Having thus become acquainted with the two Miss Byleses, and
understanding that they were always delighted when strangers were
brought to see them in a similar manner, I afterwards became the
introducer of several friends from other cities, who successively
visited Boston in the course of that summer, and who expressed a desire
to pay their compliments to these singular old ladies.
In every instance, the same routine was pursued upon these occasions by
the two sisters, and the practice of nearly half a century had, of
course, made them perfect in it. I was told by a lady who had known the
Miss Byleses long and intimately, and had introduced to them, at their
house, not less than fifty persons, that she had never observed the
slightest variation in their usual series of sayings and doings. And so
I always found it, whenever I brought them a new visitor. Miss Mary
always came to receive us at the front door,—and Miss Catharine always
produced her own effect by not making her appearance, till we had sat
sometime in the parlour. The attention of the stranger was always, in
the same words, directed to the cornelian ring on their father’s
picture, and always the new guests were placed in the great carved
chair, and the same wonder was expressed that “they should sit easy
under the crown.” Always did their visiter hear the history of “their
nephew, poor boy, whom they had not seen for forty years.” Always did
Miss Catharine with the same diffidence exhibit the snake,—and always
was the snake unwilling to re-enter his box, till he had been brought to
obedience by a little wholesome chastisement. The astounding trick of
the alphabetical bits of paper was unfailingly shown;—and, always when
the visiters gave symptoms of departure, did Miss Mary slip out of the
room, and lock the front door, that she might have an opportunity of
repeating her excellent joke about the ladies’ night caps.
It was very desirable that all ladies and gentlemen, taken to see the
Miss Byleses, should have sufficient tact to be astonished up to the
exact point at the exhibition of their curiosities, that they should
laugh, just enough, at their witticisms; and that they should humor,
rather than controvert, their gratuitous manifestations of loyalty to
the person they called their rightful king.
My friend Mr. Sully, (who was glad to have an opportunity of seeing
Copley’s portrait of Dr. Byles,) enacted his part _à mervëílle_;—or
rather, it was no acting at all; but the genuine impulse of his kind and
considerate feelings, and of his ever-indulgent toleration for the
peculiarities of such minds as are not so fortunate as to resemble his
own.
Another gentleman who was desirous of an introduction to the sisters,
rather alarmed me by over-doing his part,—and, as I thought, being
rather _too_ much amazed at the curiosities; and rather too mirthful at
the jokes,—and rather too warm in praising kings and deprecating
presidents. But on this occasion, I threw away a great deal of good
uneasiness, for I afterwards found that the Miss Byleses, spoke of this
very gentleman as one of the most sensible and agreeable men they had
ever seen,—and one who had exactly the right way of talking and
behaving.
A lady who testified a wish to accompany me on a visit to the Miss
Byleses, found little either to interest or amuse her,—the truth was,
that being unable to enter the least into their characters, she looked
very gravely all the time, and afterwards told me she saw nothing in
them but foolishness.
I must do the Miss Byleses the justice to say, that they appeared to
much less advantage on these the first visits of new people, than to
those among the initiated, who took sufficient interest in them to
cultivate an after-acquaintance. I went sometimes alone to sit an hour
with them towards the decline of a summer afternoon,—and then I always
found them infinitely more rational than when “putting themselves
through their facings,” to show off to strangers. In the course of these
quiet visits, they told me many little circumstances connected with the
royalist side of our revolutionary contest, that I could scarcely have
obtained from any other source,—the few persons yet remaining among us
that were tories during that eventful period, taking care to say as
little about it as possible: and every one is so considerate as to ask
them no questions on a subject so sore to them.
