Through Colonial Doorways
Date: 2022-04-07T00:00:00+00:00
Keywords: United States -- Social life and customs -- 1775-1783; United States -- Social life and customs -- To 1775

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Title: Through Colonial Doorways

Author: Anne Hollingsworth Wharton

Release date: April 7, 2022 [eBook #67788]
Most recently updated: October 18, 2024

Language: English

Original publication: Panama: J. B. Lippincott Company

Credits: Charlene Taylor and the Online Distributed Proofreading Team at https://www.pgdp.net (This file was produced from images generously made available by The Internet Archive/American Libraries.)

*** START OF THE PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS ***

THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS

SEVENTEENTH EDITION

THROUGH
COLONIAL
DOORWAYS

BY
ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH
WHARTON

PHILADELPHIA
J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
MDCCCC

Copyright, 1893,
BY
J. B. Lippincott Company.

Printed by J. B. Lippincott Company, Philadelphia

TO THE MEMORY OF

MARGARET N. CARTER,

WHOSE LIVING AND LOVING PRESENCE WAS AN INSPIRATION DURING THE PREPARATION OF THESE CHAPTERS, AND WHOSE SKETCHES ARE AMONG THOSE THAT ADORN ITS PAGES,

THIS LITTLE VOLUME

IS

Dedicated.

PREFACE

The revival of interest in Colonial and Revolutionary times has become a marked feature of the life of to-day. Its manifestations are to be found in the literature which has grown up around these periods, and in the painstaking individual research being made among documents and records of the past with genealogical and historical intent.

Not only has a desire been shown to learn more of the great events of the last century, but with it has come an altogether natural curiosity to gain some insight into the social and domestic life of Colonial days. To read of councils, congresses, and battles is not enough: men and women wish to know something more intimate and personal of the life of the past, of how their ancestors lived and loved as well of how they wrought, suffered, and died.

With some thought of gratifying this desire, by sounding the heavy brass knocker, and inviting the reader to enter with us through the broad doorways of some Colonial homes into the hospitable life within, have these pages been written.

For original material placed at my disposal, in the form of letters and manuscripts, I am indebted to numerous friends, among these to Mrs. Oliver Hopkinson, the Misses Sharples, Miss Anna E. Peale, Miss F. A. Logan, Mrs. Edward Wetherill, Mr. C. R. Hildeburn, and Mr. Edward Shippen.

To the Editors of the Atlantic Monthly, the Lippincott’s Magazine, and the Philadelphia Ledger and Times, I wish to express my appreciation of their courtesy in allowing me to use in some of these chapters material to which they first gave place in their columns.

A. H. W.

Philadelphia, March, 1893.

CONTENTS.

THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS | 7
THE MESCHIANZA | 23
NEW YORK BALLS AND RECEPTIONS | 65
THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY | 97
THE WISTAR PARTIES | 147
A BUNDLE OF OLD LOVE LETTERS | 177
THE PHILADELPHIA DANCING ASSEMBLIES | 197

THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS

The historian of the past has, as a rule, been pleased to treat with dignified silence the lighter side of Colonial life, allowing the procession of noble men and fair women to sweep on, grand, stately, and imposing, but lacking the softer touches that belong to social and domestic life. So much has been written and said of the stern virtues of the fathers and mothers of the Republic, and of their sacrifices, privations, and heroism, that we of this generation would be in danger of regarding them as types of excellence to be placed upon pedestals, rather than as men and women to be loved with human affection, were it not for some old letter, or diary, or anecdote that floats down to us from the past, revealing the touch of nature that makes them our kinsfolk by the bond of sympathy and interest, of taste and habit, as well as by that of blood.

The dignified Washington becomes to us a more approachable personality when, in a letter written by Mrs. John M. Bowers, we read that when she was a child of six he dandled her on his knee and sang to her about “the old, old man and the old, old woman who lived in the vinegar-bottle together,” or when we come across a facetious letter of his own in which the general tells how his cook was “sometimes minded to cut a figure,” notably, when ladies were entertained at camp, and would, on such occasions, add to the ordinary roast and greens a beefsteak pie or a dish of crabs, which left only six feet of space between the different dishes instead of twelve; or again, when General Greene writes from Middlebrook, “We had a little dance at my quarters. His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours without once sitting down. Upon the whole we had a pretty little frisk.”

We are not accustomed to associate minuets and “pretty frisks” with the stern realities of Revolutionary days, yet as brief mention of them comes down to us, they serve to light up the background of that rugged picture, as when Miss Sally Wister tells, in her sprightly journal, of the tricks played by herself and a bevy of gay girls upon the young officers quartered in the old Foulke mansion, at Penllyn, soon after the battle of Brandywine. Miss Wister’s confidences are addressed to Miss Deborah Norris, afterwards the learned Mrs. George Logan, and the principal actors in the century-old drama are the lively Miss Sally, who dubs herself “Thy smart journalizer,” and Major Stoddert from Maryland, who in the first scenes plays a rôle somewhat similar to that of Young Marlow, but later develops attractions of mind and character that Miss Sally finds simply irresistible. She considers him both “good natur’d and good humor’d,” and evinces a fine discrimination in defining the application of these terms, which shows that a Quaker maiden in love may still retain a modicum of the clear-headedness which is one of the distinguishing characteristics of her sect. The cousinly allusions to “chicken-hearted Liddy”—Miss Liddy Foulke, later known as Mrs. John Spencer—and her numerous admirers are very interesting. When Miss Sally, who is evidently reducing the heart of the gallant major to “ashes of Sodom,” naively remarks, à propos of Liddy’s conquests, “When will Sally’s admirers appear? Ah! that, indeed. Why, Sally has not charms sufficient to pierce the heart of a soldier. But still I won’t despair. Who knows what mischief I yet may do?” we feel that maidens’ hearts in 1777 were made on much the same plan that they are nowadays, and that even to so rare a confidante as Miss Deborah Norris the whole was not revealed.

Through such old chroniclers or letter-writers we sometimes meet the great ladies of the past at ball or dinner, or, better still, in the informal intercourse of their own homes, and catch glimpses of their husbands and lovers, the warriors, statesmen, and philosophers of the time, at some social club, like the Hasty Pudding of Cambridge, the State in Schuylkill or the Wistar Parties of Philadelphia, or the Tuesday Club and the Delphian in Baltimore. Meeting them thus, enjoying witticisms and good cheer in one another’s excellent company, we feel a closer bond between their life and our own than if they were always presented to us in public ceremonial or with pen and folio in hand. When we read of Judge Peters crying out good-humoredly, as he pushed his way between a fat and a slim man who blocked up a doorway, “Here I go through thick and thin;” or when we think of the signers of the Declaration, gathered together in the old State House on that memorable July day of 1776, illuminating the solemnity of the occasion by jokes, even as grim ones as those of Hancock and Franklin and Gerry, we are conscious of a sense of comradeship inspired more by the mirth and bonhomie than by the heroism of these men, who labored yesterday that we might laugh to-day. The great John Adams, who with all his greatness was not a universal favorite among his contemporaries, comes down to us irradiated with a nimbus of amiability, in a picture that his wife draws of him, submitting to be driven about the room with a willow stick by one of his small grandchildren; and when Mrs. Bache begs her “dear papa” not to reprimand her so severely for desiring a little finery, in which to appear at the Ambassador’s and when she “goes abroad with the Washingtons,” because he is the last person to wish to see her “dressed with singularity, or in a way that will not do credit to her father and her husband,” we can fancy Dr. Franklin’s grave features relaxing in a smile over the daughter’s diplomacy, inherited from no stranger. The wedding of President Madison to the pretty Widow Todd seems more real to us when we learn from eye-witnesses of the various festivities that illuminated the occasion, and of how the girls vied with one another in obtaining mementos of the evening, cutting in bits the Mechlin lace that adorned the groom’s delicate shirt-ruffles, and showering the happy pair with rice when they drove off to Montpelier, old Mr. Madison’s estate in Virginia. Through it all, we can hear Mrs. Washington’s earnest voice assuring “Dolly” that she and General Washington approve of the match, and that even if Mr. Madison is twenty years older than herself, he will still make her a good husband. That this sensible advice from the stately matron should have made the girl-widow blush and run away does not surprise us, for, while acknowledging to an immense respect for Mrs. Washington, in consequence not only of her position, but of the dignity and serenity of her character, we are always conscious of a feeling of restraint in her presence, which she makes no effort to overcome by word or smile. We cannot imagine ourselves spending a pleasant evening with her, discussing events of the day, or the last engagement or ball, as we can with Mrs. John Adams, Mrs. John Jay, or sprightly Mrs. Bache. We confess to the same emotions with regard to Mrs. Robert Morris, whose character stands out, like that of her intimate friend Mrs. Washington, surrounded by a halo of excellence. Is this the fault of these worthy ladies, or is it that of their biographers, who, in presenting them to the world with all the lofty virtues of Roman matrons, have added no lighter touches to their pictures? In vain we search for some shred of gayety, or mirth, or enthusiasm, on their part, and in sheer desperation back out of their presence with a stately courtesy, and take refuge with Rebecca Franks, or Sally Wister, or Eliza Southgate, with whom we are always sure of passing a merry half-hour. Nor is it frivolity and merry-making that we look for in the records of the past: it is life, with its high hopes and homely cares, its simple pleasures and small gayeties, that served to relieve the tension of earnest endeavor needed to accomplish a great and difficult task. Mrs. Adams’s letters about her children, her household economies, and her experiments in farming are almost as interesting as those written from abroad, because she approaches all subjects, even the most commonplace, with a buoyant spirit and playful fancy. To her husband, during one of his long absences from home, she writes, “I am a mortal enemy to anything but a cheerful countenance and a merry heart, which, Solomon tells us, does good like medicine.” And again, “I could give you a long list of domestic affairs, but they would only serve to embarrass you and in noways relieve me. All domestic pleasures are absorbed in the great and important duty you owe your country, ‘for our country is, as it were, a secondary god, and the first and greatest parent. It is to be preferred to parents, wives, children, friends, and all things,—the gods only excepted.’” It is not strange that to such a wife John Adams should have written, “By the accounts in your last letter, it seems the women in Boston begin to think themselves able to serve their country. What a pity it is that our generals in the northern districts had not Aspasias to their wives! I believe the two Howes have not very great women for wives. If they had, we should suffer more from their exertions than we do. This is our good fortune. A woman of sense would not let her husband spend five weeks at sea in such a season of the year. A smart wife would have put Howe in possession of Philadelphia a long time ago.” It is evident that Mr. Adams did not need to be won over to any modern theories with regard to the higher education of women, and, as a relief to the sterner side of the picture, we find the wife who penned such wise and inspiriting words to her husband entering on other occasions with the delight of a mondaine into a court or republican function, describing the gowns of the women, their faces and their manners, with the minuteness and accuracy of a Parisian. Was there ever anything written more spirited than Mrs. Adams’s description of Madame Helvetius at Passy, throwing her arms about the neck of ce cher Franklin? or her picture of Queen Charlotte and the royal princesses, for whom her admiration was of the scantest? With far different touches was it her pleasure to describe some of the American beauties abroad, for Mrs. Adams was always a true daughter of New England, and we can read between the lines when she writes of Madame Helvetius’s singular manners, “I should have been greatly astonished at this conduct if the good Doctor [Franklin] had not told me that in this lady I should see a genuine Frenchwoman, wholly free from affectation or stiffness of behavior.”[1]

Pleasant it is, and not wholly unprofitable to the student of life and manners, to look into the family room of some Colonial mansion, to hear girlish laughter and raillery about balls and beaux in one corner, while in another the father of the family writes of his aspirations for the nation in which his hopes for his children are bound up, and the mother, looking over his shoulder, sympathizes with his patriotic and fatherly ambitions, while she turns over in her brain, for the hundredth time, the important question of how she and Nancy are to make a respectable appearance at the next Assembly ball, when silks, laces, and feathers are so very dear,—worth their weight in gold, as Mrs. Bache tells us. It is such touches of life as these that we find in the diaries of Sarah Eve, who was living in Philadelphia in 1772, of Eliza Southgate of Scarborough, and of Elizabeth Drinker; in Mrs. Grant’s pictures of New York and Albany life, in which Madame Philip Schuyler is the central figure; or in such letters as those of Thomas Jefferson to his family, of Mrs. Bache, Miss Franks, Lady Cathcart, and Mrs. John Morgan. The latter gives us charming glimpses of Cambridge society in 1776, and tells of dinners, tea-drinking, and reviews in company with the Mifflins, Roberdeaus, and others, of handsome officers and pretty girls. Of one of the latter she speaks, in a letter to her mother, in a manner which reveals her own loveliness of character quite as clearly as it does the external charms of the beauty whom all the world and her own husband admire. “The one that drew every one’s attention,” she writes, “was the famous Jersey beauty, Miss Keyes, who is now on a visit to Mr. Roberdeau. She may justly be said to be fairest where thousands are fair. I have had an opportunity of seeing her, and think her a most beautiful creature, and what makes her still more engaging is her not betraying the least consciousness of her own perfections. I am, it seems, a most violent favorite with her; she is to dine here to-morrow. You will wonder, perhaps, how this great intimacy took place, but you must know she has been indisposed since her coming to town, and Dr. Morgan had the honor of attending her,—you know what an admirer of beauty he is; the rest followed, of course.”

In a different vein, but no less piquant, are Lady Cathcart’s remarks on London personages and functions, in the midst of which her thoughts fly back to her relatives and friends in America. One moment she is describing the “Queen’s Birthnight Ball,” and the next is sending Mrs. Jauncey a picture of her son with “Six Curles of a Side,” or commenting upon Betty Shipton’s marriage to Major Giles, adding, “I am sure I never believed her, last winter, when she used to talk so much about him.”

There being many old letters and diaries still unread and unpublished, it seems a task not unworthy of the later historian to gather together such records, in order to present to this generation more characteristic pictures of their grandfathers and grandmothers, drawn with a freer hand and touched with the familiar light of every-day intercourse. One young girl of the present time was strongly attracted towards her own great-grandmother by reading a letter written by her to her mother in Newport, asking her to send her from thence “a sprigged muslin petticoat, and the making of an apron such as all the girls are wearing.” A rather more modest request, this, than that of Miss Eliza Southgate, who begged her mother for five dollars with which to purchase a wig for the next Assembly, because Eleanor Coffin had one, and it was quite impossible “to dress her hair stylish without it.” Placed thus in touch with her great-grandmother’s longings and aspirations, which flowed in the same frivolous channel as her own, this young descendant suddenly realized that they two were of one flesh and blood, and gathering and piecing together all that could be learned from older members of the family of this lady of the last century, she has become the heroine of romance so thrilling and so sweet, that the girl of to-day may be said to entertain for her unknown ancestress a more than ordinary affection.

The records that have come down to us are, after all, only a few out of the great mass written. Many, perhaps equally interesting, have in some garret fallen a prey to mould, decay, and the book-lizard; or have found their way to the fireplace, impelled thither by some family iconoclast possessed with a rage for clearing up; or, still more ignoble fate, have been torn up for curl-papers! A narrator of veracity tells how a bevy of gay young girls, gathered together in the roomy old Hopkinson house in Bordentown, appropriated some letters found in the garret to this purpose, and lighting on some interesting passages, amused themselves by reading them aloud at what Macaulay names the “curling hour.” Reports of these nocturnal revels being carried down-stairs, a member of the family interested herself in the preservation of the letters, which proved an historical treasure-trove. Such treasure-troves will be less likely to be discovered as the years go on, and those who would find love-letters like Esther Wynn’s, under the cellar stairs, had better set about looking for them before mould and dampness have utterly obliterated the characters traced in the long-ago.

FOOTNOTES:

[1] Letters of Mrs. John Adams, p. 253.

The Meschianza

“Mars, conquest plumed, the Cyprian queen disarms:
And victors, vanquished, yield to Beauty’s charms.
Here then the laurel, here the palm we yield,
And all the trophies of the tilted field;
Here Whites and Blacks, with blended homage, pay
To each device the honors of the day.
Hard were the task and impious to decide,
Where all are fairest, which the fairer side.
Enough for us if by such sports we strove
To grace this feast of military love
And, joining in the wish of every heart,
Honor’d the friend and leader ere we part.”

From the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1778.

If we could by any means turn back, for a moment, to certain May days more than a hundred years ago, and enter one of the stately old Philadelphia mansions in the eastern portion of our city, then the court end of the town, what a gay scene would meet our eyes! Fair ladies gathered in the spacious rooms, in their quaint but becoming old-time dress, bending over brocades, laces, and ribbons, busied in consulting upon and improvising ravishing costumes, in which to grace the splendid fête to be given to General Sir William Howe, by the officers of the British army, previous to his departure for England. This army then held possession of Penn’s “faire greene country towne,” and had been busy during the past winter, in lieu of more warlike employment, in introducing among its inhabitants many of the amusements, follies, and vices of Old World courts. The Quaker City had, at the pleasure of her conqueror, doffed her sober drab and appeared in festal array; for, like the Babylonian victors of old, they that wasted her required of her mirth. The best that the city afforded was at the disposal of the enemy, who seem to have spent their days in feasting and merry-making, while Washington and his army endured all the hardships of the severe winter of 1777-78 upon the bleak hillsides of Valley Forge. Dancing assemblies, theatrical entertainments, and various gayeties marked the advent of the British in Philadelphia, all of which formed a fitting prelude to the full-blown glories of the Meschianza, which burst upon the admiring inhabitants on that last-century May day.

It must be remembered, in looking back upon these times, that most of our aristocratic citizens were descended from old English stock, and, with an inherent loyalty to the monarchy under which they had prospered, were still content to avow themselves subjects of King George, or, as Graydon puts it, “stuck to their ease and Madeira,” declaring themselves neutral, which rendered the lessons taught by these gay, pleasure-loving British officers easy ones, learned with few grimaces. Thus, although there were many sober Friends who cast indignant side-glances at the elaborate preparations in progress for this brilliant fête, and many hearts which beat in sympathy with the patriot cause and could ill brook the thought of such frivolity in the midst of the stern realities of war, there was still a large class which entered with spirit into a festivity which was openly denounced by British journals of the day as ill-timed and absurd, given, as it was, in honor of a commander whose errors had well-nigh cost him his cause, and who was severely censured for these months of inactivity and trifling which his officers now proceeded to commemorate. Howe was, notwithstanding his faults and failures, sincerely beloved by his officers, who resolved to give him this entertainment that, as they phrased it, their “sentiments might be more universally and unequivocally known.”

Major André, who took a leading part in the preparations for the Meschianza, composed some verses in Sir William’s praise, to be repeated during the pageant; but, with a modesty that has not always been attributed to him, he set them aside. The last stanza of this strain proves to us how readily this child of monarchy, poet though he was, had learned to cry, “The King is dead. Long live the King!” Howe being at this very time superseded by Clinton, André writes:

“On Hudson’s banks the sure presage we read,—
Of other triumphs to our arms decreed:
Nor fear but equal honors shall repay
Each hardy deed where Clinton leads the way.”

André indulged in some bold flights of fancy in these verses, such as the following:

“Veterans appeared who never knew to yield
When Howe and glory led them to the field.”

Which are in sharp contrast with the effusions of a Jerseyman of the time, who, with more truth and less sentiment, wrote:

“Threat’ning to drive us from the hill,
Sir William marched to attack our men,
But finding that we all stood still,
Sir William he—marched back again.”

The day appointed for the Meschianza was the 18th of May. Cards of invitation were sent out and tickets of admission given. The latter are thus described by a Whig lady: “On the top is the crest of the Howe arms, with vive vale (live and farewell). To the sun setting in the sea the other motto refers, and bears this translation: ‘He shines as he sets, but shall rise again more luminous.’ General Howe being recalled is the setting sun; while ploughing the ocean he is obscured, but shall, on his return, and giving an account of his heroic deeds, rise again with redoubled lustre. The wreath of laurel encompassing the whole, encircling the arms, completes, I think, the burlesque.”

The names by which this fête is known, Meschianza and Mischianza, are derived from two Italian words,—mescere, to mix, and mischiare, to mingle. Thus the entertainment, so varied in its nature, has been named a mixture and a medley with equal propriety. We have adopted the spelling of the original invitations, one of which lies before us, and reads thus:

The Favor of your meeting the Subscribers to the Meschianza at Knight’s Wharf, near Pool’s Bridge, to-morrow, at half-past three, is Desired.

[Signed] Henry Calder.

Sunday, 17th May.
Miss Clifton.

Knight’s wharf was at the edge of Green Street, in the Northern Liberties; Poole’s bridge crossed Pegg’s Run at Front Street, and was named after one Poole, a Friend, whose mansion lay quite near.

It is curious to notice that this invitation to Miss Eleanor Clifton, whose portrait proclaims her one of the beauties of the period, is dated but one day in advance of the fête, which would lead us to fear that this lady was tempted to commit the sin of sewing at her ball-dress on a Sunday, like that unfortunate damsel of Queen Elizabeth’s time whom Mrs. Jarley holds up as a waxen warning to all Sabbath-breakers, had we not good reason to infer that a verbal invitation had been given long before.

The preparations for this magnificent entertainment, the erection of the numerous and vast pavilions around the old Wharton mansion, and their decoration by André, Delancey, and all the other gallant officers who took part in the affair, were doubtless the talk of the town for weeks. Yards and yards of painting must have been executed by the indefatigable André, as the ceilings, sides, and decorations of the long pavilions, designed for the supper- and ball-rooms, were to a great extent the work of his hands. Here he used unsparingly the pencil that had made its virgin essay on the features of lovely, unrequiting Honora Sneyd, lingering, with true artistic fervor, over festoons of roses and bouquets of drooping flowers.

The owner of this property was dubbed by his contemporaries “Duke Wharton,” in consequence of the extreme haughtiness of his bearing and, it is said, from the following circumstance: “One winter’s day, when the sidewalks were rendered dangerously slippery from the accumulated ice upon them, Mr. Wharton, while attempting to make his usual dignified progress over the uncertain footing, was suddenly tripped up, and would have measured his length upon the pavement, had not a jovial Hibernian, passing at the moment, stretched forth a friendly hand to his aid, crying out, ‘God save my Lord the Duke!’” Another amusing passage of compliments, this time with Sir William Draper, is related by Graydon: “Sir William, observing that Mr. Wharton entered the room hat in hand, and remained uncovered, begged, as it was contrary to the custom of his Society to do so, that the Quaker gentleman would dispense with this unnecessary mark of respect. But the ‘Duke,’ feeling his pride piqued at the supposition that he would uncover to Sir William or any other man, replied, with entire sang-froid, that he had uncovered for his own comfort, the day being warm, and that whenever he found it convenient he would resume his hat.” These and other stories, all indicating a pride that seems to have been considered commendable in those days, repeated with embellishments, doubtless added to the merriment of many convivial after-dinner gatherings, and passing from mouth to mouth, served to establish the reputation and title of this old Quaker gentleman, whose death occurred more than a year previous to the British occupation of Philadelphia.[2] The fact that Walnut Grove was a country-seat, and in all probability used by the Wharton family only during the summer months, may account for the British officers having entire possession of the premises in the spring of ’78, while its size and situation made it an appropriate place in which to hold their revels. Surrounded by broad lawns and lofty trees, situated at some distance west of the Delaware River, at what is now Fifth Street near Washington Avenue, Walnut Grove was then considered quite a rural residence. It has long since disappeared, the encroaching streets of a busy city having rendered almost traditional the theatre of this gay and brilliant scene, although there were those still living, on the anniversary of the festival in 1878, who recalled the old brick house as it stood in Colonial times, and one who slid down the balusters of the stairway in boyish frolic, with never a thought of all the gay and gallant throng which once passed over the stairs and down the broad hall to the sound of music, merry jests, courtly compliments, and rippling laughter.

