The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees
by Mary Caroline Crawford · English · Gutenberg #21645 · 335,250 chars · public domain (US)
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Title: The Romance of Old New England Rooftrees
Author: Mary Caroline Crawford
Release date: May 30, 2007 [eBook #21645]
Most recently updated: January 2, 2021
Language: English
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Little Pilgrimages
The Romance of
Old New England
Rooftrees
By
Mary C. Crawford
Illustrated
[Illustration]
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.
* * * * *
[Illustration: 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._
* * * * *
"All houses wherein men have lived and died are haunted houses."
_Longfellow._
"So very difficult a matter is it to trace and find out the truth
of anything by history."
_Plutarch._
"... Common as light is love,
And its familiar voice wearies not ever."
_Shelley._
"... I discern
Infinite passion and the pain
Of finite hearts that yearn."
_Browning._
"'Tis an old tale and often told."
_Scott._
* * * * *
Contents
_Page_
Foreword iii
The Heir of Swift's Vanessa 11
The Maid of Marblehead 37
An American-Born Baronet 59
Molly Stark's Gentleman-Son 74
A Soldier of Fortune 90
The Message of the Lanterns 104
Hancock's Dorothy Q. 117
Baroness Riedesel and Her Tory Friends 130
Doctor Church: First Traitor to the American Cause 147
A Victim of Two Revolutions 159
The Woman Veteran of the Continental Army 170
The Redeemed Captive 190
New England's First "Club Woman" 210
In the Reign of the Witches 225
Lady Wentworth of the Hall 241
An Historic Tragedy 251
Inventor Morse's Unfulfilled Ambition 264
Where the "Brothers and Sisters" Met 279
The Brook Farmers 293
Margaret Fuller: Marchesa d'Ossoli 307
The Old Manse and Some of Its Mosses 324
Salem's Chinese God 341
The Well-Sweep of a Song 356
Whittier's Lost Love 366
LIST OF ILLUSTRATIONS
_Page_
Sir Harry Frankland (_See page 48_) _Frontispiece_
Whitehall, Newport, R. I. 31
Agnes Surriage Pump, Marblehead,
Mass. 39
Summer House, Royall Estate, Medford,
Mass. 63
Royall House, Medford, Mass.--Pepperell
House, Kittery, Maine 66
Stark House, Dunbarton, N. H. 79
General Lee's Headquarters, Somerville,
Mass. 94
Christ Church--Paul Revere House,
Boston, Mass. 104
Robert Newman House, Boston, Mass. 110
Clark House, Lexington, Mass. 118
Dorothy Q. House, Quincy, Mass. 123
Riedesel House, Cambridge, Mass. 145
House Where Doctor Church Was
Confined, Cambridge, Mass. 149
Swan House, Dorchester, Mass. 164
Deborah Sampson Gannett 170
Gannett House, Sharon, Mass. 188
Williams House, Deerfield, Mass. 193
Reverend Stephen Williams 204
Old Corner Bookstore, Site of the
Hutchinson House, Boston, Mass. 214
Old Witch House, Salem, Mass. 225
Rebecca Nourse House, Danvers,
Mass. 229
Red Horse Tavern, Sudbury, Mass. 242
Governor Wentworth House, Portsmouth,
N. H. 246
Fairbanks House, Dedham, Mass. 260
Edes House, Birthplace of Professor
Morse, Charlestown, Mass. 264
Oval Parlour, Fay House, Cambridge,
Mass. 286
Brook Farm, West Roxbury, Mass. 296
Fuller House, Cambridgeport, Mass. 312
Old Manse, Concord, Mass. 324
Townsend House, Salem, Mass. 342
Old Oaken Bucket House, Scituate,
Mass. 359
Whittier's Birthplace, East Haverhill,
Mass. 380
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 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 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 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 instruments 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 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 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 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
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 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 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."
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-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.
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:
"Cadenus, common forms apart,
In every scene had kept his heart;
Had sighed and languished, vowed and writ
For pastime, or to show his wit,
But books and time and state affairs
Had spoiled his fashionable airs;
He now could praise, esteem, approve,
But understood not what was love:
His conduct might have made him styled
A father and the nymph his child.
That innocent delight he took
To see the virgin mind her book,
Was but the master's secret joy
In school to hear the finest boy."
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:
"In all I wish how happy should I be,
Thou grand deluder, were it not for thee.
So weak thou art that fools thy power despise,
And yet so strong, thou triumph'st o'er the wise."
