at the left of the entrance. The upper and lower halls of the house were
hung with pictures of game and with hunting scenes. The furniture,
wall-papers and draperies throughout the house had been imported from
England by Thomas Hancock, and expressed the height of luxury for that
day. Passing through the hall, a flight of steps led to a small
summer-house in the garden, near Mount Vernon Street, and here the
grounds were laid out in ornamental box-bordered beds like those still
to be seen in the beautiful Washington home on the Potomac. A highly
interesting corner of the garden was that given over to the group of
mulberry-trees, which had been imported from England by Thomas Hancock,
the uncle of John, he being, with others of his time, immensely
interested in the culture of the silkworm.
Of this beautiful home Dorothy Quincy showed herself well fitted to be
mistress, and through her native grace and dignity admirably performed
her part at the reception of D'Estaing, Lafayette, Washington, Brissot,
Lords Stanley and Wortley, and other noted guests.
On October 8, 1793, Hancock died, at the age of fifty-six years. The
last recorded letter penned in his letter volume was to Captain James
Scott, his lifelong friend. And it was to this Captain Scott that our
Dorothy Q. gave her hand in a second marriage three years later. She
outlived her second husband many years, residing at the end of her life
on Federal Street in Boston. When turned of seventy she had a lithe,
handsome figure, a pair of laughing eyes, and fine yellow ringlets in
which scarcely a gray hair could be seen. And although for the second
time a widow, she was as sprightly as a girl of sixteen. In her advanced
years, Madam Scott received another call from Lafayette, and those who
witnessed the hearty interview say that the once youthful chevalier and
the unrivalled belle met as if only a summer had passed since their
social intercourse during the perils of the Revolution.
FOOTNOTES:
[Footnote 7: Drake.]
[Footnote 8: _New England Magazine._]
BARONESS RIEDESEL AND HER TORY FRIENDS
The most beautiful example of wifely devotion to be found in the annals
connected with the war of the Revolution is that afforded by the story
of the lovely Baroness Riedesel, whose husband was deputed to serve at
the head of the German mercenaries allied to the king's troops, and who
was herself, with the baron and her children, made prisoner of war after
the battle of Saratoga.
Riedesel was a gallant soldier, and his wife a fair and fascinating
young woman at this time. They had not been long married when the war in
America broke out, and the wife's love for her husband was such as to
impel her to dare all the hardships of the journey and join him in the
foreign land. Her letters and journal, which give a lively and vivid
account of the perils of this undertaking, and of the pleasures and
difficulties that she experienced after she had succeeded in reaching
her dear spouse, supply what is perhaps the most interesting human
document of those long years of war.
The baroness landed on the American continent at Quebec, and travelled
amid great hardships to Chambly, where her husband was stationed. For
two days only they were together. After that she returned with her
children to Three Rivers. Soon, however, came the orders to march down
into the enemy's country.
The description of this journey as the baroness has given it to us
makes, indeed, moving reading. Once a frightful cannonade was directed
against the house in which the women and the wounded had taken refuge.
In the cellar of this place Madam Riedesel and her children passed the
entire night. It was in this cellar, indeed, that the little family
lived during the long period of waiting that preceded the capitulation
made necessary by Burgoyne's inexcusable delay near Saratoga. Later the
Riedesels were most hospitably entertained at Saratoga by General
Schuyler, his wife and daughters, of whom the baroness never fails to
speak in her journal with the utmost affection.
The journey from Albany to Boston was full of incident and hardship, but
of it the plucky wife writes only: "In the midst of all my trials God so
supported me that I lost neither my frolicsomeness nor my spirits...."
The contrast between the station of the Americans and of the Germans
who were their prisoners, is strikingly brought out in this passage of
the diary: "Some of the American generals who were in charge of us on
the march to Boston were shoemakers; and upon our halting days they made
boots for our officers, and also mended nicely the shoes of our
soldiers. They set a great value upon our money coinage, which with them
was scarce. One of our officers had worn his boots entirely into shreds.
