Part 1

Through the Gates of Old Romance

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Through the Gates of Old Romance

BY W. JAY MILLS

Author of "Historic Houses of New Jersey"

Editor of "Glimpses of Colonial Society and the Life at Princeton College, 1766-1773"

With Illustrations by John Rae

PHILADELPHIA & LONDON

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

1903

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COPYRIGHT, 1903

BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY

_Published November, 1903_

_Electrotyped and Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia, U. S. A._

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TO THE FOUR MANNERS OF MANNERS HOUSE ON OLD BARROW STREET

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Contents

PAGE

AN UNRECORDED PHILADELPHIA ROMANCE THE FRANKLIN FAMILY HELPED INTO FLOWER 15

THE LOVE-STORY OF THE NOTED NATHANIEL MOORE AND "THE HEAVENLY ELLEN," A BELLE OF CHAMBERS STREET, NEW YORK CITY 59

A TRUE PICTURE OF THE LAST DAYS OF AARON BURR 99

THE POETIC COURTSHIP OF PHILIP FRENEAU, THE POET OF THE REVOLUTION, AND BEAUTIFUL ELEANOR FORMAN 123

THE CHEVALIER DE SILLY AND HIS NEWPORT SALLY 159

SUSANNA ROWSON, OF "CHARLOTTE TEMPLE" FAME, AND HER BRITISH GRENADIER 179

THE GHOSTS OF AN OLD STATEN ISLAND MANOR 197

MAJOR ANDRÉ'S LAST LOVE 213

PINDERINA SCRIBBLERUS, AN AMERICAN MONTAGU 253

List of Illustrations

PAGE

THE PARK THEATRE, NEW YORK CITY, IN 1807 _Frontispiece_

THE WEST FAMILY IN LONDON 41 Painted by Benjamin West

HOW CAN I DESCRIBE TO YOU HIS EYES, HIS HAIR, HIS VOICE 61

A SIDEWALK FILLED WITH THE FASHIONABLES OF GOTHAM STARTING FOR THE AFTERNOON BATTERY PROMENADE 65

NATHANIEL FISH MOORE 69

AN OLD VIEW OF STATEN ISLAND, ABOUT 1830 101

ON THE WIDE GALLERIES OF THIS HAVEN OF REST OLD SEA-CAPTAINS COULD ALWAYS BE SEEN GENTLY DOZING AS THEY PUFFED LONG PIPES IN THE SUNLIGHT 105

NOW, LIKE SOME SLEEPY ANTIQUE DAME BELATED AFTER A REVELRY, IT WAITS DESPAIRINGLY BY THE TURN OF THE ROAD 139

NEWPORT IN 1831 161

MRS. WANTON, A BELLE OF NEWPORT 167

CHARLOTTE TEMPLE IN HER GARDEN 191 From an old print

THE TOWNSEND GARDEN 217

MAJOR JOHN ANDRÉ 221

A LADY OF OLD AMBOY 259

THE WALK TO MRS. BELL'S MANSION 273

AN UNRECORDED PHILADELPHIA ROMANCE THE FRANKLIN FAMILY HELPED INTO FLOWER

AN UNRECORDED PHILADELPHIA ROMANCE THE FRANKLIN FAMILY HELPED INTO FLOWER

It was at a musical party given by the great Franklin a few months after he returned from London to Philadelphia, in 1762, that Betsey Shewell first met Benjamin West and entered with him through the ever-swaying gates of Romance. At the time she was known as a belle of the Quaker City, and he is best described by that keen observer of mankind, Doctor Jonathan Morris, as "a young painter of fine parts enjoying his native haunts after the glamour of European capitals."

