TWO COLONIAL ADVENTURESSES.
A “strange true story of Louisiana” so furnished with every attractive
element of romance, so calculated to satisfy every exaction of literary
art, that it seems marvellous it has not been eagerly seized upon
and frequently utilized by dramatists and novelists, is that of a
Louisiana princess--or pretender--whose death in a Parisian convent in
1771 furnished a fruitful topic of speculation and conversation in the
courts of France, Austria, Russia, and Prussia. This Louisiana princess
(were she no pretender) was the daughter-in-law of Peter the Great
of Russia, wife of the Grand Duke Alexis, and mother of Peter II. of
Russia. The story, as gathered from a few European authorities and some
old French chronicles and histories of Louisiana, is this.
The Princess Christine, daughter of a German princeling and wife of the
Grand Duke Alexis, is said by Russian official and historical records
to have died in 1716 after a short and most unhappy married life with
a brutal royal profligate, and to have been buried with proper court
honors and attendance. But there is another statement, half-history,
half-romance, which denies that she died at that time, and asserts that
her death and burial were but a carefully planned deception, to permit
her to escape her intolerable life in Russia, and only concealed her
successful flight from St. Petersburg and the power of the Russian
throne. Aided by the famous Countess Königsmark, the princess, after
some delay and frightened hiding in France, sailed from the port of
L’Orient, accompanied by an old devoted court retainer named Walter.
Of course there must always be a lover to form a true romance, and a
young officer named D’Aubant successfully fills that rôle. He had often
seen Christine in the Russian court, and had rescued her from danger
when she was hunting in the Hartz Mountains, and had cherished for her
a deep though hopeless love. When the news of her death came to the
knowledge of Chevalier D’Aubant, he sadly left the Czar’s service
and went to France. Soon after he chanced to see at the cathedral in
Poitiers a woman who raised her veil, glanced at him with a look of
recognition, and apparently a face like that of his loved Christine.
After long search for the unknown, he found her temporary home, only to
learn that she, with her father Mons. De L’Ecluse (who was of course
Walter), had just sailed for the New World. But the woman of the house
gave him a slip of paper which the fair one had left for him in case
he called and asked concerning her. On it was written this enigmatical
lure:--
I have drunk of the waters of Lethe,
Hope yet remains to me.
Now, he would not have been an ideal court-lover, nor indeed but a
sorry hero, if, after such a message, he had not promply sailed after
the possible Christine. He learned that the vessel which bore her
was to land at Biloxi, Louisiana. He sailed for the same port with
his fortune in his pockets. But on arriving in Louisiana, Walter (or
Mons. De L’Ecluse) had taken the disguising name of Walter Holden,
and Christine posed as his daughter, Augustine Holden; so her
knight-errant thus lost trace of her. Christine-Augustine and her
father settled in the Colonie Roland on the Red River. D’Aubant, with
sixty colonists, founded a settlement but fifty miles away, which he
named the Valley of Christine. Of course in due time the lovers met,
and disguise was impossible and futile, and Augustine confessed her
identity with the Crown Princess. As her husband Alexis had by this
time conveniently died in prison, in Moscow, where he had been tried
and condemned to death (and probably been privately executed), there
was no reason, save the memory of her past exalted position, why she
should not become the wife of an honest planter. They were married by
a Spanish priest, and lived for twenty happy years in the Valley of
Christine.
But D’Aubant’s health failed, and he sought physicians in Paris. One
day when Christine was walking in the garden of the Tuileries, with her
two daughters, the children of D’Aubant, the German conversation of the
mother attracted the attention of Marshal Saxe, who was the son of the
very Countess Königsmark who had aided Christine’s escape. The marshal
recognized the princess at once, in spite of the lapse of years, and
through his influence with Louis XV. obtained for D’Aubant a commission
as major of troops, and the office of governor of the Isle of Bourbon.
The King also informed the Empress of Austria, who was a niece of
Christine, that her aunt was alive; and an invitation was sent from the
Empress for the D’Aubant family to become residents of the Austrian
Court. They remained, however, at the Isle of Bourbon until the death
of D’Aubant and the two daughters, when Christine came to Brunswick and
was granted a pension for life by the Empress. Her death in a convent,
and her burial, took place over half a century after her pretended
legal demise.
