlight while she repeated, in her soft voice, one of her own ballads, written for the "Brothers and Sisters," as this group of young people was called.

OVAL PARLOUR, FAY HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.

Of a more distinctly academic cast were some of the companies later assembled in this same room—Judge Story, Doctor Beck, President Felton, Professors Pierce, Lane, Child, and Lowell, with maybe Longfellow, listening to one of his own songs, or that strange figure, Professor[Pg 287] Evangelinus Apostolides Sophocles, oddly ill at ease in his suit of dingy black. In his younger days he had been both pirate and priest, and he retained, as professor, some of his early habits—seldom being seated while he talked, and leaning against the door, shaking and fumbling his college keys as the monks shake their rosaries. Mr. Arthur Gilman has related in a charming article on Fay House, written for the Harvard Graduates Magazine (from which, as from Miss Norris's sketch of the old place, printed in a recent number of the Radcliffe Magazine, many of the incidents here given are drawn), that Professor Sophocles was allowed by Miss Fay to keep some hens on the estate, pets which he had an odd habit of naming after his friends. When, therefore, some accomplishment striking and praiseworthy in a hen was related in company as peculiar to one or[Pg 288] another of them, the professor innocently calling his animals by the name he had borrowed, the effect was apt to be startling.

During the latter part of Miss Fay's long tenancy of this house, she had with her her elder sister, the handsome Mrs. Greenough, a woman who had been so famous a beauty in her youth that, on the occasion of her wedding, Harvard students thronged the aisles and climbed the pews of old Christ Church to see her. The wedding receptions of Mrs. Greenough's daughter and granddaughter were held, too, in Fay House. This latter girl was the fascinating and talented Lily Greenough, who was later a favourite at the court of Napoleon and Eugénie, and who, after the death of her first husband, Mr. Charles Moulton, was married in this house to Monsieur De Hegermann Lindencrone, at that time[Pg 289] Danish Minister to the United States, and now minister at Paris. Her daughter, Suzanne Moulton, who has left her name scratched with a diamond on one of the Fay House windows, is now the Countess Suzanne Raben-Levetzan of Nystel, Denmark.

In connection with the Fays' life in this house occurred one thing which will particularly send the building down into posterity, and will link for all time Radcliffe and Harvard traditions. For it was in the upper corner room, nearest the Washington Elm, that Doctor Samuel Gilman, Judge Fay's brother-in-law, wrote "Fair Harvard," while a guest in this hospitable home, during the second centennial celebration of the college on the Charles. Radcliffe girls often seem a bit triumphant as they point out to visitors this room and its facsimile copy of the famous song. Yet[Pg 290] they have plenty of pleasant things of their own to remember.

Just one of these, taken at random from among the present writer's own memories of pretty happenings at Fay House, will serve: During Duse's last tour in this country, the famous actress came out one afternoon, as many a famous personage does, to drink a cup of tea with Mrs. Agassiz in the stately old parlour, where Mrs. Whitman's famous portrait of the president of Radcliffe College vies in attractiveness with the living reality graciously presiding over the Wednesday afternoon teacups. As it happened, there was a scant attendance at the tea on this day of Duse's visit. She had not been expected, and so it fell out that some two or three girls who could speak French or Italian were privileged to do the honours of the occasion to the great actress whom they had long[Pg 291] worshipped from afar. Duse was in one of her most charming moods, and she listened with the greatest attention to her young hostesses' laboured explanations concerning the college and its ancient home.

The best of it all, from the enthusiastic girl-students' point of view, was, however, in the dark-eyed Italienne's mode of saying farewell. As she entered her carriage—to which she had been escorted by this little group—she took from her belt a beautiful bouquet of roses, camellias, and violets. And as the smart coachman flicked the impatient horses with his whip, Duse threw the girls the precious flowers. Those who caught a camellia felt, of course, especially delighted, for it was as the Dame aux Camellias that Duse had been winning for weeks the plaudits of admiring Boston. My own share of the[Pg 292] largesse consisted of a few fresh, sweet violets, which I still have tucked away somewhere, together with one of the great actress's photographs that bears the date of the pleasant afternoon hour passed with her in the parlour where the "Brothers and Sisters" met.[Pg 293]

THE BROOK FARMERS

One of the weddings noted in our Fay House chapter was that of Sophia Dana to George Ripley, an event which was celebrated August 22, 1827, in the stately parlour of the Cambridge mansion, the ceremony being performed by the father of Oliver Wendell Holmes. The time between the date of their marriage and the year 1840, when Mr. and Mrs. Ripley "discovered" the milk-farm in West Roxbury, which was afterward to be developed through their efforts into the most remarkable socialistic experiment America has ever known,[Pg 294] represented for the young people joined together in what is now the home of Radcliffe College some dozen years of quiet parsonage life in Boston.

The later years of George Ripley's life held for him a series of disappointments before which his courage and ideals never failed. When the young student left the Harvard Divinity School, he was appointed minister over a Unitarian parish which was gathered for him at the corner of Pearl and Purchase Streets, Boston. Here his ministrations went faithfully on, but inasmuch as his parishioners failed to take any deep interest in the social questions which seemed to him of most vital concern, he sent them, in the October of 1840, a letter of resignation, which they duly accepted, thus leaving Ripley free to enter upon the experiment so dear to him.

The Ripleys, as has been said, had al[Pg 295]ready discovered Brook Farm, a pleasant place, varied in contour, with pine woods close at hand, the Charles River within easy distance, and plenty of land—whether of a sort to produce paying crops or not they were later to learn. That winter Ripley wrote to Emerson: "We propose to take a small tract of land, which, under skilful husbandry, uniting the garden and the farm, will be adequate to the subsistence of the families; and to connect with this a school or college in which the most complete instruction shall be given, from the first rudiments to the highest culture." Ripley himself assumed the responsibility for the management and success of the undertaking, and about the middle of April, 1841, he took possession with his wife and sister and some fifteen others, including Hawthorne, of the farm[Pg 296]house, which, with a large barn, was already on the estate.

BROOK FARM, WEST ROXBURY, MASS.

The first six months were spent in "getting started," especially in the matter of the school, of which Mrs. Ripley was largely in charge, and it was not until early fall—September 29—that the Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education was organised as a kind of joint stock company, not incorporated.

A seeker after country quiet and beauty might easily be as much attracted to-day by the undulating acres of Brook Farm as were those who sought it sixty years ago as a refuge from social discouragement. The brook still babbles cheerily as it threads its way through the meadows, and there are still pleasant pastures and shady groves on the large estate. The only one of the community buildings which is still standing, however, is that now known as[Pg 297] the Martin Luther Orphan Home. This house was built at the very start of the community life by Mrs. A. G. Alford, one of the members of the colony.

The building was in the form of a Maltese cross with four gables, the central space being taken by the staircase. It contained only about half a dozen rooms, and probably could not have accommodated more than that number of residents. It is said to have been the prettiest and best furnished house on the place, but an examination of its simple construction will confirm the memory of one of its occupants, who remarked that contact with nature was here always admirably close and unaffected. From the rough dwelling, which resembled an inexpensive beach cottage, to out-doors was hardly a transition, it is chronicled, and at all seasons the external and internal temperatures closely corresponded. Until[Pg 298] lately the cottage wore its original dark-brown colour; and it is still the best visible remnant of the early days, and gives a pleasant impression of what the daily life of the association must have been.

Gay and happy indeed were the dwellers in this community during the early stages of its development. Ripley's theory of the wholesomeness of combined manual and intellectual work ruled everywhere. He himself donned the farmer's blouse, the wide straw hat, and the high boots in which he has been pictured at Brook Farm; and whether he cleaned stables, milked cows, carried vegetables to market, or taught philosophy and discussed religion, he was unfailingly cheerful and inspiring.

Mrs. Ripley was in complete accord with her husband on all vital questions, and as the chief of the Wash-Room Group worked blithely eight or ten hours a day. Whether[Pg 299] this devotion to her husband's ideals grew out of her love for him, or whether she was really persuaded of the truth of his theory, does not appear. In later life it is interesting to learn that she sought in the Church of Rome the comfort which Ripley's transcendentalism was not able to afford her. When she died in 1859 she had held the faith of Rome for nearly a dozen years, and, curiously enough, was buried as a Catholic from that very building in which her husband had preached as a Unitarian early in their married life, the church having in the interim been purchased by the Catholics. With just one glimpse of the later Ripley himself, we must leave this interesting couple. In 1866, when, armed with a letter of introduction from Emerson, the original Brook Farmer sought Carlyle (who had once described him as "a Socinian minister who[Pg 300] had left his pulpit to reform the world by cultivating onions"), and Carlyle greeted him with a long and violent tirade against our government, Ripley sat quietly through it all, but when the sage of Chelsea paused for breath, calmly rose and left the house, saying no word of remonstrance.

It is, of course, however, in Hawthorne and his descriptions in the "Blithedale Romance" of the life at Brook Farm that the principal interest of most readers centres. This work has come to be regarded as the epic of the community, and it is now generally conceded that Hawthorne was in this novel far more of a realist than was at first admitted. He did not avoid the impulse to tell the happenings of life at the farm pretty nearly as he found them, and substantial as the characters may or may not be, the daily life and doings, the scenery, the surroundings, and[Pg 301] even trivial details are presented with a well-nigh faultless accuracy.

