generous favor will hide my naked and deformed fault altho: it seems
to be a renewed coldness to require such an incomparable favour from
your tender heart, from whom I have deserved so little Kindness. Mrs.
Mary: Solomon says Childhood and Youth are vanity; and if so you
cannot expect that in my youth which the gray hairs of our Age (or at
least of our wooden world) cannot afford; it is a common saying and
a true, love is stronger than death, & it is as true a proverb where
Love cannot go it will creep--you know Dear Lady, that the higher the
sun riseth by degrees from the East the more influence hath the power
and heat of its beams upon the Earth, so ever since I saw the sun-rise
of your comely and gracious presence the sunbeams of your countenance
and your discreet and virtuous behaviour, hath by degrees wroat such
a virtuous heat and such Ammorouse Effects in my disconsolate heart
that that which I cannot at present disclose in words in your gracious
presence I am forct (altho far distant from you) to discover in ink
and paper; trusting in god that this may be a Key to open the door of
your virtuous and tender heart against the time I do appear in person;
Dear Mistress: let me most submissively crave this favour of you among
your generrosities that you would not in the least Imagine that I have
any Bye Ends or reserves in writing these few lines to you: But that
I am Virtuously truly and sincerely, upon the word of a Christian;
and the main scope and intent of this letter is only and alone to
discover unto you, these Amorous impressions of a virtuous Love which
hath taken root or is Allready ingrafted in my heart; who have lifted
myself under the Banner of your Love; provided I can by any means
gain the honor to induce you to Acknowledge and account me your most
obligeing Servant: I must needs say this is not a common practice of
mine to write Letters of this nature but Love hath made that proper
which is not common; Mrs. Mary if I had foreseen when I saw you what
I have since experienced I would have foreshown a more Ample and
courteous behavior than I then did; Through my Stupidity and dullness
the reason then I could not tell: But the effects I now know and shall
be careful and industrious to improve, not to your disadvantage, and I
am persuaded to my exceeding comfort and contentment; as for my person
you have in a measure seen it, and as for my practice you do in a
measure Know it as for my parts the Effects of my Conversations will
show it. I know it is folly to speak in my own Praise, seeing I have
learnt this Leason Long ago wise is that man that speaks few words in
his own praise....
“As for my parents I am obliged By the Law of god; to Honour them, &
thus I say in short (first) they are of no mean Family; (secondly)
they are of no mean Learning, & (thirdly) they are of no mean account
and note in the World: tho they are not of ye world But the truth &
certainty of this I Leave to be proved; By Severall of no mean note in
this Province and the next.”
Mr. Keach evidently refers to the Provinces of Pennsylvania and New
Jersey. After several lines that it is impossible to decipher, we
extract the following hope:
“That the Silver Streams of my Dearest Affections and faithfull Love
will be willingly received into the Mill Pond of your tender Virgin
Heart; by your halling up the flood gate of your virtuous Love and
Affections; which will completely turn the Wheeles of your Gracious
will and Understanding to receive the golden graines or Effects of
my Steadfast Love and unerring Affection which will be in Loyall
respective and Obliging Service so Long as Life Shall Last and such
a thrice Happy Conjunction; may induce Many to bring bags of Golden
graines of Rejoycing to our Mill and River of joy and contentment
and we ourselves will sing ye Epithalmy; this is the Earnest (yet
Languishing) Desire of his Soul who hath sent his heart with his
Letter:”[33]
The foregoing epistle is connected with a curious chapter in the
religious life of the Lower Counties of Pennsylvania.[34] The writer,
a son of the celebrated controversialist and Baptist divine of London,
Benjamin Keach, made himself notorious in the early days of the Colony
by passing himself off as a minister of the Baptist Church. “A very
wild spark,” one historian calls him, while even in Baptist annals
Elias Keach is spoken of as “an ungodly young man, who, to make
himself appear to be a clergyman, wore black clothing and bands.” He