It is said that there were not many ladies with the British officers in Philadelphia, most of them having left their wives in New York; so, there being few authorities to consult about the prevailing fashions at the court of the beautiful Austrian or the less beautiful Queen Charlotte, our young ladies were forced to rely upon their own ingenuity in the arrangement of their toilets. Those chosen to be knights’ ladies were assisted by the taste and skill of André, whose water-color design for the costume of the ladies of the Blended Rose is still preserved, representing a curious combination of Oriental and Parisian styles, its flowing tunic over full Turkish trousers being topped by the high coiffure of the day. Miss Peggy Shippen’s portrait[3] represents her in this head-dress, and in a letter written to her in August, 1779, André playfully alludes to his millinery experience gained during preparations for the fête:

“You know the Mesquianza made me a complete milliner. Should you not have received supplies for your fullest equipment from that department, I shall be glad to enter into the whole details of cap-wire, needles, gauze, &c., and, to the best of my abilities, render you in these trifles services from which I hope you would infer a zeal to be further employed.”

A rash offer, it seems to us, for what knight, be he never so bold, would be willing to enter into all the intricacies and mysteries of a modern feminine toilet? And those of the days of powder, patch, and high befeathered coiffure were certainly not less bewildering to the minds of the uninitiated.

Although from various sources we learn that André took an active part in the preparations for the Meschianza, out of doors as well as among laces and silks in fair ladies’ boudoirs, Mr. Sargent tells us that Burgoyne[4] was the conductor of the elegant affair, which was on the plan of a fête champêtre given by Lord Derby, June, 1774, on the occasion of Lord Stanley’s marriage with the Duke of Hamilton’s daughter. Only about fifty young Philadelphia ladies were present at the Meschianza; but if we are to credit history and the gossip of the day, the destruction wrought by their charms upon the hearts of the British officers must have been equal to that to have been expected from twice their number, for all authorities unite in telling us that the ladies of this city were justly celebrated for their beauty, of a certain grand and noble type. Watson says that most of the American gentlemen who took part in the Meschianza were “aged non-combatants,” the young men of the city being Whigs, and generally, be it said to their credit, with Washington’s army at Valley Forge.

There seems to be no doubt that a number of Whig ladies graced this entertainment, and one of them, herself, describes the affair in glowing colors. What shall we say for the erring fair ones? That they were young, beautiful, anxious to see and perhaps to be seen. Shall we, standing amid the lights and shadows of another century, be severe in our judgment upon these fair, curious Eves of a hundred years ago? They had read of grand doings among court ladies and gentlemen in the exaggerated and stilted romances of the day, until their foolish hearts were in an eager flutter of anticipation and delight. The whole town was talking about the projected fête; the young officers were constantly passing to and fro busied with the arrangements; so grand a sight might never again dawn upon the Philadelphia world. Thus reasoning, and dropping the while a tear for the braves at Valley Forge, these inconsistent Whig ladies yielded.

From the windows of some dwellings belonging to Friends—opposed in principle to such scenes of gayety and dissipation—eyes as eager as any looked forth upon the busy scene of preparation, like doves from behind imprisoning bars. Sweet young Quakeresses, gentle-eyed as the dove and gentle-voiced, that gay land of enchantment down the river—a seeming Elysium—is not for you! How they must have longed to go—sitting by the fireside, like so many Cinderellas, watching their happy sisters start off bravely attired to the ball! To them, alas! came no fairy godmother, so they reluctantly folded their soft wings and stayed at home.

In a little, old, commonplace-book found in a house in Southwark, and now in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, among extracts from various authors—some in English, some in Latin, proving the unknown writer to have been a person of taste and culture—is a description of the Meschianza penned by an eyewitness. With the exception of the well-known account of the fête given by Major André in a letter to a friend in England, this is the most detailed recital that we have encountered. Opening the yellowed pages, we read:

“Agreeable to an invitation of the managers of the Meschianza, Dr. M., Mr. F., and myself went up about four o’clock in the afternoon, in Mr. F.’s Coach, to Knight’s wharf, where we found most of the company in the Boats. Some of these were on the water in the galley with Lord Howe, among them Mrs. Chew, Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Worrell, Mrs. Coxe, Miss Chew, Miss Auchmuty, Miss Redman, Miss Franks, &c., General Howe, Sir Henry Clinton, Lord Rawdon, &c.; and General Knyphausen and his attendants were in another Galley. We continued waiting on the water for the rest of the company near half an Hour, when, a Signal being given from the ‘Vigilant,’ we began to move in three divisions, a Galley and ten flatboats in each division. In the first was General Knyphausen, &c., in the third British and German officers, and in the middle, Lord General Howe, &c.—with three Barges, in each of which were bands of music playing.”

A lady in Philadelphia at this time who attended the Meschianza, although she declares herself a noted Whig, thus describes this portion of the entertainment in a letter addressed to Mrs. Colonel Theodorick Bland, in Virginia:

“On the back of the ticket, you observe, we are to attend at Knight’s wharf (you remember Pool’s bridge near Kensington). Thither we accordingly repaired in carriages at the appointed hour of three, where we found a vast number of boats, barges, and galleys to receive us, all adorned with small colors or jacks of different colors. On a signal from the ‘Vigilant’ we all embarked, forming lines, with all the music belonging to the army in the centre. The ladies interspersed in the different boats (the seats of which were covered with green cloth) with the red coats, colors flying, music playing, etc., you may easily suppose formed a very gay and grand appearance; nor were the shore and houses, lined with spectators, any bad object to those in the regatta (the water party so called). We were obliged to row gently on account of the galley sailing slow.

“The armed ship—the ‘Fanny’—was drawn into the stream and decorated in the most beautiful manner with the colors of every Court or State streaming; amidst the number, the thirteen stripes waved with as much elegance, and as gracefully sported with the gentle zephyrs, as any of the number. After passing the above ship we reached the ‘Roebuck,’ whose men were all fixed on her yards and gave us three cheers as we passed, and as soon as we had got to a distance not to be incommoded by the smoke she fired a salute and was answered by several other vessels in the harbor. At length we reached the place of destination (after lying awhile on our oars) opposite the ‘Roebuck,’ the music playing ‘God Save the King.’”

The regatta which headed the programme of the Meschianza was suggested by a similar pageant on the Thames, June 23, 1775, and, being a novelty even in old England, it is not strange that it should have set provincial Philadelphia astir, nor that six barges were needed to keep at a distance the numerous boats, filled with eager spectators, that crowded the Delaware on the day of the entertainment, when:

“There in the broad, clear afternoon,
With myriad oars, and all in tune,
A swarm of barges moved away
In all their grand regatta pride.”

We doubt whether those who disapproved of the whole affair—the Quakers, Whigs, and many sensible Tories—could forbear casting furtive glances toward that fairy procession, which, Read says,—

“Like tropic isles of flowery light,
Unmoored by some enchanter’s might,
O’erflowed with music, floated down
Before the wharf-assembled town.”

Thus this gay and brilliant fleet proceeded down the river with flying colors, while the band played stirring English airs, amid the soft breezes and under the perfect skies of an old-time May day, until they arrived opposite the scene of the festivity, where everything was in readiness for joust and revelry. Salutes were fired by the “Roebuck” as soon as General Howe stepped on shore, which were echoed by the “Vigilant” and several smaller vessels up and down the river.

“The fleet at the wharves,” says our journalist, “consisting of about three hundred sail, adorned with colors, and together with the procession, exhibited a very grand and pleasing appearance.” Very grand it must have been to see those knights, ladies, and officers, in their rich costumes, leaving behind them the gay scene on the river, and walking between two files of grenadiers up the avenue toward the house! The bravest display of the kind that the New World could afford, for Philadelphia then excelled all the other Colonial cities in size, culture, and importance; and here, beside the flower of the English army, were met some of the most beautiful women of the day.

Passing up this avenue, the company entered a lawn, four hundred yards on every side, where all was prepared for the exhibition of a tournament according to the laws of ancient chivalry. Here were two pavilions, with rows of benches rising one above the other; on the front row of each were placed seven of the principal young ladies of the county, arrayed in white Poland dresses of Mantua with long sleeves, a gauze turban spangled, and sashes round the waist. Seven of them wore pink sashes with silver spangles, and the others white with gold spangles. All bore in their turbans favors destined for their respective knights. Those who wore pink and white were called the Ladies of the Blended Rose, and were Miss Auchmuty, Miss Peggy Chew, Miss Janet Craig, Miss Nancy Redman, Miss Nancy White, Miss Williamina Bond, and Miss Shippen. Lord Cathcart, who led the Knights of the Blended Rose in Miss Auchmuty’s honor, appeared upon a superb charger. Two young black slaves, with sashes of blue and white silk, wearing large silver clasps round their necks and arms, their breasts and shoulders bare, held his stirrups. On his right hand walked Captain Hazard, and on his left Captain Brownlow, his two esquires, the one bearing his lance, the other his shield. His device was Cupid riding on a Lion; the motto, “Surmounted by Love.”

The Ladies of the Burning Mountain, whose dress was white and gold, and whose chief was Captain Watson, superbly mounted, and arrayed in a magnificent suit of black and orange silk, were Miss Rebecca Franks, in whose honor Captain Watson appeared, with the motto “Love and Glory,” Miss Sarah Shippen, Miss P. Shippen, Miss Becky Bond, Miss Becky Redman, Miss Sally Chew, and Miss Williamina Smith.

In all descriptions of the Meschianza related by eye-witnesses, the Shippen sisters are spoken of as having taken a prominent part in the entertainment. Only within a few years has a letter from a member of the family controverted this statement, in the following terms:

“The young ladies [the daughters of Chief Justice Edward Shippen] had been invited and had arranged to go [to the Meschianza]; their names were upon the programmes, and their dresses actually prepared; but at the last moment their father was visited by some of his friends, prominent members of the Society of Friends, who persuaded him that it would be by no means seemly that his daughters should appear in public in the Turkish dresses designed for the occasion. Consequently, although they are said to have been in a dancing fury, they were obliged to stay away. This same story has, I know, come down independently through several branches of the family, and was told to me repeatedly, the last time not more than two years ago, by an old lady of the family, who was a niece of Mrs. Arnold and her sisters, and who has since died.”[5]

Major André includes the Shippens in his description of the entertainment printed in the Gentleman’s Magazine in August, 1778. The discrepancy between his statement and the family letters can be accounted for only upon the supposition that, like the modern reporter, André sent off his copy before the ball had taken place; or perhaps the “dancing fury” of his daughters had such an effect upon the Chief Justice that, at the last moment, the girls were allowed to go.

Beautiful, brilliant, and fascinating, full of spirit and gayety, the toast of the British officers, Miss Peggy Shippen seems so much a part of the Meschianza that we incline to the latter theory, being almost as unwilling to spare her and her sisters from the ranks of beauty as were the gallant young officers who were prepared to do battle in their honor.

As soon as the fair ladies were seated upon the benches prepared for them, the crowd on the left gave way, and the Knights of the Blended Rose appeared mounted on white steeds elegantly caparisoned and covered with white satin ornamented with pink roses. “These knights,” says our journalist, “were dressed in white and pink satin, with hats of pink silk, the brims of which were covered with white feathers. Each knight had his squire on foot, dressed also in white and pink, with the addition of a cloak of white silk. Every squire carried a spear and shield, each of which had a different device and motto.”

The knights, having all ridden around the lists and saluted the ladies, sent their herald, with two trumpeters, to the Dulcineas with this message: “The Knights of the Blended Rose, by me their herald, proclaim and assert that the ladies of the Blended Rose excel in wit, beauty, and every other accomplishment all other ladies in the world, and if any knight or knights shall be so hardy as to deny this, they are determined to support their assertion by deeds of arms, agreeable to the laws of ancient chivalry.”

The trumpets then sounded, and the herald returned to the knights, who rode by, saluted the Dulcineas, and took their places on the left hand, about one hundred yards distant.

The crowd opening on the other side, a herald in orange and black, with a picture of a burning mountain on his back, rode forward to assure the fair ones of the Burning Mountain that their claims to wit, beauty, and all other charms, par excellence, should be vindicated by the knights whose colors they wore, “against the false and vainglorious assertions of the Knights of the Blended Rose.”

The field marshal, Major Gwynne, now gave the signal, upon which a glove was thrown down by the chief of the White Knights, which was picked up by the esquire of the chief of the Black Knights; the trumpet sounded, and the fight was on, under the fire of many bright eyes from the pavilions where the Queens of Beauty were seated.

Lances were shivered, pistols fired, and finally, in the midst of an engagement with broadswords, Major Gwynne rode in between the combatants, declaring that the ladies were abundantly satisfied with the proofs of valor and devotion displayed by their respective knights. These fell back, and, joining their companies, passed on, the White Knights to the left, the Black to the right, saluting their ladies when they reached the pavilions, after which they passed through the triumphal arch, in honor of Lord Howe, and ranged themselves on either side. This arch was elegantly painted with naval ornaments. At the top was a figure representing Neptune, with his trident and a ship. In the interior were the attributes of that god. On each side of the arch was placed a sailor, with his sword drawn. Lord Howe being an admiral in the service, these emblems were most appropriate.

The knights’ ladies passed under the arch after the knights, who dismounted and joined them, all proceeding together along a broad avenue, brilliantly decorated, to another arch of the same size and elegance as the first, this in honor of Sir William Howe. “Upon passing this second arch,” our journalist tells us, “we entered a beautiful Flower-Garden and up a Gravel Court, ascended a flight of Steps which conducted us into the House, at the door of which we were received by the Managers of the Meschianza,—namely, Sir John Wrottesley, Sir Henry Calder, Colonel O’Hara, and Colonel Montrésor.” André mentions the same, except that he substitutes Major Gardiner for Sir Henry Calder.

Two folding-doors were opened, and the company was ushered into a large hall, brilliantly lighted, where tea, coffee, and cakes were served, and where the knights upon bended knee received the favors due them from their respective ladies. This scene must have been one of the most graceful and charming of the whole pageant, and had it not been for the remembrance of that dear Honora whose miniature he always wore, André certainly could not have remained insensible to the manifold attractions of Miss Peggy Chew, who now rewarded him for having “perilled life and limb” in her service, and whose praises are thus sung by Mr. Joseph Shippen:

“With either Chew such beauties dwell,
Such charms by each are shared,
No critic’s judging eye can tell
Which merits most regard.

“’Tis far beyond the painter’s skill
To set their charms to view;
As far beyond the poet’s quill
To give the praise that’s due.”

Amid blushes, soft whisperings, and compliments such as the gentlemen of that time were skilled in paying, the fair ones bestowed their gracious favors; after which the company entered another hall, elaborately decorated and hung with eighty-five mirrors, decked with rose-pink silk ribbons and artificial flowers. In this ball-room, whose walls were pale blue and rose-pink, with panels on which were dropping festoons of flowers, “when the company was come up,” says our authority, quaintly, “the Dulcineas danced first with the knights, and then with the squires, and after them the rest of the company danced.”

At half-past ten o’clock the windows were thrown open to enable the guests to enjoy the magnificent fireworks on the lawn, when the triumphal arch near the house appeared brilliantly illuminated, Fame blowing from her trumpet these words: “Tes Lauriers sont immortels,”—meaning Sir William’s.

About this time Captain Allan McLane, with a company of infantry and Clow’s dragoons, was endeavoring to win for himself immortal laurels by firing the abatis at the north of the city, which connected the line of the British redoubts. When the flames reddened the sky the ladies, doubtless, clapped their hands with delight, wondering at the beauty of the illumination, which illusion was encouraged by the officers; and later, when the roll-call was sounded along the line and the guns of the redoubts fired, the guests were assured that this was all a part of the celebration, and the dancing continued. Although McLane did not succeed in breaking up the party, as he had hoped, he gave the British officers a fright, which must have considerably marred the enjoyment of the evening for them. The dragoons sent in pursuit of the incendiaries did not succeed in overtaking them, as they found a refuge among the hills of the Wissahickon.

“After the fireworks the company returned, some to dancing and others to a Faro-bank, which was opened by three German officers in one of the Parlours. The Company continued dancing and playing until twelve o’clock, when we were called to Supper, and two folding-doors at the end of the hall being thrown open, we entered a room two hundred feet long by forty wide. The Floor was covered with painted Canvas, and the roof and sides adorned with paintings and ornamented with fifty large mirrors. From the roof hung twelve Lustres, with twenty Spermaceti candles in each. In this room were two Tables, reaching from one end to the other. On the two tables were fifty large, elegant pyramids, with Jellies, Syllabub, Cakes, and Sweetmeats.” Beside this there were various substantials, soup being mentioned as the only viand served hot.

Major André, after describing the decorations of this supper-room, says that “there were four hundred and thirty covers, twelve hundred dishes, and twenty-four black slaves in Oriental dresses, with silver collars and bracelets, ranged in two lines, and bending to the ground as the general and admiral approached the saloon; all these, forming together the most brilliant assemblage of gay objects, and appearing at once as we entered by an easy descent, exhibited a coup-d’œil beyond description magnificent.”

Toward the end of supper, the herald of the Blended Rose, in his habit of ceremony, attended by his trumpeters, entered the saloon and proclaimed the King’s health, the Queen’s, and that of the royal family. After the toast to the King, all the company rose and sang “God Save the King,” which must have been a very trying moment to those Whig ladies present, who through all the enjoyment of the day were doubtless considerably pricked in their consciences. More loyal toasts followed, to the army and navy, their commanders, and finally to the ladies and their knights, the ladies’ toast being: “The Founder of the Feast.”

We are pained to read that some of the gentlemen, among them one of the same party as our quaint journalist, were so ungallant as to remain at table, declaring their intention of devoting the night to Bacchus,—alas for Venus! The guests did not disperse until dawn began to redden the eastern sky, and some tarried until the sun was up.

Here I cannot forbear transcribing some verses written by a lady—Miss Hannah Griffitts—residing in Philadelphia at this time, in which, though an ardent loyalist, she, as a member of the Society of Friends, expressed her indignation against the whole affair. The poem is in answer to the question, “What is it?” and the Quaker lady’s reply rings forth with no uncertain sound.

“A shameful scene of dissipation,
The death of sense and reputation;
A deep degeneracy of nature,
A frolic ‘for the lush of satire.’
A feast of grandeur fit for kings,
Formed of the following empty things:
Ribbons and gewgaws, tints and tinsel,
To glow beneath the historic pencil;
(For what though reason now stands neuter,
How will it sparkle,—page the future?)
Heroes that will not bear inspection,
And glasses to affect reflection;

“Triumphant arches raised in blunders,
And true Don Quixotes made of wonders.
Laurels, instead of weeping willows,
To crown the bacchanalian fellows;
The sound of victory complete,
Loudly re-echoed from defeat;
The fair of vanity profound,
A madman’s dance,—a lover’s round.

“In short, it’s one clear contradiction
To every truth (except a fiction);
Condemned by wisdom’s silver rules,
The blush of sense and gaze of fools.

“But recollection’s pained to know
That ladies joined the frantic show;
When female prudence thus can fail,
It’s time the sex should wear the veil.”

So ended this afternoon and evening of brilliant and gorgeous pageantry, resembling more nearly a chapter from one of the richly-colored Eastern fairy-tales that delighted our childhood than a story of Colonial days, which was speedily followed by the sober realities of Sir William and Lord Howe’s return to England and by Clinton’s evacuation of Philadelphia.

It may be interesting to follow the fates of those gay beauties who held their brief, brilliant court through that spring afternoon, especially so to that much maligned class who study the science of love and courtship, crudely called match-makers.

Strange as it may seem, none of the queens of the Meschianza married their respective knights. Miss Janet Craig, whose knight was Lieutenant Bygrove, and who has described the whole scene as one of enchantment to her young mind, was never married.

The chief lady of the Knights of the Blended Rose, although spoken of frequently as an English girl, was the daughter of the Rev. Samuel Auchmuty, D.D., of Trinity Church, New York, a devoted loyalist. Miss Auchmuty was with her brother-in-law, Captain Montrésor, chief engineer of General Gage’s army at Boston, to whose skill the success of the fireworks at the Meschianza was largely due.

Williamina Smith, whose picture, with its bright eyes and tip-tilted nose, lies before us, had for her knight Major Tarleton, who appeared with the motto “Swift, vigilant, and bold.” He who was afterward the terror of the South is described as a fine, soldierly fellow of one-and-twenty, who, “when not riding races with Major Gwynne on the commons,” spent his time in making love to the ladies. Miss Smith became the wife of Charles Goldsborough, of Long Neck, Dorset County, Maryland.

The Misses Redman, so often mentioned among the belles of the time, were nieces of the famous Dr. John Redman. Miss Rebecca, whose knight was Monsieur Montluisant[6] (lieutenant of Hessian Chasseurs), with the emblem a sunflower turning to the sun, her motto “Je vise à vous,” is said to have been the Queen of the Meschianza, whom Watson describes, many years later, as old and blind, “fast waning from the things that be,” yet able to paint in vivid colors the occurrences of this day. She spoke of André as the life of the company. It is not strange that this brave young officer and elegant and accomplished gentleman, who added so much to the enjoyment of the loyalist ladies of Philadelphia during the British occupation, should have been long held by them in grateful remembrance. We know that he was on terms of intimate friendship with one of these sisters, as it was for her he wrote those tender, plaintive verses, commencing,—

“Return, enraptured hours,
When Delia’s heart was mine;
When she with wreaths of flowers
My temples would entwine.”

For her he cut silhouettes of mutual friends, and, on leaving the city, severed one of the buttons of his coat, which he playfully presented to her as a parting keepsake. Miss Rebecca Redman married Colonel Elisha Lawrence in December, 1779.

Miss Margaret Chew, in whose honor Major André appeared with the motto “No rival,” was married on the ninth anniversary of the Meschianza to Colonel John Eager Howard, of Maryland. The Howards of Belvidere are a well-known Baltimore family, and this young man filled a prominent place in the war of the Revolution. He was present at the battle of White Plains, distinguished himself at Germantown, where so many of our heroes strove in vain to turn the tide of battle, served under Gates in the South, and at the battle of Cowpens decided the fortunes of the day by a successful bayonet charge. At one time, it is said, he held in his hands the swords of seven British officers of the Seventy-First Regiment. After the war he was Governor of Maryland and filled other public offices of importance. Surely, in this case, “the brave deserved the fair.”

One of the most striking figures in this brilliant assemblage was Rebecca Franks, who was as celebrated for her ready wit as was Peggy Shippen for her exquisite beauty and grace. Handsome, witty, and an heiress, combining with these attractions that of being an ardent loyalist, it is not strange that Miss Franks was given a high place at the British revel. She won the affections of Colonel Sir Henry Johnson, who while in Philadelphia was quartered on Edward Penington, a leading Friend, living at the corner of Crown and Race Streets. The marriage took place January 17, 1782, and after the surrender of Yorktown Sir Henry and his bride sailed for England. Colonel Johnson was surprised at Stony Point on the night of July 15, 1779, by Wayne, and made prisoner with all his force. He afterwards distinguished himself in the Irish rebellion, and was created Baronet. Although Cornwallis speaks of Sir Henry as “a wrong-headed blockhead,” and thinks that he has been unduly praised, we are inclined to say that he who was willing to run the gauntlet of Miss Franks’s daring raillery must have been a brave man. She seems to have spared neither friend nor foe and her wit was always telling, whether flashing up in the quick rejoinder, “No; Britons, go home, you mean,” when Sir Henry Clinton ordered the band to play “Britons, Strike Home,” at a New York ball, or in her keen, sharp rebuff when Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Steward, of Maryland, after the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British, appeared before her in a fine suit of scarlet, saying, “I have adopted your colors, my Princess, the better to secure a courteous reception; deign to smile on a true knight.” To this speech Miss Franks made no reply, but, turning to the company who surrounded her, exclaimed, “How the ass glories in the lion’s skin!”

One of this lady’s pointed shafts was directed at General Charles Lee, and this time the daring beauty met her match, for he not only vindicated himself from her charge of having worn “green breeches patched with leather,” but in language more caustic than courtly alluded to her own Jewish ancestry. There is a flavor of the wit of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Walpole in these jokes; but they raised a great laugh at the time, and were perhaps of a sort to be better relished in Miss Franks’s future home than in America.