The characters, as I have said, are not easily traceable, but even in this respect Hawthorne was something of a photographer. Zenobia seems a blend of Margaret Fuller and of Mrs. Barlow, who as Miss Penniman was once a famous Brookline beauty of lively and attractive disposition. In the strongest and most repellant character of the novel, Hollingsworth, Hawthorne seems to have incorporated something of the fierce earnestness of Brownson and the pathetic zeal of Ripley. And those who best know Brook Farm are able to find in the book reflections of other well-known members of the community. For the actual life of the place, however, readers cannot do better than peruse Lindsay Swift's recent delightful work,[Pg 302] "Brook Farm, Its Members, Scholars, and Visitors."

There was, we learn here, a charming happy-go-luckiness about the whole life. Partly from necessity, partly from choice, the young people used to sit on the stairs and on the floor during the evening entertainments. Dishes were washed and wiped to the tune of "Oh, Canaan, Bright Canaan," or some other song of the time. When about their work the women wore short skirts with knickerbockers; the water-cure and the starving-cure both received due attention at the hands of some of the members of the household; at table the customary formula was, "Is the butter within the sphere of your influence?" And very often the day's work ended in a dance, a walk to Eliot's Pulpit, or a moonlight hour on the Charles!

During the earlier years the men, who[Pg 303] were in excess of the young women in point of numbers, helped very largely in the household labours. George William Curtis occasionally trimmed lamps, Charles Dana, who afterward founded the New York Sun, organised a band of griddle-cake servitors composed of "four of the most elegant youths of the Community!" One legend, which has the air of probability, records that a student confessed his passion while helping his sweetheart at the sink. Of love there was indeed not a little at Brook Farm. Cupid is said to have made much havoc in the Community, and though very little mismating is to be traced to the intimacy of the life there, fourteen marriages have been attributed to friendships begun at Brook Farm, and there was even one wedding there, that of John Orvis to John Dwight's sister, Marianne. At this simple ceremony Will[Pg 304]iam Henry Channing was the minister, and John Dwight made a speech of exactly five words.

Starting with about fifteen persons, the numbers at the farm increased rapidly, though never above one hundred and twenty people were there at a time. It is estimated, however, that about two hundred individuals were connected with the Community from first to last. Of these all the well-known ones are now dead, unless, indeed, one is to count among the "Farmers" Mrs. Abby Morton Diaz, who as a very young girl was a teacher in the infant department of the school.

Yet though the Farmers have almost all passed beyond, delicious anecdotes about them are all the time coming to light. There is one story of "Sam" Larned which is almost too good to be true. Larned, it is said, steadily refused to drink milk on[Pg 305] the ground that his relations with the cow did not justify him in drawing on her reserves, and when it was pointed out to him that he ought on the same principle to abandon shoes, he is said to have made a serious attempt to discover some more moral type of footwear.

And then there is another good story of an instance when Brook Farm hospitality had fatal results. An Irish baronet, Sir John Caldwell, fifth of that title, and treasurer-general at Canada, after supping with the Community on its greatest delicacy, pork and beans, returned to the now departed Tremont House in Boston, and died suddenly of apoplexy!

This baronet's son was wont later to refer to the early members of the Community as "extinct volcanoes of transcendental nonsense and humbuggery." But no witty sallies of this sort are able to[Pg 306] lessen in the popular mind the reverence with which this Brook Farm essay in idealism must ever be held. For this Community, when all is said, remains the most successful and the most interesting failure the world has ever known.[Pg 307]

MARGARET FULLER: MARCHESA D'OSSOLI

Any account of Brook Farm which should neglect to dwell upon the part played in the community life by Margaret Fuller, Marchesa d'Ossoli, would be almost like the play of "Hamlet" with the Prince of Denmark left out. For although Margaret Fuller never lived at Brook Farm—was, indeed, only an occasional visitor there—her influence pervaded the place, and, as we feel from reading the "Blithedale Romance," she was really, whether absent or present, the strongest personality connected with the experiment.[Pg 308]

Hawthorne's first bucolic experience was with the famous "transcendental heifer" mistakenly said to have been the property of Margaret Fuller. As a matter of fact, the beast had been named after Cambridge's most intellectual woman, by Ripley, who had a whimsical fashion of thus honouring his friends. According to Hawthorne, the name in this case was not inapt, for the cow was so recalcitrant and anti-social that it was finally sent to Coventry by the more docile kine, always to be counted on for moderate conservatism.

This cow's would-be-tamer, not wishing to be unjust, refers to this heifer as having "a very intelligent face" and "a reflective cast of character." He certainly paid Margaret Fuller herself no such tribute, but thus early in his Brook Farm experience let appear his thinly veiled contempt for the high priestess of transcendentalism.[Pg 309] Even earlier his antagonism toward this eminent woman was strong, if it was not frank, for he wrote: "I was invited to dine at Mr. Bancroft's yesterday with Miss Margaret Fuller, but Providence had given me some business to do for which I was very thankful."

The unlovely side of Margaret Fuller must have made a very deep impression upon Hawthorne. Gentle as the great romancer undoubtedly was by birth and training, he has certainly been very harsh in writing, both in his note-book and in his story of Brook Farm, of the woman we recognise in Zenobia. One of the most interesting literary wars ever carried on in this vicinity, indeed, was that which was waged here some fifteen years ago concerning Julian Hawthorne's revelations of his father's private opinion of the Marchesa d'Ossoli. The remarks in question oc[Pg 310]curred in the great Hawthorne's "Roman Journal," and were certainly sufficiently scathing to call for such warm defence as Margaret's surviving friends hastened to offer. Hawthorne said among other things:

"Margaret Fuller had a strong and coarse nature which she had done her utmost to refine, with infinite pains; but, of course, it could be only superficially changed.... Margaret has not left in the hearts and minds of those who knew her any deep witness of her integrity and purity. She was a great humbug—of course, with much talent and moral reality, or else she could never have been so great a humbug.... Toward the last there appears to have been a total collapse in poor Margaret, morally and intellectually; and tragic as her catastrophe was, Providence was, after all, kind in putting her[Pg 311] and her clownish husband and their child on board that fated ship.... On the whole, I do not know but I like her the better, though, because she proved herself a very woman after all, and fell as the meanest of her sisters might."

The latter sentences refer to Margaret's marriage to Ossoli, a man some ten years the junior of his gifted wife, and by no means her intellectual equal. That the marriage was a strange one even Margaret's most ardent friends admit, but it was none the less exceedingly human and very natural, as Hawthorne implies, for a woman of thirty-seven, whose interests had long been of the strictly intellectual kind, to yield herself at last to the impulses of an affectionate nature.

But we are getting very much ahead of our story, which should begin, of course, far back in May, 1810, when there was[Pg 312] born, at the corner of Eaton and Cherry Streets, in Cambridgeport, a tiny daughter to Timothy Fuller and his wife. The dwelling in which Margaret first saw the light still stands, and is easily recognised by the three elms in front, planted by the proud father to celebrate the advent of his first child.

The garden in which Margaret and her mother delighted has long since vanished; but the house still retains a certain dignity, though now divided into three separate tenements, numbered respectively 69, 72, and 75 Cherry Street, and occupied by a rather migratory class of tenants. The pillared doorway and the carved wreaths above it still give an old-fashioned grace to the somewhat dilapidated house.

FULLER HOUSE, CAMBRIDGEPORT, MASS.

The class with which Margaret may be said to have danced through Harvard College was that of 1829, which has been[Pg 313] made by the wit and poetry of Holmes the most eminent class that ever left Harvard. The memory of one lady has preserved for us a picture of the girl Margaret as she appeared at a ball when she was sixteen.

"She had a very plain face, half-shut eyes, and hair curled all over her head; she was dressed in a badly-cut, low-neck pink silk, with white muslin over it; and she danced quadrilles very awkwardly, being withal so near-sighted that she could hardly see her partner."

With Holmes she was not especially intimate, we learn, though they had been schoolmates; but with two of the most conspicuous members of the class—William Henry Channing and James Freeman Clarke—she formed a lifelong friendship, and these gentlemen became her biographers.

Yet, after all, the most important part[Pg 314] of a woman's training is that which she obtains from her own sex, and of this Margaret Fuller had quite her share. She was one of those maidens who form passionate attachments to older women, and there were many Cambridge ladies of the college circle who in turn won her ardent loyalty.

"My elder sister," writes Thomas Wentworth Higginson, in his biography of Margaret Fuller, "can well remember this studious, self-conscious, over-grown girl as sitting at my mother's feet, covering her hands with kisses, and treasuring her every word. It was the same at other times with other women, most of whom were too much absorbed in their own duties to give more than a passing solicitude to this rather odd and sometimes inconvenient adorer."

The side of Margaret Fuller to which scant attention has been paid heretofore is this ardently affectionate side, and this[Pg 315] it is which seems to account for what has always before appeared inexplicable—her romantic marriage to the young Marchese d'Ossoli. The intellect was in truth only a small part of Margaret, and if Hawthorne had improved, as he might have done, his opportunities to study the whole nature of the woman, he would not have written even for his private diary the harsh sentences already quoted. One has only to look at the heroic fashion in which, after the death of her father, Margaret took up the task of educating her brothers and sisters to feel that there was much besides selfishness in this woman's makeup. Nor can one believe that Emerson would ever have cared to have for the friend of a lifetime a woman who was a "humbug." Of Margaret's school-teaching, conversation classes on West Street, Boston, and labours on the Dial, a[Pg 316] transcendental paper in which Emerson was deeply interested, there is not space to speak here. But one phase of her work which cannot be ignored is that performed on the Tribune, in the days of Horace Greeley.

