the title "Glimpses of Colonial Society and the Life at Princeton
College, 1766-1773," we find recorded that "little Burr" was one of the
most popular men of his class at "The College of New Jersey." "To see
you shine as a Speaker would give great pleasure to your friends in
general and to me in particular. You certainly are capable of making a
good Speaker, dear Burr," that noble youth, William Paterson, wrote to
him when leaving Princeton in 1772. Through Paterson we learn that Burr
would go any length to serve a friend, wrote in a lady-like hand, and
at sixteen was the admiration of the fair sex of Elizabethtown. This
comrade and a few other of the jolly founders of the Cliosophic Society
were the subjects of Burr's reminiscences in those last summer days
when the sea-air stealing through his windows seemed to give him new
life. The horrible nightmare of his later years was forgotten. He was a
boy again at the little village of Princeton that his father loved, the
sun shone on proud Nassau Hall, the Scotch silversmiths tinkered all
day long in the shops lengthening the Main Street, the lights glowed
in the tavern, and fair Betsy Stockton was the belle and toast of the
College.
Almost every stage of Aaron Burr's life is tinged with melodramatic
interest, and it is fitting that the woman who befriended him in his
last years should have been the daughter of a British soldier met
on the battle-field of Quebec. There Burr saw the gallant Richard
Montgomery and his own college-mate, John Macpherson, stain the snow
with their blood, and it is a disputed tradition that Burr carried
the wounded Montgomery from the field. The name of the generous soul
who cared for him after his disastrous marriage with Madame Jumel and
subsequent removal from Mrs. Hedden's house in Paulus Hook was Mrs.
Joshua Webb. It has been written that she kept a boarding-house in the
old Jay mansion, a proud dwelling in New York's history, and sheltered
her father's friend at the risk of fortune and reputation. Madame
Jumel, towards the close of her life, used to relate that she offered
him pecuniary aid at that period, but it was proudly refused.
In his basement room at Mrs. Webb's, propped up in bed by his faithful
black servant Kester, or Keaser, as the name is sometimes written,
Burr received his old friends. There John Vanderlyn, the youth
from Kingston whom he befriended, and who became a famous painter,
celebrated for his "Marius," would visit him; there, too, came Judge
Ogden Edwards, then residing in the Dongan manor-house at West New
Brighton, Colonel Richard Conner, and a few other faithful ones whose
names are unrecorded. The portrait of his lost Theodosia, who stands
forth in history as the noblest of daughters, hung in front of the bed.
Through the window he could obtain glimpses of familiar streets where
he had once walked with his wife, Theodosia Prevost, the lovely niece
of the eccentric Thomas Bartow, of Amboy. But they were changing. The
abode on Maiden Lane, his first New York house, was destroyed, and the
larger mansion at the corner of Nassau and Cedar Streets was also gone.
Richmond Hill, one of the most beautiful country-seats in New York,
where, in her fourteenth year, Theodosia presided over her father's
board and conversed with the greatest men of the day, was then covered
by Varick Street, and St. John's Park, which was in the beginning of
its glory. At the little Maiden Lane house his wife had penned him many
of her beautiful letters. Her ghost must have often come before him as
he read over the faded epistle written one stormy night after he had
left her for New Jersey, in which she outpoured for him her ardent love:
"Thus pensive, surrounded by gloom, thy Theo sat, bewailing thy
departure. Every breath of wind whistled terror; every noise at
the door was mingled with hope of thy return, and fear of thy
perseverance, when Brown arrived with the word--embarked--the wind
high and the water rough. Heaven protect my Aaron; preserve him,
restore him to his adoring mistress. A tedious hour elapsed, when our
son was the joyful messenger of thy safe landing at Paulus Hook. Stiff
with cold how must his papa have fared? Yet grateful for his safety I
blessed my God. I envied the ground which bore my pilgrim. I pursued
each footstep. Love engrossed his mind; his last adieu to Bartow was
the most persuasive token. 'Wait till I reach the opposite shore that
you may bear the glad tidings to your trembling mother.' O, Aaron, how
I thank thee! Love in all its delirium hovers about me; like opium
it lulls me to safe repose! Sweet serenity speaks, 'tis my Aaron
presides. Surrounding objects check my visionary charm. I fly to my
room and give the day to thee."
