Part 9

To those who are only acquainted with James Logan, William Penn’s young secretary, through his official correspondence and endless business letters, he must appear a very didactic and uninteresting personage; yet reading between the lines, or scanning a stray letter addressed to some friend or relative, we catch a sight of the real man, of like passions with ourselves. Mrs. Hannah Penn, who survived her lover’s generous hampers and curious medical prescriptions and became a happy wife and the mother of a brood of sturdy young Penns, was well qualified to be a lover’s _confidante_, and to her James Logan was pleased to unburden his numerous and, it must be admitted, unsuccessful love-affairs. A disappointed lover may not be the most attractive object in every-day life, but for some indefinable reason it adds to the historic interest of a man, especially to the feminine reader, to know that he loved and wooed in vain and bewailed his fate in prose or verse. Otherwise, why should generations of school-girls weep over the sorrows of Werther? The young secretary was enamoured of Letitia Penn, her of the pig’s brawn, and Rebecca Moore, and several others, if we are to judge from his letters. Letitia married William Aubrey, for whom James Logan’s admiration was ever after of the scantest. His allusion to his rival’s rapacity in money-matters, saying that he was “a tiger for returns,” by which he referred to quit-rents and the like, may not have been high-minded, but was it not natural? and also that he should have found few words in which to praise Governor Evans, whom the fair Rebecca Moore made supremely happy? It was not, however, written in the book of fate that this excellent Quaker youth should forever woo in vain, and from some family treasure-trove there comes a charming letter that succeeded in bringing to his side the lady of his love, with whom he lived as long and as happily as the princes and princesses of fairy lore. After dwelling at length upon the “excellent virtues” and qualifications of this adorable Quaker maiden, and upon his ardent desire to claim them and her for his own, the writer says, with noble self-abnegation,--

“Yet, my Dearest, I cannot press it further, than thou with freedom canst condescend to it, and enjoy Peace and Satisfaction in thy own mind, for without this, I cannot so much as desire to obtain thee. I therefore here resign thee to that Gracious God, thy tender and merciful father, to whom thy innocent life and virtuous inclinations have certainly rendered thee very dear that He may dispose of thee according to His divine Pleasure, and as it may best suit thy happiness--humbly imploring at the same time, and beseeching His divine Goodness, that I may be made worthy to receive thee as a holy gift from his hands: and then thou wilt truly prove a Blessing, and we shall forever be happy in each other.”[32]

This letter of the young secretary is in striking contrast to the overloaded verbiage so prevalent in that day, which is exhibited in another Colonial letter of a few years’ earlier date, and which reads as if modelled on the style of Sir Charles Grandison. The writer of this last effusion, who calls himself the Rev. Elias Keach, apologizes elaborately for “rushing his rude and unpolished lines into the Heroik and most Excelent Presence” of his sweetheart, Mistress Mary Helm. After defining his financial status, which is at a rather low ebb, and giving forth as his opinion that “Pure Righteousness and Zeal exceeds a portion with a wife, so also in a Husband,” Mr. Keach launches his bark upon a troubled sea of rhetorical affection, in which he pleads the advantages of his person, mind, and estate, of whose claims he never loses sight, even when involved in the most high-flown metaphorical descriptions of the charms of his mistress. The style of Mr. Keach, however, is not to be described. Like Charles Lamb’s favorite dish, it must be tasted to be enjoyed. From the carefully pen-printed pages before us, we transcribe the following passages:

“Lady let me crave the mantle of your Virtue the which Noble and generous favor will hide my naked and deformed fault altho: it seems to be a renewed coldness to require such an incomparable favour from your tender heart, from whom I have deserved so little Kindness. Mrs. Mary: Solomon says Childhood and Youth are vanity; and if so you cannot expect that in my youth which the gray hairs of our Age (or at least of our wooden world) cannot afford; it is a common saying and a true, love is stronger than death, & it is as true a proverb where Love cannot go it will creep--you know Dear Lady, that the higher the sun riseth by degrees from the East the more influence hath the power and heat of its beams upon the Earth, so ever since I saw the sun-rise of your comely and gracious presence the sunbeams of your countenance and your discreet and virtuous behaviour, hath by degrees wroat such a virtuous heat and such Ammorouse Effects in my disconsolate heart that that which I cannot at present disclose in words in your gracious presence I am forct (altho far distant from you) to discover in ink and paper; trusting in god that this may be a Key to open the door of your virtuous and tender heart against the time I do appear in person; Dear Mistress: let me most submissively crave this favour of you among your generrosities that you would not in the least Imagine that I have any Bye Ends or reserves in writing these few lines to you: But that I am Virtuously truly and sincerely, upon the word of a Christian; and the main scope and intent of this letter is only and alone to discover unto you, these Amorous impressions of a virtuous Love which hath taken root or is Allready ingrafted in my heart; who have lifted myself under the Banner of your Love; provided I can by any means gain the honor to induce you to Acknowledge and account me your most obligeing Servant: I must needs say this is not a common practice of mine to write Letters of this nature but Love hath made that proper which is not common; Mrs. Mary if I had foreseen when I saw you what I have since experienced I would have foreshown a more Ample and courteous behavior than I then did; Through my Stupidity and dullness the reason then I could not tell: But the effects I now know and shall be careful and industrious to improve, not to your disadvantage, and I am persuaded to my exceeding comfort and contentment; as for my person you have in a measure seen it, and as for my practice you do in a measure Know it as for my parts the Effects of my Conversations will show it. I know it is folly to speak in my own Praise, seeing I have learnt this Leason Long ago wise is that man that speaks few words in his own praise....

