Part 16

NOW the very ultimatum of degeneracy, in the opinion of these simple good people, was approaching; for now the officers, encouraged by the success of all their projects for amusement, resolved to new fashion and enlighten those amiable novices whom their former schemes had attracted within the sphere of their influence; and, for this purpose, a private theatre was fitted up, and preparations made for acting a play. Except the Schuylers and their adopted family, there was not, perhaps, one of the natives who understood what was meant by a play. And by this time, the town, once so closely united by intermarriages and numberless other ties, which could not exist in any other state of society, were divided into two factions; one consisting almost entirely of such of the younger class, as, having a smattering of New-York education, and a little more of dress and vivacity, or, perhaps, levity, than the rest, were eager to mingle in the society, and adopt the manners of those strangers. It is but just, however, to add, that only a few of the more estimable were included in this number; these, however they might have been captivated with novelty and plausibility, were too much attached to their older relations to give them pain, by an intimacy with people to whom an impious neglect of duties the most sacred, was generally imputed, and whose manner of treating their inferiors, at that distance from the control of higher powers, was often such as to justify the imputation of cruelty, which the severity of military punishments had given rise to. The play, however, was acted in a barn, and pretty well attended, notwithstanding the good Domine’s earnest charges to the contrary. It was the Beaux Stratagem; no favourable specimen of the delicacy or morality of the British theatre; and as for the wit it contains, very little of that was level to the comprehension of the novices who were there first initiated into a knowledge of the magic of the scene, yet they “laughed consumedly,” as Scrub says, and actually did so, “because they were talking of him.” They laughed at Scrub’s gestures and appearance: and they laughed very heartily at seeing the gay young ensigns, whom they had been used to dance with, flirting fans, displaying great hoops, and with painted cheeks and coloured eyebrows, sailing about in female habiliments. This was a jest palpable and level to every understanding; and it was not only an excellent good one, but lasted a long while; for every time they looked at them when restored to their own habits, they laughed anew at the recollection of their late masquerade. “It is much,” says Falstaff, “that a lie with a grave face, and a jest with a sad brow, will do with a fellow who never had the ache in his shoulders.” One need only look back to the first rude efforts at comic humour which delighted our fathers, to know what gross and feeble jests amuse the mind, as yet a stranger to refinement. The loud and artless mirth so easily excited in a good-humoured child, the naivete of its odd questions and ignorant wonder, which delight us while associated with innocence and simplicity, would provoke the utmost disgust if we met with them where we look for intelligence and decorous observances. The simplicity of primitive manners, in what regards the petty amusements and minute attentions to which we have become accustomed, is exactly tantamount to that of childhood; it is a thing which, in our state of society, we have no idea of. Those who are, from their depressed situation, ignorant of the forms of polished life, know, at least, that such exist; and either awkwardly imitate them, or carefully avoid committing themselves, by betraying their ignorance. Here, while this simplicity, which, by the by, was no more vulgar than that of Shakspeare’s Miranda, with its concomitant purity, continued unbroken by foreign modes, it had all the charm of undesigning childhood; but when half education and ill supported pretensions took place of this sweet attraction, it assumed a very different aspect; it was no longer simplicity but vulgarity. There are things that every one feels and no one can describe, and this is one of them.