This is the Christine of romance, of court gossip, of court credulity,
but there is another aspect of her story. Judge Martin has written a
standard history of Louisiana. In it he says:--
Two hundred German settlers of Law’s grant were landed in the month of
March 1721 at Biloxi out of the twelve hundred who had been recruited.
There came among the German new-comers a female adventurer. She had
been attached to the wardrobe of the wife of the Czarowitz Alexis
Petrovitz, the only son of Peter the Great. She imposed on the
credulity of many persons, particularly on that of an officer of the
garrison of Mobile (called by Bossu, the Chevalier D’Aubant, and by
the King of Prussia, Waldeck), who, having seen the princess at St.
Petersburg imagined he recognized her features in those of her former
servant, and gave credit to the report that she was the Duke of
Wolfenbuttel’s daughter, and the officer married her.
Grimm and Voltaire in their letters, Levesque in his History, all unite
in pronouncing her an impostor. But you can choose your own estimate of
this creature of high romance; if you elect to deem her a princess, you
find yourself in the goodly company of the King of France, the Empress
of Austria, Marshal Saxe, and a vast number of other folk of rank and
intelligence.
In the year 1771 there was sent to this country from England a woman
convict, who had in her enforced home a most extraordinary and romantic
career of successful fraud.
The first account which I have seen of her was printed in the
_Gentleman’s Magazine_ in 1771, and told simply of her startling
intrusion into the Queen’s apartments in London; but Dr. Doran’s _Lives
of the Queens of England of the House of Hanover_ gives this account of
this interesting bit of Anglo-American romance.
Sarah Wilson, yielding to a strong temptation in the year 1771,
filched one or two of the Queen’s jewels, and was condemned to be
executed. It was considered almost a violation of justice that the
thief should be saved from the halter and be transported instead of
hanged. She was sent to America, where she was allotted as slave, or
servant, to a Mr. Dwale, Bud Creek, Frederick County. Queen Charlotte
would have thought nothing more of her, had her majesty not heard with
some surprise, that her sister Susannah Caroline Matilda was keeping
her court in the plantations. Never was surprise more genuine than the
Queen’s; it was exceeded only by her hilarity when it was discovered
that the Princess Susannah was simply Sarah Wilson, at large. That
somewhat clever girl having stolen a Queen’s jewels, thought nothing,
after escaping from the penal service to which she was condemned, of
passing herself off as a Queen’s sister. The Americans were not so
acute as their descendants; so in love were some of them with the
greatness they affected to despise, that they paid royal honors to
the clever impostor. She passed the most joyous of seasons before
she was consigned again to increase of penalty for daring to pretend
relationship with the consort of King George. The story of the
presuming girl, whose escapades, however, were not fully known in
England at that time, served, as far as knowledge of them had reached
the court, to amuse the gossips who had assembled about the cradle of
the young Elizabeth.
In this account of Dr. Doran’s there are some errors. The real story
of the crime of Sarah Wilson and her subsequent career was this. In
August, 1770, a strange woman found her way by means of a private
staircase to the apartments of Queen Charlotte. She entered a room
where the Queen and the Duchess of Ancaster were sitting, to their
alarm. While she was taking a leisurely survey of the contents of the
room, a page was summoned, who expelled the intruder, but did not
succeed in arresting her. Shortly after, the Queen’s apartments were
broken into by a thief, who stole valuable jewels and a miniature of
the Queen. The thief proved to be a woman named Sarah Wilson, who had
been maid of the Honorable Miss Vernon, and this thief was asserted to
be the inquisitive intruder whose visit had so alarmed the Queen.
Sarah Wilson was arrested, tried as a felon, and sentenced to death;
but by the exertions and influence of her former mistress the sentence
was commuted to transportation to the American colonies for a seven
years’ term of servitude. This leniency caused considerable stir in
London and some dissatisfaction.