But with the daughters of Dr. Byles, the case was quite different. They
gloried,—they triumphed, in the firm adherence of their father and his
family to the royalty of England,—and scorned the idea of even now
being classed among the _citoyennes_ of a republic; a republic which, as
they said, _they_ had never acknowledged, and never would; regarding
themselves still as faithful subjects to the majesty of Britain, whoever
that majesty might be. Of the kings that they knew of, they had a
decided preference for George the Third, as the monarch of their
youthful days, and under whom the most important events of their lives
had taken place. All since the revolution was nearly a blank in their
memories;—they dated almost entirely from that period,—and since then,
they had acquired but a scanty accession to the number of their ideas.
From their visiters they learnt little or nothing, as they always had
the chief of the talk to themselves. With English history, and with the
writers of the first half of the last century they were somewhat
conversant,—but all that had transpired in the literary and political
world since the peace of ’83, was to them indistinct and shadowy as the
images of a dream not worth remembering. But they talked of what, to us,
is now the olden time with a vividness of recollection that seemed as if
the things had occurred but yesterday. In the coloring of their
pictures, I, of course, made allowance for the predominant tinge of
toryism, and who for a large portion of the lingering vanity, which I
regarded indulgently, because it injured no one, and their
self-satisfaction added to the happiness of these isolated old ladies.
They once showed me, in an upper room, portraits of themselves at the
ages of seventeen and eighteen, painted by Pelham, the brother-in-law, I
believe, of Copley. The pictures were tolerably executed; and I think
they _must_ have been likenesses, for the faded faces of the
octogenarian sisters still retained some resemblance to their youthful
prototypes. The Miss Byleses were not depicted in the prevailing costume
of that period. They had neither hoop-petticoats, stomachers, nor
powdered heads,—both were represented in a species of non-descript
garments, imagined by the painter,—and for head gear, Miss Catharine
had her own fair locks in a state of nature,—and Miss Mary a thing like
a small turban.
From their own account they must have been regarded somewhat in the
light of belles by the British officers. They talked of walking on the
Common arm in arm with General Howe and Lord Percy: both of whom, they
said, were frequent visitors at the house, and often took tea and spent
the evening there.
I imagined the heir of Northumberland, taking his tea in the old
parlour, by the old fire-place, at the old tea-table,—entertained by
the witticisms of Dr. Byles, and the prettinesses of his daughters; who,
of course, were the envy of all the female tories of Boston, at least of
those who could not aspire to the honor of being talked to by English
noblemen. Moreover, Lord Percy frequently ordered the band of his
regiment to play under the chesnut trees, for the gratification of the
Miss Byleses, who then, as they said, had “God save the King” in
perfection. By the bye, I have never heard either God save the king or
Rule Britannia _well_ played by an American band; though our musicians
seem to perform the Marseillaise _con amore_.
The venerable ladies told me that the intimacy of their family with the
principal British officers became so well known, that in a short time
they found it expedient to close their shutters before dark, as the
lights gleaming through the parlor windows made the house of Dr. Byles,
a mark for the Americans to fire at from their fortifications on
Dorchester heights, in the hope that every ball might destroy a
red-coated visitor. Also, that the cannon-shot, still sticking in the
tower of Brattle-street church, was aimed by the Cambridge rebels at
General Howe, who had established his head-quarters at the old Province
House. Unpractised artillerymen as they then were, it is difficult to
believe that, if the Province House was really their mark, they could
have missed it so widely.
The Miss Byleses related many anecdotes of their father; some of which
were new to me, and with others I had long been familiar. For the
benefit of such of my readers as have not yet met with any of these old
fashioned _jeux d’esprit_ I will insert a few samples of their quality.
For instance, his daughters told me of the doctor walking one day with a
whig gentleman, in the vicinity of the Common, where a division of the
British troops lay encamped. His companion pointing to the soldiers of
the crown—said—“you see there the cause of all our evils—” “—But you
cannot say that our evils are not _red-dressed_,” remarked Dr. Byles.
“Your pun is not a good one,” observed his companion, “you have
mis-spelt the word by adding another D.”—“Well—” replied the clerical
joker,—“as a doctor of divinity, am I not entitled to the use of two
D’s?”
