Hugh Wynne, Free Quaker Part 25

"Give it me! What is it?" Then she put on a pair of the new spectacles with wire supports to rest on the ears. "Dr. Franklin gave me these new inventions, and a great comfort too. I cannot endure bridge gla.s.ses; they leave dents in one's nose. You have not seen him lately. He was here to-day. You should see him, Hugh. He was dressed very fine in a velvet coat with new, shilling b.u.t.tons, and bless me! but he has got manners as fine as his ruffles, and that is saying a good deal--Mechlin of the best. You would not know the man."

With this she began to look at my letter. "Hoity-toity, sir! this is a fine setting down for a naughty Quaker." And she read it aloud in a strong voice, her head back, and the great promontory of her nose twitching at the nostrils now and then with supreme contempt:

"'To HUGH WYNNE: A minute, this Tenth-day of Sixth-month, 1776, from the monthly Meeting of Friends held at Philadelphia.

"'Whereas Hugh Wynne hath had his birth and education among Friends, and, as we believe, hath been convinced of that divine principle which preserves the followers thereof from a disposition to contend for the a.s.serting of civil rights in a manner contrary to our peaceful profession, yet doth not manifest a disposition to make the Meeting a proper acknowledgment of his outgoings, and hath further declared his intention to continue his wrong-doing;

"'Therefore, for the clearing of truth and our society, we give forth our testimony against such breaches, and can have no unity with him, the said Hugh Wynne, as a member of our society until he become sensible of his deviations, and come to a sense of his error, and condemn the same to the satisfaction of Friends; which is that we, as Christian men, desire.

"'Signed in, and on behalf of, the Meeting by

"'ISAAC FREEMAN, "'_Clerk_.'

"What insolent nonsense!" cried Miss Wynne. "I hope your father is satisfied. I a.s.sure you I am. You are free at last. Here was James Warder to-day with a like doc.u.ment to the address of my dear Jack. I was a.s.sured that it was a terrible disgrace. I bade him take snuff and not be any greater fool than nature had made him. He took my snuff and sneezed for ten minutes. I think it helped him. One can neither grieve nor reason when one is sneezing. It is what Dr. Rush calls a moral alterative. Whenever the man fell to lamenting, I gave him more snuff. I think it helped him. And so the baa-lambs of Meeting have disowned their two black sheep. Well, well! I have better news for you. Mr. Carroll was here just now, with his charming ways. One would think when he is talking that one is the only woman alive. If I thought the priests taught him the trick, I would turn papist. You should observe his bow, Hugh. I thought Mr. Chew's bow not to be surpa.s.sed; but Mr. Carroll--oh, where was I?"

"Some good news," I said.

"Yes, yes. He tells me the Congress this evening voted for a Declaration of Independence."

"Indeed!" I cried. "So it has come at last. I, too, am free, and it is time I went away, Aunt Gainor."

"We will see," she said. "How can I do without you? and there is your father too. He is not the man he was, and I do not see, Hugh, how you can leave him yet."

It was too true, as my last interview had shown me. He was no longer the strong, steadily obstinate John Wynne of a year or two back. He was less decisive, made occasional errors in his accounts, and would sometimes commit himself to risky ventures. Then Thomas Mason, our clerk, or my aunt would interfere, and he would protest and yield, having now by habit a great respect for my aunt's sagacity, which in fact was remarkable.

I went back to my work discontented, and pulled this way and that, not clearly seeing what I ought to do; for how could I leave him as he now was? My aunt was right.

Next day I heard Captain John Nixon read in the state-house yard the n.o.ble words of the declaration. Only a few hundred were there to hear it, and its vast consequences few men as yet could apprehend. Miss Norris told me not long after that she climbed on a barrow and looked over their garden wall at Fifth street and Chestnut; "and really, Mr.

Wynne, there were not ten decent coats in the crowd." But this Miss Norris was a hot Tory, and thought us all an underbred mob, as, I fear, did most of the proprietary set--the men lacking civil courage to fight on either side, and amazed that Mr. Wilson, and Mr. Reed, and Mr. Robert Morris, and the Virginia gentry, should side with demagogues like Adams and Roger Sherman.

And so time ran on. I fenced, drilled, saw my companions drift away into war, and knew not how to escape. I can now look back on my dismissal from Meeting with more regret than it gave my youth. I have never seen my way to a return to Friends; yet I am still apt to be spoken of as one of the small number who const.i.tute, with Wetherill and Owen and Clement Biddle, the society of Friends known as Free Quakers. To discuss why later I did not claim my place as one of these would lead me to speaking of spiritual affairs, and this, as I have elsewhere said, I never do willingly, nor with comfort to myself.

One afternoon in September of this year I was balancing an account when my father came in and told me that Mason, our clerk, had just had a fall in the hold of one of our ships. The day after I saw him, and although his hurts were painful they hardly seemed to justify my father in his desire that now at last he should take a long rest from work.