The modest Franklin house in the heart of the city was at that time a Mecca for the choice spirits of the colonists. Statesmen, scholars, and men of wealth trod the pebbly street to the philosopher's through all hours of the day until long after candle-lighting time. Benjamin Franklin meant many things to many people. It is small wonder that poor Mrs. Franklin often lamented that her "Pappy," as she called her husband, was unhappily affected with a too tender and benevolent disposition, and that all the world claimed the privilege of troubling him with their calamities and distress. But still the lady loved her kind, especially those with good ears, tradition says, and the night that "Pappy" gave this frolic for his buxom daughter Sarah she smiled at the company with broad good-humor. And, knowing this (for otherwise there would have been no party at Franklin's), we can raise the curtain on the scene with impunity, and listen to the ghostly wails of violins, the tinkles of tired spinets, and the long-lost voices of the company.

The night-shutters before the windows of the Franklin parlor are open, for it is the summer time. About the wide, plain room with its few embellishments the guests are grouped in a circle. The host seems to be in a merry mood, and is strumming away on the famous guitar, a knowledge of which he was always ready to impart to his intimate female acquaintances. The ever-laughing Sarah, who seldom sighed for more than the days brought to her, is in her element. She is having a party, and she knows that there is a spicy Madeira punch in the Staffordshire bowl her father purchased as a gift for her mother in England, and a high pyramid of sweet cakes their faithful Abigail made that morn adorns the sideboard. As she flits out into the entry she nudges a girl who is seated by the door, one of a group composed of Mr. and Mrs. Abram Bickley and good Doctor Jonathan Morris. The girl answers her invitation to join her with a wan and unresponsive smile. Her rather piquant face is suffused with sadness, and she pays no heed to the remarks of her companions. It is easy to see that Mrs. Bickley is annoyed by her behavior. Many eyes are focussed on her fine full gown of soft lustring, but she seems unaware of their attention, for the lady is Miss Betsey Shewell, who is indulging herself in a fit of the vapors.

Betsey Shewell had been crossed in love. Like a foolish maid, she had given her heart where it was not wanted, and the object of her affections, Isaac Hunt, a young gentleman from the West Indies, was then paying desperate court to her niece, Mary Shewell, a girl of her own age.

Isaac Hunt, the spoiled heir of an aristocratic Tory family settled at Bridgetown in the Barbadoes, must have been something of an Adonis. His son, the gifted gossiper Leigh Hunt, whom Charles Lamb referred to as "The Indicator" in the famous couplet he addressed to him, wrote of his father, "He was fair and handsome, with delicate features, a small aquiline nose, and blue eyes. To a graceful address he joined a remarkably fine voice, which he modulated with great effect." It was in reading with this voice the poets and other classics that he made conquest of the two girls' hearts.

The image of this fascinating gentleman was constantly haunting Betsey Shewell's mind as she sat moping by the door of Benjamin Franklin's parlor at the close of a summer's day one hundred and forty-one years ago. That very evening she knew he was to ride over from the Red Lion to visit Mary Shewell, then staying with Betsey Bickley at Penn Rhyn, the Bickley country house, five miles below Bristol on the Delaware. He was with his "shy, dark-haired Mary" now, no doubt. Try as she would, it seemed impossible for her to forget him. Her sister Bickley, observing her sad face, began to fidget. She looked at her with disgust and was about to speak, when the sound of the knocker suddenly reverberated through the house, and Sarah, hastening to open the front door, welcomed in a party of belated guests.

"Betsey Shewell! Betsey Shewell!" resounded the voice of the indefatigable Sarah over the babble of feminine tongues in the hall. "Betsey, I want to present to thee Mr. Benjamin West."

The melancholy maid turned round on her clavichord stool, and as she rose to courtesy, the color left her cheeks, for before her stood a youth strangely like her longed-for lover, but of a finer presence. His eyes, hair, and nose were the same, and when he spoke, the tones of his voice--low and tender, like Isaac's--were as balm to her lacerated heart.

It was Jonathan Morris who later in the evening fanned the flame of Miss Shewell's curiosity in regard to the handsome Mr. West. He knew almost every step in the round of the young painter's life. There were many things he told her in regard to his early years passed at Springfield, Delaware County, where he did his first drawings with colors given to him by the Indians. How his rude paintings were the pride of a simple Quaker community and the delight of a mother who believed her son to be predestined for some exalted place in the world.