New York was undergoing a great transition. She was outgrowing her
maidenhood, and her swift feet took sure foothold in meadow, swamp,
and woodland. To these changes Burr was unconscious. He had known her
well and loved her, but when his clear brain grew listless and his eyes
lost their fire she cast him out. Soon came the day when he was to look
at the familiar sights for the last time. Tears filled his eyes as he
gazed from the deck of the primitive steamboat which voyaged twice a
day from the Battery to Staten Island. He knew that it was his last
farewell, and the calloused heart was melted. In that sad moment his
friend must have held his feeble hand. The world had not deprived him
of everything--there was something at the last!
When Aaron Burr was brought to the Richmond Inn, the hostelry was kept
by Daniel Winant, a man of Dutch descent. He was assisted in his task
by two young daughters, who were the life of the little hamlet. Old
Port Richmond residents used to tell of their kindness to the famous
guest, nursing him devotedly and doing all in their power to shield him
from the annoyance of curious strangers who journeyed to the Port to
gaze upon him.
Among the guests stopping at the hotel during Burr's last days there
was a young man of twenty-four by the name of Olando Buel, from New
Preston in Connecticut. The quizzical, genial Olando in his little
shop, cutting posies and weeping willows on tombstones or making tall
mahogany clocks with wonderful embellishments, still lives in the minds
of many of the islanders. In God's acres, which lie north and south and
east and west over this isle of the great State of New York, Olando's
white blooms cover many and many a green mound. What a great man was
Olando, to record the lives of a small army of humanity! Sweet were the
emblems he placed over their faded lives. Close to the specimens of
his handiwork are older stones on which are figured skulls and other
cruel reminders of death; but Olando gave his tired ones the emblems
of nature, the never-ceasing resurrection. The elements are sweeping
away some of his trees and flowers, it is true, for this youth from
New England came to cut tombstones as a travelling apprentice to one
Thompson, in the spring before Aaron Burr thought of Staten Island as
his last home.
Olando frequently occupied a seat next to Burr on the gallery, and in
after-years the interested visitor could always induce him to relate
his memories of this time. The favorite among his stories was of Mrs.
Webb's arrival at the inn to obtain a last look at the face of her
old friend the morning after his death. Olando had prepared the body
for its final resting-place the night before and was still in charge
of the remains. Mrs. Webb came heavily veiled and accompanied by her
small daughter. In the hall they waited until the chamber of death was
deserted, and then timidly crossed its threshold. When the passionate
tears of this noble woman fell on the withered face of the dead, the
heart of her observer was touched, and he gazed on the scene with wet
eyes.
Several times during the months of July and August Burr took rides
back into the country. The Ogden chaise, drawn by a bay horse, would
stop at the Inn in the afternoon while the sun was still high. Tommy,
the lad who kept the garden path clean for the soft crinolines that
caressed it in the late afternoon and early evening, never neglected
an opportunity to leave the slouching weeds for the excitement of
running up the steep steps and hammering the heavy knocker, calling out
in the shrill trumpet tones of youth, "Here's the chaise for Colonel
Burr! Here's the chaise." The buxom calico-clad figure of one of the
Misses Winant would open the door, and through the hall and up the
narrow winding staircase would rush the boy. Out on the gallery, in
the depths of the old cushioned draught chair, an expectant figure
always sat waiting for the near approach of those eager, clattering
feet. With the boy's help he rises tremblingly, and we see him there
in the sunlight,--a slight, emaciated old man in a Continental blue
coat, a thin, worn face which has lost all the beauty of his famous
likeness given to the world by Stuart's brush, but eyes still lustrous
and ofttimes full of fire. Into the shadows, down the staircase and
the porch, the strong young arms of the boy almost carry him. After
them comes the faithful Miss Winant with Burr's great-coat, carefully
treading on tiptoe lest she should attract his attention to her heavy
burden. With the united efforts of the coachman, the boy, and his
landlady, Burr is seated in the chaise. The coachman cracks his whip
over the plodding mare, and the old-style vehicle bearing its precious
burden rounds the corner into a world of green.
A pathetic and almost tragic picture of Burr has been recorded on one
of these drives. On a gray, melancholy afternoon, while being driven
through a neighboring village, he passed a group of rustic militia
attempting a drill. His old eyes lighted up as he gazed upon them, and
his mind went back to the time when he wore regimentals in the service
of his country.
Calling out to the wind, for no one was by his side, he is said to have
exclaimed,--
"Why, one might have fancied these yokels as having just ravelled off
Washington's pet brigade! Washington! oh, Washington!"
Until the carriage had left the village far behind he continued to
hold communion with himself. The twilight was enveloping him. He saw
the youthful hero, Burr, storming the heights of Quebec, rescuing the
brigade of General Knox, routing the enemy at Hackensack; now starving
at Valley Forge and again enduring the hell of Monmouth. With ghosts
from out the past he lived again.
