drama of the Revolution was nearing its triumphant end for the
patriot. Monmouth was awakening as from a lethargy. After the ravages
it had endured through the early periods of the war, life had become
stagnant. At Mount Pleasant Hall Freneau had written many a stirring
verse which had travelled from Concord to Yorktown, encouraging the
ofttimes despairing soldiers. Not a memorable incident escaped his
watchful eye. Behind the ardent and passionate desire for liberty was
the inspiration of love to guide his pen. The love of country and the
love of woman were intertwined, and it was his thrilling visions of the
first that brought sweet dreams of the other real one to camp-fire and
battle-field. Liberty was a strange and beautiful goddess that those
tattered, wearied men knew not, and it was always the memory of the
sweetheart's face that spurred them over rock-bound roads filled with
multitudinous obstacles in quest of the shadowy creature. When they
fell by the wayside or in the trenches, the look of peace on their
white faces was not her doing, but the tender vows and the last kisses
of the girls they had left behind them.
Soon came peace, and on its trail the last meeting of the lovers in
the Forman garden. The gates of winter were open and all the gorgeous
flower-children slumbering in the earth. By the golden sundial a
solitary purple pansy bloomed, hoping that the false shimmer was the
sun, and in Madam Forman's rose-bed yellow blushmaids were glowing at
the bleak landscape like incense lamps on some dim altar. There had
been a family conference in Forman Place the night before. Eleanor's
brother David, the stern "Black David" of Germantown fame, who had
recently laid down his gun and sabre by his father's hearth, was
incensed at his sister's betrothal to the poet. Mrs. Freneau's fortune
was almost depleted by the inroads of the war. "That scribbling
fellow is no match for Eleanor," the warrior said. The household,
seated about the heavy oaken table in the hall where the letters and
the last _Gazette_ always lay, listened to his words of wisdom. Every
one was always silent when David spoke, for his sentences were like
nails,--something to be driven into the hearts of his hearers. No one
could dispute him. "The Freneaus no longer kept up the state they
flourished during their first years in Monmouth; a poet's pen could not
support a wife! The engagement was worse than foolhardy. Many a man of
wealth as well as parts would be seeking Eleanor."
Samuel, in the great Hepplewaite chair, was silent. The mirth lines
about his mouth drooped and lengthened. He liked Freneau, whose ready
tongue always held a jest. His blue-eyed Nelly loved him, he knew.
Furtively he turned and stole a glance at his wife for help to stem
the wrath of the stern dictator, but the good dame held a handkerchief
to her eyes. Trouble weighed heavily on her heart. Eleanor stood by
the door gazing out of the blurred panes at the road that led to the
Freneaus. Her face was pale, but suffused with the light of love.
Before her was the highway of Fate, and her heart told her that it
would not admit of another.
"David," she said, looking at him, "you may be a great man in war
counsel, but when a woman is the question you know naught. With the man
I love I could wander penniless but unwearied all through life."
There was silence; then Madam Forman tried to speak, but her voice was
choked with sobs.
And so it was that the lovers met in the dying garden and said good-by.
She told him of her brother's words, and into his life there came a new
desire. His country needed his pen no longer. The fortune his father's
will gave to his mother had been placed on the altar of patriotism,
and much of it went into the ship "Aurora," captured by the British.
He would leave his home to seek another fortune, and, when it was won,
return and claim her.
The air was sultry and the moon hung like a dying taper over their
heads. The fields that crept up to the Homdel hills he loved so well
were gray. A north wind sighed among the wraiths of summer in the
garden, a harbinger that the dawn would be fresh and clear.
"I shall never marry any one else," she told him. "My window faces the
bend of the road, and there I shall place a candle every night to light
your steps when they bring you back to me. Often I shall go to the
little stream and wonder where you are wandering. Never fear. I shall
wait for you forever and forever, until my cheeks fade and my eyes grow
dim."
Like one of the flowers in the garden trying to hide its head from the
death-stings of the wind, she nestled in his arms. The moon grew faint
behind the clouds, and the soughing low and melodious, for a woman's
heart was being spilled over the highway.