General Winfield Scott gives a description of an interview held with this lady at her residence, at Bath, when years had sadly impaired the beauty that had once captivated all hearts. A bright-eyed old lady in an easy-chair met Scott with an eager, kindly gaze and the query, “Is this the young rebel?” Such were her words, yet, before the conversation ended, Lady Johnson confessed that she had learned to glory in her rebel countrymen and wished that she had been a patriot, too. “Not that heaven had failed to bless her with a good husband, either,” she replied to Sir Henry’s gentle remonstrances.

When the Americans regained possession of Philadelphia an effort was made by the Whigs to exclude from their gatherings those ladies who had taken part in the Meschianza and other British entertainments.[7] With this object in view, a ball was given at the City Tavern “to the young ladies who had manifested their attachment to the cause of virtue and freedom by sacrificing every convenience to the love of their country.”[8] This sounded patriotic enough, but we learn that General Arnold soon after gave an entertainment at which the Tory ladies appeared in full force, which is not to be wondered at in view of the intelligence that Mrs. Robert Morris communicated to her mother about this time: “I must tell you that Cupid has given our little General a more mortal wound than all the hosts of Britons could, unless his present conduct can expiate for his past,—Miss Peggy Shippen is the fair one.”

With Cupid thus taking a hand in the game, and bringing to the feet of one of the brightest of the Tory belles the military commandant of Philadelphia, we can readily believe that General Wayne’s severe strictures upon the foolish fair fell upon unheeding ears:

“Tell those Philadelphia ladies, who attended Howe’s assemblies & levees,” he writes in July, 1778, “that the heavenly, sweet, pretty red-coats—the accomplished gentlemen of the guards & grenadiers have been humbled on the plains of Monmouth.

“The Knights of the Blended Roses and of the Burning Mount have resigned their laurels to Rebel officers, who will lay them at the feet of those virtuous daughters of America, who cheerfully gave up ease and affluence in a city, for liberty and peace of mind in a cottage.”[9]

FOOTNOTES:

[2] It is pleasant to learn that Mr. Joseph Wharton, the owner of Walnut Grove, if proud was also benevolent, as we find his name among liberal contributors to one of the first Philadelphia almshouses.

[3] This sketch, by Major André, is in the possession of Mr. Edward Shippen, of Philadelphia.

[4] “We all know of Burgoyne’s surrender, but hardly one knows Burgoyne’s comedies, and yet there are few cleverer or more brilliant, of a second order, than ‘The Heiress,’ and ‘Maid of Oaks.’ In a letter, dated New York, June 2, 1777, he says, ‘You cannot imagine anything half so beautiful as this country. It is impossible to conceive anything so delightful. Lady Holland, in spite of her politics, would, I am sure, feel for it, if she could see the ruin and desolation we have introduced into the most beautiful and, I verily believe, happiest part of the universe.’”—World Essays: William B. Reed, pp. 176, 177.

[5] From a letter of the late Lawrence Lewis, Jr., written in 1879.

[6] It appears that this knight with the shining name and emblem had not a reputation to match them. We learn that he entered the army only to get to America, was discharged, tried to join the Colonial army, and was seized and sent to England. (German Allied Troops, 1776-1783, p. 333.)

[7] Fred. D. Stone. Pennsylvania Magazine, vol. iii. p. 336.

[8] Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia, vol. ii. p. 297.

[9] Biographical Sketch of General Anthony Wayne, Hazard’s Register, p. 389.

New York Balls and Receptions

Amid elaborate ceremonials attending the reception and inauguration of the first President of the Republic, we find some homely touches of nature, as when those two admirable housewives Mrs. Washington and Mrs. Adams were detained at home, in April and May, 1789, by domestic duties, and so missed all the joyful demonstrations along the route, as well as the brave welcome accorded their distinguished husbands in the city of New York. Mrs. Washington was busied in putting her household in order, and shipping china, cut glass, silver-ware, and linen from Mount Vernon to the capital, while from John Adams’s letters we gather that the wife, whom he so trusted that he permitted her to dispose of sheep, cows, and other live-stock, on her own responsibility, was attending to such matters at Braintree, Massachusetts, prior to the removal of her household goods to the fine country-place at Richmond Hill that Mr. Adams had rented for the season.[10]

Although Mr. Samuel Breck, recently arrived from Europe, found New York in 1787 “a poor town, with about twenty-three thousand people, not yet recovered from its Revolutionary wounds” and the great fire that swept over its western portion, he is pleased, two years later, to admire the improvements recently made, especially some beautiful houses built on Broadway by Mr. Macomb, one of which was occupied by General Knox, the Secretary of War. As soon as it transpired that New York was to be the meeting-place of the new Congress, and that General Washington was elected President, the selection of a suitable residence for the Chief Magistrate became a matter of considerable interest in Republican circles. The President later occupied Mr. Macomb’s house on Broadway near Bowling Green, subsequently known as the Mansion House and Bunker’s Hotel; but his first residence was the house of Walter Franklin, as is proved by a letter written from New York, April 30, 1789, which with other family papers furnishes us some interesting facts relating to this old homestead, and its renovation preparatory to the advent of the President and his wife, that have not yet appeared in the histories of the time. The clever chronicler is Mrs. William T. Robinson, and the letter is addressed to Miss Kitty Wistar, of Brandywine, afterwards Mrs. Sharples, through the courtesy of whose descendants it has come into the writer’s hands.

“Great rejoicing in New York,” she says, “on the arrival of General Washington. An elegant Barge decorated with an awning of Sattin, 12 oarsmen drest in white frocks and blue ribbons, went down to E. Town [Elizabeth] last fourth day to bring him up. A Stage was erected at the Coffee House wharf covered with a carpet for him to step on, where a company of light horse, one of Artillery, and most of the Inhabitants were waiting to receive him.[11] They Paraded through Queen Street in great form, while the music, the Drums and ringing of bells were enough to stun one with the noise. Previous to his coming Uncle Walter’s house in Cherry Street was taken for him and every room furnished in the most elegant manner.

“The evening after his Excellency’s arrival a general Illumination took place, excepting among Friends, and those styled Anti-Federalists: the latter’s windows suffered some, thou may imagine. As soon as the General has sworn in, a grand exhibition of fire-works is to be displayed, which it is expected will be to-morrow. There is scarcely anything talked of now but General Washington and the Palace.”

The palace referred to is, evidently, the former residence of Walter Franklin, situated at the corner of Pearl and Cherry Streets, then owned by his widow, who had married Mr. Samuel Osgood, Postmaster-General under the new administration. Watson says that the Franklin House on Pearl Street was “No. 1 in pre-eminence,” and, from the wealth and position of its owner, it was evidently considered the best in the city for the purpose. Mrs. Robinson describes it as having been very sumptuously fitted up; and so it doubtless was, according to the prevailing idea of elegance. Miss Wistar’s correspondent adds

“Thou must know that Uncle Osgood and Duer were appointed to procure a house and furnish it; accordingly they pitched on their wives as being likely to do it better. Aunt Osgood and Lady Kitty Duer had the whole management of it. I went the morning before the General’s arrival to look at it. The house really did honour to my Aunt and Lady Kitty, they spared no pains nor expense in it. I have not done yet, my dear, is thee not almost tired? The best of furniture in every room, and the greatest quantity of plate and China that I ever saw before. The whole of the first and second Story is papered, and the floor covered with the richest kind of Turkey and Wilton Carpets.”

The Mr. Duer spoken of by Mrs. Robinson is Colonel William Duer, who had early in life been aide-de-camp to Lord Clive in India, and who later held important positions under the Federal government. His wife was one of the daughters of General William Alexander, claimant to the Scottish earldom of Stirling. She consequently figured in New York society as Lady Kitty Duer, giving, with her own sister, Lady Mary Watts, and Lady Temple, a flavor of British aristocracy to republican circles. Lady Kitty is described by John Quincy Adams as “one of the sweetest-looking women in the city,”—which testimony is scarcely corroborated by her portrait in the exaggerated coiffure of the day.

Walter Franklin’s house on Cherry Street, and that of his brother Samuel, which was around the corner on Pearl Street, were both near the shipping quarter of the town, in which respect they resembled fashionable Philadelphia residences of the same period. A number of interesting family traditions cluster about these fine old houses, in which a bevy of gay girls was gathered together, who charmed the British officers during their occupation of the city, just as their Quaker sisters were doing in old Philadelphia. Some of the officers were quartered on the Franklins, among them Lord Rawdon and Admiral Lord Richard Howe, who respectively commanded the army and the fleet. Sally Franklin, the writer of the letter from which we have quoted, was then a young girl, and a very beautiful one. Her marriage with Mr. Robinson took place while the British had possession of New York. She was evidently a great favorite with the officers in command, who begged to be permitted to attend her wedding in Quaker meeting. This request was refused, on the plea that the wedding was to be a very quiet one. British officers, as Miss Rebecca Franks has informed us, were not accustomed to take no for an answer, unless accompanied with shot and shell. Accordingly, on the morning of the marriage, when the beautiful bride, in her white silk dress and white bonnet, stood in the quaint old meeting, listening to the words of her lover, “I take this Friend, Sarah Franklin, to be my wedded wife,” a sudden sound of footsteps and clattering of swords against the benches was heard, and, lo! Lord Rawdon, Lord Howe, and a train of young officers, resplendent in gay uniforms and gold lace, stood within the solemn enclosure of the meeting. They seated themselves, with malice aforethought, on a long bench opposite the bride, whose turn had now come to speak. Trembling, and carefully avoiding the eyes of the strangers, who had vowed that they would make her smile in the midst of the ceremony, she performed her part, declaring her intention to take Friend William to be her wedded husband. When the marriage certificate was signed, the names of Lord Howe, Lord Rawdon, and the other officers were appended, beautiful Sarah Robinson showing her forgiving spirit still further by allowing those, among the intruders, who were well known to her to return to the house and partake of the wedding-feast.

The New York girls had a longer time in which to enjoy the society of the gallant red-coats than their Philadelphia sisters, and were consequently in greater danger of losing their hearts to them. There were some marriages with British officers, as in the family of Andrew Elliot, Lieutenant-Governor of New York, one of whose daughters married Admiral Robert Digby, while another, Elizabeth, became the wife of William, tenth Baron and first Earl of Cathcart, the same who as Lord Cathcart had figured as chief of the Knights of the Blended Rose in the Meschianza.[12] Miss Philipse was also one of those who yielded to the attractions of the enemy, as she married the Hon. Lionel Smythe, son of Philip, fourth Viscount Strafford, at the time captain of the Twenty-Third British Foot. Most of the New York belles had, as Graydon puts it, “sufficient toleration for our cause to marry officers of the Continental army,” and when the new administration came in, we find them as ready to dance to Whig music as they had been to Tory. The Comte de Moustier soon gave these impartial fair ones an opportunity to display their Terpsichorean powers at a very elegant ball, given to President Washington, two weeks after his inauguration, at the Macomb house, on Broadway, which was afterwards occupied by President Washington. On this occasion the alliance between France and America was represented in a cotillon, half the dancers being in French costume and the other half in American; the ladies who represented France wearing red roses and flowers of France, and the American ladies blue ribbons and American flowers. Mr. Elias Boudinot, chairman of the committee of Congress, in a description of this ball sent to his wife in Philadelphia, speaks of these representatives of the allied powers entering the room, two by two, and engaging in what he ingeniously calls “a most curious dance, called en ballet, to show the happy union between the two nations.”[13]

The Comte de Moustier had succeeded Barbé-Marbois as French minister to the United States, and was so addicted to entertaining that he was wont to say that he was “but a tavern-keeper;” adding, facetiously, that “the Americans had the complaisance not to demand his recall.”[14] Of the new ambassador Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Jefferson, in Paris, “It is with much pleasure I inform you that Moustier begins to make himself acceptable; and with still more that Madame Bréhan begins to be viewed in the light which I hope she merits.” This lady was Anne-Flore Millet, Marquise de Bréhan, a sister of the Comte de Moustier, who assisted him in doing the honors of his house. She is described as a singular, whimsical old woman, who delighted in playing with a negro child and caressing a monkey. With all her eccentricities, she seems to have been possessed of some talent and considerable skill as an artist, as she not only executed several portraits of Washington, but achieved a feat known to few portrait-painters, that of pleasing the sitter himself.

About a week before the Comte de Moustier’s entertainment, the inauguration ball was held, and, if we are to credit contemporaneous gossip, was a very grand and imposing function. Although those were days of stage-coaching and slow travel, a number of visitors from other cities were in New York, as appears from a letter written by Miss Bertha Ingersoll, from the scene of the festivities, to Miss Sallie McKean in Philadelphia.

“We shall remain here,” she writes, “even if we have to sleep in tents, as so many will have to do. Mr. Williamson had promised to engage us rooms at Frauncis’s, but that was jammed long ago, as was every other decent public house, and now while we are waiting at Mrs. Vandervoort’s, in Maiden Lane, till after dinner, two of our beaux are running about town determined to obtain the best places for us to stay at which can be opened for love or money or the most persuasive speeches.”

Mrs. Washington was still at Mount Vernon on the 7th of May, the date of the inauguration ball,[15] consequently the story of a sofa raised some steps above the floor of the ball-room for the accommodation of the President and his wife during the dancing is quite without foundation, as is the equally absurd story of portly Mrs. Knox pushing her way up to this circle and having to descend suddenly from her elevated position because there was no room for her on the platform. Even if there was no dais for the President and his wife, there was no lack of form and ceremony at this Republican entertainment, where the men all wore the small-clothes of the day, which so well became their stately proportions, and where, says Huntingdon, many powdered heads were still to be seen, among men as well as women. The President’s costume on such occasions was a full suit of black velvet, with long black silk stockings, white vest, silver knee- and shoe-buckles, the hair being powdered and gathered together at the back in a black silk bag tied with a bow of black ribbon. He wore a light dress sword, with a richly-ornamented hilt, and often carried in his hand a cocked hat, decorated with the American cockade. The Vice-President, John Adams, wore a full suit of drab, with bag-wig and wrist-ruffles. The gentlemen’s laces seem to have rivalled those of the ladies, although in their costumes rich silks, satins, and brocades had begun to give place to cloth of various colors, as if to forecast the less ornate masculine costume of later date.

“The collection of ladies” at this ball, writes a contemporary, “was numerous and brilliant, and they were dressed with consummate taste and elegance. The number of persons present was upwards of three hundred, and satisfaction, vivacity, and delight beamed from every countenance.” Colonel William Leet Stone, of New York, thus describes one of the costumes: “It was a plain celestial blue satin gown, with a white satin petticoat. On the neck was worn a very large Italian gauze handkerchief, with border stripes of satin. The head-dress was a pouf of satin in the form of a globe, the créneaux or head-piece of which was composed of white satin, having a double wing in large pleats and trimmed with a wreath of artificial roses. The hair was dressed all over in detached curls, four of which in two ranks fell on each side of the neck and were relieved behind by a floating chignon.” We have Colonel Stone’s word for it that this was an attractive costume, although the description does not sound so to modern ears, especially with the heavy head decorations. It appears, however, that the ladies of the first administration had made one important departure, for which thanksgivings should have been devoutly uttered. They had by this time renounced the ungainly head-dress that had reared its pyramid skyward for some years, and which, accompanied as it was with scant drapery about the shoulders and bust, had led some wit of the day to accuse the fair ones of robbing their breasts of gauze, cambric, and muslin for the use of their heads, while another satirist wrote,—

“Give Chloe a bushel of horse-hair and wool,
Of paste and pomatum a pound;
Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull,
And gauze to encompass it round.”

Perhaps some such witticisms as these had led to the change of fashion; or, more likely, a little bird from France had whispered in the ladies’ ears that the mighty pyramid had fallen there. From whatever cause, the structure of hair, flowers, feathers, and jewels no longer reared its imposing pinnacle above the brow of beauty, and many of the Stuart, Malbone, Trumbull, and Copley paintings of women of this period represent the hair dressed low, with curls and bandeaux à la Grecque or rolled moderately high à la Pompadour.

In one of the journals of the day we read that

“On Thursday evening, the subscribers of the Dancing Assembly, gave an elegant Ball and Entertainment. The President of the United States, was pleased to honor the company with his presence—His Excellency the Vice President—most of the members of both Houses of Congress—His Excellency the Governor [Clinton] and a great many other dignified public characters: His Excellency Count de Moustier—His Most Christian Majesty’s Ambassador—The Baron Steuben, and other foreigners of distinction were present, as well as the most beautiful ladies of New York.”[16]

Among these were the Misses Livingston, one of whom married Mr. Ridley, of Baltimore, the Misses Van Horne, “avowed Whigs,” says Graydon, “notwithstanding their civility to the British officers,” and the Misses White, who lived on Wall Street near Broadway, to one of whom was addressed the following epigram by a beau of the period named Brown:

“My lovely maid, I’ve often thought
Whether thy name be just or not;
Thy bosom is as cold as snow,
Which we for matchless white may show;
But when thy beauteous face is seen,
Thou’rt of brunettes the charming queen.
Resolve our doubts: let it be known
Thou rather art inclined to Brown.”

It is evident that this fair White did not permanently incline to Brown, as one sister became Lady Hayes, and the other married one of the Monroes. Here also, in goodly array, were Osgoods, Philipses, Rutherfurds, Van Cortlandts, Van Zandts, Clintons, Montgomerys, De Lanceys, De Peysters, Kissams, Bleeckers, Clarksons, Verplancks, Schuylers, Van Rensselaers, and Macombs. How the old names repeat themselves in the social life of to-day! Prominent in these inaugural festivities were the Livingstons of Clermont, Chief Justice Yates, of New York, the handsome soldierly figure of Morgan Lewis, Grand Marshal of the Inauguration ceremonies, Mrs. Dominick Lynch, Mrs. Edgar, Mrs. Provoost, Lady Stirling, and her two daughters, Lady Mary Watts and Lady Kitty Duer. We learn that their aunt, Mrs. Peter Van Brugh Livingston, had the honor of dancing a cotillon with the President, who opened the ball with the wife of the Mayor of New York, Mrs. James Duane. He also danced in the minuet with Mrs. James Homer Maxwell, with whom as Miss Catharine Van Zandt he had repeatedly danced while the army was quartered at Morristown. When Washington entered the lists, dancing seemed to be elevated to the dignity of a function of the state, and in proof of the grace with which his Excellency could tread a measure it is related that a French gentleman, after observing him in the dance, paid him the high compliment of saying that a Parisian education could not have rendered his execution more admirable. Mrs. James Beekman,[17] born Jane Keteletas, was the belle of the de Moustier ball, a week later, and gazing upon her serene face, framed in by a little cap of gauze and ribbon, that would have been trying to features less perfect, we can readily believe that she also occupied a prominent place in the inaugural festivities. Mrs. William Smith, who had returned from London, where her husband was Secretary of the American legation, was present, as was also Lady Temple, the American wife of Sir John Temple, British Consul-General, whom the Marquis de Chastellux found so distinguished that it was unnecessary to pronounce her beautiful. Her husband, Sir John, took upon himself “singular airs,” says Mrs. William Smith, and this spirited little woman declined to visit my lady because she did not consider that Sir John treated her spouse with proper deference. Lady Christiana Griffin, the Scotch wife of Cyrus Griffin, President of Congress, was also one of the guests of the evening.

Among New York women whose husbands held high positions were Mrs. Alexander Hamilton; Mrs. Ralph Izard, wife of the Senator from South Carolina, whose surname furnished Mrs. Bache a peg on which to hang her bon-mot about knowing everything South Carolinian from B[18] to Z (izzard); Mrs. Robert R. Livingston, the daughter of Colonel Henry Beekman, whose husband had a week earlier administered the oath of office to the President; Mrs. King, born Mary Alsop, of whose marriage to Rufus King John Adams speaks as “additional bonds to cement the love between New York and old Massachusetts;” and Mrs. Elbridge Gerry, wife of the Senator from Massachusetts. The Rev. Manasseh Cutler visited the Gerrys when they were living in Philadelphia, and speaks of the beauty and accomplishments of the New York lady. He expressed to her his surprise that Philadelphia ladies rose so early, saying that he saw them at breakfast at half-past five, when in Boston they could hardly see a breakfast-table before nine without falling into hysterics. To which Mrs. Gerry replied that she had become inured to early rising and found it conducive to her health.

Stately courtesy and dignity, combined with a certain simplicity begotten of pioneer living in a new country, seem to have been the distinguishing characteristics of this old-time society, and of the couple who presided over it and knew so well how to balance the functions of public office with the sacred demands of home life.

In days of retirement at Mount Vernon, when engaged in instructing her maidens, or in household pursuits, Mrs. Washington was always simply attired, and in cloth of home manufacture. She could, however, on occasions of state appear in rich costumes of satin, velvet, and lace, while the President, although appearing at the inaugural ceremonies in a suit of cloth of American manufacture, on festal occasions donned the velvet and satin that so well became him. With his republicanism in national affairs, it is evident that Washington inclined more to the state and ceremony of Old-World courts than to the extreme, almost bald, simplicity that came in with a later administration. The statement of that unknown “Virginia colonel” who said that General Washington’s “bows were more distant and stiff than anything he had seen at St. James’s” savors of probability, although disputed by some of his contemporaries, and Mr. Breck tells us that the President “had a stud of twelve or fourteen horses, and occasionally rode out to take the air with six horses to his coach, and always two footmen behind his carriage;” adding, “He knew how to maintain the dignity of his station. None of his successors, except the elder Adams, has placed a proper value on a certain degree of display that seems suitable for the chief magistrate of a great nation. I do not mean pageantry, but the decent exterior of a well-bred gentleman.” A President who thus realized all the dignity that his office implied naturally introduced a certain amount of form and ceremony into the social life of the capital, and when Mrs. Washington came from Mount Vernon, on the 27th of May, receptions were held at the old Franklin house on Cherry Street, whose like, for a certain state and fine aroma of old-time courtesy, we shall never see again. Those who, “with the earliest attention and respect, paid their devoirs to the amiable consort of our beloved President were,” says one of the newspapers of the time, “the Ladies of the Most Hon. Mr. Langdon [State Senator from New Hampshire] and the Most Hon. Mr. Dalton, the Mayoress [Mrs. James Duane], Mrs. Livingston of Clermont, Mrs. Chancellor Livingston, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. McComb, Mrs. Lynch, the Misses Bayard, and a great number of other respectable characters. Mrs. Washington from Philadelphia was accompanied by the Lady of Mr. Robert Morris.” We also learn that the President met his wife at Trenton, and that with a gayly-decorated and well-manned barge she made her journey to the seat of government.

Although we are not disposed to agree with the Chevalier de Crèvecœur, that “if there is a town on the American continent where English luxury displayed its follies, it was in New York,” Philadelphia, with Mrs. William Bingham as its social leader, having continued to assert its supremacy in this line, we are willing to believe that there was a fair amount of both folly and luxury in the national capital. This gentleman, Saint-John de Crèvecœur, sometime Consul-General at New York, was probably surprised to find anything approaching civilization in this city and country, as he exclaims, “You will find here the English fashions. In the dress of the women you will see the most brilliant silks, gauzes, hats, and borrowed hair.” It is amusing, in this connection, to note the French gentleman’s ideal of what a woman should be. He happened to be looking for a wife himself just then, and, like Solomon’s perfect woman, she was expected to look well to the ways of her household, to be skilled in the spinning of flax and the making of cheese and butter, and withal she was to have her mind cultivated a little, just enough to enable her to enjoy reading with her husband.

Mrs. William Smith, a less prejudiced observer than M. de Crèvecœur, in writing to her mother of a dinner at Chief Justice Jay’s which was served à la mode française, says that there was more fashion and state in New York than she would fancy. Brissot de Warville speaks of another dinner, this one at the house of Cyrus Griffin, at which seven or eight women appeared dressed in great hats and plumes. If the hats were as graceful and becoming as that worn by Mrs. John Jay in her portrait by Pine, we have no word of censure for those old-time beauties, although a plumed hat does seem a rather peculiar finish to a dinner costume, almost as odd as Mrs. William Smith’s elbow-sleeves, bare arms, and muff.