He saw that an American general had on a good pair, and said to him,
jestingly, 'I will gladly give you a guinea for them.' Immediately the
general alighted from his horse, took the guinea, gave up his boots, put
on the badly-worn ones of the officer, and again mounted his horse."
The journey was at length successfully accomplished, however, and in
Massachusetts the baroness was on the whole very well treated, it would
seem.
"We remained three weeks in wretched quarters at Winter Hill," she
writes, "until they transferred us to Cambridge, where they lodged us in
one of the most beautiful houses of the place, which had formerly been
built by the wealth of the royalists. Never had I chanced upon any such
agreeable situation. Seven families, who were connected with each other
partly by the ties of relationship and partly by affection, had here
farms, gardens, and magnificent houses, and not far off plantations of
fruit. The owners of these were in the habit of meeting each other in
the afternoon, now at the house of one, and now at another, and making
themselves merry with music and the dance--living in prosperity united
and happy, until, alas! this ruinous war severed them, and left all
their houses desolate except two, the proprietors of which were also
soon obliged to flee....
"None of our gentlemen were allowed to go into Boston. Curiosity and
desire urged me, however, to pay a visit, to Madam Carter, the daughter
of General Schuyler, and I dined at her house several times. The city
throughout is pretty, but inhabited by violent patriots, and full of
wicked people. The women especially were so shameless, that they
regarded me with repugnance, and even spit at me when I passed by them.
Madam Carter was as gentle and good as her parents, but her husband was
wicked and treacherous. She came often to visit us, and also dined at
our house with the other generals. We sought to show them by every means
our gratitude. They seemed also to have much friendship for us; and yet
at the same time this miserable Carter, when the English General Howe
had burned many hamlets and small towns, made the horrible proposition
to the Americans to chop off the heads of our generals, salt them down
in small barrels, and send over to the English one of these barrels for
every hamlet or little town burned down. But this barbarous suggestion
fortunately was not adopted.
"... I saw here that nothing is more terrible than a civil war. Almost
every family was disunited.... On the third of June, 1778, I gave a ball
and supper in celebration of the birthday of my husband. I had invited
to it all the generals and officers. The Carters also were there.
General Burgoyne sent an excuse after he had made us wait until eight
o'clock in the evening. He invariably excused himself on various
pretences from coming to see us until his departure for England, when
he came and made me a great many apologies, but to which I made no other
answer than that I should be extremely sorry if he had gone out of his
way on our account. We danced considerably, and our cook prepared us a
magnificent supper of more than eighty covers. Moreover, our courtyard
and garden were illuminated. As the birthday of the King of England came
upon the following day, which was the fourth, it was resolved that we
would not separate until his health had been drank; which was done with
the most hearty attachment to his person and his interests.
"Never, I believe, has 'God Save the King,' been drunk with more
enthusiasm or more genuine good will. Even both my oldest little
daughters were there, having stayed up to see the illumination. All eyes
were full of tears; and it seemed as if every one present was proud to
have the spirit to venture to this in the midst of our enemies. Even the
Carters could not shut their hearts against us. As soon as the company
separated, we perceived that the whole house was surrounded by
Americans, who, having seen so many people go into the house, and having
noticed also the illumination, suspected that we were planning a mutiny,
and if the slightest disturbance had arisen it would have cost us
dear....
"The Americans," says the baroness, further on, "when they desire to
collect their troops together, place burning torches of pitch upon the
hilltops, at which signal every one hastens to the rendezvous. We were
once witnesses of this when General Howe attempted a landing at Boston
in order to rescue the captive troops. They learned of this plan, as
usual, long beforehand, and opened barrels of pitch, whereupon for
three or four successive days a large number of people without shoes and
stockings, and with guns on their backs, were seen hastily coming from
all directions, by which means so many people came together so soon that
it would have been a very difficult thing to effect a landing.
"We lived very happily and contented in Cambridge, and were therefore
well pleased at remaining there during the captivity of our troops. As
winter approached, however, we were ordered to Virginia [because of the
difficulty of providing provisions], and in the month of November, 1778,
set out.
