_The_ FRIENDLY CLUB & OTHER PORTRAITS
FRANCIS PARSONS
[Illustration: JOEL BARLOW
From an Engraving by Durand
After the Portrait by Robert Fulton]
The
FRIENDLY CLUB
And
OTHER PORTRAITS
_By_ Francis Parsons
"_Whose yesterdays look backwards
with a smile._"
--YOUNG'S _Night Thoughts_
[Illustration]
Edwin Valentine Mitchell
Hartford, Connecticut
1922
Copyright, 1922,
By Edwin Valentine Mitchell
_First Edition_
PRINTED IN THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA
TO
THE MEMORY OF
MY FATHER
NOTE
THE thanks of the author are due to Mr. Charles Hopkins Clark, Editor of
"The Hartford Courant," in which most of the following essays originally
appeared anonymously, for permission to republish them in the revised,
enlarged and sometimes entirely re-written form in which they are here
presented. "The Friendly Club," "The Mystery of the Bell Tavern" and
"Our Battle Laureate" have not been previously printed.
Citation of authorities, except so far as they appear in the text, has
been considered inappropriate in the case of such informal articles as
these. It would be ungracious, however, to omit mention of the writer's
indebtedness in connection with the second essay to Mr. Charles Knowles
Bolton's "The Elizabeth Whitman Mystery," which is the latest and most
comprehensive document on this baffling incident of New England social
history.
F. P.
CONTENTS
PAGE
I The Friendly Club 13
II The Mystery of the Bell Tavern 47
III The Hemans of America 69
IV Whom the Gods Love 83
V An Eccentric Visitor 95
VI Who Was Peter Parley? 107
VII A Preacher of the Gospel 121
VIII A Friend of Lincoln 135
IX Our Battle Laureate 147
X The Temple of the Muses 161
XI The Friend of Youth 181
XII The Christmas Party 191
XIII The Fabric of a Dream 201
XIV The Quiet Life 213
ILLUSTRATIONS
JOEL BARLOW _Frontispiece_
From the engraving by Durand after the portrait
by Robert Fulton
LEXINGTON MONUMENT AND BELL TAVERN, DANVERS 64
From Barber's "Massachusetts Historical Collections"
THE SIGOURNEY MANSION 75
From an old woodcut
LYDIA HUNTLEY SIGOURNEY 78
From a miniature in the Colt Collection by
permission of the Wadsworth Atheneum
INSCRIPTION TO DANIEL WADSWORTH IN J. G. C.
BRAINARD'S HAND 91
TITLE PAGE OF BRAINARD'S "OCCASIONAL PIECES OF POETRY" 92
THE WATKINSON LIBRARY 166
Drawing by Seth Talcott
SILHOUETTE OF DANIEL WADSWORTH 170
By permission of The Connecticut Historical Society
_I: The Friendly Club_
A HARVARD man, not exempt from the complacency sometimes attributed to
graduates of his university, once observed, according to Barrett
Wendell, that the group of forgotten litterateurs, who toward the close
of the eighteenth century attained a brief measure of fame as the
"Hartford Wits," represents the only considerable literary efflorescence
of Yale. The remark did not fail to provoke the rejoinder, doubtless
from a Yale source, that nevertheless at the time when the Hartford Wits
flourished no Harvard man had produced literature half so good as
theirs.
How good this literature was considered in its day is not readily
understood by the modern reader, for from the Hudibrastic imitations and
heroic couplets of these writers, whose brilliance was dimmed so long
ago, the contemporary flavor has long since evaporated. Indeed there is
no modern reader in the general sense. It is only the antiquarian, the
literary researcher, the casual burrower among the shelves of some old
library who now opens these yellow pages and follows for a few moments
the stilted lines that seem to him a diluted imitation of Pope,
Goldsmith and Butler. Professor Beers of Yale ventures the surmise that
he may be the only living man who has read the whole of Joel Barlow's
"Columbiad."
Yet in their time this coterie of poets, who gathered in the little
Connecticut town after the close of the war for independence, became
famous not only in their own land but abroad, and the community where
most of them lived and met at their "friendly club"--was it at the Black
Horse Tavern or the "Bunch of Grapes"?--shone in reflected glory as the
literary center of America. No Boswell was among them to record the
sparkling epigrams, the jovial give and take, the profound "political
and philosophical" debates of those weekly gatherings. Yet imagination
loves to linger on the old friendships, the patriotic aspirations, the
common passion for creative art, the wooing of the Muses of an older
world, thus dimly shadowed forth against the background of the raw
young country just embarking on its mysterious experiment.
Do not doubt that these personages whose individualities are now so
effectually concealed behind the veil of their sounding and artificial
cantos were real young men who cherished their dreams and their hopes.
One can see them gathered around the great wood fire in the low ceiled
room redolent of tobacco, blazing hickory and hot Jamaica rum.