carried his imposture so far as to undertake to conduct a service, in
the midst of which he broke down, and when the congregation gathered
about him, thinking that he was attacked by some sudden indisposition,
Mr. Keach confessed, “with tears and much trembling,” that he was no
minister, nor a Christian. Whether this shady episode, which occurred
in 1686, the same year that the love-letter was written to Miss Helm,
prevented the mistress of his “Amorous and Virtuous Affections” from
favoring his suit, contemporaneous history does not reveal. It does,
however, establish the fact that Miss More, daughter of Chief Justice
Nicholas More, of Pennsylvania, and not Miss Helm, became the wife of
the polite letter-writer. It would be interesting to know with what
sort of a declaratory effusion this second love was favored. On this
point history is again silent. It states, however, what it is only just
to repeat with regard to the subsequent career of Elias Keach,--namely,
that he repented of his sins before he created further scandal in
clerical circles. Having confessed, and having received absolution and
ordination from one Elder Dungan, of Rhode Island, Mr. Keach began
his life-work in earnest, which evidently bore good fruit, as he now
enjoys the reputation of having established the first Baptist church
in Philadelphia County, that of Pennepack, from which sprang a large
sisterhood of Baptist churches in Pennsylvania and New Jersey.
Among later Colonial love-letters are those of Abigail Smith,
afterwards Mrs. John Adams, which are marked by the ready wit and
playful fancy that characterized all her writings. These qualities
she seems to have inherited from no stranger, as her father, the Rev.
William Smith of Weymouth, was one of the most facetious of divines. It
is said that when his eldest daughter, Mary, married Richard Cranch,
he preached from Luke x. 42: “And Mary hath chosen that good part,
which shall not be taken away from her.” Abigail also had her turn.
Some of the aristocratic parishioners of Weymouth objected to John
Adams because he was the son of a small farmer and himself a lawyer,
these two facts rendering him, they thought, ineligible to marry the
minister’s daughter, in whose veins flowed the bluest of New England
blue blood. Mr. Smith accordingly favored his congregation with a
discourse on the text, “For John came neither eating bread nor drinking
wine; and ye say, He hath a devil,” the latter clause having reference
to the groom’s profession, the law, which was not then held in much
repute in New England.
In a letter written by Miss Smith, from her village home, to John
Adams, who was undergoing the process of inoculation for small-pox in
Boston, she says,--
“By the time you receive this I hope from experience that you will be
able to say that the distemper is but a trifle. Think you I would not
endure a trifle for the pleasure of seeing you? Yes, were it ten times
that trifle, I would. But my own inclinations must not be followed. I
hope you smoke your letters well before you deliver them. Mamma is so
fearful lest I catch the distemper, that she hardly ever thinks the
letters are sufficiently purified. Did you never rob a bird’s nest?
Do you remember how the poor birds would fly round and round, fearful
to come nigh, yet not know how to leave the place? Just so they say I
hover round Tom whilst he is smoking my letters.”
It is to be regretted that John Adams’s answers to these letters are
not preserved: they were probably burned up by the anxious mamma.
All Abigail’s letters are love-letters in their tone of earnest
devotion, whether written before or after marriage. With the details
of the stir and excitement of military doings in and around Boston,
the arrival of General Washington, the scantiness of provisions, and
the cry for pins, which seem to have been as scarce as diamonds, there
abound such passages as this:
“I wish I could come and see you. I never suffer myself to think you
are about returning soon. Can it, will it be? May I ask--may I wish
for it? When once I expect you----But hush! Do you know it is eleven
o’clock at night?... Pray don’t let Bass forget my pins. We shall
soon have no coffee, nor sugar, nor pepper here; but whortleberries
and milk we are not obliged to commerce for. I saw a letter of yours
to Colonel Palmer by General Washington. I hope I have one too.
Good-night. With thoughts of thee I close my eyes. Angels guard and
protect thee; and may a safe return ere long bless thy Portia.”