“As for my parents I am obliged By the Law of god; to Honour them, & thus I say in short (first) they are of no mean Family; (secondly) they are of no mean Learning, & (thirdly) they are of no mean account and note in the World: tho they are not of ye world But the truth & certainty of this I Leave to be proved; By Severall of no mean note in this Province and the next.”

Mr. Keach evidently refers to the Provinces of Pennsylvania and New Jersey. After several lines that it is impossible to decipher, we extract the following hope:

“That the Silver Streams of my Dearest Affections and faithfull Love will be willingly received into the Mill Pond of your tender Virgin Heart; by your halling up the flood gate of your virtuous Love and Affections; which will completely turn the Wheeles of your Gracious will and Understanding to receive the golden graines or Effects of my Steadfast Love and unerring Affection which will be in Loyall respective and Obliging Service so Long as Life Shall Last and such a thrice Happy Conjunction; may induce Many to bring bags of Golden graines of Rejoycing to our Mill and River of joy and contentment and we ourselves will sing ye Epithalmy; this is the Earnest (yet Languishing) Desire of his Soul who hath sent his heart with his Letter:”[33]

The foregoing epistle is connected with a curious chapter in the religious life of the Lower Counties of Pennsylvania.[34] The writer, a son of the celebrated controversialist and Baptist divine of London, Benjamin Keach, made himself notorious in the early days of the Colony by passing himself off as a minister of the Baptist Church. “A very wild spark,” one historian calls him, while even in Baptist annals Elias Keach is spoken of as “an ungodly young man, who, to make himself appear to be a clergyman, wore black clothing and bands.” He carried his imposture so far as to undertake to conduct a service, in the midst of which he broke down, and when the congregation gathered about him, thinking that he was attacked by some sudden indisposition, Mr. Keach confessed, “with tears and much trembling,” that he was no minister, nor a Christian. Whether this shady episode, which occurred in 1686, the same year that the love-letter was written to Miss Helm, prevented the mistress of his “Amorous and Virtuous Affections” from favoring his suit, contemporaneous history does not reveal. It does, however, establish the fact that Miss More, daughter of Chief Justice Nicholas More, of Pennsylvania, and not Miss Helm, became the wife of the polite letter-writer. It would be interesting to know with what sort of a declaratory effusion this second love was favored. On this point history is again silent. It states, however, what it is only just to repeat with regard to the subsequent career of Elias Keach,--namely, that he repented of his sins before he created further scandal in clerical circles. Having confessed, and having received absolution and ordination from one Elder Dungan, of Rhode Island, Mr. Keach began his life-work in earnest, which evidently bore good fruit, as he now enjoys the reputation of having established the first Baptist church in Philadelphia County, that of Pennepack, from which sprang a large sisterhood of Baptist churches in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.

Among later Colonial love-letters are those of Abigail Smith, afterwards Mrs. John Adams, which are marked by the ready wit and playful fancy that characterized all her writings. These qualities she seems to have inherited from no stranger, as her father, the Rev. William Smith of Weymouth, was one of the most facetious of divines. It is said that when his eldest daughter, Mary, married Richard Cranch, he preached from Luke x. 42: “And Mary hath chosen that good part, which shall not be taken away from her.” Abigail also had her turn. Some of the aristocratic parishioners of Weymouth objected to John Adams because he was the son of a small farmer and himself a lawyer, these two facts rendering him, they thought, ineligible to marry the minister’s daughter, in whose veins flowed the bluest of New England blue blood. Mr. Smith accordingly favored his congregation with a discourse on the text, “For John came neither eating bread nor drinking wine; and ye say, He hath a devil,” the latter clause having reference to the groom’s profession, the law, which was not then held in much repute in New England.

In a letter written by Miss Smith, from her village home, to John Adams, who was undergoing the process of inoculation for small-pox in Boston, she says,--

“By the time you receive this I hope from experience that you will be able to say that the distemper is but a trifle. Think you I would not endure a trifle for the pleasure of seeing you? Yes, were it ten times that trifle, I would. But my own inclinations must not be followed. I hope you smoke your letters well before you deliver them. Mamma is so fearful lest I catch the distemper, that she hardly ever thinks the letters are sufficiently purified. Did you never rob a bird’s nest? Do you remember how the poor birds would fly round and round, fearful to come nigh, yet not know how to leave the place? Just so they say I hover round Tom whilst he is smoking my letters.”