At her formal receptions, which Mr. Daniel Huntingdon has represented in his famous picture, Mrs. Washington stood with the Cabinet ladies around her, stately Mrs. Robert Morris by her side, herself the stateliest figure in the group. The President passed from guest to guest, exchanging a word with one and another, and pleasing all by the fine courtesy of his manner. The lovely ladies and the dignified gentlemen, many of the latter with powdered heads and bag-wigs, like his Excellency, trooped up by twos and threes to pay their respects to the first lady in the land. If around the Chief Magistrate were gathered the great men of the nation, those who, like John Adams, Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, had already impressed themselves deeply upon the past, and in connection with such younger minds as those of James Madison, Rufus King, Elbridge Gerry, and Oliver Ellsworth, the Cerberus of the Treasury, were destined to outline the serener history of the future, Mrs. Washington numbered in her Republican Court the noblest and most beautiful women in the land. Among these were many who, like her, had shared with their husbands the anxieties of the Revolutionary period,—notably, Mrs. General Knox, Mrs. Robert Morris, and Mrs. Adams,—while in a younger group were Mrs. Rufus King, who is described as singularly handsome, Mrs. Gerry, Mrs. George Clinton, Mrs. William Smith, John Adams’s daughter, Mrs. Walter Livingston, whom General Washington had once entertained, in rustic style, when encamped near New York, and, not the least attractive among these lovely dames, Mrs. John Jay, a daughter of Governor Livingston, who shared with Mrs. William Bingham, of Philadelphia, the distinction of being called the most beautiful and charming woman in America. Honors seem to have been easy between these two high-born dames, as both were beloved, admired, and fêted at home and abroad. The Marquise de Lafayette, who entertained a warm friendship for Mrs. Jay, said, with charming simplicity, that “Mrs. Jay and she thought alike, that pleasure might be found abroad, but happiness only at home.” All of Mrs. Jay’s portraits represent a face of such exquisite beauty that it is not difficult to imagine the furore she created at foreign and Republican courts.

Does there not seem to have been an indefinable charm of exquisiteness and dignity about these old-time dames, like the fragrance that surrounds some fine and stately exotic? They had abundant leisure to make their daily sacrifice to the graces, and they always appear before us in full toilette,—hair rolled or curled, slippers high of heel, and gown of stiff brocade or satin. We never catch these fair ladies en déshabille, nor do we desire to do so; their charm would as surely vanish before the inglorious ease of a loose morning gown and roomy slippers as does that of an American Indian when he divests himself of his war-paint and feathers. We read with equanimity of some of the belles of the period sitting all night with their pyramidal heads propped up against pillows, because the hair-dresser could not make his round without attending to some heads the night before the ball. This was “souffrir pour être belle” with a vengeance; yet, deeming it all in keeping with their stately elegance, for which they had to pay a price, we never stop to think of how their poor necks must have ached, choosing rather to dwell upon their triumphs when they entered the ball-room. We can hear Mr. Swanwick, or some other poet of the day, pay them the most extravagant compliments, while lamenting the void left by the absence of another fair one:

“Say why, amid the splendid rows
Of graceful belles and polish’d beaux,
Does not Markoe appear?
Has some intrusive pain dismay’d
From festive scenes the lov’ly maid,
Or does she illness fear?”

Is it possible that Markoe could not get her head dressed in time, and thus missed the ball? We wonder, and, wondering, lavish so much sympathy upon her for the pleasure she has lost that we forget to moralize upon the impropriety of Mr. Swanwick’s paying such exaggerated compliments, which would turn the head of any girl of to-day. We of this generation reverse the order of nature; like doting grandparents we enjoy the picturesque beauty of these stately ancestors, and, with never a thought of their higher good, retail their triumphs with enthusiasm, wishing that for one brief moment we could turn back and feel what they felt when their world was at their feet. It was a very small world, according to our ideas, but it was the largest that they knew, and it was all their own.

What a gay pageant that old social life seems as it passes before us! We almost forget that the picture is limned against the stern background of war, for it is one in which the shadows have all faded out, leaving only the bright colors upon the canvas. Let it remain so. Why should we weep over sorrows so long past? The sting has all gone from them, and surely there can no harm come to this generation from dwelling upon the beauty and grace of those fair ladies, who ruled society in New York a hundred years ago, or upon the bravery and strength of the noble men who gathered around them. Sic transit gloria mundi! cries the moralist; but the glory has not all passed away, as is proved by our lingering over it now, nor need it be quite effaced from the gay life of to-day, if hearts still beat as true under silk and broadcloth as did those of the fathers and mothers of the Republic beneath brocaded bodices and satin waistcoats.

FOOTNOTES:

[10] This house was the residence of Aaron Burr at the time of his duel with Alexander Hamilton.

[11] Mrs. Robinson’s statement that a carpet was spread from the wharf for the President to walk upon was authenticated, more than sixty years later, by an eyewitness of the scene. Dr. Atlee, in 1850, while substitute-resident at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, met a man of eighty-two who, when he learned that the young physician was named Walter Franklin Atlee, exclaimed at the coincidence, saying that he remembered having seen General Washington come up the river in a boat, and walk on a carpet to Walter Franklin’s house, where he and Mrs. Washington were to reside.

[12] “Lady Cathcart was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte. Peter Pindar celebrates her at Weymouth in connection with the king’s insensate manners:

‘Cæsar spies Lady Cathcart with a book;
He flies to know what ’tis—he longs to look.
“What’s in your hand, my lady? let me know?”—
“A book, an’t please your majesty?”—“Oho!
Book’s a good thing—good thing,—I like a book.
Very good thing, my lady,—let me look.
War of America! my lady, hae?
Bad thing, my lady! fling, fling that away.”’”

Life of Major John André, by Winthrop Sargent, p. 147.

[13] See Army List, 1778.

[14] This pleasantry on the part of the French minister seems to have been taken au sérieux by certain writers as pointing to some obscurity of origin, while the fact is substantiated by various authorities that Eléonore-François-Elie, Comte de Moustier, entered the diplomatic service at eighteen, and after representing his country at several foreign courts was twice offered the position of Minister of Foreign Affairs by Louis XVI.

[15] United States Gazette, May 9, 1789.

[16] It is interesting to turn from these Republican festivities to read in the journal of a Moravian minister, written in New York during the occupation of the British, of King’s and Queen’s “Birthnight Balls,” “Coronation Day” celebrations, and rejoicings over the arrival of “His Royal Highness, Prince William Henry, the third son of our dear King, an amiable young Prince, who gave satisfaction to all who saw him.”—Diary of Ewald Gustav Schaukirk.

[17] “The old Beekman house, built by James Beekman, and standing three miles from the City Hall in New York, was the scene of a number of interesting events. During the British possession of the city it was occupied by the commander-in-chief of their army, and one room at the head of a flight of stairs was occupied by Major André the night before proceeding up the river on his ill-fated expedition to West Point, while (strange providence) but a few yards distant still stands [1848] the green house where Captain Nathan Hale, of the American army, received his trial and condemnation as a spy.”—Jerome B. Holgate.

[18] Evidently referring to the Bee family of S. C.

American Philosophical Society

In none of his schemes and foundations did Dr. Franklin more signally display the breadth and catholicity of his mind than in his plan for the establishment, in the New World, of an association for the general diffusion of useful knowledge, to which the Old World should be tributary, and from which it should in time be recipient. With this end in view, he, in 1743, issued a proposal for the organization and government of an American Philosophical Society, whose object was to bring into correspondence with a central association in Philadelphia all scientists, philosophers, and inventors, on this continent and in Europe. Bold as was this scheme in its breadth and reach, in its smaller details it was marked by the practical characteristics of the projector. The Hamiltons and Franklins might “dream dreams and see visions” to the end of the chapter; but they would have framed no governments, or have founded no learned institutions destined to outlast the centuries, had not their ideality been well balanced by the strong common sense that Guizot calls “the genius of humanity.” It was this union of the ideal and the practical that caused Franklin to be so appreciated by the French. Mirabeau named him “the sage of two worlds,” with a larger grasp of thought than that of our own day, when he is still claimed, like the debatable baby brought to King Solomon, by two cities,—by Boston, in which he first saw the light, and by Philadelphia, in which he disseminated it so liberally.

Although there is a vast amount of documentary evidence to prove that the American Philosophical Society was the direct outcome of Franklin’s proposal of 1743, and that before the breaking out of the war with Great Britain it was an active and useful organization, having a large native and foreign membership, two of Dr. Franklin’s biographers have done but scant justice to his work in this direction. Professor McMaster, in his recent interesting life of Franklin as a man of letters, dismisses his proposal to establish such a society as a failure;[19] while Mr. Parton, after mentioning the fact of Franklin having founded the Philosophical Society, in accordance with his proposal of 1743, adds, “The society was formed, and continued in existence for some years. Nevertheless, its success was neither great nor permanent, for at that day the circle of men capable of taking much interest in science was too limited for the proper support of such an organization.”[20]

As both of these historians mention the Philosophical Society later, and Mr. Parton at some length in his Life of Jefferson, it is probable that they did not consider that this early society was identical with that which in 1767 took a fresh start, elected a number of influential members, and made for itself an enviable reputation in Europe and America, in the latter years of the century. Sparks and Bigelow, however, take what is, according to the historian of the society, Dr. Robert M. Patterson, a true view of the case, tracing it back, a continuous organization, to the proposal of Dr. Franklin issued in 1743. Indeed, they carry it back even further than this period, deriving it primarily from the old Junto of 1727. After describing the workings of the Junto, or Leather Apron Society, formed from among Franklin’s “ingenious acquaintance,” a sort of debating club of clever young men, Jared Sparks says, “Forty years after its establishment, it became the basis of the American Philosophical Society, of which Franklin was the first president, and the published Transactions of which have contributed to the advancement of science and the diffusion of valuable knowledge in the United States.”[21] As most of Franklin’s projects were discussed in the congenial circle that composed the Junto, this statement does not conflict with that of Dr. Patterson.

Dr. Franklin, in his proposal, gave a list of the subjects that were to claim the attention of these New World philosophers. It included “investigations in botany; in medicine; in mineralogy and mining; in chemistry; in mechanics; in arts, trades, and manufactures; in geography and topography; in agriculture;” and, lest something should have been left out of this rather comprehensive list of subjects, it was added that the association should “give its attention to all philosophical experiments that let light into the nature of things, tend to increase the power of man over matter, and multiply the conveniences or pleasures of life.” The duties of the secretary of the society were laid down, and were especially arduous, including much foreign correspondence, in addition to the correcting, abstracting, and methodizing of such papers as required it. This office Dr. Franklin took upon himself, saying, with a touch of modesty that seems a trifle strained, that he “would be secretary until they should be provided with one more capable.” He, however, tells us in the Autobiography that he one day added humility to his list of virtues at the suggestion of a Quaker friend, and this form of expression may have been one of his self-imposed exercises.

The Philosophical Society, once established, was destined to exert an important influence on American science, life, and letters. Among its members were literary men, statesmen, and artists, as well as scientists and inventors. Before its meetings were read learned papers on government, history, education, philanthropy, politics, religion, worship, above all, on common sense: these in addition to the numerous scientific papers, read and communicated, while among its eulogiums and oraisons funèbres, pronounced upon deceased members, are to be found compositions worthy of Bossuet.

As early as 1769, the society had members in the different colonies, in the Barbadoes, in Antigua, in Heidelberg and Stockholm; while in Edinburgh the distinguished Dr. William Cullen was a member, in London Dr. John Fothergill, and in Paris the learned Count de Buffon. At home it numbered such men as Francis Hopkinson, statesman and writer of prose and poetry; Dr. Phineas Bond and his brother Thomas, both original members; Dr. Adam Kuhn and Daniel Dulany, of Maryland. Upon these early lists we find Pierre Eugène du Simitière, who was one of the committee appointed to prepare a design for a national seal; Benjamin West; John Dickinson, who was writing his “Farmer’s Letters,” destined to make him known on both sides of the sea; and John Bartram, botanist to his majesty, who planted his celebrated botanical garden near Gray’s Ferry, and built with his own hands the house, above the study window of which is his devout confession of faith:

“’Tis God Alone, Almighty Lord,
The Holy One, by me Adored.

John Bartram, 1770.”

A pioneer in this field, he is recognized as the greatest of American botanists, and, contrary to the rule generally proved by great men’s sons, had the satisfaction of seeing his studies successfully prosecuted by his son, William Bartram, who also contributed original papers to the society.

Writing in 1744 to the Honorable Cadwallader Colden, Lieutenant-Governor of New York, a distinguished scientist and original worker in certain lines, Dr. Franklin says,—

“Happening to be in this City about some particular Affairs, I have the Pleasure of receiving yours of the 28ᵗʰ past, here. And can now acquaint you, that a Society, as far as relates to Philadelphia, is actually formed, and has had several Meetings to mutual Satisfaction;—assoon [sic] as I get home, I shall send you a short Acct. of what has been done and proposed at these meetings.”

Here follows a list of members from Philadelphia, New York, and New Jersey, to which the writer adds,—

“Mr. Nicholls tells me of several other Gentlemen of this City [New York] that incline to encourage the Thing.—There are a Number of others in Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, and the New England States who we expect to join us assoon [sic] as they are acquainted that the Society has begun to form itself. I am, Sir, with much respect,

“Your most humᵉ sevᵗ

“B. Franklin.”[22]

The Honorable Cadwallader Colden was one of the original members of the American Philosophical Society, and took an active interest in its establishment and advance. He and Dr. Franklin were intimate friends, and in the habit of communicating to each other their scientific discoveries. It was Dr. Colden who introduced into the study of botany in America the system of Linnæus.

One of the founders and the first president of this society was Mr. Thomas Hopkinson, whom Dr. Franklin called his “ingenious friend,” and to whom he acknowledges his indebtedness for demonstrating “the power of points to throw off the electrical fire.” Another “ingenious friend,” to whom he makes no profound acknowledgment, was the Rev. Ebenezer Kinnersley, a professor in the College of Philadelphia, to whom it is now generally conceded that Franklin owed much of his success in important electrical discoveries. Mr. Parton says that, in 1748, “Mr. Kinnersley contrived the amusing experiment of the magical picture. A figure of his majesty King George II. (‘God preserve him,’ says the loyal Franklin, in parenthesis, when telling the story) was so arranged that any one who attempted to take his crown from his head received a tremendous shock.” By this clever contrivance Mr. Kinnersley proves himself something of a prophet as well as a scientist, for notwithstanding the violent shock received by the friends of royalty in the colonies, a few years later, it was conclusively demonstrated that the crown could be taken off.

In drawing up rules for the government of the Philosophical Society, Dr. Franklin advises that correspondence be maintained not only between the central organization and its members in the different colonies, but with the Royal Society of London and the Dublin Society. Thus persons residing in remote districts of the United States would be placed in direct communication with the latest discoveries of Old World scientists in all their lines of work. What such correspondence meant to men of intelligence, living far from the centres of education and enlightenment, in those days of few books and fewer magazines and journals, it is impossible for us to imagine. Many years later, when the French botanist, André Michaux, was appointed by his government to examine the trees of this continent, with a view to their introduction into France, he carried letters from the Philosophical Society to one of its members, living in Lexington, Kentucky.

“During my stay at Lexington,” Michaux writes, “I frequently saw Dr. Samuel Brown, from Virginia, a physician of the College of Edinburgh, and a member of the Philosophical Society.... Receiving regularly the scientific journals from London, he is always in the channel of new discoveries, and turns them to the advantage of his fellow-citizens. It is to him that they are indebted for the introduction of the cow-pox. He had at that time inoculated upwards of five hundred persons in Kentucky, when they were making their first attempts in New York and Philadelphia.”

Agreeable as it must have been to Michaux to find flowers of science blooming in these western wilds, we can imagine the even greater delight that such a man as Dr. Brown must have experienced in meeting and conversing with this foreigner, fresh from Old World haunts of learning, with his interesting budget of news, political as well as scientific. Those were the exciting days of the Consulate in France, when Lord Nelson was gaining victories for England in the Northern seas; and we can picture to ourselves these two learned gentlemen, seated before a great fire of logs, with a steaming bowl of punch, made from the famous Kentucky apple-jack beside them, turning away from the paths of science to discuss Napoleon’s victories, the coalition against England, and the assassination of the Emperor Paul in Russia, which was followed by a treaty between his successor and the English sovereign.

American science must have been in a condition of encouraging activity between 1750 and 1767, for in those years there were no less than three societies in Philadelphia whose aims and pursuits were in the main identical,—the promotion of useful knowledge and the drawing together of its votaries. These societies were a second Junto, of which the indefatigable Dr. Franklin was a member, the American Philosophical Society, and the American Society. This division in the ranks of science probably arose from the feeling existing between the adherents of the Penn family and those averse to them; these parties being as violently opposed to each other as were, later, Federalist and Democratic-Republican; or, still later, the Whig and Democratic parties. Happily for the historian, who is sadly confused by Juntos and Juntolings, and by American Societies which were philosophical, and Philosophical Societies which were also American, these different bodies showed a disposition to unite, and in 1769 were incorporated into one society, under the title of American Philosophical Society, held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge. This title proving a trifle “unhandy for every-day use,” to borrow the phraseology of a patriotic farmer’s wife, who bestowed upon one of her offspring the entire heading of the Republican ticket in 1860, “Abraham Lincoln Hannibal Hamlin,” it has gradually been abbreviated into the American Philosophical Society, there being now no other.

Of this united society Dr. Franklin was elected president, the first of an honorable line of presidents, whose portraits adorn the walls of the old rooms on Fifth Street, where the philosophers met more than a hundred years ago. The society obtained a grant of land from the State of Pennsylvania in 1785, and in 1787 its hall was completed, the one still used, in whose sunshiny rooms are now gathered the relics, the treasures, and the memories of a century. Here is the old chair on whose broad arm Jefferson wrote the Declaration, and here are autograph letters and autographs of such value as to fill the soul of the collector with “envy, hatred, and malice, and all uncharitableness.” On one side of the hall is the well-known and most characteristic portrait of Dr. Franklin,[23] in his blue coat, large wig, and spectacles, while near by is his marble effigy by Houdon, whose statue of Washington bears the proud inscription, “Fait par Houdon, citoyen Français.”

Dr. Franklin was annually elected president of the society, Dr. Thomas Cadwalader officiating during his residence abroad. Brissot de Warville, coming to Philadelphia in 1788, exclaims, with devoutness rare in a Frenchman, “Thanks be to God, he still exists! This great man, for so many years the preceptor of the Americans, who so gloriously contributed to their independence; death had threatened his days, but our fears are dissipated, and his health is restored.” Two years later the same chronicler records, “Franklin has enjoyed this year the blessing of death, for which he waited so long a time.”

As president of the Philosophical Society, he was succeeded, in 1791, by Dr. Rittenhouse, the greatest American astronomer, of whom Jefferson said, “We have supposed Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living; in genius he must be first, because he is self-taught.” It was he who contributed to the society the first purely scientific paper in its series of Transactions, a calculation on the transit of Venus. He also described a wonderful orrery, which represented the revolution of the heavenly bodies more completely than it had ever been done before, and which he had himself constructed at the age of twenty-three. In June, 1769, he made observations on the transit of Venus. “The whole horizon was without a cloud,” says Rittenhouse, in his report of this event; and so greatly excited was the young astronomer that, in the instant of one of the contacts of the planet with the sun, he actually fainted with emotion. Rittenhouse’s interesting report on this phenomenon, which had never been seen but twice before by any inhabitant of the earth, was received with satisfaction by learned and scientific men everywhere. Those who visit the hall of the society to-day may look out upon the State-House yard from the same window through which Rittenhouse made his observations, and note the passing hours upon the face of a clock constructed by his hands, which, the curator says, “still keeps good time.”

Prominent among the portraits of early officers is an interesting picture of Thomas Jefferson, who was third president of the Philosophical Society, as well as of the United States. This painting, which well portrays the intellectual and spirited face of the original, was executed at Monticello by Mr. Sully, who was invited there for this purpose. Jefferson, who would have been a great scientist had he not been called upon by his country to use his powers as a statesman, naturally took a warm interest in the Philosophical Society, and was a member long before he was made its president in 1797. While abroad he disputed the arguments of the learned Count de Buffon on the degeneracy of American animals, and finally made his position secure by sending the astonished Frenchman the bones, skin, and horns of an enormous New Hampshire moose. Equally convincing was this, and more agreeable than the manner in which Dr. Franklin answered a similar argument on the degeneracy of American men, by making all the Americans at table, and all the Frenchmen, stand up. As those of his compatriots present happened to be fine specimens physically, towering above the little Gauls, the good doctor had the argument all his own way.

It seemed, indeed, as if these two great men, who so harmoniously combined the ideal and the practical, were born to prove to the world that genius of the highest order, in science, letters, and statecraft, is not incompatible with the same sort of ability that is essential to the success of a Western farmer or a skilled mechanic. Hence, if Dr. Franklin employed his leisure hours in inventing an improved stove, or explaining to the Philosophical Society why certain chimneys smoked; Mr. Jefferson used his in designing a plough, for which he received a gold medal from France, and in calculating the number of bushels of wheat to the acre, at Monticello. One day, he is interesting himself in the importation of seed-rice from Italy, from the Levant, and from Egypt; while on another, he is helping the Philosophical Society to frame instructions for the guidance of André Michaux in his Western explorations. It was life that interested them both,—life in the smaller details that affect home comfort, as well as in the broader issues that bear upon the happiness of states and nations. In Mr. Jefferson’s minute directions regarding the education of his daughters, and in his grasp of the details of farming, we recognize the same sort of practical common sense that so eminently distinguished Dr. Franklin, of whom his latest biographer says, in his own forcible and epigrammatic style,—“Whatever he has said on domestic economy, or thrift, is sound and striking. No other writer has left so many just and original observations on success in life. No other writer has pointed out so clearly the way to obtain the greatest amount of comfort out of life. What Solomon did for the spiritual man, that did Franklin for the earthly man. The book of Proverbs is a collection of receipts for laying up treasure in heaven. ‘Poor Richard’ is a collection of receipts for laying up treasure on earth.”[24]

In addition to its regular meetings for business and for scientific purposes, the Philosophical Society had its gala days, its annual dinners, and its especial receptions and entertainments given to distinguished strangers. Hither, in 1794, came the Rev. Joseph Priestley, of Birmingham, counted in France too devout for a scientist, and in England too broad for the clergy. As the discoverer of oxygen, the friend of Franklin, whose experiments in electricity he had described, and a devotee to the cause of liberty, Dr. Priestley was warmly welcomed by the Philosophical Society, which not only received him into its own learned brotherhood, but adopted him into American citizenship. This first reception was followed by a dinner given by the learned coterie in honor of Dr. Priestley.

Many anecdotes of these old dinners have been handed down, showing that when the good philosophers put science aside they could be as lively raconteurs and bons vivants as the world has ever seen. On such festive occasions, the witty old Abbé Correa de Serra, Judge Peters, Mr. Du Ponceau, Dr. Caspar Wistar, Mr. John Vaughan, and later, Robert Walsh, LL.D., and the Honorable William Short of Virginia, both most delightful talkers, George Ord, William Strickland the architect, and the ever-ready wits Dr. Nathaniel Chapman and Nicholas Biddle, gathered around the board.

Of Judge Peters’s clever sayings we find numerous records. As he grew older, his sharp nose and chin approached each other closely. A friend observed to him, one day, that his nose and chin would soon be at loggerheads. “Very likely,” he replied, “for hard words often pass between them.” Once, while he was Speaker of the House of Assembly, one of the members, in crossing the room, tripped on the carpet and fell flat. The House burst into laughter, while the judge, with the utmost gravity, cried, “Order, order, gentlemen! Do you not see that a member is on the floor?” Unceremonious, communicative, friendly, Judge Peters was the life of every circle that he entered; correcting Mayor Wharton at a dinner when he called to the waiter, “John, more wine,” saying that it was a demijohn that he needed, while he himself “drank like a fish,” as he expressed it, from his goblet of water, requiring no artificial aid to brighten wits that were always keen and scintillating.