Greeley brought Boston's high priestess to New York for the purpose of putting the literary criticism of the Tribune on a higher plane than any American newspaper then occupied, as well as that she might discuss in a large and stimulating way all philanthropic questions. That she rose to the former opportunity her enemies would be the first to grant, but only those who, like Margaret herself, believe in the sisterhood of women could freely endorse her attitude on philanthropic subjects.

Surely, though, it could not have been a hard woman of whom Horace Greeley wrote: "If she had been born to large[Pg 317] fortune, a house of refuge for all female outcasts desiring to return to the ways of virtue would have been one of her most cherished and first realised conceptions. She once attended, with other noble women, a gathering of outcasts of their sex, and, being asked how they appeared to her, replied, 'As women like myself, save that they are victims of wrong and misfortune.'"

While labouring for the Tribune, Margaret Fuller was all the time saving her money for the trip to Europe, which had her life long been her dream of felicity; and at last, on the first of August, 1846, she sailed for her Elysian Fields. There, in December, 1847, she was secretly married, and in September, 1848, her child was born. What these experiences must have meant to her we are able to guess from a glimpse into her private journal[Pg 318] in which she had many years before recorded her profoundest feeling about marriage and motherhood.

"I have no home. No one loves me. But I love many a good deal, and see some way into their eventful beauty.... I am myself growing better, and shall by and by be a worthy object of love, one that will not anywhere disappoint or need forbearance.... I have no child, and the woman in me has so craved this experience that it has seemed the want of it must paralyse me...."

The circumstances under which Margaret Fuller and her husband first met are full of interest. Soon after Miss Fuller's arrival in Rome, early in 1847, she went one day to hear vespers at St. Peter's, and becoming separated from her friends after the service, she was noted as she examined the church by a young man of gentlemanly[Pg 319] address, who, perceiving her discomfort and her lack of Italian, offered his services as a guide in her endeavour to find her companions.

Not seeing them anywhere, the young Marquis d'Ossoli, for it was he, accompanied Miss Fuller home, and they met once or twice again before she left Rome for the summer. The following season Miss Fuller had an apartment in Rome, and she often received among her guests this young patriot with whose labours in behalf of his native city she was thoroughly in sympathy.

When the young man after a few months declared his love, Margaret refused to marry him, insisting that he should choose a younger woman for his wife. "In this way it rested for some weeks," writes Mrs. Story, who knew them both, "during which we saw Ossoli pale, dejected, and unhappy.[Pg 320] He was always with Margaret, but in a sort of hopeless, desperate manner, until at length he convinced her of his love, and she married him."

Then followed the wife's service in the hospitals while Ossoli was in the army outside the city. After the birth of their child, Angelo, the happy little family went to Florence.

The letters which passed between the young nobleman and the wife he adored are still extant, having been with the body of her beautiful baby the only things of Margaret Fuller's saved from the fatal wreck in which she and her two loved ones were lost. One of these letters will be enough to show the tenderness of the man:

"Rome, 21 October, 1848.

"Mia Cara:—I learn by yours of the 20th that you have received the ten scudi,[Pg 321] and it makes me more tranquil. I feel also Mogliani's indolence in not coming to inoculate our child; but, my love, I pray you not to disturb yourself so much, and not to be sad, hoping that our dear love will be guarded by God, and will be free from all misfortunes. He will keep the child for us and give us the means to sustain him."

In answer to this letter, or one like it, we find the woman whom Hawthorne had deemed hard and cold writing:

"Saturday Evening,
28 October, 1848.

"... It rains very hard every day, but to-day I have been more quiet, and our darling has been so good, I have taken so much pleasure in being with him. When he smiles in his sleep, how it makes my heart beat! He has grown fat and very fair, and begins to play and spring. You[Pg 322] will have much pleasure in seeing him again. He sends you many kisses. He bends his head toward me when he asks a kiss."

Both Madame Ossoli and her husband were very fearful as they embarked on the fated ship which was to take them to America. He had been cautioned by one who had told his fortune when a boy to beware of the sea, and his wife had long cherished a superstition that the year 1850 would be a marked epoch in her life. It is remarkable that in writing to a friend of her fear Madame Ossoli said: "I pray that if we are lost it may be brief anguish, and Ossoli, the babe, and I go together."

They sailed none the less, May 17, 1850, on the Elizabeth, a new merchant vessel, which set out from Leghorn. Misfortune soon began. The captain sickened and[Pg 323] died of malignant smallpox, and after his burial at sea and a week's detention at Gibraltar, little Angelo caught the dread disease and was restored with difficulty. Yet a worse fate was to follow.

At noon of July 18, while they were off the coast of New Jersey, there was a gale, followed by a hurricane, which dashed the ship on that Fire Island Beach which has engulfed so many other vessels. Margaret Fuller and her husband were drowned with their child. The bodies of the parents were never recovered, but that of little Angelo was buried in a seaman's chest among the sandhills, from which it was later disinterred and brought to our own Mount Auburn by the relatives who had never seen the baby in life.

And there to-day in a little green grave rests the child of this great woman's great love.

THE OLD MANSE AND SOME OF ITS MOSSES

[Pg 324]

OLD MANSE, CONCORD, MASS.

"The Old Manse," writes Hawthorne, in his charming introduction to the quaint stories, "Mosses from an Old Manse", "had never been profaned by a lay occupant until that memorable summer afternoon when I entered it as my home. A priest had built it; a priest had succeeded to it; other priestly men from time to time had dwelt in it; and children born in its chambers had grown up to assume the priestly character. It is awful to reflect how many sermons must have been written here!... Here it was, too, that Emerson wrote[Pg 325] 'Nature;' for he was then an inhabitant of the Manse, and used to watch the Assyrian dawn and Paphian sunset and moon-rise from the summit of our eastern hill."

Emerson's residence in the Old Manse is to be accounted for by the fact that his grandfather was its first inhabitant. And it was while living there with his mother and kindred, before his second marriage in 1835, that he produced "Nature."

It is to the parson, the Reverend William Emerson, that we owe one of the most valuable Revolutionary documents that have come down to us. Soon after the young minister came to the old Manse (which was then the New Manse), he had occasion to make in his almanac this stirring entry:

"This morning, between one and two o'clock, we were alarmed by the ringing of the bell, and upon examination found[Pg 326] that the troops, to the number of eight hundred, had stole their march from Boston, in boats and barges, from the bottom of the Common over to a point in Cambridge, near to Inman's farm, and were at Lexington meeting-house half an hour before sunrise, where they fired upon a body of our men, and (as we afterward heard) had killed several. This intelligence was brought us first by Doctor Samuel Prescott, who narrowly escaped the guard that were sent before on horses, purposely to prevent all posts and messengers from giving us timely information. He, by the help of a very fleet horse, crossing several walks and fences, arrived at Concord, at the time above mentioned; when several posts were immediately dispatched that, returning, confirmed the account of the regulars' arrival at Lexington and that they were on their way to[Pg 327] Concord. Upon this, a number of our minute-men belonging to this town, and Acton, and Lincoln, with several others that were in readiness, marched out to meet them; while the alarm company was preparing to receive them in the town. Captain Minot, who commanded them, thought it proper to take possession of the hill above the meeting-house, as the most advantageous situation. No sooner had our men gained it, than we were met by the companies that were sent out to meet the troops, who informed us that they were just upon us, and that we must retreat, as their number was more than treble ours. We then retreated from the hill near the Liberty Pole, and took a new post back of the town upon an eminence, where we formed into two battalions, and waited the arrival of the enemy.

"Scarcely had we formed before we[Pg 328] saw the British troops at the distance of a quarter of a mile, glittering in arms, advancing toward us with the greatest celerity. Some were for making a stand, notwithstanding the superiority of their numbers, but others, more prudent, thought best to retreat till our strength should be equal to the enemy's by recruits from the neighbouring towns, that were continually coming in to our assistance. Accordingly we retreated over the bridge; when the troops came into the town, set fire to several carriages for the artillery, destroyed sixty barrels flour, rifled several houses, took possession of the town-house, destroyed five hundred pounds of balls, set a guard of one hundred men at the North Bridge, and sent a party to the house of Colonel Barrett, where they were in the expectation of finding a quantity of warlike stores. But these were happily secured just before[Pg 329] their arrival, by transportation into the woods and other by-places.

"In the meantime the guard sent by the enemy to secure the pass at the North Bridge were alarmed by the approach of our people; who had retreated as before mentioned, and were now advancing, with special orders not to fire upon the troops unless fired upon. These orders were so punctually observed that we received the fire of the enemy in three several and separate discharges of their pieces before it was returned by our commanding officer; the firing then became general for several minutes; in which skirmish two were killed on each side, and several of the enemy wounded. (It may here be observed, by the way, that we were the more cautious to prevent beginning a rupture with the king's troops, as we were then uncertain what had happened at Lexington,[Pg 330] and knew not that they had begun the quarrel there by first firing upon our people, and killing eight men upon the spot.) The three companies of troops soon quitted their post at the bridge, and retreated in the greatest disorder and confusion to the main body, who were soon upon their march to meet them.

"For half an hour the enemy, by their marches and countermarches, discovered great fickleness and inconstancy of mind,—sometimes advancing, sometimes returning to their former posts; till at length they quitted the town and retreated by the way they came. In the meantime, a party of our men (one hundred and fifty), took the back way through the Great Fields into the East Quarter, and had placed themselves to advantage, lying in ambush behind walls, fences, and buildings, ready[Pg 331] to fire upon the enemy on their retreat."[12]

Here ends the important chronicle, the best first-hand account we have of the battle of Concord. But for this alone the first resident of the Old Manse deserves our memory and thanks.