The next morning a small procession left Mount Pleasant Hall and crept
over the Morris turnpike road to the Point. There were the poet and
his mother in the antiquated chaise, Josiah, an old negro household
slave, mounted on Cato, and several of the field servants, carrying a
large wooden chest, following on foot. The air was fresh and strong,
and, although the day was young, the blue of the sky deep and pure.
John Burrowes's sailing-vessel was to leave Kearny Port, bound for
Philadelphia, before the noon hour.
The sunshine played over the yellow, clay-stained road, and off in the
distance the sea was a sheet of burnished gold. Some place where its
arms spread was the promised land the poet hoped to find. There his
work would bring him a reward that would help him to win his love.
At the Port the vessel was anchored in the calm inlet with her bowsprit
pointed to the dancing waves beyond. Old Mrs. Burrowes, the corn
merchant's wife, with some of her grandchildren, was on the wharf to
see him off. When she saw the Freneau chaise, she ran forward to meet
its occupants. "Yes, I am very sure my husband can take Mr. Freneau to
Philadelphia," she said, in answer to their inquiries. Mrs. Freneau
alighted and sat with her on one of the grain sacks while the poet
went to seek Mr. Burrowes. All about them was bustle and confusion
preparatory to a long cruise. Soon came the hour of leaving and the
last farewells. Tears filled the mother's eyes as she kissed her son.
Once before she had watched him depart to wrestle with the world beyond
her quiet land. No cruel war was to claim him now, and yet she could
not hide her anguish at parting. His own heart was full of courage and
the breath of the sea was like wine to him. The fortune his mother had
given to her country he would build again! As he embraced his mother,
before his eyes was the face of the woman he thought the most beautiful
in the world. She was worth the price of conquest.
After Philip left, Eleanor took to watching the highway. It had brought
him to her, and in the dawn, the noonday, and the dusk she looked out
upon it from the windows of her room, longing for his return. Every
night she placed the candle in the farthest sill, as she promised him
at parting. He was constantly in her thoughts. As time went on other
suitors came to Forman Place to pay to her their addresses. Hezekiah
Stout, the great mill-owner of Englishtown, was one of them. That
Revolutionary Crœsus received more encouragement from David than from
the lady of his choice. Hezekiah proved a patient lover, for when she
refused to see him, he would sit silently blinking on the Forman settle
for hours at a time, until Madam Forman, the best-natured woman in the
world, vowed to herself that, with all his money, he was too stupid a
man to wed her daughter.
And the little silver stream that whispered its secrets to the slim
pine-trees, how it missed the pair! Many a time it wearily watched the
winter wane and earth cast off her white mantle. The wild anemones
came, the primroses and the crocuses and all that lovely company of
fragile blooms which mark the footsteps of hope. "Oh, if he would
but come now while I mirror so much beauty," the stream crooned to
herself. Sometimes she would see among the flowers the reflection of
the fair face he loved. Then the little stream was happy. "She at least
remembers, and perhaps he will come soon," she sang in joy to the
pine-trees. Then the grasses grew high, and the golden sunshine lured
the dragon-flies to flit among the fragrant worlds along her course.
Still he came not. She began to grow impatient. Perhaps her heart would
be dried up before his children strolled by her side and waded in her
clear water. The leaves began to fall, and the worlds along her course
knew that the night was coming on. "He has forgotten," the stream
moaned; "forgotten." And, hundreds of miles away, he heard her voice,
and in the hold of an ice-bound ship wrote to his stream and his love,
whom he called Cynthia, these tender verses:
"Through Jersey groves a wandering stream
That still its wonted music keeps
Inspires no more my evening dream,
Where Cynthia, in retirement, sleeps.
"Sweet murmuring stream, how blest art thou
To kiss the bank where she resides!
Where nature decks the beechen bough
That trembles o'er your shallow tides.
"The cypress-tree on Hermit's height,
Where love has soft addresses paid
By Luna's pale reflected light,
No longer charms me to its shade.
"To me, alas! so far removed,
What raptures, once, that scenery gave,
Ere, wandering yet from all I loved,
I sought a deeper, drearier wave.
"Your absent charms my thoughts employ,
I sigh to think how sweet you sung,
And half adore the painted toy
That near my careless heart you hung.