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 remarked 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
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. 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 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 unaffected 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 was ushered into the town with a great
number of gentlemen, to whom he behaved himself after a very complaisant
manner."
[Illustration: 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 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 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 scholarships 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.
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 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.
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 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 dividing 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.
[Illustration: 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 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-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 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-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 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 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 remember 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 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. 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 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 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 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 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 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.
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, almost 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 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.
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 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 1: "Three Heroines of New England Romance." Little, Brown &
Co.]
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 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 regard 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 remained 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 garden of half an acre or
more, with walks, fruit, and a summer-house at the farther extremity, is
now the site of modern dwellings.
[Illustration: 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 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 Dartmouth. 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.
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 Colonel Sparhawk, his residuary legatee, requiring
him at the same time to relinquish the name of Sparhawk for that of
Peperell. 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.
[Illustration: ROYALL HOUSE, MEDFORD, MASS.]
[Illustration: PEPPERELL HOUSE, KITTERY, MAINE.]
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 falling through the
air--it has certainly been a long time in its descent."
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 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 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 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, Hobgoblin 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
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.
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 conservative, 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 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.
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 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, and by the time the war closed, was himself Major
Stark, though scarcely twenty-four years old.
[Illustration: 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, 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 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 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, 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 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 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 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 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 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, with grim, towering Kearsarge standing ever like a sentinel,
rests under the yew-trees the dust of this great family's honoured
dead.
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 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 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 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, 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
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.
[Illustration: 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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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
ministered 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 2: Drake's "Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex."
Little, Brown & Co., publishers.]
[Footnote 3: Drake's "Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex."]
[Footnote 4: Sparks's "Life of Charles Lee." Little, Brown & Co.]
THE MESSAGE OF THE LANTERNS
[Illustration: 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 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----
"By the wooden stairs, with stealthy tread,
To the belfry chamber overhead,
And startle the pigeons from their perch
On the sombre rafters, that round him make
Masses and moving shapes of shade"----
to look down as sexton Robert Newman did that eventful night on----
"The graves on the hill,
Lonely and spectral and sombre and still."
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 by
land. In Longfellow's story we learn that Newman----
"Through alley and street,
Wanders and watches with eager ears,
Till in the silence around him he hears
The muster of men at the barrack door,
The sound of arms and the tramp of feet,
And the measured tread of the grenadiers,
Marching down to their boats on the shore."
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 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
considerably 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 guarding the deserted roads leading into the country, and up to
this moment no patriot courier had gone out."
[Illustration: 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!"
Longfellow has best described the awakening of the country-side:
"A hurry of hoofs in the village street,
A shape in the moonlight, a bulk in the dark,
And beneath, from the pebbles, in passing, a spark
Struck out by a steed flying fearless and fleet;
That was all! And yet, through the gloom and the light,
The fate of a nation was riding that night;
And the spark struck out by that steed, in its flight,
Kindled the land into flame with its heat."
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" Hancock 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 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 mouthfuls 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, 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.
"You know the rest. In the books you have read
How the British regulars fired and fled--
How the farmers gave them ball for ball,
From behind each fence and farmyard wall,
Chasing the redcoats down the lane,
Then crossing the fields to emerge again
Under the trees at the turn of the road,
And only pausing to fire and load.
"So through the night rode Paul Revere;
And so through the night went his cry of alarm
To every Middlesex village and farm----
A cry of defiance and not of fear,
A voice in the darkness, a knock at the door,
And a word that shall echo for evermore!
For, borne on the night wind of the past,
Through all our history, to the last,
The people will waken and listen to hear
The hurrying hoof beats of that steed,
And the midnight message of Paul Revere."[6]
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 5: Drake's "Historic Fields and Mansions of Middlesex."
Little, Brown & Co., publishers.]
[Footnote 6: "Paul Revere's Ride:" Longfellow's Poems. Houghton, Mifflin
& Co., publishers.]
HANCOCK'S DOROTHY Q.
The Dorothy Q. of our present interest is not the little maiden of
Holmes's charming poem--
"Grandmother's mother; her age I guess,
Thirteen summers, or something less;
Girlish bust, but womanly air;
Smooth, square forehead with uprolled hair,
Lips that lover has never kissed;
Taper fingers and slender wrist;
Hanging sleeves of stiff brocade;
So they painted the little maid.
On her hand a parrot green
Sits unmoving and broods serene."
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 happened 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.