Here is Trumbull, the lawyer, the author of "M'Fingal" which everybody
has read and which has been published in England and honored with the
criticism of the Quarterly and Edinburgh Reviews. He is a little man,
rather frail, rather nervous, not without impatience, with a ready wit
that sometimes bites deep. Here is Lemuel Hopkins, the physician, whose
lank body, long nose and prominent eyes are outward manifestations of
his eccentric genius. His presence lends a fillip to the gathering for
he is an odd fish and no one can tell what he will do or say next.
Threatened all his life with tuberculosis he is nevertheless a man of
great muscular strength and during his days as a soldier he used to
astonish his comrades by his ability to fire a heavy king's arm, held
in one hand at arm's length. In his verses he castigates shams and
humbugs of all kinds, whether the nostrums of medical quacks or the
irreverent vaporings of General Ethan Allen--
"Lo, Allen, 'scaped from British jails
His tushes broke by biting nails,
Appears in hyperborean skies,
To tell the world the Bible lies."
Perhaps Colonel David Humphreys, full of war stories and anecdotes of
his intimacy with General Washington, on whose staff he served, is in
Hartford for the evening. A well dressed, hearty, sophisticated traveler
and man of the world is Colonel Humphreys, who would be recognized at
first glance as a soldier, though not as a poet. Nevertheless he is
addicted to the writing of verse which is apt to run in the vein of
comedy or burlesque when it is not earnestly patriotic. To look at him
one would know that he enjoys a good dinner, a good story and a bottle
of port.
We may be sure that Joel Barlow is here, the vacillating, visionary
Barlow who has tried, or is to try his hand at many pursuits besides
epic poetry--the ministry, the law, bookselling, philosophy, journalism
and diplomacy--but who is pre-occupied now, as all his life, with his
magnum opus, "The Vision of Columbus," later elaborated into "The
Columbiad." He is a good looking, if somewhat self-centered young man, a
favorite in the days of his New Haven residence with the young ladies of
that town. Perhaps it was there that he first met the charming and
talented Elizabeth Whitman, the daughter of the Rev. Dr. Elnathan
Whitman, sometime pastor of the South Congregational Church in Hartford,
who often visited her friend Betty Stiles, the daughter of the president
of Yale College. A few of Elizabeth Whitman's letters that have
survived--the packet bearing an endorsement in Barlow's handwriting--are
evidence that he made her a confidante of his literary schemes and hopes
and welcomed her assistance with his great epic. A strong friendship and
entire harmony seem to have existed between her and Ruth Baldwin of New
Haven, whom Barlow married during the war, and who is said to have
"inspired in the poet's breast a remarkable passion, one that survived
all the mutations of a most adventurous career, and glowed as fervently
at fifty as at twenty-five." For nearly a year the marriage was kept a
secret, but parental forgiveness was at last secured and Barlow has now
brought his wife to Hartford where he is continuing his legal studies,
begun in his college town. But the law will not engross him long. Soon,
with his friend Elisha Babcock, he is to start a new journal, "The
American Mercury," of which his editorship, like all of Barlow's early
enterprises, is to be brief, though the paper is to continue till 1830.
A tall, slender man, Noah Webster by name, a class-mate of Barlow at
Yale, though four years his junior, sits near him, relaxing for the
moment in the informality of these surroundings his strangely intense
powers of mental application, divided just now between the law and the
preparation of his "Grammatical Institute." To the "poetical effusions"
of his friends he contributes nothing, but he was an intimate of them
all and no doubt often attended their gatherings.
Perhaps, now and later, something of the poet's license in the matter of
chronology may be granted. Let us assume, then, that young Dr. Mason
Cogswell is in town for a day or two, looking over the ground with a
view of settling here in the practice of medicine and surgery in which
he is now engaged at Stamford, after his training in New York where he
served with his brother James at the soldiers' hospital. It is true that
the fragments of his diary, which by a fortunate chance were rescued
from destruction, do not mention any visit to Hartford as early as this,
though his journal does describe a short sojourn here a few years later.
Still, his presence is by no means impossible. He is a companionable
youth, as popular with the young ladies as Barlow, but with an easier
manner, a readier humor. Delighted at this opportunity to sit for an
evening at the feet of the older celebrities, he is a welcome guest, for
already he has a reputation for versatility and culture and the fact
that he was valedictorian of the Yale Class of 1780--and its youngest
member--is not forgotten.
Richard Alsop, book-worm, naturalist and linguist, who is beginning to
dip into verse, has locked up his book shop for the night and is here.
Near him sits a man who is, or is soon to be, his brother-in-law, a
tall, dark youth, Theodore Dwight, the brother of the more famous
Timothy, whose pastoral duties detain him at Greenfield Hill, but who is
sometimes numbered as one of this group. Theodore is now studying law,
but he has a flair for writing and makes an occasional adventure into
the gazettes.
These more youthful aspirants have their spurs to win. A little later
they, with their friend Dr. Elihu Smith, who published the first
American poetic anthology, are to get into print in a vein of satirical
verse ridiculing the prevalent literary affectation and bombast. After
journalistic publication these satires will appear in book form under
the title of "The Echo," in the introduction to which the anonymous
authors state that the poems "owed their origin to the accidental
suggestion of a moment of literary sportiveness." "The Echo" was
"Printed at the Porcupine Press by Pasquin Petronius."