Through the summer Burr lingered on at the old hostelry until September
14, 1836, when his tired eyes closed forever. At noon Dr. Van Pelt,
the minister of the nearby Dutch Reformed Church whom Burr had refused
so often to see, came on his last visit of consolation. Through his
life he declared that Burr's death was one of peace, despite the many
stories to the contrary.
History has never clearly revealed those who grouped themselves about
his bedside, but this we know: by the door stood the Misses Winant and
a few humble friends his last days had brought him. Their tears were
among the most heartfelt shed over the courageous one whose dreams were
delusions and great deeds ashes.
THE POETIC COURTSHIP OF
PHILIP FRENEAU, THE POET
OF THE REVOLUTION, AND
BEAUTIFUL ELEANOR FORMAN
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE POETIC COURTSHIP OF PHILIP FRENEAU, THE POET OF THE REVOLUTION,
AND BEAUTIFUL ELEANOR FORMAN
Over a hundred years ago, in the most luxuriant part of Monmouth
County, a garden spot of New Jersey, two large white houses smiled
at each other through the changing seasons across a long vista of
billowing field. The one nearest the sea was Mount Pleasant Hall, the
home of the Freneaus, and the other, on the outskirts of Freehold, was
Forman Place, the home of the Formans. Tall trees lined the narrow
roads that crept so lovingly about them, grain and fruit grew in
abundance on their broad acres, and flowers filled the gardens. Surely
it was an ideal setting for a poetic courtship.
In the history of American belles-lettres it would be hard to find
a more interesting couple than Philip Freneau, the poet of the
Revolution, and the Jersey beauty he made his bride. Their life was the
sweetest of pastorals. Like two brilliant butterflies, they flitted
through years softly tinctured with shadows. When the world ill-used
them, they sought refuge at the Pierian spring. Calliope was their sure
consoler, and it was only when their gay wings were crushed and broken
at the last that they forgot her.
Both belonged to distinguished families counted among the gentry class
of the time. The Freneaus were descended from the Huguenot house of
De Fresneau, famous in the history of La Rochelle. André Freneau, the
poet's grandfather, upon his arrival in New York identified himself
with the Royal West India Company of France. His associates in its
interest were Auguste Jay and Étienne Delancey, two men of prominence
in the early city. He is several times mentioned in the Journal of
John Fontaine, who visited New York in 1716. His son, Pierre Freneau,
resided in one of the finest dwellings on old Frankfort Street, and
there his wife held a miniature court for the French society that found
its way to the Dutch city flourishing under the English flag.
The Formans came from as notable stock as the Freneaus. One of their
ancestors was a Lord Mayor of London, and Lady Mary Forman is recorded
as dazzling New Orleans with her finery at the beginning of the
eighteenth century. Tradition says that Mrs. Samuel Forman, a jolly
dame and a leader of the old Monmouth neighborhood, used to ride to the
Tennent Church in a golden coach. It was at that old church, close by
the battle-field of Monmouth, that Philip Freneau first saw his Nelly
and grew to love her.
Little Tennent has borne the marks of time lightly since the youth
and the maiden shyly gazed at each other across the narrow aisle.
Very sweetly her voice would ring out to the gay-tuned airs, for
the music was lively in Tennent after that good nomadic dominie,
George Whitefield, introduced the fashion of theatrical music in
church. It was an often-repeated county jest in Monmouth that no one
could fall asleep in the Tennent Church, the pews were so hard and
straight-backed, and the choir so noisy.
Eleanor Forman was of a type which has always appealed to the poets.
Her features were regular, her eyes blue and languishing, and her hair
the color of pale sunshine. So fair and lasting was her complexion
that, as an old lady, a Freehold gallant compared it to "the lilies
and garden pinks." In those long-dead Sabbaths Freneau and his boy
friends, home on vacations from the College of New Jersey, no doubt
thought her a very attractive picture as she nestled by her mother's
rich beflowered brocade, a tiny figure in white muslin and soft
ribbons. James Madison saw her then, and, although she was too young
for his companionship, he never forgot her charm, and in after-years,
when she had entered the poet's life, he was one of the most loyal
frequenters of her little salon in Philadelphia during Washington's
second administration.
Although Philip Freneau, as an elderly gentleman given to reminiscence,
used to relate that Eleanor Forman crept into his heart in his boyhood
before he became a wandering pedagogue, it was not until long after
his arrival at manhood's estate that she stormed and took the citadel.