Mr. George Ord, who was a delightful raconteur as well as a learned naturalist, took great pleasure in relating a story of his friend Dr. Abercrombie, a fellow-member of the society. Dr. James Abercrombie, sometime rector of Christ and St. Peter’s Churches, was a divine of the old school, who despised not the good things of this lower world while engaged in preparation for those of the higher. Once, while on a pastoral visit to the small town of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where an Episcopal church had been established, Dr. Abercrombie was regaled with some very fine old Madeira wine, which he drank with evident appreciation, and probably some surprise at finding anything so choice in that region of the country. The next day, according to Mr. Ord’s story, the good parson chose for his text that most appropriate verse from the Acts of the Apostles, in which St. Paul says, “And the barbarous people showed us no little kindness.”

Another clerical member of the learned fraternity was William White, one of our early American bishops, who was an ardent patriot and a genial companion, as well as the most devout of churchmen. A warm friend of Benjamin West, the artist, Bishop White was fond of telling how he helped West to secure his bride, Miss Betty Shewell. Mr. West was in England, and so busy painting for the court and royal family that he could not come over to America to marry his fiancée; but, as his father was about to sail for England, he wrote to Miss Shewell, begging her to join his father, and make the voyage with him. Miss Shewell’s brother, who was averse to the match, chiefly because West was an impecunious genius, put a stop to the proceedings by confining the fair bride-elect in an upper room. Bishop White, then a very young man, Dr. Franklin, and Mr. Francis Hopkinson determined to help on the “course of true love” by facilitating Miss Shewell’s escape to the ship, which was waiting for her at Chester. This they did by means of a romantic rope-ladder and a carriage around the corner. Miss Shewell with her maid reached the ship in good time, and a few weeks after was married to Benjamin West in the English chapel of St. Martin’s-in-the-Fields. In telling this story, the kindly bishop was wont to add, gleefully, “Ben was a good fellow, and deserved a good wife, and I would do the same thing over again to-day,”—a sentiment, we may be sure, that was greeted with applause by the gravest of the philosophers, they being no exception to the rule that “all the world loves a lover.” An active member of the society, and for years one of its counsellors, Bishop White was present on all important occasions, grave or gay. Having known General Washington and the other great men of the Revolution, and met and conversed with Samuel Johnson while in England, his was one of the few familiar faces that greeted the Marquis de Lafayette when he revisited America in 1824.

Another face to be seen for many successive years at the meetings of the society, and at its annual dinners, was that of Peter S. Du Ponceau, the French lawyer and philologist, who lived here for so many years. He has left behind him pictures of some of his learned associates that prove to us that these gentlemen, whose faces look down upon us gravely from century-old portraits, were, on occasions, as full of quips and quirks and fun and frolic as the most jovial collegian of our day. Of his frequent journeys to Washington to attend the sessions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in company with Mr. Ingersoll, Mr. William Rawle, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Edward Tilghman, he says,—

“As soon as we were out of the city and felt the flush of air, we were like school-boys in the playground on a holiday; and we began to kill time by all the means that our imagination could suggest. Flashes of wit shot their coruscations on all sides; puns of the genuine Philadelphia stamp were handed about; old college stories were revived; macaroni Latin was spoken with great purity; songs were sung,—even classical songs, among which I recollect the famous Bacchanalian of the Archdeacon of Oxford, Mihi est propositum in tabernâ mori; in short, we might have been taken for anything else but the grave counsellors of the celebrated bar of Philadelphia.”

Mr. Du Ponceau it is who is accredited with the well-known story of the lawyer whose client came in and deposed that “his brother had died and made a will.” A gentleman who read law with the facetious Frenchman relates that it was only when a fee was placed in Mr. Du Ponceau’s hand that he translated the phrase into, “Ah! you mean that your brother made a will and died.” We can imagine the laugh with which the philosophers would greet this most practical of jokes.

Quite as celebrated as the dinners of the society were Mr. John Vaughan’s breakfasts, which held the same prominence in the social life of the time as Dr. Wistar’s evening parties or as the Sunday afternoon vespers of Mr. Henry C. Carey, where, during the late war, and after its close, soldiers, politicians, statesmen, and civilians met together and discussed the great issues and events that shook the nation from 1860 to 1865. So at Mr. Vaughan’s breakfasts were discussed the agitating questions of the last decade of the century, Federalists and Democratic-Republicans, as they were beginning to be called, meeting together around his hospitable board. Mr. Vaughan himself was a Federalist, although not a violent partisan. Riding, one day, with Mr. Jefferson, his horse became unmanageable, disturbing somewhat Mr. Vaughan’s serenity, upon which the latter, gathering his reins firmly, muttered under his breath, “This horse—this horse is as bad as a Democrat!” “Oh, no,” replied the high-priest and leader of the party; “if he were a Democrat, he would have thrown you long ago.” Mr. Vaughan, for many years librarian and treasurer of the society, had his rooms in the building on Fifth Street, in one of which, before its generous old-fashioned fireplace and high carved mantel, Washington sat for his well-known portrait by the elder Peale. The general, whom Mr. Vaughan numbered among his friends, had already been elected a member of the society; but we find few records of his presence at its meetings or at the famous breakfasts. One of these breakfasts, given in the latter years of Mr. Vaughan’s life, is still remembered by Dr. William H. Furness, then a young man, recently come from New England to take charge of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. The breakfast lasted from nine until one. Whether the guests breakfasted upon roast peacocks and nightingales’ tongues, or upon plain beefsteak and chops, Dr. Furness does not remember; but he will never forget the circle gathered around that table. There were John Quincy Adams, Colonel Drayton of South Carolina, Mr. Du Ponceau, and Dr. Channing, who exercised such an influence on the religious thought of New England, and of whom the orthodox clergy were wont to say that his theology was “Calvinism with the bones taken out.” A goodly company of leading minds, “joined later,” says Dr. Furness, by Albert Gallatin and the Rev. William Ware, pastor of the First Unitarian Church in New York. Among other visitors of note entertained by Mr. Vaughan were Sir Charles Lyell, and George Robins Gliddon, the Egyptologist, who were both in this country about 1841.

Mr. John Vaughan, whose most distinguishing trait was love for his fellow-men, whom, it was said, he took more delight in serving than most men take in making and hoarding dollars, belonged to a family distinguished in statesmanship, letters, and affairs. The Vaughan brothers were of English birth, sons of Samuel Vaughan, a London merchant trading with America. The most prominent of this large family was Benjamin Vaughan, M.D., LL.D., sometime secretary to Lord Shelburne, and acting as confidential messenger in the peace negotiations between Great Britain and America in 1783. Deeply tinctured with the revolutionary spirit of the time, a liberal to the extent of admiring the system of the Directory in France, and writing in favor of it, Benjamin Vaughan finally found it expedient to quit the Old World for the more congenial political atmosphere of the New. He settled in Hallowell, Maine, as did his brother Charles, where descendants of the name still reside. The death of Dr. Benjamin Vaughan, of Hallowell, was announced to the society in 1836, and Mr. Merrick, his kinsman, was appointed to prepare a notice of him. Another brother, Samuel, settled in Jamaica; William, the successful banker of the family, remained in London; while John, one of the younger brothers, came to Philadelphia, where he established himself as a wine merchant, and a prominent member of the First Unitarian Church. Generous to a fault, “Johnny Vaughan,” as his intimates were wont to call him, seems to have objected to parting with but one single earthly possession,—his umbrella. A lady who knew Mr. Vaughan when he was a very old gentleman remembers one of flaming red, whose color should have insured its staying qualities. A story is also told of his having printed on the outside of another one in large characters, “This umbrella was stolen from John Vaughan.” One day a friend of Mr. Vaughan’s started off with this umbrella, and, quite unconscious of its equivocal inscription, hoisted it in broad day. Mr. Vaughan’s Portuguese office boy, who could speak or read no English, but who knew the umbrella, and what the printing stood for, chanced to meet the gentleman who carried it, and with speechless but entire devotion to his master’s interests followed it, and “froze on to it,” as the narrator expressed it, with such persistency that the holder was fain to relinquish it and make his escape from the jeers of the by-standers.

It was over such a circle of learned men and beaux-esprits that Mr. Jefferson was called to preside, when he came to Philadelphia, in 1797, to act as Vice-President of the United States in an uncongenial Federal administration. It is not strange that, with his scholarly and scientific tastes, he found in the rooms of the Philosophical Society a grateful retreat from political wrangling and the cares of state. Party feeling ran so high, at this period, that “social intercourse between members of the two parties ceased,” says Mr. Parton, “and old friends crossed the street to avoid saluting one another. Jefferson declined invitations to ordinary social gatherings, and spent his leisure hours in the circle that met in the rooms of the Philosophical Society.” Not that its membership was Republican, many of its prominent members being Federalists; notably, Dr. Benjamin Rush, Chief Justice Tilghman, Judge Peters, Jared Ingersoll, who was Federalist candidate for the Vice-Presidency of the United States in 1812, Dr. Robert Patterson, and Mr. Du Ponceau. This was a place, however, where science, art, and literature occupied the ground and where politics and party differences were forgotten in the discussion of some subject that touched the general weal, as when Dr. Caspar Wistar discovered a new bone; or Robert Patterson presented a paper on improved ship-pumps; or Jonathan Williams one on a new mode of refining sugar; or when John Fitch exhibited “the model, with a drawing and description, of a machine for working a boat against the stream by means of a steam-engine;” or, later, when Mr. Charles Goodyear was induced, by Franklin Peale, to demonstrate to the society that vulcanized rubber could be made from the juice of the cahuchu tree. And here, as if to prove that science and religion may be allied in closest union, came two distinguished Moravian divines, John Heckewelder and the Rev. Lewis D. de Schweinitz, the latter with his “Synopsis Fungorum in America.”

John Adams, the Federalist President, was a member of the Philosophical Society, and speaks of it with warm admiration. Comparing Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, he says, in one of his letters to his wife,—

“Particular gentlemen here [in Philadelphia], who have improved upon their education by travel, shine; but in general old Massachusetts outshines her younger sisters. Still, in several particulars they have more wit than we. They have societies, the Philosophical Society particularly, which excites a scientific emulation, and propagates their fame. If ever I get through this scene of politics and war, I will spend the remainder of my days in endeavoring to instruct my countrymen in the art of making the most of their abilities and virtues, an art which they have hitherto too much neglected. A philosophical society shall be established at Boston, if I have wit and address enough to accomplish it, some time or other. Pray, set Brother Cranch’s philosophical head plodding upon this project. Many of his lucubrations would have been published and preserved for the benefit of mankind, and for his honor, if such a club had existed.”

Mr. Madison, who was far more congenial to Mr. Jefferson, politically, than the sturdy New Englander, had been for years a member of the society; but he was out of office now, and living quietly at his rural home in Orange County, Virginia. It was during his residence here, in 1794, that the sprightly widow, who afterwards became his wife, writes of her first meeting with “the great little Madison.” She tells us, in her charming letters, that Aaron Burr brought him to see her. On this occasion she wore “a mulberry-colored satin, with a silk tulle kerchief over her neck, and on her head an exquisitely dainty little cap, from which an occasional uncropped curl would escape.”

These were still days of picturesque dressing, with both men and women. “Jeffersonian simplicity” had not yet come in, in full force. Watson, the annalist, describes Mr. Jefferson, a few years earlier, in “a long-waisted white cloth coat, scarlet breeches and vest, a cocked hat, shoes and buckles, and white silk hose,”—an elegant figure, the life and centre of the group of men gathered together in the society’s rooms on Fifth Street. The great Rittenhouse had, in 1797, set forth upon a wider range among the stars; but Dr. Benjamin Rush was there,—physician, scientist, philanthropist, and statesman, a host in himself. His kindly face and the recollections of his contemporaries tell us that he was a pleasant companion, with all his learning, which cannot always be said of the learned ones of the earth. There also was the Rev. William Smith, first provost of the University of Pennsylvania, a man of science as well as an able divine; Dr. Barton, nephew of Dr. Rittenhouse, an original worker, who contributed largely to the scientific literature of the day, and gave to Americans their first elementary treatise on botany; and Dr. Caspar Wistar, the learned physician and genial companion, who not only enriched the society by his own work and teachings, but by his correspondence with Humboldt and Soemmering in Germany, Camper in Holland, Sylvester in Geneva, Pole and Hope in Great Britain, and many more of that ilk, kept its members en rapport with scientific work abroad. Dr. Wistar succeeded Dr. Rush as President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, which early uttered its protest against slavery. Nor was Dr. Wistar solely interested in the cause of the negro; that of the American Indian, which we are wont to regard as one of the latest fads in the philanthropic world, also engaged his attention at this early date.

Dr. Wistar was elected president of the Philosophical Society on the resignation of Mr. Jefferson, in 1815. Some years prior to this, Dr. Wistar introduced to its circle the Baron von Humboldt, whom he invited to that smaller coterie of learned men, at his own house, which composed the Wistar Club. A gala day it must have been at the Philosophical Society when it opened its doors to this greatest naturalist of his time, perhaps of any time. The Baron von Humboldt was returning from an extended tour in South America, Mexico, and the West Indies. His young friends Montufar and Bonpland were with him,—the same Bonpland who later gave the Empress Josephine flower-seeds from the West Indies to plant at Malmaison, who became her intendant there, and who stood by her bedside when she was dying.

Another attractive figure in this group of learned men is William Tilghman, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, the sound lawyer, ripe scholar, and true gentleman, as his biographer calls him. Perhaps the highest praise we can award to him now is to record that, although Southern born and owning slaves, he expressed, with regard to slavery, a “fervent wish to see the evils of this institution mitigated, and if possible extinguished,” freeing his own slaves by a plan of gradual emancipation. Mr. Tilghman was connected through his mother, Anne Francis, with the supposed author of the Letters of Junius; and, curiously enough, the strongest evidence yet found that the letters were written by Sir Philip Francis has come through correspondence with his American relatives. Interesting as is all that relates to this literary puzzle of more than a century, the incident that led to the recent discoveries is like a conte de fées, turning upon some anonymous verses sent to a lady at Bath, in which she is told that

“In the School of the Graces, by Venus attended,
Belinda improves every hour.”

The fair “Belinda,” Miss Giles in every-day life, is quite sure that the clever verses came from Sir Philip Francis, who danced with her through a whole evening at Bath. In fact, she recognized the handwriting of some of Woodfall’s fac-similes of the letters of Junius. She has an anonymous note that accompanied the verses, which is, she thinks, very like the Junius handwriting. The investigation becomes exciting; the experts, Messrs. Chabot and Netherclift, study the note and verses profoundly, and finally come to the conclusion that Junius might have written the note, but not the verses. The Hon. Edward Twisleton is deeply interested in the search, and is loath to give up this promising leading, when lo! there comes from over the sea a letter, nearly a hundred years old, in which Richard Tilghman, in Philadelphia, writes to his cousin, Sir Philip Francis,—

“You are very tenacious of your epigram. I observe you contend for it, as if your reputation as a Poet depended on it. I did not condemn the Composition, I only said that it was not an Original, and I say so still; but yet I am ready to allow that you can weave Originals, because in the School of the Graces by Venus attended, Belinda improves every Hour.”

Was not this a coincidence? The Franciscans were delighted, especially as the experts were ready to affirm that the handwriting of the verses was that of Richard Tilghman, and that it was evident that he had copied the verses for Sir Philip. As if to make all complete, it was found that Richard Tilghman was at Bath, with his kinsman, at the time the verses were sent. Nothing, that has not been absolutely proven, has ever come closer to proof, and so it remains the Tantalus cup of the littérateur, although there are many who find the evidence quite conclusive that Francis and Junius were one and the same.

Charles Willson Peale, the artist, known as the elder Peale, was curator of the Philosophical Society for many years, and one of its most active members. He did good work in many lines, being a man of scientific tastes and large public spirit. The society owes him a debt of gratitude for handing down to this generation portraits of its most illustrious officers and members. Mr. Peale rented a number of rooms in the old house on Fifth Street, having his museum in the building, and bringing up there his family of artist children, Raphael, Rembrandt, Titian, Van-dyck, and Rubens,—names still known in American art, that of Rembrandt being the most distinguished. In 1796 Mr. Peale presented to the assembled philosophers a son four months and four days old, born in the building, requesting them to name him. The society, upon this, unanimously agreed that the child should be called Franklin, after their chief founder and first president. “Franklin Peale,” says his biographer, “did not disgrace his sponsors. He grew up thoughtful and philosophical.” His genius was in the mechanical line. He was one of the founders of the Franklin Institute, and for many years discharged with great ability the office of chief coiner at the United States Mint.

One of Mr. Peale’s friends, who became an active and valued member of the society, was the learned Abbé de Serra, Portuguese Minister to the United States. This reverend gentleman scandalized Mrs. Peale, whose neatness was phenomenal, by appearing at her door so dusty and shabby (he was not a handsome man at his best) that the dainty Quakeress waved him away from her spotless threshold, saying, “No, my good man, I have no time to attend to you now;” little thinking that the “good man” was the expected guest in whose honor she had donned her best satin gown, and prepared a savory repast, whose crowning triumph was a dish of asparagus from Mr. Peale’s garden, then a greater rarity than now. The Abbé had been on a geological tramp with Mr. Peale, and when that gentleman rallied his wife on treating his friend and guest like a beggar, the excellent lady justified herself by saying that, after all, he could not be much of a gentleman, as he “helped himself to the asparagus with his fingers;” eating it, of course, after the French fashion.

Another habitué of Mr. Peale’s house, and a frequent attendant at the meetings of the society, was Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Prince de Canino. He was the nephew and son-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, and while in America resided in a house on the estate of his uncle, near Bordentown, New Jersey. This young prince pursued his studies in ornithology in the United States, making important contributions to the works of Wilson. A man of wide scientific knowledge, and a member of nearly all the learned societies of Europe, the Prince de Canino gave a decided impulse to the study of natural history in Italy, which was his home, and while in Philadelphia was an active and interested member of the Philosophical Society, contributing original papers and making valuable donations of books to its library.

A few women of distinguished ability have been, early and late, members of the Philosophical Society: notably Mary Somerville, the English astronomer; Professor Maria Mitchell, of Vassar; Mrs. Louis Agassiz, and Madame Emma Seiler. The earliest woman member was the Russian Princess Daschkof, lady-in-waiting to the Empress Catherine II. A great traveller, for those days, the princess profited by all that she saw and heard in the countries which she visited. A student and an observer, the friend of Diderot in France, and associating in Edinburgh with such men as Dr. Blair, Adam Smith, and Ferguson, she returned to Russia to become director of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and later to establish another academy for the improvement and cultivation of the Russian language. Of the manner in which the news of her election to the Philosophical Society reached her, the princess says,—

“I was at my country house, and was not a little surprised on hearing that a messenger from the council of state wished to see me. The case and letter were introduced, the former of which contained a large packet from Dr. Franklin, and the letter a very complimentary communication on the part of the Duke of Sudermania. These despatches,” says the princess, “were sent without any examination,” and it was necessary to explain their nature at once to the despotic Catherine. “Accordingly I drove to town,” adds the princess, “or rather straight to court; and on entering the Empress’s dressing-room I told the valet de chambre in waiting that if her majesty was not then engaged I should be happy in having permission to speak to her, and to show her some papers which I had that morning received. The Empress desired I might be shown into her bed-chamber, where I found her writing at a little table. Having delivered into her hands the letter of the Duke of Sudermania, ‘These others, madame,’ said I, ‘are from Dr. Franklin and from the secretary of the Philosophical Society of Philadelphia, of which I have been admitted a most unworthy member.’” The Empress made no comment on this matter; but after reading the letter of the duke, desired the princess not to answer his grace’s complimentary effusion. She had no objection, it appears, to a correspondence between the princess and the octogenarian Franklin, on the other side of the sea; but with the Duke of Sudermania it was quite a different affair. The duke was a brother of the King of Sweden, there was a coolness between the courts of Russia and Sweden, and, to complicate matters, his grace had admired the princess at Aix and Spa, who, with all her vast experience of life and long years of widowhood, was only a little over forty, and speaks herself of her beaux yeux.

From the time of the election of the Princess Daschkof, in 1789, the society has always had a Russian membership, generally from among the members of the St. Petersburg Academy. In 1864 it was presented with a superb copy of the Codex Sinaiticus, published in St. Petersburg in 1862, from the parchment rolls found by Tischendorf in the monastery of St. Catharine on Mount Sinai.

A day never to be forgotten by the members of the Philosophical Society—and there are some persons living whose memory runs back to that period—was that upon which the Marquis de Lafayette was welcomed to its hall, on his return to America in 1824. No words can more fitly describe the emotions of the hour, certainly none can bring back more perfectly the aroma of that olden time adulation, than the address of welcome pronounced, on this occasion, by Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll:

“America does not forget the romantic forthcoming of the most generous, consistent, and heroic of the knights of the old world to the rescue of the new. She has always dwelt delighted on the constancy of the nobleman who could renounce titles and wealth for more historical and philanthropic honors; the commander renouncing power, who never shed a drop of blood for conquest or vainglory. She has often trembled, but never blushed, for her oriental champion, when tried by the alternate caresses and rage of the most terrific mobs, and imposing monarchs. She knows that his hospitable mansion was the shrine at which her citizens in France consecrated their faith in independence. Invited to revisit the scenes of his first eminence, the very idolatry of welcome abounds with redeeming characteristics of self-government.... They raise him before the world as its image, and bear him through illuminated cities and widely-cultivated regions, all redolent with festivity and every device of hospitality and entertainment, where, when their independence was declared, there was little else than wilderness and war.”

Could tongue or pen say more?

An old Philadelphia lady, who, in her youth, had the honor of walking to church with Lafayette, vividly recalls her keen disappointment when she first saw him,—short and stout, not by any means the typical hero of her romantic dreams. His son, George Washington Lafayette, was with him, and at a dinner given him, when called upon to respond to a toast, arose, and, struggling with his emotion and his feeble command of English, placed his hand upon his heart, and said, “I am zo happy to be ze son of my fadder!”—words which so touched the sympathetic chord in the hearts of all present that they felt that the entire vocabulary of the language could have furnished him with no more fitting phrase.

Among later members of the society have been such men as Noah Webster, Josiah Quincy, Washington Irving, Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic explorer, the Count de Lesseps, Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes, George Bancroft, the historian, James Russell Lowell, and the two great naturalists, Louis Agassiz, and Joseph Leidy, both of whom, with their vast learning, retained through life a childlike frankness and simplicity that endeared them to all who approached them. Those who met Professor Agassiz by the sea, during his vacation seasons, and heard from his own lips of the wonders of the shore, and those who listened to a popular lecture of Dr. Leidy, in which he described the life and customs of the minute creatures to be found in a drop of pond water, will always rejoice that it was their privilege to journey even a little way into the fairy-land of science with such masters for their guides. Of the pleasure and profit of a more thorough penetration into its mysteries and enchantments under such preceptors, those who were fortunate enough to be numbered among the students of Agassiz and Leidy speak with enthusiasm.

The Philosophical Society, grown gray and venerable, now celebrates, May, 1893, its one hundred and fiftieth birthday. Although numbering a large corps of native and foreign members, working in various branches of knowledge, and contributing to its regularly issued publications valuable papers, the present fraternity feel that the society’s proudest claim to distinction lies in the fact that it fostered literature, science, and invention in the young nation, and thus became the alma mater of many institutions that have gone forth from its protecting arms to become, in their turn, centres of light and usefulness.

FOOTNOTES:

[19] Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, by John Bach McMaster, p. 137.

[20] Life of Benjamin Franklin, by James Parton, vol. i. p. 263.

[21] Works of Franklin, by Jared Sparks, vol. ii. p. 9.

[22] Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, pp. 1, 2.

[23] Charles Willson Peale’s copy of Martin’s Franklin, the original of which is owned by Mr. Henry Pratt McKean.

[24] Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, by John Bach McMaster, p. 277.

THE WISTAR PARTIES

If the impulse towards learning early given by the American Philosophical Society has found expression in Philadelphia, and other cities, in historical societies, scientific schools, academies of natural science, and kindred institutions, its more genial and social side has long been represented in the city of its birth by the Wistar Parties.