They spoke of their father’s captivity in his own mansion. And one of
them repeated to me the well known story of Dr. Byles coming out to the
centinel who was on guard, in a porch that then ran along the front of
the house, and requesting him to go to the street pump and bring a
bucket of cold water, as the day was warm, and the doctor very thirsty.
The soldier, it seems, at first declined; alleging his reluctance to
violate the rules of the service by quitting his post before the relief
came round. The doctor assured the man that _he_ would take his place,
and be his own guard till the water was brought. The centinel at last
complied; and took the bucket and went to the pump,—first resigning his
musket to Dr. Byles, who shouldered it in a very soldier-like manner,
and paced the porch, guarding himself till the sentry came back,—to
whom on returning his piece, he said,—“Now my friend, you see I have
been guarded—re-guarded—and dis-regarded.”
The Miss Byleses also referred to the anecdote of their father having
once paid his addresses to a lady who refused him, and afterwards
married the Mr. Quincy of that time, a name which then, as now, is
frequently in Boston pronounced Quinsy. The doctor afterwards meeting
the lady, said to her jocosely,—“Your taste in distempers must be very
bad, when it has led you to prefer the Quinsy to Byles.”
In front of the house was in former times a large deep slough, that had
been suffered by the municipal authorities to remain there for several
winters, with all its inconveniences, which in wet weather rendered it
nearly impassable. One day, Dr. Byles observed from his window that a
chaise, containing two of the select men, or regulators of the town, had
been completely arrested in its progress by sticking fast in the thick
heavy mud,—and they were both obliged to get out, and putting their
shoulders to the wheel, work almost knee-deep in the mire before they
could liberate their vehicle. The doctor came out to his gate, and
bowing respectfully, said to them—“Gentlemen, I have frequently
represented that slough to you as a nuisance to the street, but hitherto
without any effect. Therefore I am rejoiced to see you _stirring_ in the
matter at last.”
Certain fanatics who called themselves New-Lights had become very
obnoxious to the more rational part of the community, and were regarded
with much displeasure by the orthodox churches. A woman of this sect,
who lived in the neighborhood, came in as usual, one morning, to annoy
Dr. Byles, by a long argumentative, or rather vituperative visit. “Have
you heard the news?” asked the doctor, immediately on the entrance of
his unwelcome guest; he having just learnt the arrival, from London, of
three hundred street lamps.
She replied in the negative.
“Well then,”—resumed the doctor,—“Not less than three hundred new
lights have just arrived from England, and the civil authorities are
going immediately to have them all put in irons.”
The lady was shocked to hear of the cruel treatment designed for her
sectarian brethren that had just come over, and she hastened away
directly, to spread the intelligence among all her acquaintances, in the
hope, as she said, that something might be done to prevent the
infliction of so unmerited a punishment. And the doctor congratulated
himself on the success of the jest by which he had gotten rid of a
troublesome visiter.
A son of Dr. Byles, that retired to Halifax, must have probably
inherited a portion of his father’s mantle; for his sisters repeated to
me one of his conundrums, the humor of which almost atones for its
coarseness—“Why do the leaders of insurrections resemble men that like
sausages?”—“Because they are fond of intestine broils.”
The Miss Byleses told me much of the scarcity of provisions and
fire-wood, throughout Boston, during the winter of 1775, when the
British and their adherents held out the town against the Yankee rebels,
as they called them—and who had invested it every-where on the land
side, taking especial care that no supplies should pass in. It was then
that the old North Church was torn down by order of General Howe, that
the soldiers might convert into fuel the wood of which it was built.
By the bye, Mrs. Corder, an aged and intelligent female, living at the
North end, informed me that, when a little girl, she witnessed from her
father’s house on the opposite side of the way, the demolition of this
church; and that she was terrified at the noise of the falling beams and
of the wooden walls, as they battered them down, and at the shouting and
swearing of the soldiers as they quarrelled over their plunder.