"My husband, fortunately, found a pretty English wagon, and bought it
for me, so that as before I was enabled to travel comfortably. My little
Gustava had entreated one of my husband's adjutants, Captain Edmonston,
not to leave us on the way. The confiding manner of the child touched
him and he gave his promise and faithfully kept it. I travelled always
with the army and often over almost impassable roads....
"I had always provisions with me, but carried them in a second small
wagon. As this could not go as fast as we, I was often in want of
everything. Once when we were passing a town called Hertford [Hartford,
Connecticut], we made a halt, which, by the by, happened every fourth
day. We there met General Lafayette, whom my husband invited to dinner,
as otherwise he would have been unable to find anything to eat. This
placed me in rather an awkward dilemma as I knew that he loved a good
dinner. Finally, however, I managed to glean from what provisions I had
on hand enough to make him a very respectable meal. He was so polite and
agreeable that he pleased us all very much. He had many Americans in his
train, though, who were ready to leap out of their skins for vexation at
hearing us speak constantly in French. Perhaps they feared, on seeing us
on such a friendly footing with him, that we would be able to alienate
him from their cause, or that he would confide things to us that we
ought not to know.
"Lafayette spoke much of England, and of the kindness of the king in
having had all objects of interest shown to him. I could not keep myself
from asking him how he could find it in his heart to accept so many
marks of kindness from the king when he was on the point of departing in
order to fight against him. Upon this observation of mine he appeared
somewhat ashamed, and answered me: 'It is true that such a thought
passed through my mind one day, when the king offered to show me his
fleet. I answered that I hoped to see it some day, and then quietly
retired, in order to escape from the embarrassment of being obliged to
decline, point blank, the offer, should it be repeated.'"
The baroness's own meeting with the king soon after her return to
England, in the autumn of 1780, when the prisoners were exchanged, is
thus entertainingly described: "One day when we were yet seated at
table, the queen's first lady of honour, my Lady Howard, sent us a
message to the effect that her Majesty would receive us at six o'clock
that afternoon. As my court dress was not yet ready, and I had nothing
with me proper to wear, I sent my apologies for not going at that time,
which I again repeated when we had the honour of being presented to
their Majesties, who were both present at the reception. The queen,
however, as did also the king, received us with extraordinary
graciousness, and replied to my excuses by saying, 'We do not look at
the dress of those persons we are glad to see.'
"They were surrounded by the princesses, their daughters. We seated
ourselves before the chimney-fire,--the queen, the princesses, the first
lady of honour, and myself,--forming a half-circle, my husband, with the
king, standing in the centre close to the fire. Tea and cakes were then
passed round. I sat between the queen and one of the princesses, and was
obliged to go over a great part of my adventures. Her majesty said to me
very graciously, 'I have followed you everywhere, and have often
inquired after you; and I have always heard with delight that you were
well, contented, and beloved by every one.' I happened to have at this
time a shocking cough. Observing this, the Princess Sophia went herself
and brought me a jelly made of black currants, which she represented as
a particularly good remedy, and forced me to accept a jar full.
"About nine o'clock in the evening the Prince of Wales came in. His
youngest sisters flocked around him, and he embraced them and danced
them around. In short, the royal family had such a peculiar gift for
removing all restraint that one could readily imagine himself to be in a
cheerful family circle of his own station in life. We remained with them
until ten o'clock, and the king conversed much with my husband about
America in German, which he spoke exceedingly well."
[Illustration: RIEDESEL HOUSE, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.]
From England the baroness proceeded (in 1783), to her home in
Brunswick, where she was joyfully received, and where, after her
husband's triumph, they enjoyed together respite from war for a period
of four years. In 1794, General Riedesel was appointed commandant of the
city of Brunswick, where he died in 1800. The baroness survived him
eight years, passing away in Berlin, March 29, 1808, at the age of
sixty-two. She rests beside her beloved consort in the family vault at
Lauterbach.