Mr. Emerson was succeeded at the Manse by a certain Doctor Ripley, a venerable scholar who left behind him a reputation for learning and sanctity which was reproduced in one of the ladies of his family, long the most learned woman in the little Concord circle which Hawthorne soon after his marriage came to join.

Few New England villages have retained so much of the charm and peacefulness of country life as has Concord, and[Pg 332] few dwellings in Concord have to-day so nearly the aspect they presented fifty years ago as does the Manse, where Hawthorne passed three of the happiest years of his life.

In the "American Note-Book," there is a charming description of the pleasure the romancer and his young wife experienced in renovating and refurnishing the old parsonage which, at the time of their going into it, was "given up to ghosts and cobwebs." Some of these ghosts have been shiveringly described by Hawthorne himself in the marvellous paragraph of the introduction already referred to: "Our [clerical] ghost used to heave deep sighs in a particular corner of the parlour, and sometimes rustle paper, as if he were turning over a sermon in the long upper entry—where, nevertheless, he was invisible, in spite of the bright moonshine that fell[Pg 333] through the eastern window. Not improbably he wished me to edit and publish a selection from a chest full of manuscript discourses that stood in the garret.

"Once while Hillard and other friends sat talking with us in the twilight, there came a rustling noise as of a minister's silk gown sweeping through the very midst of the company, so closely as almost to brush against the chairs. Still there was nothing visible.

"A yet stranger business was that of a ghostly servant-maid, who used to be heard in the kitchen at deepest midnight, grinding coffee, cooking, ironing,—performing, in short, all kinds of domestic labour—although no traces of anything accomplished could be detected the next morning. Some neglected duty of her servitude—some ill-starched ministerial band[Pg 334]—disturbed the poor damsel in her grave, and kept her at work without wages."

The little drawing-room once remodelled, however, and the kitchen given over to the Hawthorne pots and pans—in which the great Hawthorne himself used often to have a stake, according to the testimony of his wife, who once wrote in this connection, "Imagine those magnificent eyes fixed anxiously upon potatoes cooking in an iron kettle!"—the ghosts came no more. Of the great people who in the flesh passed pleasant hours in the little parlour, Thoreau, Ellery Channing, Emerson, and Margaret Fuller are names known by everybody as intimately connected with the Concord circle.

Hawthorne himself cared little for society. Often he would go to the village and back without speaking to a single soul, he tells us, and once when his wife was[Pg 335] absent he resolved to pass the whole term of her visit to relatives without saying a word to any human being. With Thoreau, however, he got on very well. This odd genius was as shy and ungregarious as was the dark-eyed "teller of tales," but the two appear to have been socially disposed toward each other, and there are delightful bits in the preface to the "Mosses" in regard to the hours they spent together boating on the large, quiet Concord River. Thoreau was a great voyager in a canoe which he had constructed himself (and which he eventually made over to Hawthorne), as expert indeed in the use of his paddle as the redman who had once haunted the same silent stream.

Of the beauties of the Concord River Hawthorne has written a few sentences that will live while the silver stream continues to flow: "It comes creeping softly[Pg 336] through the mid-most privacy and deepest heart of a wood which whispers it to be quiet, while the stream whispers back again from its sedgy borders, as if river and wood were hushing one another to sleep. Yes; the river sleeps along its course and dreams of the sky and the clustering foliage...."

Concerning the visitors attracted to Concord by the great original thinker who was Hawthorne's near neighbour, the romancer speaks with less delicate sympathy: "Never was a poor little country village infested with such a variety of queer, strangely dressed, oddly behaved mortals, most of whom look upon themselves to be important agents of the world's destiny, yet are simply bores of a very intense character." A bit further on Hawthorne speaks of these pilgrims as "hobgoblins of flesh and blood," people, he humourously[Pg 337] comments, who had lighted on a new thought or a thought they fancied new, and "came to Emerson as the finder of a glittering gem hastens to a lapidary to ascertain its quality and value." With Emerson himself Hawthorne was on terms of easy intimacy. "Being happy," as he says, and feeling, therefore, "as if there were no question to be put," he was not in any sense desirous of metaphysical intercourse with the great philosopher.

It was while on the way home from his friend Emerson's one day that Hawthorne had that encounter with Margaret Fuller about which it is so pleasant to read because it serves to take away the taste of other less complimentary allusions to this lady to be found in Hawthorne's works:

"After leaving Mr. Emerson's I returned through the woods, and entering Sleepy Hollow, I perceived a lady reclining near[Pg 338] the path which bends along its verge. It was Margaret herself. She had been there the whole afternoon, meditating or reading, for she had a book in her hand with some strange title which I did not understand and have forgotten. She said that nobody had broken her solitude, and was just giving utterance to a theory that no inhabitant of Concord ever visited Sleepy Hollow, when we saw a group of people entering the sacred precincts. Most of them followed a path which led them away from us; but an old man passed near us, and smiled to see Margaret reclining on the ground and me standing by her side. He made some remark upon the beauty of the afternoon, and withdrew himself into the shadow of the wood. Then we talked about autumn, and about the pleasures of being lost in the woods, and about the crows whose voices Margaret had[Pg 339] heard; and about the experiences of early childhood, whose influence remains upon the character after the recollection of them has passed away; and about the sight of mountains from a distance, and the view from their summits; and about other matters of high and low philosophy."

Nothing that Hawthorne has ever written of Concord is more to be cherished to-day than this description of a happy afternoon passed by him in Sleepy Hollow talking with Margaret Fuller of "matters of high and low philosophy." For there are few parts of Concord to which visitors go more religiously than to the still old cemetery, where on the hill by Ridge Path Hawthorne himself now sleeps quietly, with the grave of Thoreau just behind him, and the grave of Emerson, his philosopher-friend, on the opposite side of the way. A great pine stands at the head of Haw[Pg 340]thorne's last resting-place, and a huge unhewn block of pink marble is his formal monument.

Yet the Old Manse will, so long as it stands, be the romancer's most intimate relic, for it was here that he lived as a happy bridegroom, and here that his first child was born. And from this ancient dwelling it was that he drew the inspiration for what is perhaps the most curious book of tales in all American literature, a book of which another American master of prose[13] has said, "Hawthorne here did for our past what Walter Scott did for the past of the mother-country; another Wizard of the North, he breathed the breath of life into the dry and dusty materials of history, and summoned the great dead again to live and move among us."[Pg 341]

SALEM'S CHINESE GOD

Of the romantic figures which grace the history of New England in the nineteenth century, none is to be compared in dash and in all those other qualities that captivate the imagination with the figure of Frederick Townsend Ward, the Salem boy who won a generalship in the Chinese military service, suppressed the Tai-Ping rebellion, organised the "Ever-Victorious Army"—for whose exploits "Chinese" Gordon always gets credit in history—and died fighting at Ning Po for a nation of which he had become one, a fair daughter of which he had married, and by which he is to-day wor[Pg 342]shipped as a god. Very far certainly did this soldier of fortune wander in the thirty short years of his life from the peaceful red-brick Townsend mansion (now, alas! a steam bread bakery), at the corner of Derby and Carleton Streets, Salem, in which, in 1831, he was born.

This house was built by Ward's grandfather, Townsend, and during Frederick's boyhood was a charming place of the comfortable colonial sort, to which was joined a big, rambling, old-fashioned garden, and from the upper windows of which there was to be had a fascinating view of the broad-stretching sea. To the sea it was, therefore, that the lad naturally turned when, after ending his education at the Salem High School, he was unable to gain admission to the military academy at West Point and follow the soldier career in which it had always been his ambition to[Pg 343] shine. He shipped before the mast on an American vessel sailing from New York. Apparently even the hardships of such a common sailor's lot could not dampen his ardour for adventure, for he made a number of voyages.

TOWNSEND HOUSE, SALEM, MASS.

At the outbreak of the Crimean war young Ward was in France, and, thinking that his long-looked for opportunity had come, he entered the French army for service against the Russians. Enlisting as a private, he soon, through the influence of friends, rose to be a lieutenant; but, becoming embroiled in a quarrel with his superior officer, he resigned his commission and returned to New York, without having seen service either in Russia or Turkey.

The next few years of the young man's life were passed as a ship broker in New York City, but this work-a-day career soon[Pg 344] became too humdrum, and he looked about for something that promised more adventures. He had not to look far. Colonel William Walker and his filibusters were about to start on the celebrated expedition against Nicaragua, and with them Ward determined to cast in his lot. Through the trial by fire which awaited the ill-fated expedition, he passed unhurt, and escaping by some means or other its fatal termination, returned to New York.

California next attracted his attention, but here he met with no better success, and after a hand-to-mouth existence of a few months he turned again to seafaring life, and shipped for China as the mate of an American vessel. His arrival at Shanghai in 1859 was most opportune, for there the chance for which he had been longing awaited him.

The great Tai-Ping rebellion, that half-[Pg 345]Christian, wholly fanatical uprising which devastated many flourishing provinces, had, at this time, attained alarming proportions. Ching Wang, with a host of blood-crazed rebels, had swept over the country in the vicinity of Shanghai with fire and sword, and at the time of Ward's arrival these fanatics were within eighteen miles of the city.

The Chinese merchants had appealed in vain to the foreign consuls for assistance. The imperial government had made no plans for the preservation of Shanghai. So the wealthy merchants, fearing for their stores, resolved to take the matter into their own hands, and after a consultation of many days, offered a reward of two hundred thousand dollars to any body of foreigners who should drive the Tai-Pings from the city of Sungkiang.