It was always Diana or Portia, after the romantic fashion of those
days; and who would not rather have been Portia than plain Abigail to
her lover?
A curious literary and historical fact, not generally known, is that
General Benedict Arnold, who was notorious for his extravagance in
public and private life, was extremely parsimonious in the matter
of love-letters. By the infallible proof of an old letter, recently
discovered, it appears that he made the same amatory composition do
double duty, having used it in addressing at least two ladies of his
choice. The letter was first employed in a proposal to Miss A., whom
he did not marry, and with a few changes was used in offering himself
to the beautiful Miss Peggy Shippen, of Philadelphia, whom he married
in 1779. The letter, as addressed to Miss Shippen, is to be found in
Arnold’s “Life of Benedict Arnold,” and is undoubtedly a fine sample of
a love-letter of a rather florid and bombastic style. If Miss Shippen
had realized that her suitor had written to an earlier love that her
“charms had lighted up a flame in his bosom which could never be
extinguished, that her heavenly image was too dear to be ever effaced,
and that Heaven’s blessing should be implored for the idol and _only_
wish of his soul,” she might with some reason have hesitated to bestow
her hand upon so trite a lover, who could find no fresh adjectives to
match her charms.
Of interesting foreign love-letters we might speak at length: of a
manly and tender missive from the great Gustavus Adolphus to an early
love; of the Klopstock letters, than which in the whole literature
of love nothing more beautiful can be found; of those of Prosper
Mérimée to his _coquette Inconnue_, with their irresistible grace and
brilliancy enhanced by the air of mystery that surrounds them; or of
the exquisite metrical love-letters that Elizabeth Barrett addressed
to her “Most gracious singer of high poems.” We have chosen rather to
group together a few Colonial love-letters, not only because most
of them are unknown to the reading world, but also with a thought of
drawing together in sympathy lovers of to-day with those of a past
generation, not wigged, capped, and spectacled, as we are wont to
picture our grandfathers and grandmothers, but with flowing locks
and flashing eyes, armed _cap-à-pie_ to enter in and conquer, or be
conquered, in that fair realm where victor and vanquished rejoice to
quit the lists hand clasped in hand.
[Illustration]
FOOTNOTES:
[30] From MS. letters in possession of the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania.
[31] William Penn, Jr., who grew up a gay young blade and distinguished
himself by beating the watch and otherwise scandalizing the law-abiding
citizens of old Philadelphia.
[32] From MS. letter, written to Miss Sarah Read, of Philadelphia, in
possession of Miss F. A. Logan.
[33] Original owned by Miss Anna Peale, a grand-daughter of Charles
Willson Peale.
[34] New Castle, Kent, and Sussex, which now form the State of
Delaware.
[Illustration]
_THE PHILADELPHIA DANCING ASSEMBLIES_
As has been said, we are wont to think of our esteemed progenitors of
the Colonial and Revolutionary periods as performing valuable service
in their day and generation, “being good,” as some wit expresses it,
“but not having a very good time.” If our thoughts revert to the ladies
of the last century, we picture them spending their days in spinning,
knitting, or sewing, surrounded by their maid-servants, whom they are
instructing in these most useful arts, as the Mother of the Republic
is described by so many who visited her at Mount Vernon, rather than
in bedecking themselves for conquest in the gay world. The men of the
period seem to have spent so much of their time at assemblies, not
dancing assemblies, but those in which the laws of the Colonies were
discussed, and land-claims, quit-rents, and other dry affairs settled,
that we are surprised when a stray leaf from the note-book of some
public man floats down to us containing such entries as the following:
Diana for attendance 15_s._
For candles £1.12_s._
“ snuffers 4_s._
“ three dozen chairs £7.
“ 200 limes 14_s._
“ 18 pounds milk bisket 9_s._
“ 5 gallons rum and cask £2.3_s._
“ Musick £1.10_s._
Learning that these items were among the expenses of an early
Philadelphia Dancing Assembly, and that the wives and daughters of
such ancient worthies as His Honor the Governor of Pennsylvania, Chief
Justice Shippen, Thomas Hopkinson, and the Bond brothers wore rich
imported silks, feathers, and flowers, and attended routs and balls,
life in the old Provincial city is suddenly lit up with brighter hues,
and gay scenes take their place upon the canvas of the past.