This threw all the detail of our affairs as largely into my hands as was possible with a man like my father. I think he guessed my intention to leave him for the army, and gladly improved this chance to load me with needless affairs, and all manner of small perplexities. My aunt was better--in fact, well; but here was this new trouble. What could I do?

My father declared that the old clerk would soon be able to resume his place, and meanwhile, he should have no one to help him but me. Now and then, to my surprise, he made some absurd business venture, and was impatient if I said a word of remonstrance. Twice I was sent to Maryland to see after our tobacco plantations. I was in despair, and became depressed and querulous, seeing no present way, nor any future likelihood, of escape. My father was well pleased, and even my aunt seemed to me too well satisfied with the ill turn which fate had done me. My father was clearly using the poor old clerk's calamity as an excuse to keep me busy; nor was it at all like him to employ such subterfuges. All his life long he had been direct, positive, and dictatorial; a few years back he would have ordered me to give up all idea of the army, and would as like as not have punished resistance with cold-blooded disinheritance. He was visibly and but too clearly changing from the resolute, uncompromising man he had once been. Was he cunning enough to know that his weakness was for me a bondage far stronger than his more vigorous rule had ever been?

XV

My personal difficulties were not made more easy to bear by the course of public events. Howe had taken New York. In November Fort Washington fell. Jack, who was within its walls, got away, but was slightly wounded. Our English general, Lee, had begun already to intrigue against Mr. Washington, writing, as Dr. Rush confided to my aunt, that he, Lee, ought to be made dictator. My aunt received the impression that the doctor, who loved his country well, was becoming discontented with our chief; but neither then nor later did she change her own opinion of the reserved and courteous Virginian.

He soon justified her views of his capacity. On December I he broke down the bridges in his rear over the Raritan, and marched through Jersey with a dwindling army. At Princeton he had but three thousand men; destroying every boat, he wisely put the broad Delaware between his army and the enemy.

Lord Cornwallis halted at the river, waiting for it to freeze that he might cross, and until this should happen went back with Howe to New York. About December 15 of '76, General Lee was captured, and, strange as it may now seem, no calamity yet come upon us created more consternation. Meanwhile our own alarmed citizens began to bury their silver plate. While the feeble were flying, and the doubtful were ready to renew their oath to the king, the wary and resolute commander-in-chief saw his chance.

To aid his courageous resolve came Sullivan and Gates from Lee's late command. "At sunset on Christmas day we crossed the Delaware," writes Jack. "My general was in a small boat, with Knox, and two boatmen. We were ten hours in the ice, and marched nine miles, after crossing, in a blinding storm of sleet. By G.o.d's grace we took one thousand of those blackguard Hessians, and, but for Cadwalader's ill luck with the ice, would have got Donop also. I had a finger froze, but no worse accident.

"I dare say you know we fell back beyond a.s.sunpink Creek, below Trenton.

There we fought my lord marquis again with good fortune. Meanwhile he weakened his force at Princeton, and, I fancy, thought we were in a trap; but our general left fires burning, pa.s.sed round the enemy's left, and, as we came near Princeton at sunrise, fell upon Colonel Mawhood on his way to join Cornwallis. I was close to General Mercer when we saw them, and had as usual a fit of the shakes, hang them! Luckily there was small leisure to think.

"In the first onset, which was fierce, our brave general was mortally wounded; and then, his Excellency coming up, we routed them finely. So away went Cornwallis, with the trapped hot after the trappers. We have the Jerseys and two thousand prisoners. I do not think even Miss Wynne can imagine what courage it took for our general to turn as he did on an army like that of Cornwallis'. Are you never coming?

"It is sad that the Southern officers look upon us and those of New England as tradesfolk, and this makes constant trouble, especially among the militia, who come and go much as they please. I have had no personal difficulty, but there have been several duels, of which little is said.

"It is to be hoped that Congress will now order all enlistments to be for the war, else we shall soon be in a mortal bad way. Hast heard of Miss p.e.n.i.ston?"

This letter came soon after the smart little winter campaign in Jersey had made us all so happy.

"It will last a good while yet," said James Wilson. "And when are you going, Hugh?" Indeed, I began at last to see a way opened, as we of Friends say; for now, in the spring, our old clerk hobbled back to his desk, and I knew that my father would no longer be left without friendly and familiar help. But before he could a.s.sume his full duties August was upon us-August of '77, a year for me most eventful. Darthea's letters to my aunt grew less and less frequent, and, as I thought, had an air of sadness unusual in this gladsome creature. Once she spoke of Captain Wynne as absent, and once that he, like Jack, had had a slight wound in the storm of Fort Washington. Of politics she could say nothing, as her letters had usually to pa.s.s our lines.

On July 31 Washington knew that Howe's fleet was off the Delaware capes.

Meanwhile he had crossed that river into Pennsylvania, and hurried his army across country, finally encamping on a Sat.u.r.day at Nicetown, some five miles from Philadelphia. I rode out that evening to meet Jack, whose troop camped even nearer to town, and close to the tents of the headquarters staff. The general lay for this night at Stenton, where our Quaker friends, the Logans, lived. He was shown, I was told, the secret stairway and the underground pa.s.sage to the stable and beyond, and was disposed to think it curious.