Salem's soldier of fortune, Frederick T.[Pg 346] Ward, responded at once to the opportunity thus offered. He accepted in June, 1860, the offer of Ta Kee, the mandarin at the head of the merchant body, and in less than a week—such was the magnetism of the man—had raised a body of one hundred foreign sailors, and, with an American by the name of Henry Burgevine as his lieutenant, had set out for Sungkiang. The men in Ward's company were desperadoes, for the most part, but they were no match, of course, for the twelve thousand Tai-Pings. This Ward realised as soon as the skirmishing advance had been made, and he returned to Shanghai for reinforcements.

From the Chinese imperial troops he obtained men to garrison whatever courts the foreign legation might capture, an arrangement which left the adventurers free[Pg 347] to go wherever their action could be most effective.

Thus reinforced, Ward once more set out for Sungkiang. Even on this occasion his men were outnumbered one hundred to one, but, such was the desperation of the attacking force, the rebels were driven like sheep to the slaughter, and the defeat of the Tai-Pings was overwhelming. It was during this battle, it is interesting to know, that the term "foreign devils" first found place in the Chinese vocabulary.

The promised reward was forthwith presented to the gifted American soldier, and immediately Ward accepted a second commission against the rebels at Singpo. The Tai-Pings of this city were under the leadership of a renegade Englishman named Savage, and the fighting was fast and furious. Ward and his men performed many feats of valour, and actually scaled[Pg 348] the city wall, thirty feet in height, to fight like demons upon its top. But it was without avail. With heavy losses, they were driven back.

But the attempt was not abandoned. Retiring to Shanghai, Ward secured the assistance of about one hundred new foreign recruits, and with them returned once more to the scene of his defeat. Half a mile from the walls of Singpo the little band of foreign soldiers of fortune and poorly organised imperial troops were met by Savage and the Tai-Pings, and the battle that resulted waged for hours. The rebels were the aggressors, and ten miles of Ward's retreat upon Sungkiang saw fighting every inch of the way. The line of retreat was strewn with rebel dead, and such were their losses that they retired from the province altogether.

Later Savage was killed, and the Tai-[Pg 349]Pings quieted down. For his exploits Ward received the monetary rewards agreed upon, and was also granted the button of a mandarin of the fourth degree.

He had received severe wounds during the campaigns, and was taking time to recuperate from them at Shanghai when the jealousy of other foreigners made itself felt, and the soldier from Salem was obliged to face a charge before the United States consul that he had violated the neutrality laws. The matter was dropped, however, because the hero of Sungkiang promptly swore that he was no longer an American citizen, as he had become a naturalised subject of the Chinese emperor!

Realising the value of the Chinese as fighting men, Ward now determined to organise a number of Chinese regiments, officer them with Europeans, and arm and[Pg 350] equip them after American methods. This he did, and in six months he appeared at Shanghai at the head of three bodies of Chinese, splendidly drilled and under iron discipline. He arrived in the nick of time, and, routing a vastly superior force, saved the city from capture.

After this exploit he was no longer shunned by Europeans as an adventurer and an outlaw. He was too prominent to be overlooked. His Ever-Victorious Army, as it was afterward termed, entered upon a campaign of glorious victory. One after another of the rebel strongholds fell before it, and its leader was made a mandarin of the highest grade, with the title of admiral-general.

Ward then assumed the Chinese name of Hwa, and married Changmei, a maiden of high degree, who was nineteen at the time of her wedding, and as the daughter of one[Pg 351] of the richest and most exalted mandarins of the red button, was considered in China an exceedingly good match for the Salem youth. According to oriental standards she was a beauty, too.

Ward did not rest long from his campaigns, however, for we find that he was soon besieged in the city of Sungkiang with a few men. A relieving force of the Ever-Victorious Army here came to his assistance.

He did not win all his victories easily. In the battle of Ningpo, toward the end of the first division of the Tai-Ping rebellion, the carnage was frightful. Outnumbered, but not outgeneralled, the government forces fought valiantly. Ward was shot through the stomach while leading a charge, but refused to leave the field while the battle was on. Through his field officers he directed his men, and when the[Pg 352] victory was assured, fell back unconscious in the arms of his companion, Burgevine. He was carried to Ningpo, where he died the following morning, a gallant and distinguished soldier, although still only thirty years old.

In the Confucian cemetery at Ningpo his body was laid at rest with all possible honours and with military ceremony becoming his rank. Over his grave, and that of his young wife, who survived him only a few months, a mausoleum was erected, and monuments were placed on the scenes of his victories. The mausoleum soon became a shrine invested with miraculous power, and a number of years after his death General Ward was solemnly declared to be a joss or god. The manuscript of the imperial edict to this effect is now preserved in the Essex Institute.

The command of the Ever-Victorious[Pg 353] army reverted to Burgevine, but later, through British intrigue, to General Gordon. It was Ward, however, the Salem lad, who organised the army by which Chinese Gordon gained his fame. The British made a saint and martyr of Gordon, and called Ward an adventurer and a common sailor, but the Chinese rated him more nearly as he deserved.

In a little red-bound volume printed in Shanghai in 1863, and translated from the Chinese for the benefit of a few of General Ward's relatives in this country—a work which I have been permitted to examine—the native chronicler says of our hero:

"What General Ward has done to and for China is as yet but imperfectly known, for those whose duty it is to transfer to posterity a record of this great man are either so wrapped in speculation as to how to build themselves up on his deeds of the[Pg 354] past time, or are so fearful that any comment on any subject regarding him may detract from their ability, that with his last breath they allow all that appertains to him to be buried in the tomb. Not one in ten thousand of them could at all approach him in military genius, in courage, and in resource, or do anything like what he did."

In his native land Ward has never been honoured as he deserves to be. On the contrary, severe criticism has been accorded him because he was fighting in China for money during our civil war, "when," said his detractors, "he might have been using his talents for the protection of the flag under which he was born."

But this was the fault of circumstances rather than of intention. Ward wished, above everything, to be a soldier, and when he found fighting waiting for him in[Pg 355] China, it was the most natural thing in the world for him to accept the opportunity the gods provided. But he did what he could under the circumstances for his country. He offered ten thousand dollars to the national cause—and was killed in the Chinese war before the answer to his proffer of financial aid came from Minister Anson Burlingame.

It is rather odd that just the amount that he wished to be used by the North for the advancement of the Union cause has recently (1901) been bequeathed to the Essex Institute at Salem by Miss Elizabeth C. Ward, his lately deceased sister, to found a Chinese library in memory of Salem's soldier of fortune. Thus is rounded out this very romantic chapter of modern American history.[Pg 356]

THE WELL-SWEEP OF A SONG

That the wise Shakespeare spoke the truth when he observed that "one touch of nature makes the whole world kin" has never been better exemplified than in the affectionate tenderness with which all sorts and conditions of men join in singing a song like "The Old Oaken Bucket." As one hears this ballad in a crowded room, or even as so often given—in a New England play like "The Old Homestead," one does not stop to analyse one's sensations; one forgets the homely phrase; one simply feels and knows oneself the better for the memories[Pg 357] of happy and innocent childhood which the simple song invokes.

Dear, delightful Goldsmith has wonderfully expressed in "The Deserted Village" the inextinguishable yearning for the spot we call "home":

and it is this same lyric cry that has been crystallised for all time, so far as the American people are concerned, in "The Old Oaken Bucket."

The day will not improbably come when the allusions in this poem will demand as careful an explanation as some of Shakespeare's archaic references now call for. But even when this time does come, and an elaborate description of the strange old custom of drawing water from a hole in[Pg 358] the ground by means of a long pole and a rude pail will be necessary to an understanding of the poem, men's voices will grow husky and their eyes will dim at the music of "The Old Oaken Bucket."

It is to the town of Scituate, Massachusetts, one of the most ancient settlements of the old colony, that we trace back the local colour which pervades the poem. The history of the place is memorable and interesting. The people come of a hardy and determined ancestry, who fought for every inch of ground that their descendants now hold. To this fact may perhaps be attributed the strength of those associations, clinging like ivy around some of the most notable of the ancient homesteads.

The scene so vividly described in the charming ballad we are considering is a little valley through which Herring Brook pursues its devious way to meet the tidal[Pg 359] waters of North River. "The view of it from Coleman Heights, with its neat cottages, its maple groves, and apple orchards, is remarkably beautiful," writes one appreciative author. The "wide-spreading pond," the "mill," the "dairy-house," the "rock where the cataract fell," and even the "old well," if not the original "moss-covered bucket" itself, may still be seen just as the poet described them.

OLD OAKEN BUCKET HOUSE, SCITUATE, MASS.

In quaint, homely Scituate, Samuel Woodworth, the people's poet, was indeed born and reared. Although the original house is no longer there, a pretty place called "The Old Oaken Bucket House" still stands, a modern successor to the poet's home, and at another bucket, oaken if not old, the pilgrim of to-day may stop to slake his thirst from the very waters, the recollection of which gave the poet such exquisite pleasure in after years. One[Pg 360] would fain have the surroundings unchanged—the cot where Woodworth dwelt, the ponderous well-sweep, creaking with age, at which his youthful hands were wont to tug strongly; and finally the mossy bucket, overflowing with crystal nectar fresh from the cool depths below. Yet in spite of the changes, one gets fairly well the illusion of the ancient spot, and comes away well content to have quaffed a draught of such excellent water to the memory of this Scituate poet.