In 1771, after passage in a convict ship, Sarah Wilson was sold to a
Mr. William Duvall, of Bush Creek, Frederick County, Maryland, for
seven years’ servitude. After a short time, in which she apparently
developed her plans of fraud, she escaped from her master, and went to
Virginia and the Carolinas, where she assumed the title of Princess
Susannah Caroline Matilda, and asserted she was the sister of the Queen
of England. She still owned the miniature of the Queen, and some rich
jewels, which gave apparent proof of her assertion, and it is said some
rich clothing. It is indeed mysterious that a transported convict
could retain in her possession, through all her reverses, the very
jewels for whose theft she was punished; yet the story can scarcely be
doubted.
She travelled through the South from plantation to plantation, with
plentiful promises of future English offices and court favors to all
who assisted her progress; and liberal sums of money were placed at her
disposal, to be repaid by Queen Charlotte; and she seems to have been
universally welcomed and feasted.
But the fame of the royal visitor spread afar and found its way to Bush
Creek, to the ears of Mr. Duvall, and he promptly suspected that he had
found trace of his ingenious runaway servant. As was the custom of the
day, he advertised for her and a reward for her capture. The notice
reads thus:--
Bush Creek, Frederick County, Maryland, October 11, 1771. Ran away
from the subscriber a convict servant named SARAH WILSON, but has
changed her name to Lady Susannah Caroline Matilda, which made the
public believe that she was her Majesty’s sister. She has a blemish in
her right eye, black roll’d hair, stoops in the shoulders, and makes
a common practice of writing and marking her clothes with a crown and
a B. Whoever secures the said servant woman or will take her home,
shall receive five pistoles, besides all cost of charges. William
Duvall.
I entitle Michael Dalton to search the city of Philadelphia, and from
there to Charleston, for the said woman.
Beauty readily inspires confidence, and dignity commands it. But a
woman with such scant personal charms, with a blemish in her eye and
stooping shoulders, must have been most persuasive in conversation to
have surmounted such obstacles. It is said that she was most gracious,
yet commanding.
To elude Michael Dalton’s authorized search from Philadelphia to
Charleston, Sarah Wilson fled from her scenes of success, but also of
too familiar and extensive acquaintance, to New York. But New York
proved still too near to Maryland, so she took passage for Newport.
Here her fame preceded her, for in the _Newport Mercury_ of November
29, 1773, is this notice:--
Last Tuesday arrived here from New York the lady who has passed
through several of the southern colonies under the name and character
of CAROLINE MATILDA, Marchioness de Waldgrave, etc., etc.
I do not know the steps that led to her capture and removal, but at
the end of the year the Marchioness was back on William Duvall’s
plantation, and bound to serve a redoubled term of years. It seems to
be probable that she also suffered more ignoble punishment, for Judge
Martin says in his _History of Louisiana_:--
A female driven for her misconduct from the service of a maid of honor
of Princess Matilda, sister of George III., was convicted at the Old
Bailey and transported to Maryland. She effected her escape before the
expiration of her time, and travelled through Virginia and both the
Carolinas personating the Princess, and levying contributions on the
credulity of the planters and merchants and even some of the king’s
officers. She was at last arrested in Charleston, prosecuted and
whipped.
I often wonder what became of the Brummagem princess, with her jewels
and her personal blemishes; and I often fancy that I find traces of
her career, still masquerading, still imposing on simple folk. For
instance, Rev. Manasseh Cutler wrote, at his home in Ipswich Hamlet,
Mass., on January 25, 1775:
A lady came to our house who had made a great noise in the country,
and has been made the occasion of various conjectures. She calls
herself Caroline Augusta Harriet, Duchess of Brownstonburges. Says
she has resided in the Court of England for several years, that she
eloped from the palace of St. James. She appears to be a person of an
extraordinary education, and well acquainted with things at Court, but
she is generally supposed to be an impostor.
Three days later he writes that he “conveyed the extraordinary visitor
to town in a chaise.” With this glimpse of Sarah--if Sarah she
were--visiting in a little New England town in a sober Puritan family,
and riding off to Boston in a chaise with the pious Puritan preacher,
she vanishes from our ken, to be obscured in the smoke of battle and
the din of war, and forced to learn that to American patriots it was no
endearing trait to pose as an English princess.