As this old club has, within a few years, been reorganized, it may be interesting to turn back to the period of its inception, and even further back into the past century, when Dr. Caspar Wistar held, at his own house, those informal gatherings to which the Wistar Parties of to-day owe their name. How large a place this club filled in the social life of the period may be gathered from the fact that most Philadelphians of distinction, if not actual members, were its frequent guests, while all strangers of note were introduced into the circle of choice spirits,—choice in the full sense of the word, because chosen for particular gifts or attainments, the original Wistar Club being composed of members of the American Philosophical Society, a close organization that has ever striven to keep its eye single to the interests of science, literature, art, history, and the promotion of all useful knowledge. Although Silas Deane, the Marquis de Chastellux, and John Adams grow quite enthusiastic when describing the luxurious living prevalent among “the nobles of Pennsylvania,” the latter admits, with what in a New-Englander may be considered rare generosity, that there was something to be found here better than our high living, as he speaks of the “high thinking” of some of those old Philadelphians, in one of his charming letters to his wife which are only less charming than her own.

That John Adams does not mention Dr. Wistar’s hospitable house, and the company met there, is attributable to the fact that the seat of government, and with it John Adams as its head, removed from Philadelphia to Washington about the time that these receptions began.

The Wistar Parties have frequently been spoken of as first held on Sunday, which erroneous impression was probably due to the fact that Dr. Wistar’s family and friends were in the habit of dropping in upon him on Sunday evenings, knowing him to be more at leisure then than through the week. The following account, from the pen of Dr. Hugh L. Hodge, entirely disproves the Sunday origin of these parties, which were begun before Dr. Wistar’s second marriage:[25]

“His [Dr. Wistar’s] house had become the centre of the literary and scientific society of Philadelphia. He was in the habit of receiving his friends to a frugal entertainment every Saturday evening. To these reunions the most distinguished foreign visitors in the city brought introductions, and the most intellectual of the professional residents gathered.

“Mrs. Bache, a very superior and high-toned woman, had, previous to her marriage [in 1797], kept house for her brother for several years, during which time she, with her friend Miss Eddy, afterwards Mrs. Dr. Hosack, of New York, had the great pleasure and advantage of attending these remarkable Saturday evening meetings.”

These early reunions were informal, but as years rolled on a pleasant custom crystallized into an established usage, the same friends meeting, week after week, in Dr. Wistar’s house, at the southwest corner of Fourth and Prune Streets, whose beautiful garden extended to St. Mary’s church-yard. The entertainment was simple, as the host’s idea was an intellectual rather than a convivial gathering. Tea, coffee, and other light refreshments were offered to the guests; ice-creams, raisins, and almonds were later added to the regale. Even then the name of Sybarite could not be applied to those early convives: the terrapin and oyster decadence was of much later date. A table was seldom spread. The number of guests varied from ten to fifty, but usually included between fifteen and twenty-five persons. The invitations were commenced in October or November, and continued to March or April. During this period Dr. Wistar welcomed to his home, each week, his old friends and colleagues, and any strangers whom they chose to bring with them.

In 1804 Dr. Wistar issued an invitation to his friends to meet Baron von Humboldt, the great naturalist, and his young friend the botanist Bonpland, who stopped in Philadelphia on their return from a scientific expedition through Mexico and the West Indies. Here also was introduced the latest sensation, in the form of Captain Riley, long a prisoner among the Arabs; also the learned and eccentric Dr. Mitchill, first Surgeon-General of New York, later satirized by Halleck and Drake in “The Croakers:”

“We hail thee!—mammoth of the State,
Steam frigate on the waves of physic,
Equal in practice or debate
To cure the nation or the phthisic!”

Dr. Hosack, of the same city, who was present at the fatal duel between Hamilton and Burr, was another early guest; while under the formal organization of 1818, and in a time nearer our own, England’s most brilliant novelist recalls an evening spent at what he is pleased to call a “Whister party.”

It is not strange that Philadelphians were glad to take the guests of the city to these parties, where was gathered together, both in the last century and in this, the best that our New World civilization could produce, whether of talent and learning or of courtly grace and good breeding, and here down all the varied years has flashed that genial flow of wit without which no social gathering is complete. Here, in early days, came the learned and witty Abbé Correa de Serra, Mr. Samuel Breck, of Boston, and Dr. John W. Francis, of New York, whose wit and social qualities were said to resemble those of the much-loved Lamb; and later came Robert Walsh and Joseph Hopkinson, both distinguished for their brilliant colloquial abilities, while Nicholas Biddle would save for the learned brotherhood his freshest bon mot, and Dr. Nathaniel Chapman would bring hither his most irresistible witticism.

If the older physicians, whose portraits were recently collected at the centenary of the College of Physicians, could step down from their frames, after the fashion of a scene in a well-known drama, we should have before us, in propria persona, a number of Dr. Wistar’s guests of the medical fraternity. Presumably among these was Dr. Benjamin Rush, who has been called the American Sydenham, but who combined so many gifts that, like certain plants of various characteristics, it is almost impossible to classify him. Perhaps in a larger sense than it can be said of most men, even of the good physician, he belonged to humanity.[26]

A frequent guest was Dr. Adam Kuhn, who studied in Edinburgh, and brought home treasures of learning as his contribution to this “feast of reason.” Here were also the Shippens, father and son,—both Williams, both practising at the same time, and both so eminent that they have frequently been confused by the historian. An honorable line of Shippens, in different callings, but notably in law and medicine, has come from that Edward Shippen of whom Boston was not worthy, and who, after being lashed and driven through the town at the cart’s tail, because, forsooth, good Puritans couldn’t abide good Quakers, came to Philadelphia in 1693, to be its first mayor and the founder of a distinguished family.[27] Here also shone the kindly face of Dr. Samuel Powel Griffitts, who seems to have brought with him, wherever he went, an atmosphere of “peace and good will to men.” And here, these gatherings being formed of men of various callings and professions, came such lawyers as William Rawle, who was ready to discuss theology as well as law,—perhaps a little readier to talk of the one than of the other. One day he is writing his notes on the Constitution of the United States, while upon another such subjects as Original Sin and the Evidences of Christianity engage his versatile pen.

Among legal gentlemen who were frequent guests of Dr. Wistar were William Tilghman, of Maryland, later Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, who in an interesting biographical sketch has embalmed the memory of his host; George Clymer, statesman and patriot, whose name is appended to the Declaration; and Peter Du Ponceau, who, although a Frenchman, had an ardent admiration for American institutions and the primitive simplicity that characterized the old Quaker régime in Philadelphia. And that the cure of souls might not be neglected, we find here John Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary, an intimate of Wistar, and a correspondent of Du Ponceau, who later translated Heckewelder’s interesting work on Indian manners and customs into the French. Here also was John Vaughan, the Unitarian philanthropist, of whom it has been said that “he represented this city as faithfully as its own name ‘Brotherly Love.’” Did they meet and talk together, these two at the extreme poles of doctrine, the devout Moravian and the Arian whose life was consecrated to the service of his brother man? If they met, and in their discourse fell upon such subjects as engage the characters in “Paradise Lost” and the “Divina Commedia,” we may be sure that in their large mutual love for mankind they found abundant sympathy,

“Nor melted in the acid waters of a creed
The Christian pearl of charity.”

A goodly company, among whose members there is no one more worthy to be remembered than the host, generally known as Dr. Caspar Wistar, Jr., being descended from another Caspar Wistar, who came to this country in 1717. We are informed by a German scholar and a genealogist that all the Wisters, whether ter or tar, come from one common stock in Germany, where the name is written Wüster, and that Caspar, who came to Philadelphia in 1717, son of Hans Caspar and Anna Katerina Wüster or Wister, in having a deed of conveyance prepared was put down Wistar by the clerk. This mistake he did not take the trouble to correct, and from this first Caspar has come a line of tars, of which Dr. Caspar Wistar, Jr., was the most distinguished. A second son of old Hans Caspar Wister, of Hilsbach, Germany, coming over later, had his papers made out properly, according to the German orthography of the name, and thus established the Philadelphia line of ters. We venture to give this rather lengthy explanation in view of the fact that the spelling of Wister has been a fertile subject for discussion in the Quaker City for some years, and because it is a most reasonable one, as will be admitted by all who have studied the records of past generations. In old letters and papers of the last century it is not unusual to find a surname variously spelled in the same letter, or even on the same page. This is notably the case in the voluminous “Penn and Logan Correspondence,” where Jenings and Jennings, Ashton and Assheton, Blaithwaite and Blathwayt, used interchangeably, hopelessly confuse the reader.

A student of the schools of Edinburgh, Professor in the College of Philadelphia, and later in the University, Dr. Wistar has the honor of being the author of the first American treatise on anatomy. Eminent as a physician, teacher, and man of science, this large-brained and busy man found life incomplete without the cultivation of its social side.

It is to be regretted that Mr. Vaughan, Mr. Du Ponceau, or the learned Dr. Benjamin Rush, who at times used a pen with a humorous nib, or some of the other habitués of these unique gatherings, have not left us pleasant and gossiping reminiscences of the Wistar Club, which would serve to render us as familiar with these old figures as contemporaneous writers have made us with the frequenters of the Kit-Cat Club, where the wits of Queen Anne’s time gathered, or that later circle at the Turk’s Head, dominated by the great burly figure of the dictionary-maker. Garrick, Reynolds, and all the rest are grouped about him; and Boswell is ever at hand, taking notes. Did humble Boswell realize that he was painting pictures for the future, as well as, even better than, the elegant Sir Joshua, who sat near him? Goldsmith was at it too, giving us life as it was, not some fanciful picture of it; and to them we owe it that these men live before us now. The following is the nearest approach that we can find to such a picture, and this, from the pen of the late Chief Justice Tilghman, gives us only one figure, when we would like to be presented to the whole company.

After dwelling upon the modest dignity and bland courtesy of Dr. Wistar’s bearing as President of the Philosophical Society, and the ardor with which he incited its members to diligence in collecting, before it should be too late, the perishing materials of American history, Mr. Tilghman says,—

“The meetings of this committee he [Dr. Wistar] regularly attended. It was their custom, after the business of the evening was concluded, to enter upon an unconstrained conversation on literary subjects. Then, without intending it, our lamented friend would insensibly take the lead; and so interesting were his anecdotes, and so just his remarks, that, drawing close to the dying embers, we often forgot the lapse of time, until warned by the unwelcome clock that we had entered on another day.”

Here is another pen-sketch from a writer signing himself “Antiquary,” which has a touch of life in it, and shows the good doctor’s ready tact in setting a gauche stranger at his ease. Mr. John Vaughan introduced into the learned circle what the narrator is pleased to call “a living, live Yankee, a specimen of humanity more rare,” he says, “forty or fifty years ago than now.” It would appear that this compatriot was received into the company with emotions similar to those awakened, later, by the advent of the “American Cousin” in England.

“He was,” says the writer, “a man remarkable for his mechanical turn of mind, but entirely unused to society. No workshop could turn out a more uncouth individual. I was standing near the door when John Vaughan brought him in. Between the blaze of light, the hum of conversation, and the number of well-dressed men, he was completely overcome, and sank into the first chair he could reach. Mr. Vaughan could not coax him out of it, and I expected every minute the door opened that he would make a bolt for the street. Presently Dr. Wistar, who had the happy knack of suiting his conversation to all ages and classes, was introduced to the shy Yankee. Soon the ice was broken, and I saw the shy mechanic conversing freely with scientific men, explaining to them his views upon mechanism, etc.”

When, in 1818, the good old doctor went out to join “the innumerable company,” the little circle here, which he had drawn together, resolved to commemorate the pleasant meetings at his house, and to keep fresh his memory, by forming an organization called the Wistar Parties. This is, in brief, the raison d’être of the association, as given by a subsequent member, Mr. Job R. Tyson, in his interesting paper entitled “Sketch of the Wistar Party,” read before that honorable society September 26, 1845. He says,—

“I have ascertained that the following gentlemen, in the autumn of the year 1818, formed themselves into an association and agreed to give three parties every year, during the season: William Tilghman, Robert M. Patterson, Peter S. Du Ponceau, John Vaughan, Reuben Haines, Robert Walsh, Jr., Zacheus Collins, and Thomas C. James.”

There were only eight to begin with; in 1821 the number had increased to sixteen, and in 1828 to twenty-four.

Mr. Tyson tells us that two essential laws of the existence of the organization were, “first, that no one is eligible to membership who is not a member of the American Philosophical Society; and, second, that unanimity is necessary to a choice.” Numerous regulations were added, “which,” he says, “with some modifications, have since been observed.”

The number of Philadelphians who could be invited to one party was twenty, and these it appears were picked citizens, selected rather for their attainments and attributes than for their “long descent.” With regard to the number of strangers invited, no limit was set.

The members were pledged to attend themselves, and procure the attendance of strangers, punctually at the hour of eight o’clock; and “the sumptuary code enjoined, as consentaneous with the scheme and objects in view, that the entertainments should be marked by unexpensive, if not frugal, simplicity.” No tea, coffee, cakes, or wine were to be served before supper. It was recommended that the collation consist of one course, and be so prepared as to dispense with the use of knives at table. No ice-creams were allowed. This in 1828.

In 1835 Mr. Job R. Tyson bought Dr. Caspar Wistar’s old house, at Fourth and Prune Streets, when once more it opened its doors to the learned and jovial brotherhood.

In 1840 the number of citizens who could be invited was raised to forty, while in the years succeeding the organization of the club many guests from over the sea, and from the different States of the Union, had been welcomed to the Wistar Parties. One of the latter writes,—

“During my stay in Philadelphia I was present at several of these Wistar meetings, and always returned from them with increased conviction of their beneficial tendency.

“These meetings are held by rotation at the houses of the different members. The conversation is generally literary or scientific, and, as the party is usually very large, it can be varied at pleasure. Philosophers eat like other men, and the precaution of an excellent supper is by no means found to be superfluous. It acts, too, as a gentle emollient on the acrimony of debate. No man can say a harsh thing with his mouth full of turkey, and disputants forget their differences in unity of enjoyment.”

Better known abroad in the early part of the century than any other American city, all travellers of consequence came to Philadelphia. Among these we find such men as General Moreau, counted after Bonaparte the greatest general in the French Republic; the younger Murat, who married Miss Fraser, of South Carolina; the Marquis de Grouchy, whose name will be forever associated with the defeat of Waterloo; the poet Moore, whose singing drew tears from the beautiful eyes of Mrs. Joseph Hopkinson; the Prince de Canino, son-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king of Spain, who, himself residing at Bordentown until 1830, was doubtless a guest of the Wistar Association, although, after the fashion of princes, it was his pleasure to entertain rather than to be entertained. These and many more, including President Madison, and the witty and able Virginia gentleman William Short, who, as secretary of legation under Thomas Jefferson, chargé-d’affaires to the French Republic, and minister to Spain and the Netherlands, had seen much of foreign official and social life. An acquaintance of Talleyrand, himself a diplomatist, life abroad offered Mr. Short many attractions, which a friend and contemporary assures us were more than balanced by the terrors of the sea, which menaced him in the form of sea-sickness. This gentleman, a surviving member of the Wistar Association of 1837, recalls no social intercourse in Old-World cities more delightful than that of this informal club.

While on a visit to Philadelphia in 1825, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar makes the following entry in his journal:

“At Mr. Walsh’s I found a numerous assembly, mostly of scientific and literary gentlemen. This assembly is called ‘Wistar Party.’... The conversation generally relates to literary and scientific topics. I unexpectedly met Mr. E. Livingston in this assembly. I was also introduced to the mayor of the city, Mr. [Joseph] Watson, as well as to most of the gentlemen present, whose interesting conversation afforded me much entertainment.”

This German nobleman, who was well “wined and dined” in old Philadelphia, seems to have possessed a happy faculty of replying aptly to the pretty compliments paid him and his country by Judge Peters, Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll, and other social magnates of the period. To the toast “Weimar, the native country of letters,” he replied, with ready wit, “Pennsylvania, the asylum of unfortunate Germans.” Can we not hear the laughter and applause that greeted that toast? They were not allowed to subside, either, as the venerable Judge Peters followed the toast with a song which he had composed the previous evening, and which he sang with great vivacity and spirit. Are there any such gatherings now, and do our octogenarians sing songs of their own composing with vivacity?

The Duke of Saxe-Weimar describes another Wistar Party, this at the house of Colonel Clement C. Biddle, at which John Quincy Adams, then President of the United States, was a guest. Of him he says,—

“The President is about sixty years old, of rather short stature, with a bald head, and of a very plain and worthy appearance. He speaks little, but what he does speak is to the purpose. I must confess that I seldom in my life felt so true and sincere a reverence as at the moment when this honorable gentleman, whom eleven millions of people have thought worthy to elect as their chief magistrate, shook hands with me.”

In the same year Chief Justice Tilghman records a Wistar Party held at his house, at which were present such citizens as Roberts Vaux, Mathew Carey, the Irish protectionist, his son Henry C. Carey, political economist and writer, Joseph Hopkinson, the elder Peale, who had studied at the Royal Academy in London and came home to paint portraits of Washington and his generals, Dr. Frederick Beasley, and many more, with a sprinkling of foreigners,—Mr. Pedersen, Minister from Denmark to the United States, the Prince de Canino, who was an enthusiastic ornithologist, Colonel Beckwith, who had left a leg upon the field of Waterloo, and several French chevaliers. The whole company, numbering about one hundred, was regaled with chicken salad, oysters, ices, wine, punch, and the like, at an expense of twenty-four dollars and eighty-nine cents. This moderate sum, the accurate transcriber tells us, included the whiskey for the punch, the spermaceti candles, oil for the lamps, and extra fire in one room.

Later in the history of the Wistar Club, after the good founders had gone, and left it to its own devices, serious innovations were made in the old sumptuary code, whereupon severe strictures were instituted against the dainty fare set before the wise men, in the local journals and elsewhere. One of these attacks upon the Wistarians appeared in the then recently established Daily Courier, and is interesting not only because the slashing editorial of the young writer ended the brief career of his paper, but because its demise is intimately connected with the rise of two prominent journals of to-day. It happened that many of the subscribers to the Daily Courier were members or guests of the Wistar Parties. These persons instantly withdrew their patronage. The Courier was shaken to its foundations, and the unfortunate young Scotchman, James Gordon Bennett, whose pen had proved too sharp for Philadelphia, sold his journal to Mr. Jesper Harding, upon which the Daily Courier was merged in the Pennsylvania Inquirer, and Mr. Bennett, having transplanted his talents to the more congenial soil of New York, later employed them in founding the New York Herald.[28]

Written invitations to the Wistar Parties seem to have been used up to 1835, when Mr. Vaughan first speaks of a printed invitation. This bore the quaint queued head of Dr. Wistar, and is in all respects similar to that issued by the Wistar Association redivivus of 1886.

In 1838 and 1839 printed lists appeared, naming the hosts of the season, and giving the dates of the several entertainments. To these were appended sumptuary regulations, which were of course born to die. Just when the terrapin, game, croquette, and like dainties replaced the original decanters, flanked with ice, cakes, and one substantial course, Mr. Tyson does not record. When the terrapin came, however, it came to stay, until the hot discussions incident to the disturbances of the late civil war routed it and the guests alike.

Thackeray carried away from Philadelphia such pleasant recollections of the Wistar Parties, and the mirth and good cheer there enjoyed, that he thus refers to them in a letter written to Mr. William B. Reed from Washington in 1853. He has just heard of the death of his friend Mr. William Peter, British Consul to Philadelphia.

“Saturday I was to have dined with him, and Mrs. Peter wrote saying he was ill with influenza: he was in bed with his last illness, and there were to be no more Whister parties for him. Will Whister himself, hospitable pig-tailed shade, welcome him to Hades? And will they sit down—no, stand up—to a ghostly supper, devouring the ιφθιμους ψυχας of oysters and all sorts of birds?”

Something else than the mighty oysters impressed the genial novelist, and that was the face and figure of John Irwin, a well-known head-waiter, who so resembled the terrapin over which he presided that Thackeray has, in a few rapid pencil-strokes, put him down on paper as a fine specimen of a diamond-back. Those who still remember Irwin’s great paunch and shining face will recognize his portrait in Mr. Thackeray’s “Orphan of Pimlico.” Thus, this latter-day Bogle, although there arose in his time no poet, like Nicholas Biddle, to embalm his virtues in humorous verse, has, like the “colorless colored man,” been immortalized by the hand of genius.

The pleasing side of Philadelphia social life must have left its impress upon the receptive mind of Thackeray, as he writes from Switzerland in July of the same year,—

“Since my return from the West, it was flying from London to Paris, and vice versa, dinners right and left, parties every night. If I had been in Philadelphia I could scarcely have been more feasted. Oh, you unhappy Reed! I see you (after that little supper with McMichael) on Sunday at your own table, when we had that good Sherry-Madeira, turning aside from the wine-cup with your pale face! That cup has gone down this well so often (meaning my own private cavity) that I wonder the cup isn’t broken, and the well as well as it is.... I always remember you and yours, and honest Mac, and Wharton, and Lewis, and kind fellows who have been kind to me and I hope will be kind to me again.”

The “Mac” is evidently Mr. Morton McMichael, to whose whiskey punch Mr. Thackeray alludes with tenderness in another letter, and who is described by all who knew him as the most genial of men, a very “king of good fellows.” So great were his social talents that, like Shenstone’s Frenchwoman who could “draw wit out of a stone,” he possessed the power to redeem from stagnation the dullest of dinners by his happy faculty of giving his best and leading others to do the same.

The “Lewis” alluded to by Mr. Thackeray is Mr. William D. Lewis, more recently dead; another delightful dinner-talker. Possessed of rare bonhomie, and furnished with a fund of anecdotes of travel,—for he had lived some years in Russia,—he brought mirth and cheer into the circles to which he was welcomed, and was even known, on occasions, to sing some familiar household verses, as “Home, Sweet Home,” in the Russian language, to the great amusement, if not to the edification, of his hearers.

In 1842, Mr. Tyson records only two of the original members of 1818 still surviving, Dr. R. M. Patterson and Robert Walsh. The kindly face of Mr. Vaughan (Johnny Vaughan, as his intimates called him), first Dean of the Wistar Association, had only lately disappeared from the circle. Although death had sadly thinned the ranks of original membership, a number of honored names filled the blanks: among these, Horace Binney, William M. Meredith, John Sergeant, Joshua Francis Fisher, Judge Kane, Langdon Cheves, from South Carolina, Thomas Isaac Wharton, and, there always being a large proportion of medical men, such distinguished sons of the healing art as Dr. Robert Hare, Dr. Thomas C. James, Dr. John K. Mitchell, Dr. Isaac Hays, physician and writer, Dr. Franklin Bache and his friend Dr. George B. Wood closely associated with him in medical literature, Dr. Charles D. Meigs, and Moncure Robinson, Esq., who, among the many who have come and gone, still [1887] recalls delightful evenings spent at the Wistar Parties. Dr. Isaac Lea was in 1843 Dean of the association, which office he held until the stirring events of ’60 and ’61 scattered its members, not again to unite until 1886, within a few months of his death, when he was succeeded in this office by his son, Mr. Henry C. Lea.[29]

Writing during this hiatus of many years, Dr. George B. Wood says,—

“I have always regarded the Wistar Club not merely as an ornamental feature of Philadelphia society, but as a very useful institution; bringing as it did persons together of various pursuits, who would not otherwise perhaps have met, thus removing prejudices and conciliating friendly feeling; and, by a regulation regarding strangers which gave each member the right to introduce one or more to the meetings, facilitating their intercourse with citizens, and contributing to the reputation of our city for hospitality.”

It may be that these words hold something of a prophecy for the future, as well as a résumé of the past; and now that the old-time invitation, bearing the “hospitable pig-tailed” head of the founder, has once more begun to circulate, an important influence may be exercised by it, in drawing together the best and ablest of the various professions and callings of this city, and in affording, as of old, a pleasant and informal means of entertaining stranger guests. Such a club as this forecasts a meeting-ground where British and Continental scientists and literati, professional men and men of affairs, may clasp hands with American workers on the same lines; where the large philanthropy of England may meet an even larger New-World philanthropy; where, under some hospitable roof, questions in social and political science, or the latest discovery in chemistry or physics, may be discussed over croquettes and oysters, and with a dash of hock or sherry (no sparkling wines are allowed) the seas that wash widely-separated shores shall be bridged in an instant, and, meeting on some congenial ground of knowledge, of thought, or of interest, Old and New World denizens shall feel the delightful thrill of a common brotherhood.