We can see the girl's bright eyes glisten as she listens to the tale of the day when the youth first left his home to journey to the city and to fame. His father and several neighbors accompanied him part of the way on the Strasburg road, which was then unsafe to travel without the protection of a score of muskets. In those days of pioneer life under King George the way from Springfield township to the City of Brotherly Love was a hazardous one, infested with bands of brigands constantly on the watch for travellers. As he pictures West flying through the forest pursued by outlaws, but at last outwitting them, her eyes stray to the young painter, who is talking with her sister. She views him with mingled emotions. Brave and valiant, he dashes before her on the charger of courage over the rough and rocky places of life. And then the face of Isaac Hunt comes to her mind in the guise of a handsome weakling. Her foolish infatuation for him is flickering and dying. What has he ever done like this man who has risen from a humble environment to a figure of consequence through the force of his own nature? The words of Morris have succeeded in exciting her interest.

West feels her gaze upon him and turns to look at her. She is wonderfully lovely in her shimmering gown. Their eyes meet and he goes to her. The vapors that Doctor Franklin's music could not dispel have vanished, and in their place the lights of love are all aglow for conquest.

Sarah Franklin was the life of her party that night. She even made her mother--good jolly home dame that few Philadelphia fine madams would have anything to do with--sing for the company. Perhaps she sang the quaint song Franklin composed for her some years after his marriage, called "My Plain Country Joan." If she did, she must have lingered with satisfaction over the last verses, in which "Pappy" paid a tribute to her worth:

"Were the finest young princess with millions in purse To be had in exchange for my Joan, I could not get better wife, might get worse, So I'll stick to my dearest old Joan."

When the company rose and gathered in a group for the chorus, there were two who stole out into the cool entry. They were Betsey and West, the idealization of her former lover. There he finished for her the story that his early patron had begun. She heard of his life in Italy and the admiration his work excited. Through the great cities of Europe she strayed with him until they came to the small town of Reading, where, in a watchmaker's rose-embowered shop, his brother tinkered over fusees, ratchet wheels, and main-springs. In his words peace lingered along the village street, and she sighed over the charm of it.

When the chairs came the Franklin household stood on the doorstep and wished their guests "good-night and good rest." West helped Miss Shewell into her sister's vehicle, bound for Stephen Shewell's abode on Chestnut Street, where the Bickley party were to pass the night. After the carriers started he followed in the chair's shadow until he neared the alley which led to his lodging-place; there he turned and threw a kiss at it in the darkness. The girl's conquest was complete. The lights of love had burned him.

Betsey, seated by her sister in their slow-moving vehicle, was silent. As they passed the long rows of Cheapside houses, each like its neighbor, some new memory of the evening would come to her. Life seemed an intangible mystery with labyrinths of intricacies. She had found a lover strangely like Isaac Hunt in appearance, and yet so different. As she mounted the steps of her four-poster a little later she almost pitied her niece Mary.

Philadelphia was a gossipy place in the days before the Revolution, and it soon became noised abroad that the young limner West was paying court to Betsey Shewell. The Bickleys had retired to Penn Rhyn, but the maiden still stayed on at her brother Shewell's abode. This brother Shewell was a wealthy man, following the mercantile calling of many of his family. It is a tradition that he desired to marry his sister to a Water Street compatriot over twice her age, and therefore frowned on any gentleman whose admiration was ardent enough to lead him to call upon her. West had visited the fair sister several times before the rumors of their love-affair reached his ears. Returning one night from the Hat Tavern, where he had business with one Widow Cadwell, he fell in with a meddlesome friend of Betsey's who inadvertently told him of the tales that were floating about the town. That a saucy nincompoop of a painter should dare set his eyes on one of the Shewells was a strange thing to this arrogant gentleman whose days were bound with buckram. Nevertheless, he resolved to deal summarily with all parties concerned and sift the matter to the bottom. At first he thought of calling out West, but decided that it would create too much scandal; besides, although the painter's usual demeanor was most peaceable, it was said that while in the Lancaster militia he had become well skilled in the use of his sword. As he rode homeward his anger grew at every rod the horse covered. He scowled at the timorous handmaiden who opened the door of his house. His spurs beat the hard pine-wood floor as he strode through the hall.