That particular sportive moment is still in the future. Now it is
sufficient for these younger men to shine in the reflected luster of the
established luminaries. These greater lights are worthy indeed of the
worship of the lesser stars. Three of them have achieved, or are soon to
acquire, an international as well as a national reputation. That
"M'Fingal" had provoked discussion in England has been noted.
Humphreys's "Address to the Armies of America," written in camp at
Peekskill, and dedicated to the Duke de Rochefoucault, was issued with
an introductory letter by the poet's friend, the Marquis de Chastellux,
in a French translation in Paris, after its publication in England where
the Monthly and Critical Reviews gave it a fair amount of praise, though
they could not refrain from the statement that the poem was "not a very
pleasing one to a good Englishman." Barlow's "Vision of Columbus" was
published almost simultaneously in Hartford and London in 1787.
In short these men had attained a genuine intellectual eminence in their
generation. They were the cognoscenti of their day. Like most young
intellectuals their gospel concerned itself with reform, with the
ridicule of shams, with the refusal to accept the popularity of new
doctrines as a final test of their value. Trumbull and Barlow, both Yale
graduates, had fought with their friend Timothy Dwight their first
reform campaign which was an effort to introduce into the somewhat
archaic and outworn body of the Yale curriculum the breath of the
humanities and of modern thought. Trumbull, according to Moses Coit
Tyler, was an example of a "new tone coming into American
letters--urbanity, perspective, moderation of emphasis, satire,
especially on its more playful side--that of irony."
Their interests were not only literary. They were publicists, political
satirists, social philosophers, not without their religious theories. In
all these matters their search was for the true standards and as
champions of causes and enthusiasts of ideals they exhibited a variation
from type in that their warfare was waged, not against the recognized
conventions in government, religion and society, but in favor of them.
Priding themselves on untrammelled and direct thinking, their reasoning
led them to support the established, the orderly, the stable.
Temperamentally aristocrats, theoretically republicans--in the broad
sense of the term--they were practically federalists. "The Anarchiad," a
series of poems they were contributing anonymously about this time to
"The New Haven Gazette," dealt satirically with the dangers of national
unrest and instability, of selfish aggrandizement and of a fictitious
currency. In these verses Hesper addresses "the Sages and Counsellors at
Philadelphia" as follows:
"But know, ye favor'd race, one potent head
Must rule your States, and strike your foes with dread."
And in the same passage occur some lines, attributed to Hopkins, that
Daniel Webster may have read:
"Through ruined realms the voice of UNION calls;
On you she calls! Attend the warning cry:
YE LIVE UNITED, OR DIVIDED, DIE!"
They ridiculed unsparingly the dangers hidden under the cloak of
"Democracy"--dangers imminent and menacing in the days following the end
of the war in which most of them had served. In fighting these perils
they were sagacious in making use of the means frequently employed by
advocates of radicalism--invective, irony and ridicule. For these
methods secured, as they naturally would secure if cleverly managed, a
wide appeal. Yet the efficiency of such weapons depends very largely
upon the occasion. Their potency is contemporary with the events against
which they are directed and with the passing years their force weakens.
Who reads nowadays the political diatribes of Swift, the tracts of
Defoe, or the letters of Junius? Here perhaps is in part an explanation
of the great temporary influence of the Hartford Wits, as well as of
their complete modern obscuration. The brilliant blade they wielded had
a biting edge, but the rust of a century and a half has dulled it.
This general leaning toward the established canons, this impatience with
the new doctrines that in the judgment of these men made for disunion
and disaster, should be qualified, at least in the religious aspect, in
two interesting particulars, each contradictory to the other. Hopkins
began adult life as a sceptic but became a defender of the Christian
philosophy. Barlow, on the other hand, deserted in later life the
orthodox ideals of his youth, never, perhaps, very enthusiastically
championed, and during his sojourn in France became a rationalist and
free-thinker.
In general, however, the Hartford Wits fought for the established order
against the forces of innovation and disintegration and thus when they
sat down to unburden their minds of their visions of their country's
future greatness, or of their impatience with demagoguery and political
short-sightedness, it was natural that their sense of tradition and
order should lead their thoughts to seek expression in the verse forms
lifted into fame by the masters of an older and greater literature and
accepted as the conventional vehicle of poetic expression. Here is
another reason, if they must be catalogued, for the forgetfulness of the
Hartford Wits. These balanced, formal lines, so expressive of the
artificial modes and manners of the subjects of Queen Anne and her
successors, are to us prosy, old-fashioned and imitative. Their charm
has fled. Can you imagine Miss Amy Lowell reading Hudibras? And we must
admit that "M'Fingal," though it has given to literature some still
remembered aphorisms, such as--
"No man e'er felt the halter draw
With good opinion of the law"--
is, on the whole, poorer reading than its model.