Her Cambridge residence, which formerly stood at the corner of Sparks
Street, on Brattle, among the beautiful lindens so often mentioned in
the "journal," has recently been remodelled and removed to the next lot
but one from its original site. It now looks as in the picture, and is
numbered 149 Brattle Street. A little street at the right has been
appropriately named Riedesel Avenue. Yet even in history-loving
Cambridge there is little familiarity with the career of the baron and
his charming lady, and there are few persons who have read the
entertaining journal, written in German a century and a quarter ago by
this clever and devoted wife.
DOCTOR CHURCH: FIRST TRAITOR TO THE AMERICAN CAUSE
Very few old houses retain at the present time so large a share of the
dignity and picturesqueness originally theirs, as does the homestead
whose chief interest for us lies in the fact that it was the
Revolutionary prison of Doctor Benjamin Church, the first-discovered
traitor to the American cause. This house is on Brattle Street, at the
corner of Hawthorn. Built about 1700, it came early into the possession
of Jonathan Belcher, who afterward became Sir Jonathan, and from 1730
till 1741 was governor of Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Colonel John
Vassall the elder was the next owner of the house, acquiring it in 1736,
and somewhat later conveying it, with its adjoining estate of seven
acres, to his brother, Major Henry, an officer in the militia, who died
under its roof in 1769.
Major Henry Vassall had married Penelope, sister of Isaac Royall, the
proprietor of the beautiful place at Medford, but upon the beginning of
hostilities, this sprightly widow abandoned her spacious home in such
haste that she carried along with her, according to tradition, a young
companion whom she had not time to restore to her friends! Such of her
property as could be used by the colony forces was given in charge of
Colonel Stark, while the rest was allowed to pass into Boston. The barns
and roomy outbuildings were used for the storage of the colony
forage.
[Illustration: HOUSE WHERE DOCTOR CHURCH WAS CONFINED, CAMBRIDGE, MASS.]
It is highly probable that the Widow Vassall's house at once became the
American hospital, and that it was the residence, as it was certainly
the prison, of Doctor Benjamin Church. Church had been placed at the
head of an army hospital for the accommodation of twenty thousand men,
and till this time had seemed a brave and zealous compatriot of Warren
and the other leading men of the time. Soon after his appointment, he
was, however, detected in secret correspondence with Gage. He had
entrusted to a woman of his acquaintance a letter written in cipher to
be forwarded to the British commander. This letter was found upon the
girl, she was taken to headquarters, and there the contents of the fatal
message were deciphered and the defection of Doctor Church established.
When questioned by Washington he appeared utterly confounded, and made
no attempt to vindicate himself.
The letter itself did not contain any intelligence of importance, but
the discovery that one, until then so high in the esteem of his
countrymen, was engaged in a clandestine correspondence with the enemy
was deemed sufficient evidence of guilt. Church was therefore arrested
at once, and confined in a chamber looking upon Brattle Street. Some of
his leisure, while here imprisoned, he employed in cutting on the door
of a closet:
"B CHURCH, JR."
There the marks still remain, their significance having after a half
century been interpreted by a lady of the house to whom they had long
been familiar, but who had lacked any clue to their origin until, in the
course of a private investigation, she determined beyond a doubt their
relation to Church. The chamber has two windows in the north front, and
two overlooking the area on the south.
Church's fall was the more terrible because from a height. He was a
member of a very distinguished family, and he had been afforded in his
youth all the best opportunities of the day. In 1754 he was graduated at
Harvard, and after studying with Doctor Pynchon rose to considerable
eminence as a physician and particularly as a surgeon. Besides talents
and genius of a sort, he was endowed with a rare poetic fancy, many of
his verses being full of daintiness as well as of a very pretty wit. He
was, however, somewhat extravagant in his habits, and about 1768 had
built himself an elegant country house near Boston. It was to sustain
this, it is believed, that he sold himself to the king's cause.
To all appearance, however, Church was up to the very hour of his
detection one of the leading patriots of the time. He had been chosen to
deliver the oration in the Old South Meeting-House on March 5, 1773, and
he there pronounced a stirring discourse, which has still power to
thrill the reader, upon the massacre the day celebrates, and the love of
liberty which inspired the patriots' revolt on that memorable occasion.