But to return to our Mirandas and their theatrical heroes: the fame of their exhibitions went abroad, and opinions were formed of them no way favourable to the actors or to the audience. In this region of reality, where rigid truth was always undisguised, they had not learned to distinguish between fiction and falsehood. It was said that the officers, familiar with every vice and every disguise, had not only spent a whole night in telling lies in a counterfeited place, the reality of which had never existed, but that they were themselves a lie, and had degraded manhood, and broke through an express prohibition in Scripture, by assuming female habits; that they had not only told lies, but cursed and swore the whole night; and assumed the characters of knaves, fools, and robbers, which every wise and good man held in detestation, and no one would put on unless they felt themselves easy in them. Painting their faces, of all other things, seemed most to violate the Albanian ideas of decorum, and was looked upon as a most flagrant abomination. Great and loud was the outcry produced by it. Little skilled in sophistry, and strangers to all the arts “that make the worst appear the better reason,” the young auditors could only say, “that indeed it was very amusing; made them laugh heartily, and did harm to nobody.” So harmless, indeed, and agreeable did this entertainment appear to the new converts to fashion, that the Recruiting Officer was given out for another night, to the great annoyance of Domine Freylinghausen, who invoked heaven and earth to witness and avenge this contempt, not only of his authority, but, as he expressed it, of the source from whence it was derived. Such had been the sanctity of this good man’s life, and the laborious diligence and awful earnestness with which he inculcated the doctrines he taught, that they had produced a correspondent effect, for the most part, on the lives of his hearers, and led them to regard him as the next thing to an evangelist. Accustomed to success in all his undertakings, and to “honour, love, obedience, troops of friends,” and all that gratitude and veneration can offer to its most distinguished object, this rebellion against his authority, and contempt of his opinion, once the standard by which every one’s judgment was regulated, wounded him very deeply. The abhorrence with which he inspired the parents of the transgressors, among whom were many young men of spirit and intelligence, was the occasion of some family disagreements, a thing formerly scarcely known. Those young people, accustomed to regard their parents with implicit reverence, were unwilling to impute to them unqualified harshness, and therefore removed the blame of a conduct so unusual to their spiritual guide; “and while he thought, good easy man, full surely his greatness was a ripening, nipt his root.” Early one Monday morning, after the Domine had, on the preceding day, been peculiarly eloquent on the subject of theatrical amusements, and pernicious innovations, some unknown person left within his door a club, a pair of old shoes, a crust of black bread, and a dollar. The worthy pastor was puzzled to think what this could mean, but had it too soon explained to him. It was an emblematic message, to signify the desire entertained of his departure. The stick was to push him away, the shoes to wear on the road, and the bread and money a provision for his journey. These symbols, appear, in former days, to have been more commonly used, and better understood than at present; for instance, we find that when Robert Bruce, afterwards king of Scotland, was in a kind of honourable captivity in the court of England; when his friend, the Earl of Glocester, discovered that it was the intention of the king to imprison him in the tower, lest he should escape to Scotland and assert his rights, unwilling by word or writing to discover what had passed in council, and at the same time desirous to save his friend, he sent him a pair of gilt spurs and twelve crowns, and ordered the servant to carry them to him as returning what he had formerly borrowed from him. This mysterious gift and message was immediately understood, and proved the means of restoring Bruce, and, with him, the laws and liberty of his native kingdom. Very different, however, was the effect produced by this mal a-propos symbol of dislike. Too conscious, and too fond of popularity, the pastor languished under a sense of imaginary degradation, grew jealous, and thought every one alienated from him, because a few giddy young people were stimulated, by momentary resentments, to express disapprobation in this vague and dubious manner. Thus, insensibly, do vanity and self-opinion, mingle with our highest duties. Had the Domine, satisfied with the testimony of a good conscience, gone on in the exercise of his duty, and been above allowing little personal resentments to mingle with his zeal for what he thought right, he might have felt himself far above an insult of this kind; but he found to his cost, that “a habitation giddy and unsure hath he, that buildeth on the fickle heart” of the unsteady, wavering multitude.

CHAP. XXXVI.

Return of madame—The Domine leaves his people—Fulfilment of his predictions.

