Settlers of a new Description—Madame’s Chaplain.
ANOTHER class of people contributed their share to destroy the quiet and
order of the country. While the great army, that had now returned to
Britain, had been stationed in America, the money they spent there, had,
in a great measure centered in New-York, where many ephemeral
adventurers begun to flourish as merchants, who lived in a gay and even
profuse style, and affected the language and manners of the army on
which they depended. Elated with sudden prosperity, those people
attempted every thing that could increase their gains; and, finally, at
the commencement of the Spanish war, fitted out several privateers,
which, being sent to cruise near the mouth of the Gulf of Florida,
captured several valuable prizes. Money so easily got was as lightly
spent, and proved indeed ruinous to those who shared it; they being thus
led to indulge in expensive habits, which continued after the means that
supplied them were exhausted. At the departure of the army trade
languished among these new people; their British creditors grew
clamorous: the primitive inhabitants looked cold upon them; and nothing
remained for them but that self banishment, which, in that country, was
the usual consequence of extravagance and folly, a retreat to the woods.
Yet, even in these primeval shades, there was no repose for the vain and
the turbulent. It was truly amusing to see these cargoes of rusticated
fine ladies and gentlemen going to their new abodes, all lassitude and
chagrin; and very soon after, to hear of their attempts at finery,
consequence, and pre-eminence, in the late invaded residence of bears
and beavers. There, no pastoral tranquillity, no sylvan delights awaited
them. In this forced retreat to the woods they failed not to carry with
them those household gods which they had worshipped in town; the pious
Eneas was not more careful of his Penates, nor more desirous of
establishing them in his new residence. These are the persons of
desperate circumstances, expensive habits, and ambitious views; who,
like the “tempest-loving raven,” delight in changes, and anticipate,
with guilty joy, the overturn of states in which they have nothing to
lose, and have hopes of rising on the ruins of others. The lawyers, too,
foresaw that the harvest they were now reaping from the new mode of
inquiry into disputed titles, could not be of long duration. They did
not lay a regular plan for the subversion of the existing order of
things; but they infected the once plain and primitive conversation of
the people with law jargon which spread like a disease, and was the more
fatal to elegance, simplicity, and candour, as there were no rival
branches of science, the cultivation of which might have divided
people’s attention with this dry contentious theme.
The spirit of litigation, which narrowed and heated every mind, was a
great nuisance to madame, who took care not to be much troubled with it
in conversation, because she discountenanced it at her table, where,
indeed, no petulant upstarts were received. She was, however, persecuted
with daily references to her recollections with regard to the
traditionary opinions relative to boundaries, &c. While she sought
refuge in the peaceable precincts of the gospel, from the tumultuous
contests of the law which she always spoke of with dislike, she was
little aware that a deserter from her own camp was about to join the
enemy. Mr. H. our chaplain, became, about this time, very reserved and
absent; law and politics were no favourite topics in our household, and
these alone seemed much to interest our divine. Many thought aunt was
imposed on by this young man, and took him to be what he was not; but
this was by no means the case. She neither thought him a wit, a scholar,
or a saint; but merely a young man, who, to very good intentions and a
blameless life, added the advantages of a better education than fell to
the lot of laymen there; simplicity of manners, and some powers of
conversation, with a little dash of the coxcomb, rendered tolerable by
great good nature.
Vanity, however, was the rock on which our chaplain split: he found
himself, among the circle he frequented, the one-eyed king in the
kingdom of the blind; and thought it a pity such talents should be lost
in a profession where, in his view of the subject, bread and peace were
all that were to be expected. The first intelligence I heard was, that
Mr. H. on some pretence or other, often went to the neighbouring town of
Schenectady now rising into consequence, and there openly renounced his
profession, and took out a license as a practising lawyer. It is easy to
conjecture how madame must have considered this wanton renunciation of
the service of the altar for a more gainful pursuit, aggravated by
simulation at least; for this seeming open and artless character took
all the benefit of her hospitality, and continued to be her inmate the
whole time that he was secretly carrying on a plan he knew she would
reprobate. She, however, behaved with great dignity on the occasion;
supposing, no doubt, that the obligations she had conferred upon him,
deprived her of a right to reproach or reflect upon him. She was never
after heard to mention his name; and when others did, always shifted the
conversation.