The circumstances under which the popular ballad was composed and written are said to be as follows: Samuel Woodworth was a printer who had served his apprenticeship under the veteran Major Russell of the Columbian Centinel, a journal which was in its day the leading Federalist organ of New England. He had inherited the wandering propensity of his[Pg 361] craft, and yielding to the desire for change he was successively in Hartford and New York, doing what he could in a journalistic way. In the latter city he became associated, after an unsuccessful career as a publisher, in the editorship of the Mirror. And it was while living in New York in the Bohemian fashion of his class, that, in company with some brother printers, he one day dropped in at a well-known establishment then kept by one Mallory to take a social glass of wine.

The cognac was pronounced excellent. After drinking it, Woodworth set his glass down on the table, and, smacking his lips, declared emphatically that Mallory's eau de vie was superior to anything that he had ever tasted.

"There you are mistaken," said one of his comrades, quietly; then added, "there certainly was one thing that far surpassed[Pg 362] this in the way of drinking, as you, too, will readily acknowledge."

"Indeed; and, pray, what was that?" Woodworth asked, with apparent incredulity that anything could surpass the liquor then before him.

"The draught of pure and sparkling spring water that we used to get from the old oaken bucket that hung in the well, after our return from the labours of the field on a sultry summer's day."

No one spoke; all were busy with their own thoughts.

Woodworth's eyes became dimmed. "True, true," he exclaimed; and soon after quitted the place. With his heart overflowing with the recollections that this chance allusion in a barroom had inspired, the scene of his happier childhood life rushed upon him in a flood of feeling. He hastened back to the office in which he then[Pg 363] worked, seized a pen, and in half an hour had written his popular ballad:

Woodworth's reputation rests upon this one stroke of genius. He died in 1842 at the age of fifty-seven. But after almost[Pg 365] fifty years his memory is still green, and we still delight to pay tender homage to the spot which inspired one of the most beautiful songs America has yet produced.[Pg 366]

WHITTIER'S LOST LOVE

In the life of the Quaker poet there is an unwritten chapter of personal history full to the brim of romance. It will be remembered that Whittier in his will left ten thousand dollars for an Amesbury Home for Aged Women. One room in this home Mrs. Elizabeth W. Pickard (the niece to whom the poet bequeathed his Amesbury homestead, and who passed away in the early spring of this year [1902], in an illness contracted while decorating her beloved uncle's grave on the anniversary of his birth), caused to be furnished with a massive black walnut[Pg 367] set formerly used in the "spare-room" of her uncle's house—the room where Lucy Larcom, Gail Hamilton, the Cary sisters, and George Macdonald were in former times entertained. A stipulation of this gift was that the particular room in the Home thus to be furnished was to be known as the Whittier room.

In connection with this Home and this room comes the story of romantic interest. Two years after the death of Mr. Whittier an old lady made application for admission to the Home on the ground that in her youth she was a schoolmate and friend of the poet. And although she was not entitled to admission by being a resident of the town, she would no doubt have been received if she had not died soon after making the application.

This aged woman was Mrs. Evelina Bray Downey, concerning whose schoolgirl[Pg 368] friendship for Whittier many inaccurate newspaper articles were current at the time of her death, in the spring of 1895. The story as here told is, however, authentic.

Evelina Bray was born at Marblehead, October 10, 1810. She was the youngest of ten children of a ship master, who made many voyages to the East Indies and to European ports. In a letter written in 1884, Mrs Downey said of herself: "My father, an East India sea captain, made frequent and long voyages. For safekeeping and improvement he sent me to Haverhill, bearing a letter of introduction from Captain William Story to the family of Judge Bartley. They passed me over to Mr. Jonathan K. Smith, and Mrs. Smith gave me as a roommate her only daughter, Mary. This was the opening season of the New Haverhill Academy, a sort of[Pg 369] rival to the Bradford Academy. Subsequently I graduated from the Ipswich Female Seminary, in the old Mary Lyon days."

Mary Smith, Miss Bray's roommate at Haverhill, and her lifelong friend—though for fifty years they were lost to each other—was afterward the wife of Reverend Doctor S. F. Smith, the author of "America."

Evelina is described as a tall and strikingly beautiful brunette, with remarkable richness of colouring, and she took high rank in scholarship. The house on Water Street at which she boarded was directly opposite that of Abijah W. Thayer, editor of the Haverhill Gazette, with whom Whittier boarded while at the academy. Whittier was then nineteen years old, and Evelina was seventeen. Naturally, they walked to and from the school together,[Pg 370] and their interest in each other was noticeable.

If the Quaker lad harboured thoughts of marriage, and even gave expression to them, it would not be strange. But the traditions of Whittier's sect included disapproval of music, and Evelina's father had given her a piano, and she was fascinated with the study of the art proscribed by the Quakers. Then, too, Whittier was poor, and his gift of versification, which had already given him quite a reputation, was not considered in those days of much consequence as a means of livelihood. If they did not at first realise, both of them, the hopelessness of their love, they found it out after Miss Bray's return to her home.

About this time Mr. Whittier accompanied his mother to a quarterly meeting of the Society of Friends at Salem, and one morning before breakfast took a walk[Pg 371] of a few miles to the quaint old town of Marblehead, where he paid a visit to the home of his schoolmate. She could not invite him in, but instead suggested a stroll along the picturesque, rocky shore of the bay.

This was in the spring or early summer of 1828, and the poet was twenty years old, a farmer's boy, with high ambitions, but with no outlook as yet toward any profession. It may be imagined that the young couple, after a discussion of the situation, saw the hopelessness of securing the needed consent of their parents, and returned from their morning's walk with saddened hearts. Whatever dreams they may have cherished were from that hour abandoned, and they parted with this understanding.

In the next fifty years they met but once again, four or five years after the morning[Pg 372] walk, and this once was at Marblehead, along the shore. Miss Bray had in the meantime been teaching in a seminary in Mississippi, and Whittier had been editing papers in Boston and Hartford, and had published his first book, a copy of which he had sent her. There was no renewal at this time of their lover-like relations, and they parted in friendship.

I have said that they met but once in the half-century after that morning's walk; the truth is they were once again close together, but Whittier was not conscious of it. This was while he was editing the Pennsylvania Freeman, at Philadelphia. Miss Bray was then associated with a Miss Catherine Beecher, in an educational movement of considerable importance, and was visiting Philadelphia. Just at this time a noted Massachusetts divine, Reverend Doctor Todd, was announced to preach in[Pg 373] the Presbyterian church, and both these Haverhill schoolmates were moved to hear him. By a singular chance they occupied the same pew, and sat close together, but Miss Bray was the only one who was conscious of this, and she was too shy to reveal herself. It must have been her bonnet hid her face, for otherwise Whittier's remarkably keen eyes could not have failed to recognise the dear friend of his school-days.

Their next meeting was at the reunion of the Haverhill Academy class of 1827, which was held in 1885, half a century after their second interview at Marblehead. It was said by some that it was this schoolboy love which Whittier commemorated in his poem, "Memories." But Mr. Pickard, the poet's biographer, affirms that, so far as known, the only direct reference made by Whittier to the affair under[Pg 374] consideration occurred in the fine poem, "A Sea Dream," written in 1874.

In the poet, now an old man, the sight of Marblehead awakens the memory of that morning walk, and he writes:

Whittier, it will be seen, believed that the love of his youth was dead. He was soon to find out, in a very odd way, that this was not the case.

Early in the forties, Miss Bray became principal of the "female department" of the Benton School at St. Louis. In 1849, during the prevalence of a fearful epidemic, the school building was converted into a hospital, and one of the patients was an Episcopal clergyman, Reverend William S. Downey, an Englishman, claiming to be of noble birth. He recovered his health, but was entirely deaf, not being[Pg 376] able to hear the loudest sound for the remainder of his life. Miss Bray married him, and for forty years endured martyrdom, for he was of a tyrannous disposition and disagreeably eccentric.

Mrs. Downey had never told her husband of her early acquaintance with Whittier, but he found it out by a singular chance. When Reverend S. F. Smith and his wife celebrated the fiftieth anniversary of their marriage the event was mentioned in the papers, and the fact that Mrs. Smith was a schoolmate of Whittier was chronicled. Mr. Downey had heard his wife speak of being a schoolmate of the wife of the author of "America," and, putting these two circumstances together, he concluded that his wife must also have known the Quaker poet in his youth. He said nothing to her about this, however, but wrote a letter to Whittier himself, and sent[Pg 377] with it a tract he had written in severe denunciation of Colonel Robert G. Ingersoll. As a postscript to this letter he asked: "Did you ever know Evelina Bray?" Whittier at once replied, acknowledging the receipt of the tract, and making this characteristic comment upon it:

"It occurs to me to say, however, that in thy tract thee has hardly charity enough for that unfortunate man, Ingersoll, who, it seems to me, is much to be pitied for his darkness of unbelief. We must remember that one of the great causes of infidelity is the worldliness, selfishness, and evil dealing of professed Christians. An awful weight of responsibility rests upon the Christian church in this respect."

And to this letter Whittier added as a postscript: "Can you give me the address of Evelina Bray?" Mr. Downey at once[Pg 378] wrote that he was her husband, told of his service of the Master, and indirectly begged for assistance in his work of spreading the gospel. At this time he was an evangelist of the Baptist church, having some time since abandoned the mother faith. And, though he was not reduced to poverty, he accepted alms, as if poor, thus trying sorely the proud spirit of his wife. So it was not an unwonted request.