Nevertheless, when the work of destruction was over, and the soldiers
all gone, she and other children of the neighborhood ran out to scramble
among the rubbish—and she found and carried home a little wooden
footstool or cricket, that had evidently been thrown out from one of the
demolished pews. I bought of my informant (who was in indigent
circumstances) this humble and time-darkened relic, and it is now in
possession of my youngest niece.
To return to the daughters of Dr. Byles.—They still lamented greatly
over the privations endured that winter by the British army shut up and
beleaguered in Boston; though certainly the same sufferings were shared
by all the inhabitants that remained in the town.—And they grieved
accordingly, to think that these inconveniencies finally compelled their
English friends to take to their ships and depart.
Miss Mary Byles related to me, that on one occasion she had given to a
hungry British soldier a piece of cold pork that had been left from
dinner. A few evenings after, the same man knocked at the door, and
requested to see one of the ladies—Miss Mary presented herself, and the
grateful soldier slipped into her hand a paper containing a small
quantity of the herb called by the whigs of that time “the detested
tea;” and which it was then scarcely possible to obtain on any terms.
* * * * *
Several years elapsed before I again was in Boston. In the interim, I
heard something of the Miss Byleses from ladies who knew and visited
them. I understood that, at length, they had found it impossible to
prevent what they had so long dreaded, the opening of a street that
would take in their little green lawn, their old horse-chesnut trees,
and that part of their house that stood directly across the way. For
this surrender of their property, they received from the city an ample
compensation in money; also their house was made as good or rather
better than ever besides being new roofed and thoroughly repaired. The
despoiled sisters, though another and more comfortable residence was
offered to them during the time of their destruction, as they termed it,
steadily persisted in remaining on their own domain during the whole
process of its dismemberment. Their house, as they said, was cut in
half; that part which faced the end of Tremont street being taken away.
They mourned over the departure of every beam and plank as if each was
an old friend—and so they truly were. And deep indeed was the
affliction of the aged sisters when they saw, falling beneath the
remorseless axe, their noble horse-chesnut trees whose scattered
branches, as they lay on the grass, the old ladies declared, seemed to
them like the dismembered limbs of children. At this juncture, their
grief and indignation reached its climax; and they excited much sympathy
even among professed utilitarians. There were many indulgent hearts in
Boston that felt as if the improvement of this part of the city might
yet have been delayed for a few short years, till after these venerable
and harmless females should have closed their eyes for ever upon all
that could attach them to this side of the grave. And that even if the
march of public spirit should in consequence have allowed itself to
pause a little longer in this part of its road, “neither heaven nor
earth would have grieved at the mercy.”
Miss Mary Byles, who with more sprightliness had less strength of mind
than her younger sister, never, as the saying is, held up her head
again.—Her health and spirits declined from that time—she sunk slowly
but surely; and after lingering some months, a few days of severe bodily
suffering terminated all her afflictions, and consigned her mortal
remains to their final resting-place beside her father. In the meantime
she had lost her nephew, Mather Brown, the painter, who died at an
advanced age in London and who was to have been the heir of all that his
aunts possessed.
In addition to the rest of their little wealth, the Miss Byleses had in
a sort of strong hold up stairs a chest of old-fashioned plate, no
article of which was on any occasion used by them. Also, they retained
some rare and valuable books that had belonged to their father, and a
few curious and excellent mathematical instruments brought by him from
England, and which the University of Harvard had vainly endeavoured to
purchase from them. Among other articles was an immense burning-glass,
said to be one of the largest in the world, and which the old ladies
kept locked up in a closet, and carefully covered with a thick cloth,
lest, as they said, it should set the house on fire.
* * * * *
On a subsequent visit to the metropolis of the American east, I went to
see the surviving Miss Byles; and when I reached the accustomed place I
could scarcely recognize it. The main part of the old house was yet
standing; but the loss of one end had given it quite a different aspect.