There was another romance in his life before his Nelly. At the immature
age of sixteen he fell in love with a Jersey maiden residing near his
home, whose name is lost to posterity. She died early of consumption,
and the poet's verses at the time show his melancholy state of mind.
In "The Power of Fancy" he wrote of her:
"Fancy, stop and rove no more,
Now, tho' late returning home,
Lead me to Belinda's tomb;
Let me glide as well as you
Through the shroud and coffin, too.
And behold, a moment, there
All that once was good and fair.
Who doth here so soundly sleep?
Shall we break this prison deep?
Thunders cannot wake the maid,
Lightnings cannot pierce the shade,
And tho' wintry tempests roar,
Tempests shall disturb no more."
Another of his poems, entitled "Amanda in a Consumption," tells the
whole pitiful story of his misplaced passion. We sympathize with a
lover who was no more than a boy when we read:
"When wandering in the evening shade,
I shared her pain and calmed her grief,
A thousand tender things I said,
But all I said gave no relief:
When from her hair I dried the dew
She sighed and said--'I'm not for you.'"
There is an old saying that "love weeping burns away," and soon the
boy ceased to write lamentations over his lost Belinda. Events were
crowding thick and fast into his life at this time; years of travel and
excitement had helped him to forget her; and when he returned to "the
old house at Monmouth" on a summer day in 1780, weary of war and ill
from long incarceration in a British prison-ship, he was in a state of
mind to fall in love with the little Nelly of old Tennent days.
Like Philip Freneau, who had written from his earliest childhood,
Eleanor Forman began the indulgence of her muse in her teens. One of
her books still in existence shows her first thoughts put into verse.
"Lines to a Lady's Singing-Bird" are scribbled over a copper print of
a placid shepherdess, and words ready for rhyming embellish some of
the margins. The pompous Mrs. Forman was very proud of her daughter's
accomplishment, and it is said that, on Eleanor's composing some
tributary verses to her mother's pet gray turkey, she presented her
with a pair of paste shoe-buckles whose glitter affected the heart of
every Monmouth maid and swain.
Beside Freneau's own stream running through the valley of young
pine-trees near the Hall the romantic Eleanor loved to come to dream.
There one day she found another dreamer, and the chance meeting was the
beginning of one of the most poetic love-affairs.
This pleasant stream was almost a human thing to the poet. In the days
before he found his Eleanor seated on its bank he addressed to it his
last musings on the vanished Belinda:
"Where the pheasant roosts at night,
Lonely, drowsy, out of sight,
Where the evening breezes sigh,
Solitary, there stray I.
"Close along the shaded stream,
Source of many a youthful dream,
Where branchy cedars dim the day,
There I muse and there I stray."
Later, with "the fairest of women" by his side, when Belinda had grown
to be only a memory, he composed his exquisite poem, "Retirement:"
"A hermit's house beside a stream,
With forests planted round,
Whatever it to you may seem,
More real happiness I deem
Than if I were a monarch crown'd.
"A cottage I could call my own,
Remote from domes of care;
A little garden, wall'd with stone,
The wall with ivy overgrown,
A limpid fountain near,
"Would more substantial joys afford,
More real bliss impart,
Than all the wealth that misers hoard,
Than vanquished worlds, or world's restored--
Mere cankers of the heart!
"Vain, foolish man! how vast thy pride,
How little can thy wants supply!--
'Tis surely wrong to grasp so wide--
We act as if we only had
To triumph--not to die!"
Reading its faded original, we hear the strong, mellifluous voice of
the poet that the ladies of Charleston used to grow enthusiastic over
when he visited his brother Peter in that city, and our minds grow
retrospective, leading us back through the years to the couple by the
little silver thread of water which long ago gave up its life to some
mysterious unknown ocean. What a joyous thing it is when she is near
him to listen to his words and share in his flights of fancy! The wind
whispers through the pine-trees, and their soft sighing mingles with
the gurgling cadences of the wavelets and breaks up the sunlit silence.
The wind is a dream wind, and brings to them both sweet visions of the
future. The house, surrounded by walls "with ivy overgrown" and "remote
from domes of care," where he longs to take her, is almost a reality.
Fate is a hag old and blind, and Life is a song from a charmed lute.
Soon after his meeting with Nelly Forman, Freneau wrote his tragedy of
"Major André," which was never presented before the footlights. It is
not known whether he ever gave it to a printer, and only fragments of
his manuscript are in existence to-day. A portion of it shows us the
unfortunate André pleading for his life before a tribunal, and as we
finger the time-stained paper, desecrated by the household accounts of
later years, a tearful Eleanor rises up before us, listening to the
impassioned reading of her poetic lover.