ii
It is significant that the distinction of the individuals united in the
"friendly club" was not confined to their literary activities. In an age
sometimes esteemed narrow and limited in its cultural aspects they are
refreshing in their versatility. Trumbull was a well-known lawyer and
served on the bench for eighteen years, part of his legal training
having been pursued in the office of John Adams. It was a strange
combination, not unprecedented but nevertheless arresting, of this
talent for the law associated with the artistic temperament. For with
all his practical attributes Trumbull was essentially an artist. His
early poem entitled "An Ode to Sleep," says Tyler, "is a composition
resonant of noble and sweet music and making, if one may say so, a
nearer approach to genuine poetry than had then [1773] been achieved by
any living American except Freneau." And in the following bit of
autobiography, quoted by Tyler, may be discerned the self-distrust and
depression to which no soul that longs and strives for the beautiful in
this imperfect world is entirely a stranger: "Formed with the keenest
sensibility and the most extravagantly romantic feelings . . . . I was
born the dupe of imagination. My satirical turn was not native. It was
produced by the keen spirit of critical observation, operating on
disappointed expectation, and revenging itself on real or fancied
wrongs."
This is an extraordinary item of self-revelation to come from a man who
at various times held office as State's Attorney for Hartford County,
member of the General Assembly and Judge of the Superior and Supreme
Courts of his State. It may not be an entirely fanciful surmise to
attribute a partial cause of the delicate health that followed Trumbull
all his long life to the warring elements that strove to unite in his
brilliant mentality.
With Dr. Hopkins poetizing was distinctly a by-product. His chief
concern was the practice of medicine and in his profession he won a
reputation that is not entirely forgotten today by members of the
faculty, for he was probably the first American physician to assert that
tuberculosis was curable and his success as a specialist in this field
was so marked that, says Dr. Walter R. Steiner in a monograph upon him,
"patients with this disease came to him for treatment from a great
distance--one being recorded to have made the trip all the way from New
Orleans." In his treatment he was unique in his day in very largely
discarding the use of drugs and relying more upon pure air, good diet
and moderate exercise when strength permitted. His theory that fresh air
was better for colds than the warm air of houses was revolutionary, but
so was almost everything he did--or so it seemed to his contemporaries.
At one time he evidently considered that New York City might offer a
wider field of practice than the Connecticut capital, for in December,
1789, Trumbull wrote to Oliver Wolcott, "Dr. Hopkins has an itch of
running away to New York, but I trust his indolence will prevent him.
However if you should catch him in your city, I desire you to take him
up or secure him so that we may have him again, for which you shall have
sixpence reward and all charges." In spite of his malady he lived till
almost fifty-one, dying in April, 1801, the head of the medical
profession in Connecticut.
It is to be noted that though Dr. Cogswell was one of the chief
contributors to "The Echo" his main business in life was as a surgeon
rather than a poet, and he became one of the most skillful surgical
practitioners in the country, being the first to introduce into the
United States the operation for cataracts and the first to tie the
carotid artery. Closely associated with him is the pathetic memory of
his daughter Alice who became stone deaf in early childhood and whose
infirmity led to the establishment at Hartford of the first school in
this country for the education of the deaf. Of this institution Dr.
Cogswell was one of the founders and he was a leader in other
philanthropic enterprises. He lived till 1830. To the last he wore the
knee breeches and silk stockings customary in his youth and which he
considered the only proper dress for a gentleman. His death broke the
heart of his daughter Alice, to whom he had been a never-failing
protection and support, and she died within a fortnight after her
father.
In contrast with the activities of their colleagues, the careers of
Theodore Dwight and Alsop are associated solely with the product of
their pens. Dwight, however, was more of a publicist and editor than a
creative literary worker. He had the brains with which nature had
endowed his family and his history of the unjustly maligned Hartford
Convention is a thoughtful and able piece of work--an original
historical document that is illuminating and suggestive. Such
distinction as Alsop attained was strictly literary, yet one gets the
impression that he worked at writing rather as an amateur than a
professional. He was really a student, a scholar, a research worker, and
seems to have sought his reward more in the pleasure of following his
interests than in the quest of public recognition. Much that he wrote
was never published.
There was a great deal in life that Colonel Humphreys enjoyed besides
composing verses and a great many activities other than poetry for which
he may be remembered. Not the least hint of any paralyzing
self-distrust, no subtle questionings as to whether it was all worth
while, disturbed his equanimity. And fate rewarded his zest in life by
furnishing him with a variety of experiences. They began in the war from
which he emerged with a reputation for gallantry and daring and, what
was perhaps more valuable, with the firm friendship of George
Washington. He participated in the raid into Sag Harbor by Colonel Meigs
in '77 and the next year raided the Long Island shore on his own
account, burning three enemy ships and getting away without the loss of
a man. It was only a freak of the weather that perhaps withheld from him
a more glorious exploit for on Christmas night, 1780, he headed a
desperate venture that had for its object no less an achievement than
the capture of Sir Henry Clinton at his headquarters in New York. The
rising of the wintry northwest gale drove the boats of the little group
of adventurers away from the intended landing near the foot of Broadway
and swept them down through the British shipping in the harbor to Sandy
Hook. After Yorktown he was ordered by Washington to carry the captured
colors to Congress which in the enthusiasm of the moment voted him a
handsome sword.