Of course, the poet had no sympathy with the work of attack Mr. Downey was evidently engaged in. But he feared the girl friend of his youth might be in destitute circumstances, and, for her sake, he made a liberal remittance. All this the miserable husband tried to keep from his wife, who he knew would at once return the money, but she came upon the fact of the remittance by finding Whittier's letter in her husband's pocket.[Pg 379]

Naturally, she was very indignant, but her letter to Whittier returning the money was couched in the most delicate terms, and gave no hint of the misery of her life. Until the year of his death she was an occasional correspondent with the poet, one of his last letters, written at Hampton Falls in the summer of 1892, being addressed to her. Their only meeting was at the Haverhill Academy reunion of 1885, fifty-eight years after the love episode of their school-days.

When they met at Haverhill the poet took the love of his youth apart from the other schoolmates, and they then exchanged souvenirs, he receiving her miniature painted on ivory, by Porter, the same artist who painted the first likeness ever taken of Whittier. This latter miniature is now in the possession of Mr. Pickard. The portrait of Miss Bray, representing her[Pg 380] in the full flush of her girlish beauty, wearing as a crown a wreath of roses, was returned to Mrs. Downey after the poet's death, by the niece of Whittier, into whose possession it came.

Mrs. Downey spent her last days in the family of Judge Bradley, at West Newbury, Massachusetts. After her death some valuable china of hers was sold at auction, and several pieces were secured by a neighbour, Mrs. Ladd. The Ladd family has since taken charge of the Whittier birthplace at East Haverhill, and by this chain of circumstances Evelina Bray's china now rests on the Whittier shelves, together with the genuine Whittier china, put in its old place by Mrs. Pickard.

WHITTIER'S BIRTHPLACE, EAST HAVERHILL, MASS.

It was not because of destitution that Mrs. Downey made application to enter the Old Ladies' Home which Whittier endowed, but, because, cherishing until the[Pg 381] day of her death her youthful fondness for the poet, she longed to live during the sunset time of her life near his grave. In all probability her request would have been granted, had not she, too, been suddenly called to the land where there is neither marriage nor giving in marriage.

[Pg 382]

THE END.

INDEX

Adams, John, 96

Adams, Mrs. John, 111.

Adams, Samuel, 119.

Agassiz, Mrs., 290.

Alford, Mrs. A. G., 297.

Allston, 270.

Antigua merchant, 60.

Auburn, Mount, 323.


Bana, Doctor, discovers Deborah Sampson's secret, 181;
sends letter to General Patterson, 188.

Bancroft, 309.

Barlow, Mrs., 301.

Barr, George L., buys Royall House, 72.

Bartley, Judge, 368.

Bath, 13;
death of Frankland at, 55.

Beck, Doctor, 286.

Belem, Frankland sails from, 53.

Belknap, Jeremy, letter of, 265.

Berkeley, Bishop, 11;
student at Dublin University, 12;
fellow at Trinity College, 12;
life as a tutor, 12;
reception in London, 28:
marriage, 29;
sails for Rhode Island, 30;
arrives at Newport, 30;
writes "Minute Philosopher," 32;
bequeaths books to Yale College, 33;
dies at Oxford, 34;
portrait by Smibert, 35.

Bermuda, proposed college at, 13.

"Blithedale Romance," 300, 307.

Bradley, Judge, 380.

Bray, Evelina, born at Marblehead, 368.

Brook Farm Institute of Agriculture and Education organised, 296.

"Brothers and Sisters" at Fay House, 292.

Brown, Rev. Arthur, 248.

Brownson, 301.

Brunswick, triumphs of Riedesels at, 145.

Burgevine, Henry, 346.

Burlingame, Anson, 355.

Burgoyne, 56, 136.

Burr, Aaron, 123.

Burr, Thaddeus, 120.

Bynner's story, Agnes Surriage, 45.


Cadenus and Vanessa, poem, 24.

Caldwell, Sir John, 305.

Carlyle visited by Ripley, 299.

Caroline, Queen (consort George Second), 29.

Carter, Madam, 135.

Cary Sisters, 367.

Channing, Ellery, 334.

Channing, Lucy, 282.

Channing, Mary, 281.

Channing, William Henry, 282, 314.

Chambly, Baroness Riedesel at, 131.

Charlestown City Hall, 270.

Chichester, Eng., 56.

Child, Professor, 286.

Christ Church, Boston, 104.

Church, Doctor, 122;
fall of, 147;
imprisoned, 150;
education of, 151;
delivers Old South Oration, 152;
tried at Watertown, 154;
confined in Norwich Jail, 155;
lost at sea (?), 156.

Clark, Rev. Jonas, 111.

Clark, Mrs. Jonas, 118.

Clarke mansion purchased by Frankland, 54.

Clough, Capt. Stephen, 162.

Codman, Mrs. J. Amory, 261.

Codman, Martha, 261.

Columbian Centinel, 360.

Coolidge, J. Templeton, 247.

Corey, Giles, pressed to death, 238.

Corey, Mrs. Martha, condemned as witch, 234.

Corwin, Justice Jonathan, 226, 228.

Cotton, Rev. John, 212, 221.

Courier, New England, 30.

Congress, Continental, 120.

Copley, 270.

Crowninshield, Hannah, 85.

Curtis, George William, at Brook Farm, 303.


Dana, Charles, 303.

Dana, Dr. J. Freeman, 274.

Dana, Edmund, 281.

Dana, Sophia Willard, 281;
marries George Ripley, 293;
goes over to Rome, 299.

Danvers, 228.

Dawes at Lexington, 114.

Deerfield, 190.

Diaz, Abby Morton, 304.

Dorothy Q. at Lexington, 112, 117;
marries John Hancock, 123;
marries Captain Scott, 128;
receives Lafayette, 129.

Downey, Evelina Bray, 367.

Downey, Rev. William S., 375, 376.

Drew, Mr. John, 56.

Duse, Eleanora, at Fay House, 290.

Dunbarton, Stark House at, 74.

Dwight, John, 303.

Dwight, Marianne, 303.

Dwight, President of Yale College, 269.


Edmonston, Captain, 140.

Elizabeth, loss of the Ossolis on, 322.

Eliot, John, at Deerfield, 190.

Ellsworth, Annie G., 275.

Emerson, Ralph Waldo, at The Manse, 325;
Hawthorne and, 337.

Emerson, William, at The Manse, 325.

Endicott, Governor, 227.

Erving, George, at Medford, 63.

Essex Institute, 67;
Ward bequest to, 355.

Eustis, Madam, 46.

Everett, Edward, 281.


Fairbanks, Jason, 252;
trial of, 258;
escape of, 259;
hanging of, 259.

Fairbanks, Jonathan, 260.

Fairbanks, Rebecca, 260.

Fairbanks, Chapter D. R., 260.

"Fair Harvard" written in Fay House, 289.

Fales, Elizabeth, 252;
murder of, 257.

Fay House, 279.

Fay, Maria Denny, 283.

Fay, P. P., 283.

Felton, President, 286.

Fielding, Henry, describes Lisbon, 50.

Fire Island Beach, loss of the Ossolis off, 323.

Fountain Inn, Marblehead, 58.

Frankland, Charles Henry, 39;
born in Bengal, 39;
collector of Boston port, 39;
meets Agnes Surriage, 43;
adopts Agnes Surriage, 44;
builds home at Hopkinton, 48;
dies at Lisbon, 55.

Franks, Miss, 100.

Fuller, Margaret, at Brook Farm, 301;
born in Cambridge, 312;
joins Tribune staff, 316;
at Concord, 338;
goes abroad, 317;
marries Ossoli, 320;
is lost at sea, 322.

Fuller, Timothy, 312.


Gage, General, at Boston, 107;
in correspondence with Church, 149.

Geer, Mr., present owner Royall House, 73.

George First, 29.

George Third entertains the Riedesels, 142;
West's anecdote of, 271.

Gilman, Arthur, 287.

Gilman, Dr. Samuel, 289.

Goldsmith, 357.

Gordon, "Chinese", 341.

Greeley, Horace, 316.

Greenough, Lily, 288.

Greenough, Mrs., 288.

Griswold, Sarah E., 276.


Hamilton, Gail, 367.

Hancock, John, at Lexington, 111;
letters of, 120, 122;
marries Miss Quincy, 123;
occupies home on Beacon Street, 125;
dies, 128.

Hancock, Lydia, at Lexington, 118.

Hartford, Conn., Riedesels entertain Lafayette at, 140.

Haverhill Academy, 368.

Haverhill Gazette, 369.

Hawthorne writes of Sir Wm. Pepperell, 67;
goes to Brook Farm, 295;
writes of Margaret Fuller, 310;
at The Manse, 324.

Higginson, Col. Thomas Wentworth, 281;
writes of Margaret Fuller, 314.

Hilliard at The Manse, 333.

Hilton, Martha, 242;
marries Governor Wentworth, 248.

Hobgoblin Hall, 72.

Hollingsworth, 301.

Holmes, Oliver Wendell, 280.

Honeyman's Hill (Newport, R. I.), 16.

Hopkinton (Mass.), 48;
home of Frankland burned, 57;
residence of Frankland, 55;
Agnes Surriage at, 55.

Howard, Lady, 142.

Howe, Sir William, 99, 136, 138.

Hutchinson, Ann, Mrs., 210;
arrives in Boston, 214;
holds meetings, 216;
accused of heresy, 219:
sentenced, 220;
banished, 222;
murdered, 224.

Hutchinson, Governor, 222, 230.