"Now, fettered fast in icy fields,
In vain we loose the sleeping sail;
The frozen wave no longer yields,
And useless blows the favoring gale.
"Yet still in hopes of vernal showers
And breezes moist with morning dew,
I pass the lingering, lazy hours
Reflecting on the spring--and you."
Mammon proved a cruel and elusive mistress to Freneau, and she led
him many a fruitless errand in pursuit of her. For several years he
commanded the brig "Washington," owned by his brother Peter. In this
ship he made many journeys to the West Indies, and by clever trading
at last succeeded in amassing a small competence. With this he returned
to Mount Pleasant Hall after an absence of nearly six years.
In the spring of that year the lovers were united. The wedding held in
Forman Place was a very simple affair, attended by only a few of the
Monmouth neighborhood. After his marriage the poet took his bride home
to Mount Pleasant Hall, and later to Philadelphia, where Mrs. Freneau's
little salon played a part in the history of the capital. A diary of
Freneau's life in that city is said to be in existence, and it is to be
hoped that it will some day come to light.
The love-letters of the charming Freneaus, written for the most part in
verse, were destroyed many years ago. Several of the poems compiled in
the editions of Freneau's works are thought to have been written by his
wife. Like Mrs. Wordsworth, who is credited with helping her husband
with his masterpiece, "The Daffodils," Mrs. Freneau lent her deft hand
to beautifying "The Wild Honeysuckle," the most exquisite poem written
by an American in the eighteenth century.
"Fair flower that dost so comely grow,
Hid in this silent, dull retreat,
Untouched thy honey blossoms blow,
Unseen thy little branches greet;
No roving foot shall crush thee here,
No busy hand provoke a tear.
"By nature's self in white arrayed,
She bade thee shun the vulgar eye,
And planted here the guardian shade,
And sent soft waters murmuring by;
Thus quietly thy summer goes,
Thy days declining to repose.
"Smit with those charms, that must decay,
I grieve to see your future doom;
They died--nor were those flowers more gay,
The flowers that did in Eden bloom;
Unpitying frosts and autumn's power
Shall leave no vestige of this flower.
"From morning's suns and evening's dews
At first thy little being came;
If nothing once, you nothing lose,
For when you die you are same;
The space between is but an hour,
The frail duration of a flower."
One cannot read these verses without entering into a closer intimacy
with "The Poet of the Revolution" and the beautiful Eleanor Forman.
Their courtship was idyllic, and during the long stretch of years they
walked together hand in hand the flame of love never diminished, but
grew brighter. From the day of their marriage, when Freneau is recorded
as having compared his blushing bride to Fielding's "Amelia," the ideal
characterization of womanhood, until one wintry dawn forty-five years
later, when a trembling, aged Eleanor bent over the lifeless body of
her lover lulled to sleep in a snow-drift, no discordant note entered
the sweet harmony of their lives. When shadows dimmed their pathway,
they clung closer to each other. Even death could not separate them.
When Freneau was under the sod and the world disputing over the few
poor bay leaves it had allowed him, her mind was constantly with the
lover of her youth. In her maidenhood she had watched weary years for
him to come back to her, and at the last, when his voice was hushed in
"the land of no returning," she longed to go to him.
[Illustration]
THE CHEVALIER DE SILLY
AND HIS NEWPORT SALLY
[Illustration]
[Illustration]
THE CHEVALIER DE SILLY AND HIS NEWPORT SALLY
In the old portion of Newport, where the houses are compact and the
streets hilly and narrow, is the Vernon mansion, erected many years
before the Revolution, when the city ranked second only to Boston in
commercial supremacy. William Vernon, its first owner, was one of the
wealthy old-time traders whose fleet of merchantmen made the long wharf
famous. There, in the days before British guns were trained on the city
and stanch, opulent warehouses flanked the quays, his jolly tars would
unload the cargoes of West Indian sugar and bring out of some brave
ship's hold the half a hundred blacks. Most of those ship-loads of
sugar would be made into rum and sent back to Africa or the Indies for
more blacks; but the savages never saw their native homes again, and
became the faithful Cudjos and Pompeys of many a colonial household.