"See Humphreys, glorious from the field retire.
Sheathe the glad sword and string the sounding lyre,"
wrote Barlow in his "Vision of Columbus," The lyre accompanied songs in
praise of his country, tributes to his commander-in-chief, political
satires, and even love lyrics--
"Enough with war my lay has sung
A softer theme awakes my tongue
'Tis beauty's force divine;
Can I resist that air, that grace,
The charms of motion, figure, face?
For ev'ry charm is thine."
But this was by the way. Appointed secretary to the commission,
consisting of Franklin, John Adams and Jefferson, sent to negotiate
treaties of commerce and amity with European nations, he no doubt
thoroughly enjoyed his two years in London and Paris. In theory the
nobility of Europe may have been anathema to a patriotic citizen of a
republic, but practically there were many persons among them whose
acquaintance was agreeable to an amiable and gallant gentleman of
sensibility like Colonel Humphreys and there was, no doubt, a certain
gratification in dedicating one's poems to a duke and in having them
reviewed by a marquis who incidentally disclosed the fact that he was an
old companion in arms. Also it was pleasant to be elected a fellow of
the Royal Society.
On Colonel Humphreys's return he spent some time as a member of the
family at Mount Vernon where Washington encouraged him in his project of
writing a history of the war which, however, never got any further in
print than a memorial of his old general, Putnam. At Mount Vernon he
wrote an ode celebrating his great and good friend whose friendship we
may reasonably infer constituted one of his chief conversational assets:
"Let others sing his deeds in arms,
A nation sav'd, and conquest's charms:
Posterity shall hear,
'Twas mine, return'd from Europe's courts
To share his thoughts, partake his sports
And sooth his partial ear."
It is clear that European life had its attractions for Colonel
Humphreys. At all events he returned to it, serving as minister to
Portugal and later to Spain whence he imported his famous merino sheep
to his acres at Humphreysville, now Seymour. Here, and in the adjoining
town of Derby, he projected and to a creditable extent realized, an
ideal patriarchal manufacturing and farming community, instructing his
operatives and husbandmen in improved industrial methods, in scientific
agriculture and stock raising, athletics, poetry and the drama in which
one of his productions was actually presented on the stage. At least he
accomplished his wish, voiced in his poem "On the Industry of the United
States of America"--
"Oh, might my guidance from the downs of Spain
Lead a white flock across the western main,
. . . . .
Clad in the raiment my merinos yield,
Like Cincinnatus, fed from my own field:
. . . . .
There would I pass, with friends, beneath my trees,
What rests from public life, in letter'd ease."
iii
Though the friends grouped around the tavern fire are united in two
sympathetic qualities--devotion to the Muses and a proud conviction,
singularly justified by events, of the destiny of their country--it is
manifest that the membership of the little club furnishes only another
illustration of the truism that human personality is the most varying
thing in the world and that life has different lessons for each of us.
The most baffling individuality of them all, the man whose story seems
to have been a quest for some mysterious, unattained goal, was Joel
Barlow.
In early life everything he attempted went to pieces. His chaplaincy in
the army was a _tour de force_ which he dropped as soon as possible. The
law proved a mistake almost as soon as begun and his editorship of "The
American Mercury" was abandoned after less than a year. Perhaps it was
with renewed hope, perhaps it was with something of desperation, that he
persuaded himself to embark on an entirely new undertaking and to accept
a proposal to journey overseas to procure settlers for the Ohio lands
which the Scioto Land Company desired to sell to unsuspecting Frenchmen.
It is an established fact that Barlow was unsuspecting himself, but
after he had procured the settlers and shipped them off with golden
promises the project turned out to be a gigantic fraud. Personal
humiliation was added to general discouragement. Yet somehow he survived
the mortification. It may be that at this particular time mundane
affairs did not seem to be of the utmost importance. He was dwelling
somewhat in the clouds, in a vision--the "Vision of Columbus," which he
proposed to amplify and republish in a form more fitting the great theme
than the first modest edition of the original poem. He was pre-occupied
with the millenium he foresaw.
To the present day reader it is of the highest interest to note that the
"Vision" foretold the Panama Canal, and that the climax of the poem is a
congress of the nations.
"Hither the delegated sires ascend,
And all the cares of every clime attend.
. . . . . .
To give each realm its limits and its laws
Bid the last breath of dire contention cease,
And bind all regions in the leagues of peace."
Indeed with the break-down of his career as a promoter the tide began to
turn. Barlow's friends knew he was innocent of complicity in the land
swindle. In Paris he found himself at last in an environment where
freedom of thought was encouraged, where the ambitions of a poet were
regarded with respect and admiration. He was always an idealist and he
caught the contagion in the mental atmosphere of Paris as the revolution
came on. Perhaps it seemed to him that his dream of the millenium was
coming true. He became a Girondist and a political writer, supporting
himself mainly by his pen, with the re-writing of the "Vision" always in
the back of his mind. Was this the real Barlow--or was it a phase, a
manifestation of a kind of philosophic idealism, fostered by the air of
Paris, so favorable to the blossoming of this new flower of liberty and
universal human brotherhood which centered on France the minds of all
the dreamers of the world?