Inman's Farm, 326.

Ireland, Nathaniel, 279.

Isle of Shoals, 66.


James, Professor William, 232.

Johnson, Doctor, 20, 24.


Kittery Point, 66.


Ladd, Mrs., 380.

Lafayette entertained by Starks, 80;
on Washington and Lee, 90;
entertained by John Hancock, 128;
received by Madame Scott, 129;
dines with Baroness Riedesel, 140;
visits George Third, 142.

Lane, Professor, 286.

Larcom, Lucy, 367.

Larned, "Sam," 304.

Lauterbach, family vault of Riedesels at, 145.

Lee, General, at Royall House, 71.

Lee, General, in British army, 90;
arrives in New York, 92;
at Medford, 94;
at Somerville, 95;
dies in Virginia, 103.

Lee, Sydney, 103.

Lexington, affair at, 110.

Lindencrone, De Hegermann, 288.

Lisbon, Frankland at, 50;
earthquake at, 51;
Agnes Surriage's experience at, 56;
Frankland consul-general at, 55.

Longfellow, 286.

Louisburg, 67.

Lowell, James Russell, 281.

Lowell, John, 257.

Luther, Martin, Orphan Home, 297.


Macdonald, George, 367.

Marblehead, Maid of, 37;
Town House, 39;
Fountain Inn, 42;
Whittier at, 371.

Marie Antoinette, plot to rescue, 163.

Marley Abbey (residence of "Vanessa"), 22.

Marshall, Judge, 23.

Massachusetts Historical Society, 53.

Mather, Rev. Cotton, 233.

McKean, Elizabeth, 282.

McKean, Joseph, 280.

McKinstrey, Sarah, marries Caleb Stark, 79;
portrait of, 84.

McNeil, Gen. John, 83.

Michelet, 231.

Minot, Captain, 327.

Morris, Robert, 82.

Morse, Rev. Jedediah, 265.

Morse, Samuel F. B., 83;
birthplace of, 264;
student at Yale, 269;
studies painting in Europe, 270;
returns to America, 272;
paints Lafayette, 272;
invents the telegraph, 273.

Moulton, Mr. Charles, 288.

Moulton, Suzanne, 289.


Nason, Rev. Elias, 41.

Newman, Robert, 106, 110.

Nichols, George C., buys Royall House, 72.

Norris, Miss, 287.

Nourse, Rebecca, 228.


"Old Oaken Bucket," 356.

Orvis, John, marries Marianne Dwight, 303.

Ossoli, Angelo, Marchese d', 320.

Ossoli, Marchesa d' (See Margaret Fuller).

Otis, Harrison Gray, 257.

Oxford, death of Berkeley at, 34.


Page, Capt. Caleb, 76.

Pennsylvania Freeman, 372.

Pepperell, Sir William, 1st, 66.

Pepperell, Sir William, 2d, at Medford, 63;
graduated, 68;
marries Miss Royall, 68;
denounced, 68;
sails for England, 68;
dies, 69.

Pepperell, Lady, 85.

Pepperell House built, 66.

Percival, Lord, 13;
letter from Walpole, 33.

Phips, Governor, 233.

Pickard, Elizabeth W., 366.

Pickard, Samuel, 374.

Pierce, Professor, 286.

Porter House in Medford, 111.

Prescott, Doctor, at Lexington, 114, 326.

Price, Rev. Roger, 48.


Quebec, Baroness Riedesel at, 131.

Quincy, Miss, 120;
marries John Hancock, 123.


Raben-Levetzan, Suzanne, 289.

Radcliffe College, 279.

Radcliffe Magazine, 287.

Revere, Paul, 104, 110, 111;
writes of Church, 156.

Revolution, Agnes Surriage in, 56.

Riedesel, Baron, 130;
entertains Lafayette, 140;
visits George Third, 142;
returns to Brunswick, 145;
dies at Brunswick, 145.

Riedesel, Baroness, 130;
letters of, 131;
lands in America, 131;
reaches Cambridge, 134;
dies at Berlin, 145;
Cambridge street named for, 146.

Ripley, Doctor, 331.

Ripley, George, 281;
marries Sophia Dana, 293;
goes to Brook Farm, 295;
visits Carlyle, 299.

Rouville, Maj. Hertel de, 192.

Royall House visited by Frankland, 45;
built at Medford, 60.

Royall, Isaac, the nabob, 61.

Royall, Col. Isaac, proscribed, 69;
leaves land to Harvard, 70.

Russell, Major, 360.


Salem, Isaac Royall to sail from, 65.

Saltonstall, 285.

Sampson, Deborah (Gannett), 170;
early life, 172;
enlists in Continental Army, 174;
writes her mother, 176;
in battle of White Plains, 179;
sex discovered by physician, 181;
receives love letter, 182;
returns to her home, 188;
marries, 188;
conducts lecture tour, 189.

Savage, 347.

Scituate, 358.

Scott, Sir Walter, 340.

Schuyler, General, at Saratoga, 132;
daughter of, 135

Sewall, Judge, 239.

Shirley, governor Massachusetts, 41.

Shirley House, 45.

Shurtleff, Robert (See Deborah Sampson).

Sleepy Hollow, 338, 339.

Smibert paints Berkeley, 35;
paints Sir Wm. Pepperell, 1st, 67.

Smith, Mary, 368;
marries S. F. Smith, 369.

Sophia, Princess, and Madame Riedesel, 144.

Sophocles, Evangelinus Apostolides, 287.

Sparhawk, Colonel, 66.

Stark, General, at Royall House, 71.

Stark, Archibald, 75.

Stark, Caleb, born at Dunbarton, 77;
marries Miss McKinstrey, 79;
entertains Lafayette, 80.

Stark, Charlotte, 82.

Stark, Harriett, 82.

Stark, Charles F. Morris, 82.

Stark Burying-ground, 88.

Stella, journal of, 17;
marriage to Swift, 20.

Story, Capt. William, 368.

Story, Judge, 286.

Story, Mary, 285.

Story, William, 285.

Sully steamship, 273.

Surriage, Agnes, 37.

Swan, Col. James, 159;
member Sons of Liberty, 160;
at Bunker Hill, 160;
secretary Mass. Board of War, 161;
makes fortune, 161;
loses fortune, 161;
secures government contracts, 162;
returns to America, 164;
arrested at Paris, 165;
confined in St. Pélagie, 166;
dies, 168.

Swift, Dean, friend to Berkeley, 16;
at lodging in Bury Street, 17;
letter to Vanessa, 21;
letter to Lord Carteret, 27.

Swift, Lindsay, 301.


Tai-Ping Rebellion, 346.

Thayer, Abijah W., 369.

Thaxter, Celia, 285.

Thaxter, Levi, 285.

Thoreau and Hawthorne, 335;
grave of, 339.

Three Rivers, Baroness Riedesel at, 131.

Tidd, Jacob, buys Royall House, 72.

Tituba, the Indian slave, 229.

Titus, Mrs. Nelson V., 261.

Tremont House, 305.


Ursuline Convent, 284.


Vane, Sir Harry, 215.

Vanessa (Cadenus and Vanessa), 19;
goes to Ireland, 20;
letter to Swift, 21;
letter to Stella, 22;
legacy to Berkeley, 23;
death of, 25.

Vanhomrigh, Esther (See Vanessa), 17.

Vassall House, 148;
becomes hospital, 149;
Doctor Church there confined, 150.

Vaudreuil, Governor, 200.

Walker, Lucretia P., 272.

Walpole, Sir Robert, 28;
writes to Lord Percival, 33.

Ward, Elizabeth C., founds Chinese library, 355.

Ward, Frederick Townsend, born at Salem, 342;
enters French army, 343;
enlists in Nicaraguan expedition, 344;
arrives at Shanghai, 344;
defeats Tai-Pings, 347;
is made a mandarin, 349;
organises Ever-Victorious Army, 350;
marries Changmei, 350;
buried at Ning Po, 352;
is made a god, 352.

Warren, Doctor, and Church, 157.

Warren, Mrs. Mercy, 100.

Washington, George, letter of, 88.

Wayside Inn, 49, 241.

Wentworth, Governor, marriage of, 248.

Wentworth, Michael, 249.

West, Benjamin, 270.

West Indies, proposed seminary at, 14.

Whitehall (built at Newport, R. I.), 11;
made over to Yale College, 33.

White, Maria, 285, 286.

Whitman, Mrs. Sarah, 290.

Whittier at Marblehead, 371;
at Philadelphia, 372;
"A Sea Dream," written by, 374;
at Haverhill Seminary reunion, 379;
endows Amesbury Home, 366.

Williams, Gov. Charles K., 208.

Williams, Rev. Eleazer (Dauphin?), 207.

Williams, Eunice, captured, 194;
is converted by Jesuits, 205;
marries a savage, 205;
revisits Deerfield, 205.

Williams, Rev. John, 193;
captured, 194;
redeemed, 203.

Williams, Roger, 226.

Williams, Rev. Stephen, 198;
captured by Indians, 194;
redeemed, 203;
settles at Longmeadow, 204.

Winthrop, John, 217.

Wiscasset, Me., plan to entertain Marie Antoinette at, 163.

Woodworth, Samuel, born at Scituate, 359;
writes "Old Oaken Bucket," 362;
dies, 364.


Yale College, bequest from Berkeley, 33;
S. F. B. Morse at, 269.


Zenobia, 301.

Little Pilgrimages Series

L. C. PAGE & COMPANY
New England Building
Boston, Mass.

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