Yet two years earlier, as we have since discovered from a letter of
Governor Hutchinson, he had been anonymously employing his venal pen in
the service of the government!
In 1774, when he was a member of the Provincial Congress, he was first
suspected of communication with Gage, and of receiving a reward for his
treachery. Paul Revere has written concerning this: "In the fall of '74
and the winter of '75 I was one of upwards of thirty, chiefly mechanics,
who formed themselves into a committee for the purpose of watching the
movements of the British soldiers and gaining every intelligence of the
Tories. We held our meetings at the Green Dragon Tavern. This committee
were astonished to find all their secrets known to General Gage,
although every time they met every member swore not to reveal any of
their transactions except to Hancock, Adams, Warren, Otis, Church, and
one or two others."
The traitor, of course, proved to be Doctor Church. One of his students
who kept his books and knew of his money embarrassment first mistrusted
him. Only treachery, he felt, could account for his master's sudden
acquisition of some hundreds of new British guineas.
The doctor was called before a council of war consisting of all the
major-generals and brigadiers of the army, beside the adjutant-general,
Washington himself presiding. This tribunal decided that Church's acts
had been criminal, but remanded him for the decision of the General
Court, of which he was a member. He was taken in a chaise, escorted by
General Gates and a guard of twenty men, to the music of fife and drum,
to Watertown meeting-house, where the court sat. "The galleries," says
an old writer, "were thronged with people of all ranks. The bar was
placed in the middle of the broad aisle, and the doctor arraigned." His
defence at the trial was very ingenious and able:--that the fatal letter
was designed for his brother, but that since it was not sent he had
communicated no intelligence; that there was nothing in the letter but
notorious facts; that his exaggerations of the American force could only
be designed to favour the cause of his country; and that his object was
purely patriotic. He added, in a burst of sounding though unconvincing
oratory: "The warmest bosom here does not flame with a brighter zeal for
the security, happiness, and liberties of America than mine."
These eloquent professions did not avail him, however. He was adjudged
guilty, and expelled from the House of Representatives of Massachusetts.
By order of the General Congress, he was condemned to close confinement
in Norwich jail in Connecticut, "and debarred from the use of pen, ink,
and paper," but his health failing, he was allowed (in 1776) to leave
the country. He sailed for the West Indies,--and the vessel that bore
him was never afterward heard from.
Some people in Church's time, as well as our own, have been disposed to
doubt the man's treachery, but Paul Revere was firmly convinced that the
doctor was in the pay of General Gage. Revere's statement runs in part
as follows:
"The same day I met Doctor Warren. He was president of the Committee of
Safety. He engaged me as a messenger to do the out-of-doors business for
that committee; which gave me an opportunity of being frequently with
them. The Friday evening after, about sunset, I was sitting with some or
near all that committee in their room, which was at Mr. Hastings's house
in Cambridge. Doctor Church all at once started up. 'Doctor Warren,'
said he, 'I am determined to go into Boston to-morrow.' (It set them all
a-staring.) Doctor Warren replied, 'Are you serious, Doctor Church? They
will hang you if they catch you in Boston.' He replied, 'I am serious,
and am determined to go at all adventures.' After a considerable
conversation, Doctor Warren said, 'If you are determined, let us make
some business for you.' They agreed that he should go to get medicine
for their and our wounded officers."
Naturally, Paul Revere, who was an ardent patriot as well as an
exceedingly straightforward man, had little sympathy with Church's
weakness, but to-day as one looks at the initials scratched by the
prisoner on the door of his cell, one's heart expands with pity for the
man, and one wonders long and long whether the vessel on which he
sailed was really lost, or whether he escaped on it to foreign shores,
there to expiate as best he could his sin against himself and his
country.
A VICTIM OF TWO REVOLUTIONS
In the life of Colonel James Swan, as in that of Doctor Benjamin Church,
money was the root of all evil. Swan was almost a fool because of his
pig-headedness in financial adversity, and Church was ever a knave,
plausible even when proved guilty. Yet both fell from the same cause,
utter inability to keep money and avoid debt.