Jack, now a captain, in a new suit of blue and buff, looked brown and hardy, and his figure had spread, but the locks were as yellow and the cheeks as rosy as ever I knew them.

Dear Aunt Gainor made much of him that evening, and we talked late into the night of battles and generals and what had gone with Lord Howe. I went to bed discontented, feeling myself to be a very inconsiderable person, and Jack rode away to camp. The next day being Sunday, the 24th of August, his Excellency marched into town by Front street at the head of the flower of his army, in all about eleven thousand. Fine men they were, but many half clad and ill shod; fairly drilled too, but not as they were later in the war. The town was wild with delight, and every one glad save the Tories and the Quakers, many of whom remained all day in their houses.

This march being made only to exhibit the army to friend and foe, the troops moved out High street and by the middle ferry across the Schuylkill, on their way toward the Delaware to meet Mr. Howe, who, having landed at the head of Elk River, was now on his way toward Philadelphia. His troops were slow, the roads bad and few, the ague in great force and severe--or so we heard. I rode sadly with our people as far as Darby, and then turned homeward a vexed and dispirited man. It was, I think, on the 4th of August that our general, who had ridden on in advance of his army, first met Marquis Lafayette.

My aunt, who spoke French with remarkable fluency and a calm disregard of accent and inflections, was well pleased to entertain the French gentleman, and at her house I had the happiness to make his acquaintance, greatly, as it proved, to my future advantage. He was glad to find any who spoke his own tongue well, and discussed our affairs with me, horrified at the lack of decent uniforms and discipline, but, like me, pleased with the tall, strong men he saw in our ranks. Later my acquaintance with French was of much use to me; so little can a man tell what value an accomplishment will have for him.

The marquis was very young, and somewhat free in stating his opinions.

At this time he thought Mr. Howe intended Charleston, and, like others, was amazed at his folly in not going up the Delaware Bay to land his troops. His strange strategy left Burgoyne to the fate in store for him at Saratoga, where the latter general was to act a first part in a tragic drama much finer than those he wrote, which were so greatly praised by the fine ladies in London, and indeed by some better critics.

A letter of Jack's came to hand during this week. In it he said my aunt must leave, as he was sure we had not force enough to keep General Howe out of Philadelphia. But the old lady said, "Not I, indeed!" and I think no mortal power could have induced her to go away. She even declined to bury her silver, as many had done. Not so the rest of the Whigs. Every one fled who knew where to go, or who feared to be called to account; and none would hear of defending the town, as should have been attempted.

Jack's letter went on to say that in Delaware the general had a narrow escape. "He rode out," says Jack, "with Marquis Lafayette on a reconnaissance, attended by but two officers and an orderly. General Sullivan had an officer follow with a half-troop; but the general, fearing such numbers might attract attention, ordered them to wait behind a thicket. Looking thence, they saw the general ride direct toward a picket of the enemy, which from their vantage they could see, but he could not. An English officer, perceiving him, seemed to give an order to fire; but as the men raised their pieces he struck them up. As he was about to give the order to fire, the general, being satisfied, had turned his back to ride away. It is a curious tale, is it not? and none can explain it."

Long years after I myself met an English officer, a General Henderson, in Canada, and on my telling him the incident, he said at once it was he who was concerned, and that when the general turned to ride away he could not make up his mind to shoot down a man who had turned his back.

He was amazed and pleased to know who it was he thus spared.

On the 11th of September, at evening, came the disaster of Brandywine, and on the 26th Lord Cornwallis marched into our city, with two batteries and the Sixteenth Dragoons and Grenadiers. They were received quietly, and that evening my Cousin Arthur appeared at our house. My father, who had been very inert of late, seemed to arouse himself, and expressed quite forcibly his joy and relief at the coming of the troops.

He recounted his griefs, too: how that, refusing the militia tax, the Committee of Safety had taken away his great tankard, and later two tables, which was true enough. Then, to my amazement, my father declared Arthur must stay with us, which he was nothing loath to do.

I was cool, as you may suppose, but it was difficult for man or woman to resist Arthur Wynne when he meant to be pleasant; and so, putting my dislike aside, I found myself chatting with him about the war and what not. In fact, he was a guest, and what else could I do?

My aunt kept herself indoors and would none of the Galloways and Allens, who had come back in swarms, nor even the neutrals, like Mr. Penn, whom she much liked. The day after the town was occupied, Captain Wynne appeared early in the morning, as we were discussing a matter of business. He took it for granted, I presume, that my aunt would see him, and went past the turbaned black boy despite his small remonstrances.

My aunt rose to the full of her great height, her nose in the air, and letting fall a lapful of papers.

"To what," she said, "have I the honour to owe a visit from Mr. Wynne?

Is my house an inn, that any officer of the king may enter whether I will or not?"

Although he must have been surprised, he was perfectly at his ease.

Indeed, I envied him his self-possession.