What did he now think, we wonder, of his dedication of the first edition
of his epic, published the year before he sailed for France, to Louis
the Sixteenth whom, as one commentator has noted, he soon indirectly
assisted in sending to the guillotine? He had gone a long way from the
militant conservatism of the brilliant companions of his youth--from the
days when he had preached the gospel to American soldiers and had
collaborated with Timothy Dwight, at the request of the General
Association of the Connecticut Clergy, in getting out an edition of
Isaac Watts's metrical versions of the Psalms--to which he had added a
few poetical renderings of his own.
For the following years his residence alternated between Paris and
London where he found congenial souls among the artists and poets who
were members of the Constitutional Society. His "Advice to the
Privileged Orders" was attacked by Burke, praised by Fox, proscribed by
the British government and translated into French and German. In 1792 he
presented to the National Convention of France a treatise on government
which was in fact a remarkable state paper, combining profound
philosophic theories of government with practical administrative and
executive suggestions. As a result he was made a citizen of France--an
honor he shared among Americans with only Washington and Hamilton.
Defeat for election as a deputy from Savoy and his repugnance to the
excesses of the Revolution appear to have thrown him out of practical
politics for a time. And then a strange thing happened. This visionary
poet and idealist attempted to retrieve his fortunes in commerce and
speculation and actually succeeded. During his consulship at Algiers,
from which he anticipated he might never return, he left a letter for
his wife in which he stated that his estate might amount to one hundred
and twenty thousand dollars if French funds rose to par.
This appointment came to him in a pleasant way. One day in the summer of
1795 he returned from a business trip to the Low Countries to find an
old friend waiting for him. Colonel Humphreys, now minister at Lisbon,
had arrived at the request of the administration to ask Barlow to accept
this mission to Algiers where for a year and a half he was to labor,
succeeding in the end in liberating imprisoned countrymen and in
effecting a treaty that composed troublesome difficulties.
It must have been an interesting reunion. Humphreys was too much of a
cosmopolitan, too generous in spirit, to make Barlow's growing
liberalism of thought a personal grievance. Here for the exiled American
was first-hand news of the old Connecticut friends--that Trumbull,
between ill health and the pressure of public affairs, was neglecting
the Muses; that Noah Webster was said to be working on a great lexicon;
that Dr. Cogswell had settled in Hartford and married a daughter of
Colonel William Ledyard who was killed at Fort Griswold with his own
sword in the act of surrender; that a play by Dr. Elihu Smith had been
acted at the John Street Theatre in New York; that Timothy Dwight would
probably succeed Dr. Stiles as President of Yale--and much besides. Very
likely Humphreys confided to his friend his growing interest in Miss Ann
Bulkley, an English heiress, whom he had met in Lisbon and who soon
afterward was to become his wife, and Barlow no doubt found a
sympathetic listener to his great project of enlarging and re-publishing
the "Vision."
His return from Algiers found French consols rising with the Napoleonic
successes and Barlow lived as became a man of wealth and distinction.
Robert Fulton, who made his home with him, painted his portrait in the
intervals of experimenting with submarine boats and torpedoes in the
Seine and the harbor at Brest. Indeed Barlow had now acquired so strong
an influence with the Directory and the French people that his
biographer attributes to him the chief part in averting war between
France and the United States in the tense days after 1798.
Then followed a return to his own country where he had an ambition to
found a national institution for education and the advancement of
science. He built a beautiful home, not in New England, be it noted, but
near Washington--the "Holland House of America"--and began, but never
finished, a history of the United States. He did, however, at last
complete "The Columbiad," which was published in Philadelphia in
1807--"the finest specimen of book-making ever produced in America."
Did the great moment hold something of disillusion and disappointment,
when, amid the somewhat perfunctory adulation, came the bitter criticism
of the Federalists and the expressed conviction of some of his old Yale
and Hartford friends that he was an apostate in politics and religion?
To him it was clear that they did not understand. How could it be
expected that Timothy Dwight, for example, the grandson of Jonathan
Edwards, with all of New England's conservatism and provincialism in his
blood, could understand? Yet Barlow's ancestral background was the
same--but who can fathom the depths of personality, or solve the
complexity of motive and aspiration?
Perhaps there were times when the returned wanderer grew homesick for
Paris. At last the chance to return to the land that had adopted him
came--a chance for notable service in an honorable capacity. War was
again in the air and in 1811 Barlow went back to France as minister
plenipotentiary, charged with the duty of again averting conflict and
negotiating a treaty embodying a settlement of the differences.