[Illustration: NEWPORT IN 1831]
Quaint Mary Lane, or Street, as it is now called, running past the
Vernon residence, is truly a thoroughfare of memories. For a period
of three years it was trodden by the feet of thousands of British
soldiers, and later the gallant Frenchmen of Rochambeau's fleet of
seven ships of the line and five frigates walked there disconsolately
in groups of three or four, hoping soon to sail away from the
poverty-stricken place Newport was at that period of its existence. No
longer were there gentlemen of fortune like Colonel Godfrey Malbone,
who so often clinked silver goblets with his guests over groaning
tables, to give entertainments. The town was almost destitute of
wealth, and but a small number of the better class of its population
came back to their former dwellings during the French fleet's stay
there.
Life in Newport during 1780 and 1781 was for the most part a dreary
thing to these Frenchmen, but a host of dashing chevaliers fresh
from the Court of "the Austrian," as spiteful Madame Adélaïde had
nicknamed her fair niece, were sure to find some amusement even in
the dullest city. It is true there was no "prince of youth," as the
court ringleader, the Comte d'Artois, was dubbed by his intimates, to
lead them through days of delight as at Versailles and Fontainebleau,
but Newport gallants soon introduced them to town beauties, and cards
were laid for the ever new and exciting game of love. In lieu of
the cabriolet races in the Bois de Boulogne they could skate in the
little creeks about the Point, and when dreams of the Palais Royal
made them long for "Armid" and "Alcestio," there was always a dame to
finger a spinet. Old citizens of the past generation used to tell of
window-panes in the Vernon mansion covered with the names of Newport's
femininity. With the same spirit which later led their compatriots to
jest and dance amid the grim shadows of the Conceirgerie, they made the
best of a changed life.
Mrs. Cowley's assembly-room, famous in Newport annals, was made over
into a salon for play, and there the youth of the army would often
stray when the periods of duty were over. We can see the haughty
Rochambeau with his muff bending over the tric-trac table, while about
him flutter the very flower of France,--men bearing such names as
Marquis de Chastelleux, Marquis de Laval, Baron de Closen, Vicomte de
Noailles, Marquis de Custine, Comte de Fersen, and Duc de Lauzun. They
who had lost and won their louis to the laughter of the fairest women
of a famous court had for sole spectators little village gamins peering
in at the windows. Before the glitter of gold these graceful gamesters
forgot time and place. They were back again at tables in the gardens of
Paris,--recreation spots as lovely as Little Trianon, where Oberkirche
wrote, "The glades were perfumed with lilacs and peopled with
nightingales--The air full of fragrant mist brightened by butterflies."
Off came their tinselled coats, and in their stead some of them donned
frieze great-coats, while the more intrepid rolled thin soft linen
shirt-sleeves up to the elbow for luck. To guard their eyes from the
light and keep their powdered wigs in place, they tied on straw-crowned
hats festooned with some forgotten charmer's colors. The Maybud plucked
many moons before, which nestled so often 'neath a tassel, was faded.
Cliff flowers were in full bloom then.
The belles of Newport! What pages could be devoted to them! A more
enchanting galaxy of femininity never enriched a New England town.
The Duc de Lauzun, an ardent spirit in our struggle for liberty who
left his countrymen enthusiastic over republican ideas, the ladies even
going so far as to have their hair dressed _aux insurgents_, wrote
home from Newport of their charms. The Misses Hunter, daughters of Dr.
William Hunter, he particularly admired. "I was not in love with them,"
he coyly confided, "but had they been my sisters I could not have loved
them more."
Three famous beauties were Miss Champlin, who danced with stately
Washington; Miss Redwood, to whose charms the sailors in the street
would doff their caps, holding them low until she passed; and Sally
Church, the sprightly maiden who, tradition says, tripped into the
hearts of a small army of Frenchmen when she returned from Providence
to her native city about the time of the French fleet's arrival.
[Illustration: MRS. WANTON, A BELLE OF NEWPORT]
Sally Church! how prim the pseudonym, and yet very vivacious was its
owner. A charming vision in her red wool gown and huge fur tippet, we
see her mincing merrily through that Mary Street on a blustering March
morning. The wind blows her wide London hat and gives it a saucy tilt,
and the eyes of a long line of soldiers follow the wave of her skirt
as it plays about her trim ankles. "Here comes Sally in her chair,"
or "Here comes Sally on foot," were among the most interesting pieces
of news her admirers had to impart. They ogled and sang to her, wrote
poems on her beauty; and yet at most of them she only laughed, and so
they ended by worshipping her.