There was no longer the green inclosure, the fence-gate, and the narrow
path through the grass—the door opened directly upon a brick pavement
and on the dusty street. To be sure there was a fresh-looking wooden
door-step. New tenements had been run up all about the now noisy
vicinity, which had entirely lost its air of quiet retirement. All was
now symptomatic of bustle and business. The ancient dwelling-place of
the Byles family had ceased to be picturesque. It had been repaired and
made comfortable; but denuded of its guardian trees there was nothing
more to screen from full view its extreme unsightliness. Above its
weather-blackened walls (which the sisters would not allow to be
painted, lest it should look _totally_ unlike itself) the new shingles
of the roof seemed out of keeping—I thought of all the poor ladies must
have suffered during the transformation of their paternal domicile.
On knocking at the door, it was opened for me by an extremely
good-looking neatly dressed matron, who conducted me into a room which I
could scarcely believe was the original old parlor. The homely antique
furniture had disappeared, and was replaced by some very neat and
convenient articles of modern form. The floor was nicely carpeted; there
were new chairs and a new table,—a bed with white curtains and
counterpane, and window-curtains to match.—Nothing looked familiar but
the antique crown chair and the pictures.
I found Miss Catharine Byles seated in a rocking chair with a pillow at
her back.—She looked paler, thinner, sharper, and much older than when
I last saw her. She was no longer in a white short gown but wore a whole
gown of black merino, with a nice white muslin collar and a regular
day-cap trimmed with black ribbon.
Though glad to find her so much improved as to comfort, I take shame to
myself when I confess that I felt something not unlike disappointment,
at seeing such a change in the ancient lady and her attributes. The
quaintness, and I may say the picturesqueness of the old mansion, and
its accessories, and also that of its octogenarian mistress, seemed gone
for ever. I am sorry to acknowledge that at the moment I thought of the
French artist Lebrun, who meeting in the street an old tattered
beggar-man with long gray locks and a venerable silver beard, was struck
with the idea of his being a capital subject for the pencil, and engaged
him to come to him next day and have his likeness transferred to
canvass. The beggar came; but thinking that all people who sit for their
pictures should look spruce, he had bedizened himself in a very genteel
suit of Sunday clothes, with kneebuckles and silk stockings; his face
and hands nicely washed; his chin shaved clean; and his hair dressed and
powdered; the whole man looking altogether as unpaintable as
possible.—All artists will sympathize with the disappointed Lebrun, as
he contemplated his beggar with dismay, and exclaimed “—oh! you are
spoiled!—you are spoiled!” I suppose it is because I am a painter’s
sister, that I caught myself nearly on the point of making a similar
ejaculation on seeing the new-modelling of Miss Catharine Byles, and her
domicile.
But a truce with such unpardonable thoughts—Miss Catharine recognized
me at once, and seemed very glad to see me. She soon began to talk about
her troubles, and her sorrows, and alluded in a very affecting manner to
the loss of her sister, who she said had died of a broken heart in
consequence of the changes made in their little patrimony; having always
hoped to die, as she had lived, in her father’s house just as he had
left it—“But the worst of all,” pursued Miss Catharine—“was the
cutting down of the old trees.—Every stroke of the axe seemed like a
blow upon our hearts. Neither of us slept a wink all that night. Poor
sister Mary; she soon fretted herself to death. To think of our having
to submit to these dreadful changes, all at once; when for ten years our
dear father’s spectacles, were never removed from the place in which he
had last laid them down.”
I attempted to offer a few words of consolation to Miss Catharine, but
she wept bitterly and would not be comforted. “Ah!”—said she—“this is
one of the consequences of living in a republic. Had we been still under
a king, he would have known nothing about our little property, and we
could have enjoyed it in our own way as long as we lived. There is one
comfort, that not a creature in the states will be any the better for
what _we_ shall leave behind us—Sister and I have taken care of that.