All these revolutions in manners and opinions helped to endear me to
aunt, as a pupil of her own school; while my tenacious memory enabled me
to entertain her with the wealth of others’ minds, rendered more amusing
by the simplicity of my childish comments. Had I been capable of
flattery, or rather, had I been so deficient in natural delicacy, as to
say what I really thought of this exalted character, the awe with which
I regarded her would have deterred me from such presumption; but as I
really loved and honoured her, as virtue personified, and found my chief
happiness in her society and conversation, she could not but be aware of
this silent adulation, and she became indeed more and more desirous of
having me with her. To my father, however, I was now become, in some
degree, necessary, from causes somewhat similar. He, too, was sick of
the reigning conversation; and being nervous and rather inclined to
melancholy, begun to see things in the darkest light, and made the most
of a rheumatism, in itself bad enough, to have a pretext for indulging
the chagrin that preyed upon his mind, and avoiding his Connecticut
persecutors, who attacked him every where but in bed. A fit of chagrin
was generally succeeded by a fit of home sickness, and that by a
paroxysm of devotion exalted to enthusiasm; during which all worldly
concerns were to give way to those of futurity. Thus melancholy and thus
devout I found my father; whose pure and upright spirit was corroded
with the tricks and chicanery he was forced to observe in his new
associates, with whom his singular probity and simplicity of character
rendered him very unfit to contend. My mother, active, cheerful, and
constantly occupied with her domestic affairs, sought pleasure no where,
and found content every where. I had begun to taste the luxury of
intellectual pleasures with a very keen relish. Winter, always severe,
but this year armed with tenfold vigour, checked my researches among
birds and plants, which constituted my summer delights; and poetry was
all that remained to me. While I was, “in some diviner mood,” exulting
in these scenes of inspiration, opened to me by the “humanizing muse,”
the terrible decree went forth, that I was to read no more “idle books
or plays.” This decree was merely the result of a momentary fit of
sickness and dejection, and never meant to be seriously enforced. It
produced, however, the effect of making me read so much divinity that I
fancied myself got quite “beyond the flaming bounds of space and time;”
and thought I could never relish light reading any more. In this solemn
mood, my greatest relaxation was a visit now and then to aunt’s
sister-in-law, now entirely bed-ridden, but still possessing great
powers of conversation, which were called forth by the flattering
attention of a child to one whom the world had forsaken. I loved,
indeed, play, strictly such, thoughtless, childish play, and next to
that, calm reflection and discussion. The world was too busy and too
artful for me. I found myself most at home with those who had not
entered, or those who had left it.
My father’s illness was much aggravated by the conflict which begun to
arise in his mind regarding his proposed removal to his lands, which
were already surrounded by a new population, consisting of these
fashionable emigrants from the gay world at New-York, whom I have been
describing, and a set of fierce republicans, if any thing sneaking and
drawling may be so called, whom litigious contention had banished from
their native province, and who seemed let loose, like Samson’s foxes, to
carry mischief and conflagration wherever they went. Among this motley
crew there was no regular place of worship, nor any likely prospect that
there should, for their religions had as many shades of difference as
the leaves in autumn; and every man of substance who arrived, was
preacher and magistrate to his own little colony. To hear their people
talk, one would think time had run back to the days of the levellers.