In the French capital he took his old house. His old servants came back
to him with tears of joy. Old friends gathered about him. It was not
easy, however, to clinch the treaty. The Emperor was involved in
momentous affairs. The Russian expedition was on foot. The ministers
procrastinated. There is an intimation in the record that the poet and
political theorist was out-maneuvered in the negotiations by players of
a game that had nothing to do with poetry or abstract questions but that
concerned itself, persistently and relentlessly, with very definite but
not entirely obvious purposes. Yet it does not seem that this inference
is conclusively supported by the evidence. However that may be, it was
given out that Barlow had secured, and he unquestionably believed that
he had secured, an agreement as to the provisions of the proposed
treaty. At any rate the Emperor consented to meet the American envoy if
he would come to Vilna in West Russia.
So in that dreary winter he set out with a high hope of achieving his
greatest service to his country, but what would have happened at Vilna
we shall never know, for on Barlow's approach to that town an incredible
and stupendous piece of news awaited him. The invincible Grand Army was
retreating, apparently in some demoralization. Everything was in
confusion. Where the Emperor was, no one knew. Obviously nothing could
now be done and the American minister started to return.
Somewhere on those frozen roads the Emperor passed him, racing for Paris
to save his dynasty and himself. In the exposure and hardship Barlow
fell ill. At the little village of Zarnovich, near Cracow, it became
evident that he could travel no further and there, in the midst of that
historic cataclysm, he died.
It was a strange ending for one of the old Hartford coterie. In the
clairvoyance said sometimes to accompany the supreme moment did he
realize that if his great epic might not live forever he had at least
given form in his day to a dream of which civilization would never let
go? Did any intimation come to him that his "Ode to Hasty Pudding,"
written off-hand at a Savoyard inn, held more real emotion than all the
balanced cadences of his monumental work? No doubt his delirious fancies
sometimes went back to the old days. Perhaps he saw once more the faces
of his old companions of the friendly club, not clouded now with
misunderstanding or disapproval. From beyond the frosted panes came
intermittently the confused noises of the great retreat, with all their
implications of selfish ambition, human suffering and the continual
warfare of the world. Was his belief in the final triumph of the
fraternity of mankind shaken by that sinister monotone? It is idle to
conjecture, but let us hope that he was comforted by a lingering faith,
revived in this hour of his extremity from the days of his youth, that
he would soon learn as to the truth of his vision and that he would find
as well the answers to the other riddles that had puzzled him all his
life.
_II: The Mystery of the Bell Tavern_
THE investigator of early American fiction will find that a peculiar
interest attaches to two novels, both published in the last decade of
the eighteenth century, both following Richardson in their epistolary
form and both founded on fact.
One of these was called "Charlotte Temple, or a Tale of Truth." In the
graveyard of Trinity Church in New York, at the head of Wall Street, is
a large stone, flush with the ground, bearing the name of the heroine of
this now forgotten story which in its day attained an astonishing
popularity. The tale is of a young girl who during the War of the
American Revolution eloped from an English school with a British officer
who abandoned her in New York where she died soon after the birth of a
daughter. The tradition runs that more than a century ago the daughter,
grown to womanhood, caused her mother's body to be removed to an
English churchyard, but the stone still marks the first resting place
and when the writer last saw it two wreaths lay upon it.
In 1797--seven years after the date of the first edition of "Charlotte
Temple"--the second of our two novels appeared. It was called "The
Coquette" and was written by Mrs. Hannah Foster, the wife of a Brighton,
Massachusetts, minister. For many years it was read and re-read
throughout the country, the latest edition appearing in 1866. Like
"Charlotte Temple" its theme was the tragedy of abandonment. It seems,
indeed, that the writer who wished to intrigue the interest of our
ancestors of this period was compelled to hang his plot on the
judiciously interwoven threads of sentiment and gloom. Perhaps no
further proof of this is needed than the example of Charles Brockden
Brown's portentous and sinister romances, with their undeniable flashes
of genius. But it is well to remember, too, that these were the days
when "The Castle of Otranto," "Clarissa Harlowe," and "The Vicar of
Wakefield" were all popular, and all exhibited varying phases of the
literary vogue of the day. In other words, though the prevailing mode
of thought found expression in different forms, the imaginative impulses
beneath the various manifestations were the same.
Therefore it is not surprising to find little relief from the tragic
note in "The Coquette." It is true that the author endeavors to present
the heroine, Eliza Wharton, as a worldly and volatile young woman, but
these touches of lightness have lost with the passing years whatever
approaches to polite comedy they may have once implied. One must confess
that regarded strictly as a piece of fiction the book makes rather hard
reading today. But examined with some knowledge of the mystery upon
which it is founded, the old novel becomes a genuine human document.
Mrs. Foster was a family connection of Elizabeth Whitman, the original
of "Eliza Wharton," and may have known her. Whatever the shortcomings of
her portrayal may be, it is clear that the authoress was endeavoring to
set forth in her book the character, as she estimated it, of the
charming and gifted girl, the tragedy of whose death is still
unexplained. It is true that the accuracy of the portrait in all
respects may be doubted. For example, the few letters of Elizabeth
Whitman that have been preserved are far more spontaneous and delightful
than any of Eliza Wharton's epistles which constitute so large a part of
the story.