History has treated with such dignified silence this more frivolous
side of Philadelphia life that it is only from old manuscript letters
and note-books, from such sprightly diaries as those of William Black,
of Virginia, Sarah Eve, and Sally Wister, and from Watson and other
annalists, that we learn that there was much gayety, as well as rare
good living, in this city in the last century. As early as 1738 we read
of a dancing class, instructed by Theobald Hackett, who engaged to teach
“all sorts of fashionable English and French dances, after the newest
and politest manner practised in London, Dublin, and Paris, and to
give to young ladies, gentlemen, and children the most graceful
carriage in dancing and genteel behavior in company that can possibly
be given by any dancing-master whatever.”
Certainly the dancing-master’s card is worded in the “politest manner,”
and his pupils in this city must have proved singularly apt in the
Terpsichorean art, as the Philadelphia women were noted, at an early
date, for their grace and social charm.
Later, one Kennet taught dancing and fencing, as did also John Ormsby,
from London, “in the newest taste now practised in Europe, at Mr.
Foster’s house, in Market Street, opposite the Horse and Dray.”
These announcements sound strangely un-Quakerlike, and in 1749 such
alarming premonitory symptoms of gayety culminated in a regular series
of subscription balls, after the London fashion. The good Quakers
naturally looked askance at such festivities; consequently we find
the names of no Pembertons, Logans, Fishers, Lloyds, Whartons, Coxes,
Rawles, Norrises, Peningtons, Emlens, Morrises, or Biddles on the
original list of membership; but here are M’Calls, Francises, Burds,
Shippens, Barclays, Wilcockses, Willings, McIlvaines, Hamiltons,
Allens, Whites, and Conynghams.
The clergy was represented in these early Assemblies by the Rev.
Richard Peters, of London, who held high positions in the State as well
as in the Church, and the Provincial Government by James Hamilton, the
first American-born governor of Pennsylvania. A letter from Richard
Peters to Thomas Penn shows what a warm interest the reverend gentleman
took in the recently-formed Assembly. The letter is dated New Castle,
May 3, 1749, and reads as follows:
“By the Governor’s encouragement there has been a very handsome
Assembly once a fortnight at Andrew Hamilton’s house and stores,
which are tenanted by Mr. Inglis [and] make a set of rooms for such a
purpose, & Consists of eighty ladies and as many gentlemen, one-half
appearing every Assembly Night. Mr. Inglis had the conduct of the
whole, and managed exceeding well. There happened a little mistake
at the beginning, which at some other times might [have] produced
disturbances. The Governor would have opened the Assembly with Mrs.
Taylor, but she refused him, I suppose because he had not been to
visit her. After Mrs. Taylor’s refusal, two or three other ladies, out
of Modesty and from no manner of ill design, excused themselves, so
that the Governor was put a little to his shifts when Mrs. Willing,
now Mrs. Mayoreas,[35] in a most Genteel Manner put herself into his
way, and on the Governor seeing this instance, he”
here there occurs something illegible, but it appears from what follows
that the Governor danced the first minuet with this amiable lady, who
showed her fine breeding by stepping in to prevent his being placed in
an awkward position.
Mr. Peters adds, in judicial form, that “Mrs. Taylor was neither blamed
nor excused nor commended, and so it went off, and every person during
the continuance of the Assembly, which ended last week, was extremely
cheerful and good natured.”
This Mrs. Abraham Taylor was the same Philadelphia Taylor who wrote a
little earlier of the exceeding dulness of Provincial life, and the
lack of all congenial amusement, sighing the while for an “English
Arcadia,” which she thus quaintly described: “The hight of my ambition
is to have us all live together in some pretty country place in a clean
and genteel manner.”