We have bequeathed every article to our relations in Nova Scotia since
our nephew, poor boy, was so unfortunate as to die before us. In all our
trials it has been a great satisfaction to us to reflect that when
everything was changing around, grace has been given us to remain
faithful to our church and king.”
The loyal old lady then informed me that, on his accession to the
throne, she had written a letter of congratulation to his Britannic
Majesty, William the Fourth, whom she remembered having seen in Boston
before the revolution, when he was there as Duke of Clarence and an
officer in his father’s navy. In this epistle she had earnestly assured
him that the family of Dr. Byles always were, and always would be, most
true and fervent in their devotion to their liege lord and rightful
sovereign the king of England.—To have attempted to argue her out of
this feeling, the pride and solace of her declining life, would have
been cruel; and moreover entirely useless—I did not hint to her the
improbability of her letter ever having reached the royal personage to
whom it was addressed.
The old lady told me that her chief occupation now was to write serious
poetry, and she gave me a copy of some stanzas which she had recently
composed. The verses were tolerably good, and written in a hand
remarkably neat, handsome, and steady.
* * * * *
Miss Catharine Byles survived her sister Miss Mary about two years, and
died of gradual decay in the summer of 1837. Her remains repose with
those of her father and sister beneath the flooring of Trinity Church.
They left the whole of their property to their loyalist relations in
Nova Scotia, true to their long-cherished resolution that no republican
should inherit the value of a farthing from them. The representative of
the family is said to have come to Boston and taken possession of the
bequest.
It is curious, as well as instructive, to contemplate the infinite
varieties of human character, and the strange phases under which human
intellect presents itself. The peculiarities of these two sisters
strikingly evinced the lasting power of early impressions, almost always
indelible when acting upon minds that have not been expanded by
intercourse with the world. For instance—their steadfast, gratuitous
and useless loyalty, cherished for monarchs whom they had never seen,
and who had forgotten the very existence of Dr. Byles (if indeed they
had ever remembered it) and who, of course, neither knew nor cared
anything about his daughters; their rooted antipathy to the republic in
which they lived, and where if they had not persisted in shutting their
eyes they must have seen everything flourishing around them; the strict
economy which induced them to deny themselves even the comforts of life,
and their willingness to be assisted by the benevolent rather than
render themselves independent by an advantageous disposal of their
property. The almost idolatrous devotion with which they clung to the
inanimate objects that had been familiar to them in early life, showed
an intensity of feeling which was both pitied and respected by their
friends, though reason perhaps would not have sanctioned its entire
indulgence. By living so much alone, by visiting at no other house, by
never going out of their native town, by perpetually thinking and
talking over the occurrences of their youth, they had wrought themselves
into a firm belief that no way was right but their own way, no opinions
correct but their own opinions: and above all, that in no other
dwelling-place but their paternal mansion was it possible for them to be
happy or even to exist.
As a set-off to their weaknesses, their vanities and their prejudices,
it gives me pleasure to bear testimony to the kindness of their
deportment, the soft tones of their voices, and to the old-fashioned
polish of their manners; which at once denoted them to be ladies, even
in their short-gowns and petticoats.
Though, in the latter part of their lives, the daughters of Dr. Byles
were subjected to the sore trial of seeing the little green lawn on
which they had played when children converted into a dusty street, and
the fine old trees (which would take a century to replace) demolished in
a few minutes before their eyes: still they were both permitted to die
beneath the same roof under which their existence had commenced. The
house of their heavenly father has many mansions; and there, in their
eternal abode, now that their mental vision has cleared, and their souls
have been purified from the dross of mortality, they have learnt the
futility of having set their hearts too steadfastly on a dwelling
erected by human hands; and more than all, of fostering prejudices in
favor of that system of government which, according to the signs of the
times, is fast and deservedly passing away. Is it too much to hope that
ere the lapse of another half century, not a being in the civilized
world will render the homage of a bended knee, except to the King of
Heaven.
* * * * *