As the months flew by there lay in one of the rooms of the Vernon
mansion, which Rochambeau had made his head-quarters, a young
lieutenant by the name of Chevalier de Silly, suffering from a disease
protracted by the severe cold. Having heard his brother officers dilate
on the charms of the lovely Sally, he desired that his bed be removed
close to the window, in hope that he might obtain a glimpse of her.
Many a weary hour he spent gazing out into the gray line of the street
unrewarded, and then one happy day he espied her. The fates favored
him, and Sally, chancing to look up at his window, smiled and thereby
added another soldier to her own little army. Soon the Chevalier grew
better and was able to assume the duties of his post. His friendship
with Sally had progressed by this time and she was becoming the torment
of his life,--an agony far worse than bodily illness. As he stood on
duty--a grim sentinel--before the Vernon mansion, the maiden would
happen to stroll by.
"Come, Silly," she would call, "take me for a walk to the old mill."
"I cannot, mademoiselle," was his usual sad answer; "the king's service
goes before everything."
"You do not love me or you would take me," she always mocked, and with
a proud toss of her head she would hasten past him, heedless of his
torrent of reproaches.
And so "Silly and his Sally," as the youth and the maiden came to be
dubbed by the garrison, spent their days. Tradition says that she was
fonder of him than of any other of her French swains, but, womanlike,
enjoyed the power of her fascinations. But she was not to keep him in
her train forever. The springlike day dawned when General Washington,
"the Atlas of America," Silly called him, was to arrive. At Barney's
Ferry he landed in a gayly decorated barge, and all Newport was out to
greet him. The troops formed a solid line three deep on either side
from the long wharf to the very door of the Vernon mansion, where he
was to be entertained by Rochambeau. The following night all Newport
was illuminated, and old records say that the Town Council ordered
candles to be purchased and given to all who were too poor to use
them, so that every house should show a light. About the streets the
hero rode, followed by the French officers, their aides, and hundreds
of patriotic citizens bearing candle torches to make the occasion
joyful. The night was clear, the sea calm, and the wind still. Those
who participated in the affair never forgot the beauty of the scene.
Sally was in the crowd, but there was no Silly by her side, for
the disconsolate Chevalier wrote to a friend that, "after General
Washington, she who attracted my attention was the amiable Sally Church
accompanied, alas! by a faithful townsman who was free of a touch of
the gout."
A few days later, when the gout departed, the Chevalier had his revenge
on her other suitors at a ball given by the city of Newport to General
Washington and Admiral Rochambeau, in Mrs. Cowley's assembly-room.
There, to the rippling airs of Gluck, so beloved by musical little
Marie Antoinette, he showed the company many of the famous Guimard
steps, as he essayed the gavottes of his king. Sally would look at
him often, admiration springing forth from her sparkling eyes, as he
gracefully swayed to music, one moment gay and the next sinking into
a gentle cadence. This is one of the last records we have of Sally
and her Silly dancing out the swift-footed hours in the taper-lighted
ballroom.
Numerous accounts of the ball have come down to us. The decorations
were intrusted to Dezoteux, one of the aides of the Baron de Vioménil,
and the guests are said to have been loud in the appreciation of
his efforts. Washington opened the festivities by leading out Miss
Champlin in a minuet. When midnight was near at hand and frolic and
mirth at their highest pitch, the gallant Rochambeau and several of his
officers led an assault on the startled musicians, and, seizing their
instruments, played the tune, "A Successful Campaign,"--a graceful
token of respect to the Commander-in-Chief of the army.
We picture them together when he homeward walks beside her chair, the
constant lover, to her very gate. With the memory of the music in her
ears, the stars overspreading the sky a dazzling canopy, and a cavalier
by her side, could she ask for more? And yet she did, and, alack-a-day,
as she herself would have said, the stream of her life was not always
so fresh and frolicking. Could the chairmen tell us more? No doubt; but
leave the door tight shut and spare a lady's blushes.