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
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]
[Illustration: CLARK HOUSE, LEXINGTON, MASS.]
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 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 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 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:
2 pair white silk } which stockings
4 pair white thread } I think will fit you
1 pair black satin } Shoes, the other,
1 pair Calem Co. } Shall be sent when done.
1 very pretty light hat
1 neat airy summer Cloak
2 caps
1 Fann
"I wish these may please you, I shall be gratified if they do, pray
write me, I will attend to all your Commands.
"Adieu, my dear Girl, and believe me with great Esteem & affection,
"Yours without reserve,
"JOHN HANCOCK."[8]
[Illustration: 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 Philadelphia, 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.
"... 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 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. 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 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, 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Drake.]
[Footnote 8: _New England Magazine._]
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, 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, 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 between 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
Massachusetts 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 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 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 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 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 beforehand, 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 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 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 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 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 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."
[Illustration: RIEDESEL HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.]
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 at
Lauterbach.
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 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.
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 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 outbuildings were used for the storage of the colony
forage.
[Illustration: 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 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 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
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 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 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 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
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 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 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.
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 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 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. 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. 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 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.
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 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.
[Illustration: SWAN HOUSE, DORCHESTER, MASS.]
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 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 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 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, 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.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 9: "History of Swan's Island."]
THE WOMAN VETERAN OF THE CONTINENTAL ARMY
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.
[Illustration: DEBORAH SAMPSON GANNETT.]
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.
"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 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.
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 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 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 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 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 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 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 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, 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 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 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 conduce 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 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 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 imperfections 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 General Patterson, which disclosed the
secret.
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.
[Illustration: GANNETT HOUSE, SHARON, MASS.]
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.
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 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.
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. 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.
[Illustration: 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, 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 covered 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 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 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 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: "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
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 determined 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 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 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 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.
[Illustration: 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 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
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 be 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 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 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.
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 salvation, 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
Hutchinson, 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 married 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 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.
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 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.
[Illustration: OLD CORNER BOOKSTORE, SITE OF THE HUTCHINSON HOUSE.]
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 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
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. 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 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 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 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
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 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 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.
[Illustration: OLD WITCH HOUSE, SALEM, MASS.]
IN THE REIGN OF THE WITCHES
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 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 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 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.
[Illustration: REBECCA NOURSE HOUSE, DANVERS, MASS.]
Rebecca Nourse, aged and infirm and universally beloved by her
neighbours, was 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.
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 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 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."
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
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.
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 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
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 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 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_.
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 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.
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:
"These tales you tell are, one and all,
Of the Old World,
Flowers gathered from a crumbling wall,
Dead leaves that rustle as they fall;
Let me present you in their stead
Something of our New England earth;
A tale which, though of no great worth,
Has still this merit, that it yields
A certain freshness of the fields,
A sweetness as of home-made bread."
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.
[Illustration: RED HORSE TAVERN, SUDBURY, 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 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:"
"Oh, Martha Hilton! Fie! how dare you go
About the town half dressed and looking so!"
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
"A pail of water dripping through the street,
And bathing as she went her naked feet."
Nor do the worthy people of Portsmouth fail to recall the other actor in
this memorable drama, upon which the Earl of Halifax once benignly
smiled:
"A portly person, with three-cornered hat,
A crimson velvet coat, head high in air,
Gold-headed cane and nicely powdered hair,
And diamond buckles sparkling at his knees,
Dignified, stately, florid, much at ease.
For this was Governor Wentworth, driving down
To Little Harbour, just beyond the town,
Where his Great House stood, looking out to sea,
A goodly place, where it was good to be."
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:
"It was a pleasant mansion, an abode
Near and yet hidden from the great highroad,
Sequestered among trees, a noble pile,
Baronial and Colonial in its style;
Gables and dormer windows everywhere--
Pandalan pipes, on which all winds that blew
Made mournful music the whole winter through.
Within, unwonted splendours met the eye,
Panels, and floors of oak, and tapestry;
Carved chimneypieces, where, on brazen dogs,
Revelled and roared the Christmas fire of logs.
Doors opening into darkness unawares,
Mysterious passages and flights of stairs;
And on the walls, in heavy-gilded frames,
The ancestral Wentworths, with old Scripture names.
Such was the mansion where the great man dwelt."
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 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 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!
[Illustration: 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----
"A maid of all work, whether coarse or fine,
A servant who made service seem divine!"
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:
"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 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 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.
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 exa
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