FOOTNOTES:

[25] Dr. Wistar married, in 1798, Elizabeth Mifflin, granddaughter of John Mifflin, the Councillor.

[26] Dr. Rush himself humorously related how his patriotism had interfered with his practice, a number of persons refusing to be treated by him for yellow fever for the very good reason that he had signed the Declaration of Independence.

[27] Since writing the above, it appears upon the indisputable authority of the first charter for the city of Philadelphia, discovered in 1887 by Messrs. Edward P. Allinson and Boies Penrose, that the honored name of Edward Shippen, which so long headed the list of Philadelphia mayors, must be relegated to a second place, Humphrey Morray having been the first mayor of Philadelphia.

[28] Casper Souder’s History of Chestnut Street.

[29] The Saturday Night Parties, held during the war and for some years after, have been spoken of as direct successors of the Wistar Association. These, however, were not composed of members of the Philosophical Society, and the discussions at the meetings naturally partook of the heat and excitement of the hour, rather than of the calmer literary and scientific debate for which the Wistar Parties were designed. The only lineal descendants of the Wistar Association of 1818 are the parties recently organized, which bear the name of the great physician and scientist in whose honor they were founded.

A BUNDLE OF OLD LOVE LETTERS

Strange it is that the maiden meditations of more than two centuries ago should have recently been brought to light in the love-letters of Dorothy Osborne, so full of womanly tenderness, so humorous, so grave and gay by turns, and so valuable for the spirited pictures they give of the life and personages of the day.

Among stacks of dry-as-dust manuscripts, awaiting the discriminating inspection of the antiquarian, are doubtless other letters of sentiment worthy of the world’s reading, even if there are few equal in grace and style to those of the lovely mistress of Chicksands. A few such unknown or forgotten love-letters have come under the observation of the writer,—among these some yellowed pages traced by the hand of William Penn and addressed to Hannah Callowhill, whose name is now handed down to Philadelphians by the street which bears her family name, but who was known to her contemporaries as a woman of strong character and noble qualities, well fitted to be a helpmeet to the good Proprietary. These letters form pleasant reading for a leisure hour, not only on account of their quaint simplicity, but also because of the insight they give into the delicate and refined nature of the man who wrote them.[30]

We are wont to think of the founder of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania as a man deeply immersed in religious questions, in legal business, land surveys and titles,—indeed, in all that affected the welfare of the little colony that he established on the banks of the Delaware. To picture him as an ardent lover requires some imagination, especially at a period when the early romance of his life was buried in the grave of his beloved Gulielma, and he figures on the pages of history as a widower, past middle age, with three children. Yet among his letters to his betrothed are some that glow with all the warmth and ardor of youthful affection, while, as befits a man of his years and position, they contain wise reflections on life, and passages marked by the prudence, the forethought, and the practical grasp that come with riper age; and always they are deeply and sincerely religious.

This Quaker lover does not write a sonnet to the eyebrows of his mistress, nor does he say, like a modern widower whose billet doux has come under our notice, that he has “lost his married partner and would be glad to renew his loss.” He tells her, in grave and simple language, that it is for the qualities of her heart and mind that he loves her and desires to win her, as in the following written from Worminghurst, Penn’s English home, in 1695:

“And now let me tell thee, my Dearest, that tho’ there are many qualitys, for which I admire thee, as well as love thee, yet yt of Compassionating the unhappy is none of the least. And whatsoever pittys has love, for it springs out of the same soft ground; and can never fail, as often as there is occasion to try it. That my Dearest H. has been a Mourner, a Sympathizer, an inhabitant of Dust, and so wean’d from the common tastes of pleasure, yt gratefy other Pallats, does so much exalt her character with me, yt if this were all she brought, she must be a treasure to yt happy man yt has a Title to her. And since, by an unusual goodness, she has made it my Lot, it shall be as much my pleasure as she has made it my duty to make her constantly sensible how much I am so of my obligation to her.”

One of the most tender of these missives includes some family details about Billy’s[31] health, who “is lively yet tender” and has just had his hair cut, and winds up with the following description of a most unromantic hamper which was intended as an offering to the beloved one:

“I presume by the next wagon, there comes an Hamper directed to thy father, the Contents for thee. Viz 3 Gallons of light french Brandy, one of wh’ pray present thy Mother. I ordered 2 lbs of Chocolate to keep them company. My Daughter prays thee to accept of 3 small pots of venson, yt she says will keep well & are of her own manufacture, as were all the last. She is concerned her pig brawn was not ready wc’h she fancys would not have been a disagreeable way of eating a pig, but another season will do. These are little things and yet would express tho’ meanly Love that is Great.”

Was Letitia Penn’s brawn the same sort as that over which dear old Lamb waxed so eloquent in a letter to his friend Manning? It had been sent to him by the cook of Trinity Hall and Caius College, and he says of it,—

“’Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the eating way. He might have sent sops from the pan, skimmings, crumpets, chips, hog’s lard, the tender brown judiciously scalped from a fillet of veal (dexterously replaced by a salamander), the tops of asparagus, fugitive livers, run-away gizzards of fowls, the eyes of martyred pigs, the red spawn of lobsters, leverets’ ears, and such pretty filchings common to cooks; but these had been ordinary presents, the every-day courtesies of dish-washers to their sweethearts. Brawn was a noble thought.”

At another time William Penn is concerned about the health of his betrothed, and concludes his missive with an earnest recommendation to her to take some pills, that he sends her, at certain hours of the day, and a specified medicinal water, to be imbibed “three days before the full and changes of the moon.”

It appears to have been a not unusual practice among lovers of this period to prescribe for their sweethearts, as we find Dorothy Osborne writing about some infusion of steel in which she drinks Sir William Temple’s health every morning. She vows that it makes her horribly ill, says that it is a “drench that would poison a horse,” and declines to continue its use unless her lover insists upon her doing so. In another of her charming letters she gives Sir William many directions about the care of his precious health, and even does a little quacking on his behalf, sending him a new medicine for his cold, of which she says,—

“’Tis like the rest of my medicines: if it do no good ’twill do no harm and ’twill be no great trouble to take a little on’t now and then; for the taste on’t as it is not excellent, so ’tis not very ill.”

It is well that some of these old letters of sentiment and domestic life are left us, for did we not occasionally catch glimpses of the great men of the past penning tender messages to beloved objects (sometimes, indeed, spelling them very ill), writing about their children and sending them trinkets and gewgaws, they would become to us shadowy personages, very spectres, and hauntings of a dream.

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

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]

Among the subscribers to the first Dancing Assembly was Andrew Elliot, son of Sir Gilbert Elliot, then a young man recently arrived in the Province. Although he married into two Philadelphia families, Mr. Elliot’s associations were much with New York, where he was sometime Collector of Customs and Lieutenant-Governor. Mrs. Jauncey, Governor Elliot’s daughter, writes from that city, in 1783, of a ball at Head-quarters in honor of the Queen’s birthday, which her father urged his wife to attend, yet we find him writing a few months later of Mrs. Elliot being in Philadelphia, and warmly received by the authorities there, “in high spirits and high frolic, with all her best clothes; dancing with the French Minister, Financier-General, Governor of the State, &c., &c., all striving who shall show her most attention.” This latter was after the preliminaries of peace had been signed between Great Britain and the United States, when Governor Elliot’s old friends, “Governor Dickinson, Bob. Morris,” and other officials in the government, had begun to assume the more imposing proportions of winning figures. Both Mrs. Jauncey and Elizabeth Elliot married Englishmen. The latter, as Lady Cathcart, seems to have taken particular delight in dazzling the eyes of her American relatives with pictures of her own magnificent appearance in sable and diamonds assisting at court functions, where she is pleased to find herself on occasions the best dressed person in the company.[37]

Mrs. Jekyll, whose name is to be found on the early Assembly lists, and who is spoken of as “a lady of pre-eminent fashion and beauty,” was a grand-daughter of the first Edward Shippen. Her husband, John Jekyll, was Collector of the Port of Boston. In connection with this lady’s gayety and social distinction, Watson gives some curious information with regard to the invitations in early times, which, he says, were printed upon common playing-cards, there being no blank cards in the country, none but playing-cards being imported for sale. “I have seen at least a variety of a dozen in number addressed to this same lady [Mrs. Jekyll]. One of them, from a leading gentleman of that day, contained on the back the glaring effigy of a queen of clubs!”[38]

The first Assembly Balls were held in a large room at Hamilton’s wharf, on Water Street, between Walnut and Dock. There seems to have been no hall capable of accommodating so many persons, and as Water Street skirted the court end of the town, it was a rather convenient locality in which to hold a ball. A lady of the olden time has left a record of going to one of these balls at Hamilton’s Stores in full dress and on horseback. What would the belles of that early time think if their Rosinantes could land them at the Academy of Music for one of the great routs of our days? The scene of enchantment now presented by the corridors, foyer, and supper-room would certainly bewilder the brains and dazzle the eyes of those beautiful great-grandmothers, for the decorations were not then elaborate, and the entertainment was simple, consisting, says one chronicler, “chiefly of something to drink.”

In 1772 the Assembly Balls seem to have been held at the Freemasons’ Lodge, while it is evident from notices in the Pennsylvania Journal of 1784-85, that they were later held at the City Tavern. In 1802 the managers gave notice to subscribers, in Poulson’s Advertiser, that the first ball of the season would be held at Francis’s Hotel, on Market Street.

According to the early Assembly rules, tickets for strangers were to be had on application to the managers, and were to be paid for at the rate of seven shillings and sixpence,—this for gentlemen; for ladies (such was the gallantry of the time) nothing was to be paid. This old regulation remained in force until quite recently, when, in consequence of the increasing number of guests from other cities and in simple justice to the subscribers, it was decided that guests of both sexes should be paid for at the same rates as residents. The old subscription ticket was forty shillings, which moderate sum was levied upon the gentleman, and of course included the lady who accompanied him. It covered the expenses of a series of entertainments given upon every Thursday evening from January until May. The rule was that the ball “should commence at precisely six in the evening, and not, by any means, to exceed twelve the same night.” Worthy and most moderate ancestors! Your ball ended at the hour that the Assembly of our time begins, and the fair Belindas and Myrtillas who had graced the scene were sent off to their beds in time to get, if not beauty-sleep, certainly some hours of good sleep before dawn. This was a fortunate circumstance, for those were days when mothers of families considered it one of the cardinal sins to lie abed in the morning, and if Belinda did not get her quantum of sleep at night there was little chance of making it up at high noon.

Although it was one of the regulations of the Assembly that none were to be admitted without tickets, which were received at the door by one of the directors, there appears to have been some laxity in enforcing this regulation, as, in 1771, the following notice was inserted in the Pennsylvania Journal:

“The Assembly will be opened this evening, and as the receiving money at the door has been found extremely inconvenient, the managers think it necessary to give the public notice that no person will be admitted without a ticket from the directors, which (through the application of a subscriber) may be had of either of the managers.”

As card-playing formed an important part in the entertainment of the time, rooms were provided for those who preferred cards to the dance, furnished with fire, candles, tables, cards, etc.

The dances were regulated according to very strict rules, “first come, first served.” The ladies who arrived first had places in the first set; the others were to be arranged in the order in which they arrived. The ladies were to draw for their places, which made a little pleasant excitement and raised a flutter of expectation in breasts masculine as well as feminine. The directors always had the right to reserve one place out of the set “to present to a stranger, if any, or any other lady, who was thereby entitled to lead up that set for the night.”

To break in upon the regular order of the dances seems to have been a serious offence, as, in a letter of 1782, we read of a Philadelphia belle, Miss Polly Riché, starting up a revolt against the established authorities by “standing up in a set not her own.” By drawing the other ladies and gentlemen, who formed the cotillon, into the rebellion, she precipitated a rupture between the gentlemen, Mr. Moore and Colonel Armand, and the managers of the Assembly.

Two Jewish names appear on this early list of 1749, Levy and Franks. Mr. Black, who was in Philadelphia in 1744, thus describes a Miss Levy, probably a sister of Samson Levy, whose name is enrolled among the subscribers to the Assembly:

“In the evening, in company with Mr. Lewis and Mr. Littlepage, I went to Mr. Levy’s, a Jew, and very Considerable Merch’t; he was a Widdower. And his Sister, Miss Hettie Levy, kept his House. We staid Tea, and was very agreeably Entertain’d by the Young Lady. She was of middle Stature, and very well made her Complection Black but very Comely, she had two Charming eyes full of Fire and Rolling; Eye Brows Black and well turn’d, with a Beautiful head of Hair, Coal Black which she wore a Wigg, waving in wanting curling Ringletts in her Neck; She was a lady of a great Deal of Wit, Join’d to a Good Understanding, full of Spirits, and of a Humor exceeding Jocose and Agreeable.”

Another lady who inspired even more ardent admiration in the susceptible breast of Mr. Black was Miss Mollie Stamper, who married William Bingham, and figures on the early lists of the Assembly as Mrs. Bingham.[39] Of this young lady’s charms Mr. Black says,—

“I cannot say that she was a Regular Beauty, but she was Such that few could find any Fault with what Dame Nature had done for her.... When I view’d her I thought all the Statues I ever beheld, was so much inferior to her in Beauty that she was more capable of Converting a man into a Statue, than of being Imitated by the Greatest Master of that Art, & I surely had as much delight in Surveying her as the Organs of Sight are capable of conveying to the Soul.”

Few names were better known in the old-time social life than that of Franks. David Franks was a brother of Phila Franks, afterwards Mrs. Oliver De Lancey, and father of Rebecca Franks, who was a reigning belle during the British occupation of Philadelphia, when General Howe was in the habit of tying his horse before David Franks’s house and going in to have a chat with the ladies, and probably to enjoy a laugh at some of Miss Rebecca’s spirited sallies. Although the beautiful Jewess shared the honors of belledom with fair Willings and Shippens, no person seems to have disputed her title to be considered the wit of the day among womankind. Abigail Franks, who became Mrs. Andrew Hamilton, was another daughter of David Franks. It was to this sister in Philadelphia that Miss Rebecca wrote a long gossipy letter from New York in 1781, in which she contrasted the manners of the belles of that city and her own very much to the advantage of those of the latter place, always excepting the Van Hornes, with whom she is staying, and whom she describes as most attractive, Miss Kitty Van Horne much resembling the greatly admired Mrs. Galloway.

“By the way,” she writes, “few New York ladies know how to entertain company in their own houses, unless they introduce the card-table. Except this family, who are remarkable for their good sense and ease, I don’t know a woman or girl that can chat above half an hour, and that on the form of a cap, the color of a ribbon, or the set of a hoop, stay, or jupon. I will do our ladies, that is in Philadelphia, the justice to say they have more cleverness in the turn of an eye than the New York girls have in their whole composition. With what ease have I seen a Chew, a Penn, Oswald, Allen, and a thousand others entertain a large circle of both sexes, and the conversation, without the aid of cards, not flag or seem in the least strained or stupid.”[40]

In Mr. Joseph Shippen’s “Lines Written in an Assembly Room” we find a graceful picture of the beauties of the ante-Revolutionary period. “Fair, charming Swift,” the eldest daughter of John Swift, who afterwards became Mrs. Livingston; “lovely White,” a sister of Bishop White, who, as Mrs. Robert Morris, was the chosen friend of Mrs. Washington while in Philadelphia; “sweet, smiling, fair M’Call;” Katharine Inglis; Polly Franks, an elder daughter of David Franks; Sally Coxe, who married Andrew Allen, the loyalist; and Chews so fair that Mr. Shippen cannot decide which is the fairer. Two of these bewildering sisters, Mary and Elizabeth Chew, married respectively Alexander Wilcocks and Edward Tilghman. Another poet, of a period a little later than this, happening to pick up a knot of ribbon dropped by Miss Chew on the ball-room floor, thus descants upon her charms:

“If I mistake not—’tis the accomplish’d Chew,
To whom this ornamental bow is due;
Its taste like hers, so neat, so void of art—
Just as her mind and gentle as her heart.
I haste to send it—to resume its place,
For beaux should sorrow o’er a bow’s disgrace.”

It does not appear to have taken great inspirations to set the muse to rhyming in those days. Mr. John Swanwick seems always to have found his prompt to obey his call, and whether he is disappointed in a walk with Miss Markoe, or whether he takes such a walk; whether it is Miss Meredith’s canary-bird that dies or the great astronomer David Rittenhouse, all alike give wings to his Pegasus. He lends Miss Abby Willing his Biographical Dictionary, and with it encloses a dozen verses or more on those inscribed in this “splendid roll of fame.” Another occasion of poetic inspiration is when tears are observed to stream down a young lady’s cheek on listening to a sermon from the Rev. William White. Must it not have been delightful to possess such a fancy?

As early as 1765 some of the good old Quaker names are to be found on the Assembly lists, as Mifflin, Fishbourne, Dickinson, Galloway, Nixon, Powell, and Cadwalader, the latter family being, like the Ingersolls, Montgomerys, Sergeants, Tilghmans, Wisters, and Markoes, among later arrivals in Philadelphia from other States or from abroad. Margaret Cadwalader married Samuel Meredith, first Treasurer of the United States, while her elder sister Polly became the wife of Philemon Dickinson, from Crosia-doré, Maryland, a brother of John Dickinson, himself distinguished as a soldier and statesman, while General John Cadwalader carried off one of the Meschianza belles, Miss Williamina Bond.[41] Among names upon other Assembly lists, early and late, are those of Clymer, Hazlehurst, Evans, Burd, Lewis, McMurtrie, McPherson, Sims, Ross, Watmough, Biddle, Wharton, Meade, etc., while in that of 1765 there is a curious record of “Miss Allen, alias Governess,” which evidently refers to Ann Allen, who married Governor John Penn, a grandson of the Proprietary. Of this fair lady the ever-ready Swanwick sings,—

“When youthful Allen of majestic mien
Seems as she moves of every beauty queen—
And by refinements of a polish’d mind,
To decorate a throne design’d.”

The regular Assembly balls seem to have been discontinued during the War of the Revolution, although most of this time there was no lack of gayety in Philadelphia, especially in Tory circles, as is shown by contemporaneous letters. Miss Franks writes to Mrs. William Paca[42] in 1778, while the British were in possession of the city,—

“You can have no idea of the life of continued amusement I live in. I can scarce have a moment to myself. I have stole this while everybody is retired to dress for dinner. I am but just come from under Mr. J. Black’s hands and most elegantly am I dressed for a ball this evening at Smith’s where we have one every Thursday. You would not Know the room ’tis so much improv’d.

“I wish to Heaven you were going with us this evening to judge for yourself. I spent Tuesday evening at Sir Wᵐ Howes where we had a concert and Dance. I asked his leave to send you a Handkerchief to show the fashions. He very politely gave me leave to send anything you wanted, tho’ I told him you were a Delegate’s Lady....

“The Dress is more ridiculous and pretty than any thing I ever saw—great quantity of different colored feathers on the head at a time besides a thousand other things. The Hair dress’d very high in the shape Miss Vining’s was the night we returned from Smiths—the Hat we found in your Mother’s Closet wou’d be of a proper size. I have an afternoon cap with one wing—tho’ I assure you I go less in the fashion than most of the Ladies—no being dress’d without a hoop. B. Bond makes her first appearance tonight at the rooms.”

In B. Bond we recognize one of the Meschianza belles, while the Miss Vining to whom Miss Franks refers was a Wilmington girl, whose beauty, grace, and fluency in speaking their language made her a great favorite with the French officers in America, who wrote home so enthusiastically of her charms that her name became known at the court of France, the queen herself expressing a desire to meet the famous American beauty.[43]

“No loss for partners,” the lively lady continues, “even I am engaged to seven different gentlemen for you must know ’tis a fix’d rule never to dance but two dances at a time with the same person. Oh how I wish Mr. P. wou’d let you come in for a week or two—tell him I’ll answer for your being let to return. I know you are as fond of a gay life as myself—you’d have an opportunity of rakeing as much as you choose either at Plays, Balls, Concerts or Assemblys. I’ve been but 3 evenings alone since we mov’d to town. I begin now to be almost tired.”[44]

It is probably to the revival of the hoop about 1778, of which Miss Franks speaks, that some humorous verses refer, in which the hoop and anti-hoop factions are described as arraying themselves for battle upon the floor of the Assembly room. The anti-hoop party was under the leadership of Narcissa, who with her followers declared that it was their opinion

“That unless
They had it in their Power to dress
As they thought proper, nought would be
At last left to their Option free,
And so concluded, one and all,
Hoopless to go to the next Ball.”

The hoop party was conducted by Fribeto, the Nash of the time, a miniature beau, who suggests to the mind Pope’s dramatis personæ in the “Rape of the Lock:”

“A gayly brilliant thing
That sparkled in the shining ring.

*    *    *    *    *

This same Fribeto once was chose
Director of the Belles and Beaux,
When’er in full Assembly they
Should meet to dance an hour away.”

Indeed, the scheme and treatment of this rhymed Bataille de Dames are evidently borrowed from Pope’s brilliant satire, and some verses seem not unworthy the pen of Francis Hopkinson, as, for instance, a description of the two factions upon the Assembly night:

“Here walks a Fair, from Head to toe
As straight as ever she can go;
And here a Dame with wings so wide,
Three Yards at least from side to side.

“Hoops and no Hoops dividing stand
In dread array on either Hand,
Resolved to try th’ important Cause
By that Assembly’s fixed Laws.”

In the conflict which ensues, Fribeto is worsted by the slim damsels, and takes refuge under Melisinda’s ample wing, from whose pocket he surveys the field of battle. Enraged by the impertinent popping up of the dandy’s head from Melisinda’s pocket, Narcissa aims a blow at him, which glances aside and falls upon the bosom of his protectress, who starts up with a cry of pain and makes her escape, leaving Fribeto prone upon the ball-room floor, a pitiable object.

“One peal of laughter fills the place.
The Hoops their Hero now despise,
And view him with disdainful Eyes,
And with one Voice at once agree
To cry aloud for Liberty”—

declaring

“That Women still
In dress at least should have their will.”

Upon which the humiliated Fribeto announces,—

“My office and my Right
To govern, I resign this Night,
Nor will I meddle should you come
In greasy night Caps to this Room,
Or sit in Rows in yonder Benches,
As black with Dirt as Cynder-wenches.”

This important battle probably occurred after the British evacuation of the city, as Philadelphia gayety did not cease with the departure of the red-coats, an article of apparel that General Knox declared the American girls loved too well. Arnold’s advent as Commandant, we know, was inaugurated by a series of festivities from which the Tory belles were not excluded. Indeed, when such a measure was contemplated in connection with a grand ball to be given to the French and American officers, it was found impossible to make up the company without them, consequently they appeared in full feather, at this and other entertainments, it being alleged by more than one authority that far from being slighted these loyalist ladies were given the preference over Whig belles. Among leading Tory women were Miss Polly Riché, her friend Miss Christian Amiel, the Bards, Bonds, Odells, Oswalds, and Cliftons. It has been whispered that Miss Amiel was the fair lady to whom General Arnold was engaged in writing amatory epistles before Miss Shippen’s charms conquered the hero of many battles. A note from the Commandant to Miss Riché is still extant, in which he thanks her for a picture conveyed to him, in language so guarded that no reading between the lines serves to reveal the original of the miniature, although there are those who shrewdly suspect that it was a picture of General Arnold, which, for reasons best known to herself, Miss Amiel returned to him through Miss Riché. Miss Amiel afterwards married Colonel Richard Armstrong who was in America with Major Simcoe’s British Foot, while her friend Miss Riché became the wife of Charles Swift. It is evidently to her approaching marriage that Miss White refers in a letter written in 1785, in which she relates the disasters that have befallen the wardrobes of several mutual friends, among them Miss B. Lawrence, who has lost “three elegant lisk robes, and seventy yards of Lace, beside the rest of her Cloaths. There is,” she adds, “no dependence on these stage boats, pray be careful how you send your wedding Cloaths up when you come to Town for it must be horribly mortifying to lose them.”