MADAME now returned to town with the colonel, and finding this general disorder and division of sentiments with regard to the pastor, as well as to the adoption of new modes, endeavoured, with her usual good sense, to moderate and to heal. She was always of opinion that the increase of wealth should be accompanied with a proportionate progress in refinement and intelligence; but she had a particular dislike to peoples forsaking a respectable plainness of dress and manners, for mere imperfect imitation and inelegant finery. She knew too well the progress of society to expect, that, as it grew wealthy and numerous, it would retain its pristine purity; but then she preferred a gradual abolition of old habits, that people, as they receded from their original modes of thinking and living, might rather become simply elegant than tawdrily fine; and though she all along wished, in every possible way, to promote the comfort of the brave men to whom the country owed so much, she by no means thought an indiscriminate admission of those strangers among the youth of the place, so unpractised in the ways of the world, an advisable measure: she was particularly displeased with the person in whose house the colonel of the regiment lodged, for so entirely domesticating a showy stranger, of whose real character he knew so little.—Liberal and judicious in her views, she did not altogether approve the austerity of the Domine’s opinions, nor the vehemence of his language; and, as a Christian, she still less approved his dejection and concern at the neglect or rudeness of a few thoughtless young persons. In vain the colonel and madame soothed and cheered him with counsel and with kindness; night and day he mused on the imagined insult; nor could the joint efforts of the most respectable inhabitants prevent his heart from being corroded with the sense of imagined unkindness. At length he took the resolution of leaving those people so dear to him, to visit his friends in Holland, promising to return in a short time, whenever his health was restored, and his spirits more composed. A Dutch ship happened about this time to touch at New-York, on board of which the Domine embarked; but as the vessel belonging to Holland was not expected to return, and he did not, as he had promised, either write or return in an English ship, his congregation remained for a great while unsupplied, while his silence gave room for the most anxious and painful conjectures: these were not soon removed, for the intercourse with Holland was not frequent or direct. At length, however, the sad reality was but too well ascertained. This victim of lost popularity had appeared silent and melancholy to his ship-mates, and walked constantly on deck. At length he suddenly disappeared, leaving it doubtful whether he had fallen overboard by accident, or was prompted by despair to plunge into eternity. If this latter was the case, it must have been the consequence of a temporary fit of insanity; for no man had led a more spotless life, and no man was more beloved by all that were intimately known to him. He was, indeed, before the fatal affront, which made such an undue impression on him, considered as a blessing to the place; and his memory was so beloved, and his fate so regretted, that this, in addition to some other occurrences falling out about the same time, entirely turned the tide of opinion, and rendered the thinking as well as the violent party, more averse to innovations than ever. Had the Albanians been Catholics, they would probably have canonized M. Freylinghausen, whom they considered as a martyr to levity and innovation. He prophesied a great deal; such prophecy as ardent and comprehensive minds have delivered, without any other inspiration but that of the sound, strong intellect, which augurs the future from a comparison of the past, and a rational deduction of probable consequences. The affection that was entertained for his memory induced people to listen to the most romantic stories of his being landed on an island, and become a hermit; taken up into a ship when floating on the sea, into which he had accidentally fallen, and carried to some remote country, from which he was expected to return, fraught with experience and faith. I remember some of my earliest reveries to have been occupied by the mysterious disappearance of this hard-fated pastor.

In the mean while new events were unfolding more fully to the Albanians the characters of their lately acquired friends. Scandal of fifty years standing, must, by this time, have become almost pointless. The house where the young colonel, formerly mentioned, was billetted, and made his quarters good by every art of seductive courtesy, was occupied by a person wealthy, and somewhat vain and shallow, who had an only daughter; I am not certain, but I think she was his only child. She was young, lively, bold, conceited, and exceedingly well looking. Artless and fearless of consequences, this thoughtless creature saw every day a person who was no doubt as much pleased with her as one could be with mere youth, beauty, and kindness, animated by vivacity, and distinguished from her companions by all the embellishments which wealth could procure in that unfashioned quarter; his heart, however, was safe, as will appear from the sequel. Madame foresaw the consequences likely to result from an intimacy daily growing, where there was little prudence on the one side, and as little of that honour which should respect unsuspecting innocence on the other. She warned the family, but in vain; they considered marriage as the worst consequence that could ensue; and this they could not easily have been reconciled to, notwithstanding the family and fortune of the lover, had not his address and attentions charmed them into a kind of tacit acquiescence; for, as a Roman citizen, in the proud days of the republic, would have refused his daughter to a king, an Albanian, at one period, would rather have his daughter married to the meanest of his fellow-citizens, than to a person of the highest rank in the army, because they thought a young person, by such a marriage, was not only forever alienated from her family, but from those pure morals and plain manners, in which they considered the greatest possible happiness to exist. To return:

While these gaieties were going on, and the unhappy Domine embarking on the voyage which terminated his career, an order came for the colonel to march. This was the only commander who had ever been in town, who had not spent any time, or asked any counsel at the Flats. Meanwhile, his Calista, (for such she was,) tore her hair in frantic agonies at his departure; not that she in the least doubted of his returning soon to give a public sanction to their union, but lest he should prove a victim to the war then existing; and because, being very impetuous, and unaccustomed to control, the object of her wishes had been delayed to a future period. In a short time, things began to assume a more serious aspect; and her father came one day posting to the Flats, on his way to the lakes, seeking counsel too late, and requesting the aid of their influence to bring about a marriage, which should cover the disgrace of his family. They had little hopes of his success, yet he proceeded; and finding the colonel deaf to all his arguments, he had recourse to entreaty, and finally offered to divest himself of all but a mere subsistence, and give him such a fortune as was never heard of in that country. This, with an angel, as the fond father thought her, appeared irresistible; but no! heir to a considerable fortune in his own country, and, perhaps, inwardly despising a romp, whom he had not considered from the first as estimable, he was not to be soothed or bribed into compliance. The dejected father returned disconsolate; and the astonishment and horror this altogether novel occurrence occasioned in the town, was not to be described. Of such a circumstance there was no existing precedent; half the city were related to the fair culprit, for penitent she could hardly be called. This unexpected refusal threw the whole city into consternation. One would have thought there had been an earthquake; and all the insulted Domine’s predictions rose to remembrance, armed with avenging terrors.