The family were seated at the evening repast. Mrs. Shewell, a dainty, fluttering little woman with the air of a shy wood-pigeon, rose to greet him, but fell back in her seat as she saw his face. Betsey glanced at him, too. She did not quail, for she had known her brother longer than his wife. For a moment there was a silence awesome as the void between two thunder-claps. Then fury was let loose upon the room and tore the story of a tender love-affair from a girl's heart.

"Love him, dost thou? Thy chamber, miss, is the place for thee until thy mind mends." The man sputtered as he made to seize the now thoroughly frightened girl.

The dining-room, so peaceful a few minutes before, became a scene of wild confusion. Mrs. Shewell was taken with the hysterics, the frightened handmaiden, having entirely lost her wits, let fall a tray of India ware she was clutching, and in the nearby aviary a pair of Brazilian parrots set up a screeching.

Through the hall and up the stairway Stephen Shewell forced his sister, now grown passive, and thrust her into her chamber, locking the door from the outside. From the landing he called in a loud voice his orders that no one should go to her. The tongues of the household were silent, and quiet came after the storm.

Later in the night, when the hall candles were snuffed out and the stern lord of the mansion had fallen asleep, Mrs. Shewell crept to the girl's door and, unfastening the lock, stole in to give her comfort. The room was dark and the little woman's throat became parched as she imagined all sorts of awful things which might have befallen her sister-in-law. A chair gave an unearthly creak, and she stood still, afraid to move, when Betsey descried her and spoke.

The girl was seated, fully dressed, by the window, gazing on the sleeping city. Mrs. Shewell approached her, and, putting her arms about her neck, wept softly as she thought over the past scene. Betsey kissed her and smiled out at the night. Somewhere off over those dim roofs just touched by a pale moon's light he was sleeping, dreaming of her. Over the silent streets her prayer floated to him, where'er he was: "Oh, Mother Night, fold your tranquil shadows about his couch and guide his wanderings in that wondrous land to pleasant places." Her face was suffused with the joy of love. They might shut her away forever behind closed doors, but they could not destroy the memory of the world she had found with him.

Sarah Franklin was one of the first to hear of Betsey Shewell's incarceration and its cause.

"'Tis hard on the poor maid," she said to her father over their morning dish. "Her love-affairs always run amuck. First 'tis her niece Shewell who runs away with Isaac Hunt, and now 'tis that cock-a-spur of a brother who shuts her away from Mr. West."

Mrs. Franklin was up in arms in an instant. "Pappy" should go at once to get her out. The poor maid was no doubt languishing. Then, too, 'twas well known Mr. West was soon leaving again for foreign countries.

Franklin shook his shaggy head and bent lower over his bowl. "Would you have me carry coals to Newcastle?" he asked. "We must bide our time, for he that stops a little makes an end the sooner."

Sarah smiled, for she knew that when her father waxed proverbial his mind was making a pleasant excursion.

"We must bide our time," he repeated again. Neither Sarah nor her mother spoke, for they knew his mood.

A few hours before the Franklins began their digression on Betsey Shewell's fate a dark-coated figure stood before the Shewell house and threw tiny pebbles at the third-story chamber window where the girl slept. There was no one on the street. The solitary lanternman, who had laid aside his rattle and staff, called out in a husky voice the last "All's well and near morning," and departed. Daylight's eyes were on the verge of opening. Faint streaks of pink were drawn across a sombre sky like tassels bedecking a dull brocade. It was the wonder hour when ghosts are creeping back to their graves and the living are about to awake.

Soon a young girl appeared at the window, opened it, and began to talk softly with the man below. Sweet were the words that the dawn wind caught, for the pair were the lovers Betsey Shewell and Benjamin West. It was in this manner that they sometimes saw each other. Although the window was at too great a height for the youth to clamber up to his ladylove or the lady to descend to him, it still permitted soft vows and protestations. This particular morning West brought the sad news that he had obtained a berth on a vessel leaving port in a fortnight. Could she not in some way escape from her prison? The heart of the girl, so near and yet far away from her lover on the pavement, beat wildly 'neath her quilted night-robe. Vainly she longed for the wings of a bird that she might light by his side. For an instant there was a faint hope, and then it was dashed away.