The settlers from New-York, however, struggled hard for superiority, but
they were not equal in chicane to their adversaries, whose power lay in
their cunning. It was particularly hard for people who acknowledged no
superior, who had a thorough knowledge of law and scripture, ready to
wrest to every selfish purpose, it was particularly hard, I say, for
such all-sufficient personages to hold their lands from such people as
my father and others, of “king George’s red coats,” as they elegantly
styled them. But they were fertile in expedients. From the original
establishment of these provinces, the Connecticut River had been
accounted the boundary, to the east, of the province of New-York,
dividing it from the adjoining one; this division was specified in old
patents, and confirmed by analogy. All at once, however, our new tenants
at will made a discovery, or rather had a revelation, purporting, that
there was a twenty mile line, as they called it, which, in old times,
had been carried thus far beyond the Connecticut River, into the bounds
of what had ever been esteemed the province of New-York. It had become
extremely fashionable to question the limits of individual property, but
for so bold a stroke at a whole province, people were not prepared. The
consequence of establishing this point was, that thus the grants made by
the province of New-York, of lands not their own, could not be valid;
and thus the property which had cost the owners so much to establish and
survey, reverted to the other province, and was no longer theirs. This
was so far beyond all imagination, that though there appeared not the
smallest likelihood of its succeeding, as the plea must, in the end, be
carried to Britain, people stood aghast, and saw no safety in living
among those who were capable of making such daring strides over all
established usage, and ready, on all occasions, to confederate where any
advantage was in view, though ever engaged in litigious contentions with
each other in their original home. This astonishing plea, during its
dependence, afforded these dangerous neighbours a pretext to continue
their usurped possession, till it should be decided to which province
the lands really belonged. They even carried their insolence so far,
that when a particular friend of my father’s, a worthy, upright man,
named Munro, who possessed a large tract of land adjoining to his; when
this good man, who had established a settlement, saw-mills, &c. came to
fix some tenants of his on his lands, a body of these incendiaries came
out, armed, to oppose them, trusting to their superior numbers and the
peaceable disposition of our friend. Now, the fatal twenty mile line ran
exactly through the middle of my father’s property. Had not the
revolution followed so soon, there was no doubt of this claim being
rejected in Britain; but in the mean time it served as a pretext for
daily encroachment and insolent bravadoes. Much of my father’s disorder
was owing to the great conflict in his mind. To give up every prospect
of consequence and affluence, and return to Britain, leaving his
property afloat among these ungovernable people, (to say no worse of
them,) was very hard. Yet to live among them, and by legal coercion,
force his due out of their hands, was no pleasing prospect. His good
angel, it would seem in the sequel, whispered to him to return. Though,
in human prudence, it appeared a fatal measure to leave so valuable a
property in such hands, he thought, first, that he would stay two or
three years; and then, when others had vanquished his antagonists, and
driven them off the lands, which they, in the mean time, were busily
clearing, he should return with a host of friends and kinsmen, and form
a chosen society of his own. He, however, waited to see what change for
the better another twelvemonth might produce. Madame, who was consulted
on all his plans, did not greatly relish this; he, at length, half
promised to leave me with her, till he should return from this
expedition.
Returning for a short time to town in spring, I found aunt’s house much
enlivened by a very agreeable visitor; this was Miss W. daughter to the
Honourable Mr. W. of the council. Her elder sister was afterwards
Countess of Cassilis, and she herself was not long afterwards married to
the only native of the continent, I believe, who ever succeeded to the
title of baronet. She possessed much beauty, understanding, and
vivacity. Her playful humour exhilarated the whole household. I regarded
her with admiration and delight; and her fanciful excursions afforded
great amusement to aunt, and were like a gleam of sunshine amidst the
gloom occasioned by the spirit of contention which was let loose among
all manner of people.
The repeal of the stamp act having excited new hopes, my father found
all his expectations of comfort and prosperity renewed by this temporary
calm, and the proposed return to Britain was deferred for another year.
Aunt, to our great joy, as we scarce hoped she would again make so
distant a visit, came out to the Flats with her fair visitor, who was
about to return to New-York. This lady, after going through many of the
hardships to which persecuted loyalists were afterwards exposed, with
her husband, who lost an immense property in the service of Government,
is now with her family settled in upper Canada, where Sir J. J—n has
obtained a large grant of lands, as a partial retribution for his great
losses and faithful service.
Aunt again requested and again obtained permission for me to pass some
time with her; and golden dreams of felicity at Clarendon again began to
possess my imagination. I returned however, soon to the Flats, where my
presence became more important, as my father became less eager in
pursuit of field sports.
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