Madame’s adopted children—Anecdote of sister Susan.
YEARS passed away in this manner, varied only by the extension of that
protection and education, which they gave to a succession of nephews and
nieces of the colonel or Mrs. Schuyler. These they did not take from
mere compassion, as all their relations were in easy circumstances; but
influenced by various considerations, such as, in some cases, the death
of the mother of the children, or perhaps the father; in others, where
their nieces or nephews married very early, and lived in the houses of
their respective parents, while their young family increased before they
had a settled home; or in instances where, from the remote situations in
which the parents lived, they could not so easily educate them. Indeed,
the difficulty of getting a suitable education for children, whose
parents were ambitious for their improvement, was great; and a family so
well regulated as hers, and frequented by such society, was in itself an
academy, both for the best morals and manners. When people have children
born to them, they must submit to the ordinary lot of humanity; and if
they have not the happiness of meeting with many good qualities to
cultivate and rejoice over, there is nothing left for them but to exert
themselves to the utmost, to reform and ameliorate what will admit of
improvement. They must carefully weed and prop: if the soil produce a
crop both feeble and redundant, affection will blind them to many
defects; imperious duty will stimulate them, and hope, soothing, however
deceitful, will support them. But when people have the privilege, as in
this case, of choosing a child, they are fairly entitled to select the
most promising. This selection, I understood always to have been left to
aunt Schuyler, and it appeared, by the event, to have been generally a
happy one. Fifteen, either nephews or nieces, or the children of such
who had been under her care, all lived to grow up and go out into the
world: all acted their parts so as to do credit to the instruction they
had received, and the example they looked up to. Besides these, they had
many whom they brought for two or three years to their house to reside;
either because the family they came from was at the time crowded with
younger children, or because they were at a time of life, when a year or
two spent in such society as was there assembled, might not only form
their manners, but give a bias to their future character.
About the year 1730, they brought home a nephew of the colonel’s whose
father having a large family, and having, to the best of my
recollection, lost his wife, entirely gave over the boy to the
protection of this relation. This boy was his uncle’s god-son, and
called Philip, after him. He was a great favourite in the family; for
though apparently thoughtless and giddy, he had a very good temper and
quick parts, and was, upon the whole, an ingenious, lively, and amusing
child. He was a very great favourite, and continued to be so, in some
measure, when he grew up.
There were other children, whose names and relation to my friends I do
not remember, in the house at the same time, but none that staid so
long, or were so much talked of as this. There certainly never were
people who received so much company, made so respectable a figure in
life, and always kept so large a family about them, with so little
tumult or bustle, or indeed at so moderate an expense. What their income
was I cannot say; but am sure it could not have been what we should
think adequate to the good they did, and the hospitality and beneficence
which they practised; for the rents of lands were then of so little
value, that, though they possessed a considerable estate in another part
of the country, only very moderate profits could result from it; but,
indeed, from the simplicity of dress, &c. it was easier; though, in that
respect, too, they preserved a kind of dignity, and went beyond others
in the materials, though not the form of their apparel. Yet their
principal expense was a most plentiful and well ordered table, quite in
the English style, which was a kind of innovation: but so many strangers
frequented the houses of the three brothers, that it was necessary for
them to accommodate themselves to the habits of their guests.
Peter being in his youth an extensive trader, had spent much time in
Canada, among the noblesse there, and had served in the continental
levies. He had a fine commanding figure, and quite the air and address
of a gentleman, and was, when I knew him, an old man.
Intelligent and pleasing in a very high degree, Jeremiah had too much
familiar kindness to be looked up to like his brother. Yet he also had a
very good understanding, great frankness and affability, and was
described by all who knew him, as the very soul of cordial friendship
and warm benevolence. He married a polished and well-educated person,
whose parents (French protestants) were people of the first fashion in
New-York, and had given with her a good fortune, a thing very unusual in
that country. They used, in the early years of their marriage, to pay a
visit every winter to their connexions at New-York, who passed part of
every summer with them. This connexion, as well as that with the Flats,
gave an air of polish and a tincture of elegance to this family beyond
others; and there were few so gay and social. This cheerfulness was
supported by a large family, fourteen, I think, of very promising
children. These, however, inheriting from their mother’s family a
delicate constitution, died one after another as they came to maturity:
one only, a daughter, lived to be married, but died after having had one
son and a daughter.
I saw the mother of this large family, after out-living her own
children, and a still greater number of brothers and sisters, who had
all settled in life, prosperous and flourishing, when she married; I saw
her a helpless, bed-ridden invalid, without any remaining tie, but a
sordid, grasping son-in-law, and two grand-children, brought up at a
distance from her.