It is pleasing to know that social life was beginning to come up to
this lady’s standard, even if her own manners did not rise with it. Her
rude treatment of Governor Hamilton was due to the fact of her husband
having some difficulty with the Provincial authorities, which she
undertook to revenge upon the person who seems to have been the least
to blame in the matter.
The managers of the first Assembly were John Swift, a successful
merchant, and Collector of the Port of Philadelphia; John Wallace, son
of a Scotch clergyman; John Inglis, whose name is not now represented
in Philadelphia, but from whom are descended Fishers, Cadwaladers,
Coxes, and Kanes; and Lynford Lardner, an Englishman, who came here
in 1740 to hold a number of honorable positions in the Province, and,
being addicted to learning as well as to gayety, was a director of
the Library Company and an early member of the American Philosophical
Society.[36]
Among the subscribers to the first Dancing Assembly was Andrew Elliot,
son of Sir Gilbert Elliot, then a young man recently arrived in the
Province. Although he married into two Philadelphia families, Mr.
Elliot’s associations were much with New York, where he was sometime
Collector of Customs and Lieutenant-Governor. Mrs. Jauncey, Governor
Elliot’s daughter, writes from that city, in 1783, of a ball at
Head-quarters in honor of the Queen’s birthday, which her father
urged his wife to attend, yet we find him writing a few months later
of Mrs. Elliot being in Philadelphia, and warmly received by the
authorities there, “in high spirits and high frolic, with all her
best clothes; dancing with the French Minister, Financier-General,
Governor of the State, &c., &c., all striving who shall show her most
attention.” This latter was after the preliminaries of peace had been
signed between Great Britain and the United States, when Governor
Elliot’s old friends, “Governor Dickinson, Bob. Morris,” and other
officials in the government, had begun to assume the more imposing
proportions of winning figures. Both Mrs. Jauncey and Elizabeth Elliot
married Englishmen. The latter, as Lady Cathcart, seems to have taken
particular delight in dazzling the eyes of her American relatives
with pictures of her own magnificent appearance in sable and diamonds
assisting at court functions, where she is pleased to find herself on
occasions the best dressed person in the company.[37]
Mrs. Jekyll, whose name is to be found on the early Assembly lists, and
who is spoken of as “a lady of pre-eminent fashion and beauty,” was a
grand-daughter of the first Edward Shippen. Her husband, John Jekyll,
was Collector of the Port of Boston. In connection with this lady’s
gayety and social distinction, Watson gives some curious information
with regard to the invitations in early times, which, he says, were
printed upon common playing-cards, there being no blank cards in the
country, none but playing-cards being imported for sale. “I have seen
at least a variety of a dozen in number addressed to this same lady
[Mrs. Jekyll]. One of them, from a leading gentleman of that day,
contained on the back the glaring effigy of _a queen_ of clubs!”[38]
The first Assembly Balls were held in a large room at Hamilton’s wharf,
on Water Street, between Walnut and Dock. There seems to have been no
hall capable of accommodating so many persons, and as Water Street
skirted the court end of the town, it was a rather convenient locality
in which to hold a ball. A lady of the olden time has left a record of
going to one of these balls at Hamilton’s Stores in full dress and
on horseback. What would the belles of that early time think if their
Rosinantes could land them at the Academy of Music for one of the
great routs of our days? The scene of enchantment now presented by the
corridors, foyer, and supper-room would certainly bewilder the brains
and dazzle the eyes of those beautiful great-grandmothers, for the
decorations were not then elaborate, and the entertainment was simple,
consisting, says one chronicler, “chiefly of something to drink.”
In 1772 the Assembly Balls seem to have been held at the Freemasons’
Lodge, while it is evident from notices in the _Pennsylvania Journal_
of 1784-85, that they were later held at the City Tavern. In 1802 the
managers gave notice to subscribers, in _Poulson’s Advertiser_, that
the first ball of the season would be held at Francis’s Hotel, on
Market Street.