Many other things occurred to justify the Domine’s caution, and the extreme reluctance which the elders of the land showed to all such associations. All this madame greatly lamented, yet could not acquit the parties concerned, whose duty it was, either to keep their daughters from that society for which their undisguised simplicity of heart unfitted them, or give them that culture and usage of life, which enables a young person to maintain a certain dignity, and to revolt at the first trespass on decorum. Her own protégés were instances of this; who, having their minds early stored with sentiments, such as would enable them truly to estimate their own value, and judge of the characters and pretensions of those who conversed with them; all conducted themselves with the utmost propriety, though daily mixing with strangers, and were solicited in marriage by the first people in the province, who thought themselves happy to select companions from such a school of intelligence and politeness, where they found beauty of the first order informed by mind, and graced by the most pleasing manners.

CHAP. XXXVII.

Death of Colonel Schuyler.

THIS year (1757) was marked by an event that not only clouded the future life of madame, but occasioned the deepest concern to the whole province. Colonel Schuyler was scarcely sensible of the decline of life, except some attacks of the rheumatism, to which the people of that country are peculiarly subject. He enjoyed sound health and equal spirits, and had, upon the whole, from the temperance of his habits, and the singular equanimity of his mind, a more likely prospect of prolonging his happy and useful life, than falls to the lot of most people. He had, however, in very cold weather, gone to town to visit a relation, then ill of a pleurisy; and having sat awhile by the invalid, and conversed with him both on his worldly and spiritual affairs, he returned very thoughtful. On rising the next morning, he began the day, as had for many years been his custom, with singing some verses of a psalm in his closet. Madame observed that he was interrupted by a most violent fit of sneezing; this returned again a little while after, when he calmly told her that he felt the symptoms of a pleuritic attack, which had begun in the same manner with that of his friend; that the event might possibly prove fatal; but that knowing, as she did, how long a period[14] of more than common felicity had been granted to their mutual affection, and with what tranquillity he was enabled to look forward to that event which is common to all, and which would be earnestly desired if withheld; he expected of her that, whatever might happen, she would look back with gratitude, and forward with hope; and, in the mean time, honour his memory, and her own profession of faith, by continuing to live in the manner they had hitherto done, that he might have the comfort of thinking that his house might still be an asylum to the helpless and the stranger, and a desirable place of meeting to his most valued friends: this was spoken with an unaltered countenance, and in a calm and even tone. Madame, however, was alarmed: friends from all quarters poured in, with the most anxious concern for the event. By this time there was an hospital built at Albany for the troops, with a regular medical establishment. No human aid was wanting, and the composure of madame astonished every one. This, however, was founded on hope; for she never could let herself imagine the danger serious, being flattered both by the medical attendants, and the singular fortitude of the patient. He, however, continued to arrange all things for the change he expected. He left his houses in town and country, his plate, and, in short, all his effects, to his wife, at her sole disposal; his estates were finally left to the orphan son of his nephew, then a child in the family; but madame was to enjoy the rents during her life.

His negroes, for whom he had a great affection, were admitted every day to visit him; and with all the ardour of attachment peculiar to that kind-hearted race, implored heaven day and night for his recovery. The day before his death, he had them all called around his bed, and in their presence besought of madame that she would upon no account sell any of them. This request he would not have made could he have foreseen the consequences. On the fifth day of his illness he quietly breathed his last; having expressed, while he was able to articulate, the most perfect confidence, in the mercy of the God whom he had diligently served and entirely trusted; and the most tender attachment to the friends he was about to leave.

Footnote 14:

Forty years.

It would be a vain attempt to describe the sorrow of a family like his, who had all been accustomed from childhood to look up to him as the first of mankind, and the medium through which they received every earthly blessing; while the serenity of his wisdom, the sweet and gentle cast of his heartfelt piety, and the equable mildness of his temper, rendered him incapable of embittering obligations; so that his generous humanity and liberal hospitality, were adorned by all the graces that courtesy could add to kindness. The public voice was loud in its plaudits and lamentations. In the various characters of a patriot, a hero, and a saint, he was dear to all the friends of valour, humanity, and public spirit; while his fervent loyalty and unvaried attachment to the king, and the laws of that country by which his own was protected, endeared him to all the servants of government; who knew they never should meet with another equally able, or equally disposed to smooth their way in the paths of duty assigned to them.