It is to be regretted that John Adams’s answers to these letters are not preserved: they were probably burned up by the anxious mamma.

All Abigail’s letters are love-letters in their tone of earnest devotion, whether written before or after marriage. With the details of the stir and excitement of military doings in and around Boston, the arrival of General Washington, the scantiness of provisions, and the cry for pins, which seem to have been as scarce as diamonds, there abound such passages as this:

“I wish I could come and see you. I never suffer myself to think you are about returning soon. Can it, will it be? May I ask--may I wish for it? When once I expect you----But hush! Do you know it is eleven o’clock at night?... Pray don’t let Bass forget my pins. We shall soon have no coffee, nor sugar, nor pepper here; but whortleberries and milk we are not obliged to commerce for. I saw a letter of yours to Colonel Palmer by General Washington. I hope I have one too. Good-night. With thoughts of thee I close my eyes. Angels guard and protect thee; and may a safe return ere long bless thy Portia.”

It was always Diana or Portia, after the romantic fashion of those days; and who would not rather have been Portia than plain Abigail to her lover?

A curious literary and historical fact, not generally known, is that General Benedict Arnold, who was notorious for his extravagance in public and private life, was extremely parsimonious in the matter of love-letters. By the infallible proof of an old letter, recently discovered, it appears that he made the same amatory composition do double duty, having used it in addressing at least two ladies of his choice. The letter was first employed in a proposal to Miss A., whom he did not marry, and with a few changes was used in offering himself to the beautiful Miss Peggy Shippen, of Philadelphia, whom he married in 1779. The letter, as addressed to Miss Shippen, is to be found in Arnold’s “Life of Benedict Arnold,” and is undoubtedly a fine sample of a love-letter of a rather florid and bombastic style. If Miss Shippen had realized that her suitor had written to an earlier love that her “charms had lighted up a flame in his bosom which could never be extinguished, that her heavenly image was too dear to be ever effaced, and that Heaven’s blessing should be implored for the idol and _only_ wish of his soul,” she might with some reason have hesitated to bestow her hand upon so trite a lover, who could find no fresh adjectives to match her charms.

Of interesting foreign love-letters we might speak at length: of a manly and tender missive from the great Gustavus Adolphus to an early love; of the Klopstock letters, than which in the whole literature of love nothing more beautiful can be found; of those of Prosper Mérimée to his _coquette Inconnue_, with their irresistible grace and brilliancy enhanced by the air of mystery that surrounds them; or of the exquisite metrical love-letters that Elizabeth Barrett addressed to her “Most gracious singer of high poems.” We have chosen rather to group together a few Colonial love-letters, not only because most of them are unknown to the reading world, but also with a thought of drawing together in sympathy lovers of to-day with those of a past generation, not wigged, capped, and spectacled, as we are wont to picture our grandfathers and grandmothers, but with flowing locks and flashing eyes, armed _cap-à-pie_ to enter in and conquer, or be conquered, in that fair realm where victor and vanquished rejoice to quit the lists hand clasped in hand.

FOOTNOTES:

[30] From MS. letters in possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[31] William Penn, Jr., who grew up a gay young blade and distinguished himself by beating the watch and otherwise scandalizing the law-abiding citizens of old Philadelphia.

[32] From MS. letter, written to Miss Sarah Read, of Philadelphia, in possession of Miss F. A. Logan.

[33] Original owned by Miss Anna Peale, a grand-daughter of Charles Willson Peale.

[34] New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, which now form the State of Delaware.

_THE PHILADELPHIA DANCING ASSEMBLIES_

As has been said, we are wont to think of our esteemed progenitors of the Colonial and Revolutionary periods as performing valuable service in their day and generation, “being good,” as some wit expresses it, “but not having a very good time.” If our thoughts revert to the ladies of the last century, we picture them spending their days in spinning, knitting, or sewing, surrounded by their maid-servants, whom they are instructing in these most useful arts, as the Mother of the Republic is described by so many who visited her at Mount Vernon, rather than in bedecking themselves for conquest in the gay world. The men of the period seem to have spent so much of their time at assemblies, not dancing assemblies, but those in which the laws of the Colonies were discussed, and land-claims, quit-rents, and other dry affairs settled, that we are surprised when a stray leaf from the note-book of some public man floats down to us containing such entries as the following:

Diana for attendance 15_s._ For candles £1.12_s._ “ snuffers 4_s._ “ three dozen chairs £7. “ 200 limes 14_s._ “ 18 pounds milk bisket 9_s._ “ 5 gallons rum and cask £2.3_s._ “ Musick £1.10_s._

Learning that these items were among the expenses of an early Philadelphia Dancing Assembly, and that the wives and daughters of such ancient worthies as His Honor the Governor of Pennsylvania, Chief Justice Shippen, Thomas Hopkinson, and the Bond brothers wore rich imported silks, feathers, and flowers, and attended routs and balls, life in the old Provincial city is suddenly lit up with brighter hues, and gay scenes take their place upon the canvas of the past.