For his "Major André" Freneau wrote a prologue, which he afterwards
changed and permitted to be spoken at the opening of the Philadelphia
Theatre. This he dedicated "to his Excellency General Washington."
"PROLOGUE
"_Written to a Theatrical Entertainment in Philadelphia, December,
1781._
"Wars, bloody wars and hostile Britain's rage
Have banished long the pleasures of the stage;
From the gay painted scene compell'd to part,
(Forget the melting of the heart)
Constrained to shun the bold theatric show,
To act long tragedies of real woe,
Heroes once more attend the comic muse;
Forget our failings, and our faults excuse.
In that fine language is our fable drest
Which still unrivall'd reigns o'er all the rest;
Of foreign courts the study and the pride,
Who to know _this_ abandon all beside;
Bold though polite, and ever sure to please;
Correct with grace, and elegant with ease;
Soft from the lips its easy accents roll,
Form'd to delight and captivate the soul;
In this Eugenia tells her easy lay
The brilliant work of courtly Beaumarchais;
In this Racine, Voltaire, and Boileau sung,
The noblest parts in the noblest tongue.
If the soft story in our play expressed
Can give a moment's pleasure to your breast,
To you, Great Sir! we must be proud to say
That moment's pleasure shall our pains repay.
Returned from conquest and from glorious toils,
From armies captured and unnumbered spoils;
Ere yet again, with generous France ally'd,
You rush to battle, humbling British pride;
While arts of peace thy kind protection share,
O let the Muses claim an equal care.
You bade us first our future greatness see,
Inspired by you, we languish'd to be free;
Even here where freedom lately sat distrest,
See a new Athens rising in the West!
Fair science blooms where tyrants reign'd before,
Red war reluctant leaves our ravag'd shore--
Illustrious hero, may you live to see
These new republics powerful, great, and free;
Peace, heaven-born peace, o'er spacious regions spread,
While discord, sinking, veils her ghastly head."
In the soft autumn twilights of the days that followed, when the
yellow Morris turnpike grew vague and shadowy and the stars dotted
the sky like little candles lighting up a hundred pieces of rose- and
dusk-tinted velvet, Freneau would mount his faithful Cato and ride
through the avenue of locust-trees into the lane leading to Forman
Place. Dear to their hearts were these trysts of the lovers. There were
walks in the Forman garden, made a place of enchantment by the breath
of Indian summer. Later came songs in Madam Forman's chintz parlor.
All through their lives Nelly sang to her Philip the love-ditties of
sighing Darbys and unhappy Joans; and even after his death, when very
aged, it is said that she sometimes crooned to his spirit in a queer
cracked voice the songs he once loved to hear.
Forman Place, still standing close to the village of Freehold, what a
place of memories it is! The tired, weather-beaten old building which
the sunshine seems to desecrate was once one of the happiest of homes.
Now, like some sleepy antique dame belated after a revelry, it waits
despairingly by the turn of the road for Father Time and his band of
winds to sweep it away. Broad-shouldered and broad-hearted Samuel
Forman, with a rubicund visage made familiar by Hogarth, was an ideal
host. Oh, the Merry-Andrews and the witlings Euphrosyne brought there!
"Better one's house be too little one day than too big all the year
after" was his motto, and bantering bucks were broadcast round his
board.
And Madam Forman, who came of a pious family, but was married at
fifteen, early caught the infection from her spouse. None could resist
the laugh of the portly dame so redolent of good-humor. Tongues that
wagged said her handmaidens were willing to work their fingers off
in her service if she would let them. Her daughters she cajoled into
the idea that they were wits as well as beauties, and men, from callow
youth down to the very grandfathers of the parish, worshipped the
ground she tripped upon. Whether gracing her chintz parlor, garbed in a
lustrous grenadine, her powdered hair covered with a hundred ringlets
that dangled and danced as she talked, or in humble linsey-woolsey
overseeing the daily baking, the chance guest was always sure of a
welcome from the mistress of Forman Place.
"Heigh-ho! there's Jeremy, Juniper, or Tobias. What a lark!" the great
voice of her lord and master would come floating over the staircase or
from the depths of the cushioned grandfather's chair in the library.
"Yes, he's here, Samuel, and promised to sup," the echo would answer.
It was to this happy haven the horseman rode very often after the
meeting by the stream.
[Illustration: NOW, LIKE SOME SLEEPY ANTIQUE DAME BELATED AFTER A
REVELRY, IT WAITS DESPAIRINGLY BY THE TURN OF THE ROAD]