It is evident that the Assembly Balls were revived soon after peace was declared, and held occasionally, if not regularly, as Mrs. John Adams speaks of attending an Assembly while in Philadelphia during the administration of President Washington. The dancing she pronounces “very good and the company of the best kind,” adding that the ladies are more beautiful than those she has seen at foreign courts. Mrs. Adams must have been subject to variable moods at this time, as she writes to her daughter one week of the dazzling brilliancy of Mrs. Washington’s drawing-room, concluding that Mrs. Bingham had given laws to the Philadelphia women in fashion and elegance, while in another letter she says of an Assembly Ball, “the room despicable; the etiquette,—it was difficult to say where it was to be found. Indeed, it was not New York; but you must not report this from me.” This was probably written after one of their long drives to town over muddy roads, which made Bush Hill seem so undesirable a residence to the Vice-President and his wife. Mrs. Adams writes in more amiable mood upon another occasion, and is pleased to find “Mrs. Powell of all the ladies she has met the best informed, beside which she is friendly, affable, good, sprightly, and full of conversation.” This lady who combines so many charms is Mrs. Samuel Powel, born Elizabeth Willing, the aunt of Mrs. Bingham, who also came in for a large share of the New England lady’s admiration, being included in her “constellation of beauties,” with her sister Elizabeth, soon to become the wife of Major William Jackson, whose portrait represents one of the handsomest men of the time. The Chews of whom Mrs. Adams speaks are younger sisters of the Meschianza belles, little Sophia, Juliana, and Maria, grown up to take their sisters’ places. Old Chief Justice Benjamin Chew had a host of pretty daughters, and in the gay world of society, as in court circles, there is always a laudable disposition to hail the rising sun. Instead of Mrs. Benedict Arnold, her sisters, the Redmans, the Bonds, and Miss Wilhelmina Smith, who has gone off to Maryland with her husband Charles Goldsborough, we find a new bevy of beauties, Sally McKean, who afterwards married the Marquis de Yrujo, and whose languid beauty seemed made for a Southern court, Mrs. Walter Stewart, born Deborah McClenachan, Mrs. Henry Clymer, Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick, from Massachusetts, and Miss Wolcott, from Connecticut, whom New England gentlemen were wont to boast equal in beauty and grace to Mrs. Bingham. Mrs. Adams comments upon the gayety and prodigality of Philadelphia living at this period, as General Greene had done a little earlier, the latter having declared the luxury of Boston “an infant babe” to that of the Quaker City. Much of the extravagance which prevailed for some years in Philadelphia was an outcome of the speculation and the pursuit of private gain induced by the enormous inflation of the Continental currency. “Wealth thus easily acquired was as freely squandered,” says Mr. F. D. Stone in his admirable paper on Philadelphia society during the period of the new tender, “and while luxuries were being enjoyed by one class of citizens, the expenses and burdens of others were greatly increased.” In the diary of the moderate and abstemious Washington we read of a number of entertainments and numerous dinners attended by him at the Ingersolls’, Morrises’, Chews’, Rosses’, Willings’, Hamiltons’, and Binghams’; at the latter place “I dined in great splendor,” writes the President, who was well content with one dish of meat and one or two glasses of wine at his own table. Again, in a letter written from Philadelphia to General Wayne by a brother officer we read,—

“Permit me to say a little of the dress, manners, and customs of the town’s people. In respect to the first, great alterations have taken place since I was last here. It is all gayety, and from what I can observe, every lady and gentleman endeavors to outdo the other in splendor and show.... The manner of entertaining in this place has likewise undergone its change. You cannot conceive anything more elegant than the present taste. You can hardly dine at a table but they present you with three courses, and each of them in the most elegant manner.”

Miss Sally McKean, in writing to a friend in New York of Mrs. Washington’s first levee, says,—

“You never could have such a drawing-room; it was brilliant beyond anything you can imagine; and though there was a great deal of extravagance, there was so much of Philadelphia taste in everything that it must be confessed the most delightful occasion of the kind ever known in this country.”

Some of the old names run down the Assembly list through all the years to our own time, as Chew, Shippen, M’Call, Hopkinson, McIlvaine, White, Barclay, Cadwalader, Coxe, Lardner, and many more, while others have quite disappeared from Philadelphia society. There are no more Hamiltons, Oswalds, Cliftons, Plumsteds, Allens, Swifts, Inglises, or Francises to be found on the lists of to-day. Some of these families are no longer represented in the male line, while others have married and settled abroad, notably the Binghams, Allens, Hamiltons, and Elliots. Into the social circles where they once held sway have come such Southern names as Randolph, Byrd, Page, Robinson, Carter, Hunter, and Neilson from Virginia, and Tilghman, Cheston, Murray, and many other well-known names from that Eastern Shore of Maryland famed for its good cheer, and for its hospitable Colonial mansions presided over by beautiful matrons.

FOOTNOTES:

[35] Evidently intended for Mrs. Mayoress, as Charles Willing was elected Mayor of Philadelphia in 1748.

[36] Mr. Richard Penn Lardner, a descendant of this Lynford Lardner, in 1878, owned the original list of the subscribers to the Assembly of 1749, and the manner in which this list and the rules for its government came into the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania is in itself an interesting bit of local history. The rules were the property of Mr. Charles Riché Hildeburn, a direct descendant of John Swift. He offered to give them to the society if the old list should also be forthcoming. Mr. Lardner signified his willingness to donate the list, and the formal presentation was made by the late President of the Historical Society, the Hon. John William Wallace. Thus, after a separation of one hundred and thirty years, the old documents came together through the agency of descendants of three of the managers of the very Assembly to which they pertained.

[37] Chronicles of the Plumsted Family, by Eugene Devereux.

[38] Some of these old playing-cards, with invitations to the Assembly printed on the backs, are still in the possession of a descendant of the first Edward Shippen.

[39] This Mrs. Bingham was the mother of William Bingham, who married a daughter of Thomas Willing, whose wife, Anne McCall, may well be spoken of as “the beautiful mother of a beautiful race.”

[40] From manuscript letter in possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania.

[41] The name Williamina was inherited from a beautiful grandmother, Williamina Wemyss Moore.

[42] This letter was forwarded by Edward Tilghman, who was “out on his parole,” with the gauze handkerchiefs, ribbons, etc, to Mrs. Paca, born Anne Harrison, the second wife of William Paca, of Wye Island, Maryland, who was a delegate to Congress. (Pennsylvania Magazine, vol. xvi. p. 216.)

[43] This story, on the authority of Thomas Jefferson, is related by Miss Elizabeth Montgomery in her “Reminiscences of Wilmington.”

[44] Pennsylvania Magazine, vol. xvi. pp. 216, 217.

INDEX.

A.

- Abercrombie, Dr. James, 119.

- Adams, John, 11, 66, 88, 130, 148, 192.

- Adams, Mrs. John, 13, 16, 65, 191, 224.

- Adams, John Quincy, 70, 125, 167.

- Agassiz, Louis, 145.

- Agassiz, Mrs. Louis, 140.

- Alexander, General William, 70.

- Allen, Andrew, 214.

- Allen, Ann, 216.

- Allinson, Edward P., 154.

- Alsop, Mary, 85. (Mrs. Rufus King.)

- American Philosophical Society, 97-147.

- Amiel, Christian, 223.

- André, Major John, 26, 33, 44, 52, 84.

- Armand, Colonel, 210.

- Armstrong, Colonel Richard, 223.

- Arnold, General Benedict, 63, 194, 223.

- Arnold, Mrs. Benedict, 44. (Peggy Shippen.)

- Atlee, Dr. W. F., 68.

- Aubrey, William, 184.

- Auchmuty, Miss, 38, 42.

- Auchmuty, Rev. Samuel, 56.

B.

- Bache, Dr. Franklin, 174.

- Bache, Mrs. Richard, 12, 17, 85.

- Barclay, 200, 228.

- Bard, 223.

- Barton, Dr. Benjamin S., 132.

- Bartram, John, 103, 104.

- Bartram, William, 104.

- Bayard, The Misses, 88.

- Beasley, Dr. Frederick, 167.

- Beckwith, Colonel, 168.

- Beekman, Colonel Henry, 85.

- Beekman, Mrs. James, 84.

- Biddle, Clement C., 167.

- Biddle, Nicholas, 117, 152.

- Bingham, William, 211.

- Bingham, William, United States Senator, 211 (note).

- Bingham, Mrs. William, 89, 92, 224, 226.

- Binney, Horace, 173.

- Black, William, 199, 210.

- Bleecker, 82.

- Blended Rose, Ladies of the, 33, 42.

- Bonaparte, Charles Lucien, 139.

- Bonaparte, Joseph, 164.

- Bond, Becky, 43, 218.

- Bond, Dr. Phineas, 103.

- Bond, Williamina, 42, 216.

- Boudinot, Elias, 74.

- Bowers, Mrs. John M., 8.

- Breck, Samuel, 66, 152.

- Bunker’s Hotel, 67.

- Burd, 200, 216.

- Burgoyne, General, 34.

- Burning Mountain, Ladies of the, 43.

- Burr, Aaron, 66, 131.

- Bush Hill, 225.

- Byrd, 229.

C.

- Cadwalader, General John, 216.

- Cadwalader, Margaret, 216.

- Cadwalader, Polly, 216.

- Cadwalader, Dr. Thomas, 111.

- Calder, Sir Henry, 28, 49.

- Callowhill, Hannah, 178. (Hannah Penn.)

- Canino, Prince de, 164, 168.

- Carey, Henry C., 123, 167.

- Carey, Mathew, 167.

- Carey Vespers, 123.

- Carter, 229.

- Cathcart, Lady, 18, 19, 205.

- Cathcart, Lord, 42.

- Chapman, Dr. Nathaniel, 117, 153.

- Chastellux, Marquis de, 84, 148.

- Cheston, 229.

- Cheves, Langdon, 173.

- Chew, Elizabeth, 214.

- Chew, Mary, 214.

- Chew, Peggy, 42, 49, 58.

- Chew, Sally, 43.

- Clarkson, 82.

- Clifton, Eleanor, 28, 29.

- Clinton, Governor George, 81.

- Clinton, Mrs. George, 92.

- Clinton, Sir Henry, 38, 61.

- Clymer, George, 155.

- Clymer, Mrs. Henry, 226.

- Coffin, Eleanor, 20.

- Colden, Dr. Cadwallader, 104, 105.

- Collins, Zacheus, 162.

- Conyngham, 200.

- Coxe, Sally, 214.

- Craig, Janet, 42, 56.

D.

- Daschkof, Princess, 140, 142.

- Deane, Silas, 148.

- De Lancey, Mrs. Oliver, 212.

- De Peyster, 82.

- Dickinson, John, 103, 205, 216.

- Digby, Admiral Robert, 73.

- Draper, Sir William, 30.

- Drayton, Colonel, of South Carolina, 125.

- Drinker, Elizabeth, 18.

- Duane, Mrs. James, 83, 88.

- Duer, Colonel William, 70.

- Duer, Lady Kitty, 69, 70, 83.

- Dulany, Daniel, 103.

- Du Ponceau, Peter S., 121-129, 155, 162.

E.

- Elliot, Governor Andrew, 73, 204, 205.

- Elliot, Elizabeth, 205.

- Emlen, 200.

- Evans, 216.

- Evans, Governor John, 184.

- Eve, Sarah, 18, 199.

F.

- Fishbourne, 215.

- Fisher, 200, 203.

- Fisher, Joshua Francis, 173.

- Foulke, Liddy, 10.

- Francis, Anne, 134.

- Francis, Dr. John W., 152.

- Francis, Sir Philip, 134-136.

- Francis’s Hotel, 207.

- Franklin, Benjamin, 12, 17, 106, 112, 114, 120, 140;

- founder of Philosophical Society, 97-102.

- Franklin, Samuel, 70.

- Franklin, Sarah, 71. (Mrs. Richard Bache.)

- Franklin, Walter, house of, New York residence of General Washington, 67-70.

- Franks, Abigail, 212.

- Franks, David, 212.

- Franks, Phila, 212.

- Franks, Polly, 214.

- Franks, Rebecca, 14, 38, 43, 59-61, 213, 219.

- Fraser, Caroline, 164.

- Furness, Dr. William H., 124.

G.

- Gallatin, Albert, 125.

- Galloway, Mrs., 213.

- Gerry, Elbridge, 91.

- Gerry, Mrs. Elbridge, 86.

- Gliddon, George Robins, 125.

- Goldsborough, Charles, 57, 226.

- Greene, General Nathaniel, 8, 226.

- Griffin, Lady Christiana, 85.

- Griffin, Cyrus, 85, 90.

- Griffitts, Hannah, 54.

- Griffitts, Dr. Samuel Powel, 154.

- Grouchy, Marquis de, 164.

H.

- Haines, Reuben, 162.

- Hale, Captain Nathan, 84.

- Hamilton, Alexander, 66, 91.

- Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander, 85.

- Hamilton, Andrew, 201.

- Hamilton, Mrs. Andrew, 212.

- Hamilton, Governor James, 200.

- Hamilton’s Wharf, 206.

- Hancock, John, 11.

- Harrison, Anne, 217.

- Hays, Dr. Isaac, 174.

- Hazlehurst, 216.

- Heckewelder, John, 129, 155.

- Helm, Mary, 186, 190.

- Helvetius, Madame, 16, 17.

- Hildeburn, Charles Riché, 203.

- Hopkinson, Francis, 103, 120, 220.

- Hopkinson House, 21.

- Hopkinson, Joseph, 152, 167.

- Hopkinson, Thomas, 105, 198.

- Hosack, Dr., 151.

- Howard, Colonel John Eager, 59.

- Howe, Admiral Lord Richard, 38, 48, 55, 71.

- Howe, General Sir William, 24, 28, 41, 48, 55, 218.

- Humboldt, Baron von, 133, 151.

- Hunter, 229.

- Huntington, Daniel, 91.

I.

- Ingersoll, Bertha, 76.

- Ingersoll, Charles J., 143, 166.

- Ingersoll, Jared, 129.

- Inglis, John, 203.

- Inglis, Katharine, 214.

- Izard, Mrs. Ralph, 85.

J.

- Jackson, Major William, 225.

- James, Dr. Thomas C., 162, 174.

- Jauncey, Mrs., 19, 204, 205.

- Jay, John, 90, 91.

- Jay, Mrs. John, 13, 90, 92, 93.

- Jefferson, Thomas, 18, 75, 111, 124, 128.

- Jekyll, John, 206.

- Johnson, Lady, 62. (Rebecca Franks.)

- Johnson, Sir Henry, 60, 62.

- Junto, 100, 101, 109.

K.

- Kane, Judge, 173.

- Keach, Rev. Elias, 186-191.

- Keteletas, Jane, 84.

- Keyes, Miss, 18.

- King, Rufus, 91.

- King, Mrs. Rufus, 92.

- Kinnersley, Ebenezer, 106.

- Kissam, 82.

- Knight’s Wharf, 28, 38, 39.

- Knox, General, 66, 222.

- Knox, Mrs. General, 77, 92.

- Knyphausen, General, 38.

- Kuhn, Dr. Adam, 103, 153.

L.

- Lafayette, Marquis de, 142, 144.

- Lardner, Lynford, 203.

- Lardner, Richard Penn, 203, 204.

- Lawrence, Becky, 223.

- Lawrence, Colonel Elisha, 58.

- Lea, Dr. Isaac, 174.

- Lea, Henry C., 174.

- Leather Apron Society, 100.

- Lee, General Charles, 61.

- Leidy, Joseph, 145.

- Levy, Hettie, 211.

- Levy, Samson, 211.

- Lewis, Lawrence, Jr., 44.

- Lewis, Morgan, 83.

- Lewis, William D., 172.

- Livingston, Mrs. Robert R., 85.

- Livingston, Mrs. Walter, 92.

- Lloyd, 200.

- Logan, Deborah, 9.

- Logan, James, 183, 184.

- Lynch, Mrs. Dominick, 83.

M.

- Macomb’s House occupied by President Washington, 67.

- Madison, James, 12, 75, 130, 165.

- Marbois, Barbé-, 75.

- Markoe, Miss, 94, 215.

- Maxwell, Mrs. James Homer, 83.

- M’Call, 200, 214, 228.

- McIlvaine, 200, 228.

- McKean, Henry Pratt, 111.

- McKean, Sally, 77, 226, 228.

- McLane, Captain Allan, 51.

- McMaster, John Bach, 99.

- McMichael, Morton, 172.

- McMurtrie, 216.

- McPherson, 216.

- Meade, 216.

- Meigs, Dr. Charles D., 174.

- Meredith, Samuel, 216.

- Meredith, William M., 173.

- Meschianza, 23-64.

- Michaux, André, 107, 115.

- Mifflin, Elizabeth, 149.

- Mifflin, John, 149.

- Mitchell, Dr. John K., 174.

- Mitchell, Maria, 139.

- Montgomery, 82, 216.

- More, Chief Justice Nicholas, 190.

- Morgan, Dr. John, 19.

- Morgan, Mrs. John, 18.

- Morray, Humphrey, 154.

- Morris, Robert, 91, 205.

- Morris, Mrs. Robert, 13, 63, 91, 214.

- Montrésor, Colonel, 49, 56.

- Moustier, Comte de, 74, 75, 81.

N.

- Neilson, 229.

- New York Balls and Receptions, 65-96.

- Nixon, 216.

- Norris, Deborah, 10.

O.

- Odell, 223.

- O’Hara, Colonel, 49.

- Ord, George, 117, 118, 119.

- Osgood, Samuel, 69.

- Oswald, 213, 223.

P.

- Paca, Mrs. William, 217.

- Page, 229.

- Parton, James, 99, 106, 128.

- Patterson, Dr. Robert, 129.

- Patterson, Dr. Robert M., 100, 101, 162, 173.

- Peale, Charles Willson, 111, 136-139.

- Peale, Franklin, 129, 137.

- Pegg’s Run, 29.

- Pemberton, 200.

- Penington, Edward, 60.

- Penn, Governor John, 216.

- Penn, Hannah, 183.

- Penn, Letitia, 181, 184.

- Penn, Thomas, 201.

- Penn, William, 178, 181.

- Penn, William, Jr., 180.

- Penrose, Boies, 154.

- Peter, William, 170.

- Peters, Judge Richard, 11, 117, 129, 166.

- Peters, Richard, 200-202.

- Philadelphia Dancing Assemblies, 197-229.

- Philipse, 82.

- Philipse, Miss, 73.

- Plumsted, 229.

- Pool’s Bridge, 28, 39.

- Powel, Mrs. Samuel, 225.

- Priestley, Rev. Joseph, 116, 117.

- Provoost, Mrs. Samuel, 83.

R.

- Randolph, 229.

- Rawdon, Lord, 38, 71, 72.

- Rawle, William, 122, 155.

- Read, Sarah, 185.

- Redman, Dr. John, 57.

- Redman, Nancy, 42.

- Redman, Rebecca, 43, 57, 58.

- Reed, William B., 170.

- Riché, Polly, 210, 223.

- Rittenhouse, David, 112, 131, 215.

- Roberdeau, 18.

- Robinson, Moncure, 174.

- Robinson, Mrs. William T., 67-69.

- Ross, 216, 227.

- Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 129, 132, 153, 158.

- Rutherfurd, 82.

S.

- Saxe-Weimar, Duke of, 165, 167.

- Schuyler, Madame Philip, 18.

- Schweinitz, Rev. Lewis D. de, 130.

- Sedgwick, Mrs. Theodore, 226.

- Sergeant, John, 173.

- Serra, Abbé Correa de, 117, 138, 152.

- Shewell, Betty, 120. (Mrs. Benjamin West.)

- Shippen, Chief Justice Edward, 44, 205.

- Shippen, Joseph, 49, 214.

- Shippen, Peggy, 33, 42, 63, 194, 223.

- Shippen, William, 154.

- Shipton, Betty, 19.

- Short, William, 117, 165.

- Simcoe, Major, 223.

- Sims, 216.

- Smith, Abigail, 191. (Mrs. John Adams.)

- Smith, Williamina, 43, 56, 226.

- Smythe, Hon. Lionel, 74.

- Sneyd, Honora, 30.

- Somerville, Mary, 139.

- Southgate, Eliza, 14, 18, 20.

- Sparks, Jared, 100.

- Stamper, Mollie, 211.

- State in Schuylkill, 11.

- Steuben, Baron, 81.

- Steward, Lieutenant-Colonel Jack, 61.

- Stewart, Mrs. Walter, 226.

- Stirling, Lady, 83.

- Stoddert, Major, 9.

- Stone, Colonel William Leet, 79.

- Strickland, William, 117.

- Swanwick, John M. P., 94, 215.

- Swift, Charles, 223.

- Swift, John, 203, 214.

T.

- Tarleton, Major, 56.

- Taylor, Mrs. Abraham, 201, 202.

- Temple, Lady, 70, 84.

- Temple, Sir John, 84.

- Thackeray, William M., 170.

- Tilghman, Chief Justice, 129, 134, 155, 162, 167.

- Tilghman, Edward, 214, 217.

- Tilghman, Richard, 135, 136.

- Twisleton, Hon. Edward, 135.

- Tyson, Job R., 161.

V.

- Van Cortland, 82.

- Van Horne, Kitty, 213.

- Van Rensselaer, 82.

- Van Zandt, Catharine, 83.

- Vaughan, Benjamin, M. D., 126.

- Vaughan, Mr. John, 117, 123, 125, 127, 160.

- Vaughan, Samuel, 126.

- Vaux, Roberts, 167.

- Verplanck, 82.

- Vining, Miss, 218.

W.

- Wallace, John, 203, 204.

- Walnut Grove, 31, 32. (Meschianza House.)

- Walsh, Robert, LL. D., 117, 152, 173.

- Ware, Rev. William, 125.

- Washington, George, 8, 66, 87, 124.

- Washington, Martha, 65, 86, 91, 224.

- Watmough, 216.

- Watson, Joseph, 35, 166, 199.

- Watts, Lady Mary, 83.

- Wayne, General Anthony, 63, 227.

- West, Benjamin, 103, 120.

- Wharton, Joseph, Sr., 30-32.

- Wharton, Mayor Robert, 118.

- Wharton, Thomas Isaac, 173.

- White, Bishop, 119, 120, 214.

- White, Nancy, 42.

- Wilcocks, Alexander, 214.

- Willing, Abby, 215.

- Willing, Elizabeth, 225.

- Willing, Mrs. Charles, 201.

- Willing, Mrs. Thomas, 211.

- Wistar, Dr. Caspar, 117, 129, 149, 157, 159, 161.

- Wistar, Mrs. Caspar, 150.

- Wistar, Kitty, 67.

- Wistar Parties, 147-176.

- Wister, Sally, 9, 14, 199.

- Wolcott, Miss, 226.

- Wood, Dr. George B., 174.

- Wrottesley, John, 49.

- Wüster, Katerina, 157.

Y.

- Yates, Chief Justice, 83.

Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious errors in punctuation have been corrected.

Page 31: “entered the oom” corrected to “entered the room”

Page 42: “Miss Achmuty’s honor” changed to “Miss Auchmuty’s honor”

Page 47: “Major Gywnne rode in” changed to “Major Gwynne rode in”

Page 66: “removal of her household gods” changed to “removal of her household goods”

Page 81: In the footnote, “Diary of Ewala” changed to “Diary of Ewald”

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Table of Contents

- THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS
- PREFACE
- CONTENTS.

- THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS

- FOOTNOTES:

- The Meschianza

- FOOTNOTES:

- New York Balls and Receptions

- FOOTNOTES:

- American Philosophical Society

- FOOTNOTES:

- THE WISTAR PARTIES

- FOOTNOTES:

- A BUNDLE OF OLD LOVE LETTERS

- FOOTNOTES:

- THE PHILADELPHIA DANCING ASSEMBLIES

- FOOTNOTES:

- INDEX.

- A.

- B.

- C.

- D.

- E.

- F.

- G.

- H.

- I.

- J.

- K.

- L.

- M.

- N.

- O.

- P.

- R.

- S.

- T.

- V.

- W.

- Y.

- Transcriber’s Notes

- THE FULL PROJECT GUTENBERG LICENSE