History has treated with such dignified silence this more frivolous side of Philadelphia life that it is only from old manuscript letters and note-books, from such sprightly diaries as those of William Black, of Virginia, Sarah Eve, and Sally Wister, and from Watson and other annalists, that we learn that there was much gayety, as well as rare good living, in this city in the last century. As early as 1738 we read of a dancing class, instructed by Theobald Hackett, who engaged to teach

“all sorts of fashionable English and French dances, after the newest and politest manner practised in London, Dublin, and Paris, and to give to young ladies, gentlemen, and children the most graceful carriage in dancing and genteel behavior in company that can possibly be given by any dancing-master whatever.”

Certainly the dancing-master’s card is worded in the “politest manner,” and his pupils in this city must have proved singularly apt in the Terpsichorean art, as the Philadelphia women were noted, at an early date, for their grace and social charm.

Later, one Kennet taught dancing and fencing, as did also John Ormsby, from London, “in the newest taste now practised in Europe, at Mr. Foster’s house, in Market Street, opposite the Horse and Dray.”

These announcements sound strangely un-Quakerlike, and in 1749 such alarming premonitory symptoms of gayety culminated in a regular series of subscription balls, after the London fashion. The good Quakers naturally looked askance at such festivities; consequently we find the names of no Pembertons, Logans, Fishers, Lloyds, Whartons, Coxes, Rawles, Norrises, Peningtons, Emlens, Morrises, or Biddles on the original list of membership; but here are M’Calls, Francises, Burds, Shippens, Barclays, Wilcockses, Willings, McIlvaines, Hamiltons, Allens, Whites, and Conynghams.

The clergy was represented in these early Assemblies by the Rev. Richard Peters, of London, who held high positions in the State as well as in the Church, and the Provincial Government by James Hamilton, the first American-born governor of Pennsylvania. A letter from Richard Peters to Thomas Penn shows what a warm interest the reverend gentleman took in the recently-formed Assembly. The letter is dated New Castle, May 3, 1749, and reads as follows:

“By the Governor’s encouragement there has been a very handsome Assembly once a fortnight at Andrew Hamilton’s house and stores, which are tenanted by Mr. Inglis [and] make a set of rooms for such a purpose, & Consists of eighty ladies and as many gentlemen, one-half appearing every Assembly Night. Mr. Inglis had the conduct of the whole, and managed exceeding well. There happened a little mistake at the beginning, which at some other times might [have] produced disturbances. The Governor would have opened the Assembly with Mrs. Taylor, but she refused him, I suppose because he had not been to visit her. After Mrs. Taylor’s refusal, two or three other ladies, out of Modesty and from no manner of ill design, excused themselves, so that the Governor was put a little to his shifts when Mrs. Willing, now Mrs. Mayoreas,[35] in a most Genteel Manner put herself into his way, and on the Governor seeing this instance, he”

here there occurs something illegible, but it appears from what follows that the Governor danced the first minuet with this amiable lady, who showed her fine breeding by stepping in to prevent his being placed in an awkward position.

Mr. Peters adds, in judicial form, that “Mrs. Taylor was neither blamed nor excused nor commended, and so it went off, and every person during the continuance of the Assembly, which ended last week, was extremely cheerful and good natured.”

This Mrs. Abraham Taylor was the same Philadelphia Taylor who wrote a little earlier of the exceeding dulness of Provincial life, and the lack of all congenial amusement, sighing the while for an “English Arcadia,” which she thus quaintly described: “The hight of my ambition is to have us all live together in some pretty country place in a clean and genteel manner.”

It is pleasing to know that social life was beginning to come up to this lady’s standard, even if her own manners did not rise with it. Her rude treatment of Governor Hamilton was due to the fact of her husband having some difficulty with the Provincial authorities, which she undertook to revenge upon the person who seems to have been the least to blame in the matter.

The managers of the first Assembly were John Swift, a successful merchant, and Collector of the Port of Philadelphia; John Wallace, son of a Scotch clergyman; John Inglis, whose name is not now represented in Philadelphia, but from whom are descended Fishers, Cadwaladers, Coxes, and Kanes; and Lynford Lardner, an Englishman, who came here in 1740 to hold a number of honorable positions in the Province, and, being addicted to learning as well as to gayety, was a director of the Library Company and an early member of the American Philosophical Society.[36]