Below a window casement creaked softly. Stephen Shewell was listening ensconced in the folds of the chintz window-piece. "Would thee, hussy? Would thee?" he murmured. He could hear the voice of West imploring his Betsey to try and fly with him. The old crone who kept his lodging-place in Christ Church Alley would secrete her until the ship left port. "Oh, but to have the impudent fellow by the neck!" In his rage he clenched the soft folds of his worsted damask banyan. He longed for something to throw,--as he ofttimes did at the vermin of the night. Over under the shadow curtains of the bed his wife was waking. From a happy dream the daylight led her eyes to her husband's face leering out of the curtain. Knowing of the stolen meetings, fright overcame the awe of her husband, and she gave one piercing shriek, prolonged and full of anguish. The three actors in the drama each received a shock in a different way. There was a hurry of footsteps in the street below. Windows rattled and opened. Grave night-capped Quakers looked askance at one another from house to house. What was the matter? Inside the third-story window of the Shewell mansion a girl swooned.

When the sun was high a great coach drove away from Shewell's and took the road for the Bickley house, Penn Rhyn, many good leagues from the city. It carried a pallid maid guarded by two stout Quakeresses, servants and aides of Stephen Shewell. The hoyden hussy was wedged between them, disgraced and bound for the sequestered rural shades where impecunious painters were not.

Out into the wooded country the vehicle rolled. At every jolt of the lumbering thing the larger and stouter of the two seized a blunderbuss from an arm-chest, in fear of possible highwaymen. The girl between them gave no heed to their thoughts. Like one only half awake, she gazed out at the country. Each field and fallow they skirted was bearing her farther away from him. The sweet odor of the hay-ricks, the clouds that seemed to be racing with them, the life of the waving trees, and the trilling birds fluttering out of the coverts they brushed, all spoke of him. Each whispered some message, she knew not what.

"He will never find me again," she mused. Tears came to her eyes, and the drops which were not to be kept back fell on the palm of the stouter Quakeress, who was dozing.

The woman opened her sleepy eyes and gazed at her almost compassionately, then closed them again and fell into a deep slumber. The coach was striking level land. Now the other Quakeress was nodding. For a moment the girl was tempted to seize the blunderbuss from its leather bed and jump out into the road. Then fear overcame her, and she, too, sank back and closed her eyes.

It was the ringing of an evening bell tolled in a nearby hamlet which welcomed them into the beautiful roadway leading to Penn Rhyn. That roadway is little changed to-day, but the house itself gazes upon its visitors in new attire. Probably there is no mansion in Pennsylvania that has had a more interesting history than this pile erected early in the eighteenth century by a pompous Bickley from Buckinghamshire. On the estate is the family tomb guarding the dust of many generations of Bickleys--young Bickleys who faded before their perfect bloom, old Bickleys who were glad enough to lay down the thread of life and rest their tired bones on that moss-grown bank. A long procession of men and women bearing a name that they all were proud of, with but one exception. He, Robert Bickley, cursed his name and his father one Christmas night and then threw himself into the Delaware because the stern gentleman had told him never to darken his door in life, owing to an unfortunate marriage. Now, every Christmas eve it is said that he rises from the river, gaunt and slimy, and steals up the path to the house. Sometimes a belated wanderer sees him standing in the moonlight before the great hall door of Penn Rhyn, moaning over his unhappy fate. Again he is heard in the corridors tapping with ghostly fingers at each chamber door for admittance. Promptly on the stroke of twelve weird, unearthly cries fill the house. Then every wakeful sleeper cuddles down low under the bedclothes. Perhaps it is only the wind playing about the chimneys, but the superstitious would have us believe that it is the shade of poor Robert Bickley calling to his young wife and cursing his fate and name.