According to the early Assembly rules, tickets for strangers were to
be had on application to the managers, and were to be paid for at
the rate of seven shillings and sixpence,--this for gentlemen; for
ladies (such was the gallantry of the time) nothing was to be paid.
This old regulation remained in force until quite recently, when, in
consequence of the increasing number of guests from other cities and
in simple justice to the subscribers, it was decided that guests of
both sexes should be paid for at the same rates as residents. The old
subscription ticket was forty shillings, which moderate sum was levied
upon the gentleman, and of course included the lady who accompanied
him. It covered the expenses of a series of entertainments given upon
every Thursday evening from January until May. The rule was that the
ball “should commence at precisely six in the evening, and not, by
any means, to exceed twelve the same night.” Worthy and most moderate
ancestors! Your ball ended at the hour that the Assembly of our time
begins, and the fair Belindas and Myrtillas who had graced the scene
were sent off to their beds in time to get, if not beauty-sleep,
certainly some hours of good sleep before dawn. This was a fortunate
circumstance, for those were days when mothers of families considered
it one of the cardinal sins to lie abed in the morning, and if Belinda
did not get her quantum of sleep at night there was little chance of
making it up at high noon.
Although it was one of the regulations of the Assembly that none were
to be admitted without tickets, which were received at the door by one
of the directors, there appears to have been some laxity in enforcing
this regulation, as, in 1771, the following notice was inserted in the
_Pennsylvania Journal_:
“The Assembly will be opened this evening, and as the receiving money
at the door has been found extremely inconvenient, the managers think
it necessary to give the public notice that no person will be admitted
without a ticket from the directors, which (through the application of
a subscriber) may be had of either of the managers.”
As card-playing formed an important part in the entertainment of the
time, rooms were provided for those who preferred cards to the dance,
furnished with fire, candles, tables, cards, etc.
The dances were regulated according to very strict rules, “first come,
first served.” The ladies who arrived first had places in the first
set; the others were to be arranged in the order in which they arrived.
The ladies were to draw for their places, which made a little pleasant
excitement and raised a flutter of expectation in breasts masculine as
well as feminine. The directors always had the right to reserve one
place out of the set “to present to a stranger, if any, or any other
lady, who was thereby entitled to lead up that set for the night.”
To break in upon the regular order of the dances seems to have been a
serious offence, as, in a letter of 1782, we read of a Philadelphia
belle, Miss Polly Riché, starting up a revolt against the established
authorities by “standing up in a set not her own.” By drawing the other
ladies and gentlemen, who formed the cotillon, into the rebellion, she
precipitated a rupture between the gentlemen, Mr. Moore and Colonel
Armand, and the managers of the Assembly.
Two Jewish names appear on this early list of 1749, Levy and Franks.
Mr. Black, who was in Philadelphia in 1744, thus describes a Miss
Levy, probably a sister of Samson Levy, whose name is enrolled among
the subscribers to the Assembly:
“In the evening, in company with Mr. Lewis and Mr. Littlepage, I
went to Mr. Levy’s, a Jew, and very Considerable Merch’t; he was a
Widdower. And his Sister, Miss Hettie Levy, kept his House. We staid
Tea, and was very agreeably Entertain’d by the Young Lady. She was
of middle Stature, and very well made her Complection Black but very
Comely, she had two Charming eyes full of Fire and Rolling; Eye Brows
Black and well turn’d, with a Beautiful head of Hair, Coal Black which
she wore a Wigg, waving in wanting curling Ringletts in her Neck; She
was a lady of a great Deal of Wit, Join’d to a Good Understanding,
full of Spirits, and of a Humor exceeding Jocose and Agreeable.”
Another lady who inspired even more ardent admiration in the
susceptible breast of Mr. Black was Miss Mollie Stamper, who married
William Bingham, and figures on the early lists of the Assembly as Mrs.
Bingham.[39] Of this young lady’s charms Mr. Black says,--