Evidently they are the letters of a different person, as well as a more
attractive one, than Mrs. Foster's heroine. Then, too, Mrs. Foster's
tale has something of the effect of a tract, of a moral effort. She is
driving home an ethical lesson and Eliza is the example to be shunned,
whereas modern speculation, grown more tolerant, is apt to question the
pre-judgment which guided the novelist's pen. He who today seeks to
penetrate the old secret realizes that he is furnished with only half of
the evidence. On that incomplete data how can a verdict of condemnation
be fairly based? Elizabeth's own story has never been told.
Nevertheless, here, for what it is worth, is Mrs. Foster's notion,
adapted to her fictional purposes, of the kind of person the real
Elizabeth was, and from this reflection, faint and clouded though it may
be, of a genuine and appealing character, the old novel today gathers
its greatest interest. For against the somewhat somber background of
her New England period this Hartford girl stands forth with a flash of
brilliancy and charm. In the midst of a somewhat limited and narrow
social life, she was an individualist, an exotic. In contrast with her
Puritan environment she seems almost Hellenic--yet one fancies that
there is something about her more Gallic than Greek.
She was the eldest of the three daughters of the Rev. Elnathan Whitman,
D.D., a Fellow of Yale College, and pastor from 1732 till his death in
1777 of the Second Church in Hartford. It is a singular coincidence that
through her mother, born Abigail Stanley, she traced kinship to the
Charlotte Stanley who was the original of "Charlotte Temple." Her father
was a grandson of that noted divine, Solomon Stoddard of Northampton,
who, it will be remembered, was the grandfather of Jonathan Edwards.
John Trumbull, the poet and judge, was a cousin and so was Aaron Burr.
Besides these, the Pierreponts, the Whitneys, the Ogdens, the Russells,
the Wadsworths, were all kin or connected by marriage.
Fairly early in life Elizabeth became engaged to be married to the Rev.
Joseph Howe, a Yale graduate, and for a while a tutor at the college,
whose chief pastorate was at the New South Church in Boston. During the
siege he was compelled to flee from the city and, his health failing, he
died at Hartford, probably in 1776.
In that rare volume, "American Poems, Selected and Original," published
at Litchfield, 1793, is "An Ode, Addressed to Miss--. By the late Rev.
Joseph Howe, of Boston." Its occasion was the departure, by sea, of the
young woman to whom it was addressed.
"Nor less to heaven did I prefer,
For thy dear sake, my pious prayer.
O winds, O waves, agree!
Winds gently blow, waves softly flow,
Ship move with care, for thou dost bear
The better part of me."
It is possible, indeed probable, that Elizabeth Whitman, who visited
occasionally in Boston, inspired these lines, but it appears that on her
part this love affair was of only moderate intensity and that her
father's death, which occurred in the year following the death of her
betrothed, affected her far more than that of the young minister she was
to have married. Not long after Mr. Whitman died, while Elizabeth was
visiting in New Haven at the home of Dr. Ezra Stiles, President of Yale
College, whose daughter Betsy was her intimate friend, her second love
affair developed.
The Rev. Joseph Buckminster was also a Yale graduate and tutor, later
settling at Portsmouth, New Hampshire, in Dr. Stiles's old parish, where
his life was spent. He was considered an exceptionally brilliant and
promising young man and he seems to have loved and wooed Elizabeth
ardently. It appears that she had a deep affection for him, but also an
intense dread of the harrowing melancholia from which he at times
suffered. There is an intimation, too, as to her own growing doubts of
future happiness in the somewhat limited rôle of a New England
minister's wife. Would her free and eager spirit find satisfaction in a
lifetime of parochial routine? She was discussing her final decision in
this matter with her cousin Jeremiah Wadsworth in the arbor of her
mother's garden when Buckminster, who did not like Colonel Wadsworth,
suddenly appeared and, misunderstanding the situation, went away in
great anger.
Are the following lines from a letter of Elizabeth to Joel Barlow,
written at Hartford, February 19, 1779, references to this affair?
". . . . to find yourself quite out of Ambition's way,
and in the very bosom of content,--this certainly is
agreeable, and never more than when one has met with
trouble in a busier place. I felt myself no longer
afraid when a certain subject was started. I neither
trembled nor turned pale, but sat at my ease and felt
as if nobody would hurt me. I know you will laugh at
me for a pusillanimous creature for being ever so
afraid as you have seen me; but I cannot help it. . . .
"As to Mr. Baldwin, if he were at the door, I would
not run into the cupboard to avoid him. He may mean
well, in writing all to Buckminster and nothing to me;
but I do not think it."
After the encounter in the garden Elizabeth wrote Buckminster explaining
the matter, and, we may infer, telling him that her decision would have
been unfavorable. His reply was the announcement of his approaching
marriage, but in spite of this rapid _volte face_ he is said to have
cherished Elizabeth's memory during all of his life. Mrs. Dall in her
"Romance of the Association" tells the story of his burning the first
copy of "The Coquette" he read, which he found on a parishioner's table.
"It ought never to have been written," he said, "and shall never be
read--at least, not in my parish. Bid the ladies take notice, wherever I
find a copy I shall treat it in the same way."