With her, too, I was a great favourite, because I listened with interest
to her details of early happiness, and subsequent woes and
privations—all of which she described to me with great animation, and
the most pathetic eloquence. How much a patient listener, who has
sympathy and interest to bestow on a tale of woe, will hear! and how
affecting are the respect and compassion even of an artless child, to a
heart that has felt the bitterness of neglect, and known what it was to
pine in solitary sadness! Many a bleak day have I walked a mile to visit
this blasted tree, which the storm of calamity had stripped of every
leaf! and surely in the house of sorrow the heart is made better.
From this chronicle of past times I derived much information respecting
our good aunt; such as she would not have given me herself. The kindness
of this generous sister-in-law was, indeed, the only light that shone on
the declining days of sister Susan, as she was wont affectionately to
call her. What a sad narrative would the detail of this poor woman’s
sorrows afford! which, however, she did not relate in a querulous
manner, for her soul was subdued by affliction, and she did not “mourn
as those that had no hope.” One instance of self-accusation I must
record. She used to describe the family she left as being no less happy,
united, and highly prosperous, than that into which she came: if,
indeed, she could be said to leave it, going, as she did, for some
months every year to her mother’s house, whose darling she was, and who,
being only fifteen years older than herself, was more like an elder
sister, united by fond affection.
She went to New-York to lie in, at her mother’s house, of her four or
five first children; her mother at the same time having children as
young as hers: and thus caressed at home by a fond husband, and received
with exultation by the tenderest parents; young, gay, and fortunate, her
removals were only variations of felicity; but gratified in every wish,
she knew not what sorrow was, nor how to receive the unwelcome stranger
when it arrived. At length she went down to her father’s as usual, to
lie in of her fourth child, which died when it was eight days old. She
then screamed with agony, and told her mother, who tried by pious
counsel to alleviate her grief, that she was the most miserable of human
beings; for that no one was capable of loving their child so well as she
did hers, and could not think by what sin she had provoked this
affliction: finally, she clasped the dead infant to her bosom, and was
not, without the utmost difficulty, persuaded to part with it; while her
frantic grief outraged all decorum. “After this,” said she, “I have seen
my thirteen grown-up children, and my dear and excellent husband, all
carried out of this house to the grave: I have lost the worthiest and
most affectionate parents, brothers, and sisters, such as few ever had;
and however my heart might be pierced with sorrow, it was still more
deeply pierced with a conviction of my own past impiety and ingratitude;
and under all this affliction, I wept silently and alone—and my outcry
or lamentation was never heard by mortal.” What a lesson was this!
This once loved and much respected woman have I seen sitting in her bed,
where she had been long confined, neglected by all those whom she had
known in her better days, excepting aunt Schuyler, who unwieldy and
unfit for visiting as she was, came out two or three times in the year
to see her, and constantly sent her kindly tokens of remembrance. Had
she been more careful to preserve her independence, and had she
accommodated herself more to the plain manners of the people she lived
among, she might, in her adversity, have met with more attention; but
too conscious of her attainments, lively, regardless, and perhaps vain,
and confident of being surrounded and admired by a band of kinsfolk, she
was at no pains to conciliate others; she had, too, some expensive
habits, which, when the tide of prosperity ebbed, could meet with little
indulgence among a people who never entertained an idea of living beyond
their circumstances.
Thus, even among those unpolished people, one might learn how severely
the insolence of prosperity can be avenged upon us, even by those we
have despised and slighted—and who, perhaps, were very much our
inferiors in every respect; though both humanity and good sense should
prevent our mortifying them, by showing ourselves sensible of that
circumstance.
This year was a fatal one to the families of the three brothers.
Jeremiah, impatient of the uneasiness caused by a wen upon his neck,
submitted to undergo an operation, which being unskilfully performed,
ended fatally, to the unspeakable grief of his brothers and of aunt, who
was particularly attached to him, and often dwelt on the recollection of
his singularly compassionate disposition, the generous openness of his
temper, and peculiar warmth of his affections. He, indeed, was “taken
away from the evil to come;” for of his large family, one after the
other went off, in consequence of the weakness of their lungs, which
withstood none of the ordinary diseases of small-pox, measles, &c. till
in a few years there was not one remaining.
These were melancholy inroads on the peace of her who might truly be
said to “watch and weep, and pray for all;” for nothing could exceed our
good aunt’s care and tenderness for this feeble family, who seemed
flowers which merely bloomed to wither in their prime; for they were, as
is often the case with those who inherit such disorders, beautiful, with
quickness of comprehension, and abilities beyond their age.
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