THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS

  SEVENTEENTH EDITION

[Illustration]




[Illustration:

  THROUGH
  COLONIAL
  DOORWAYS


  BY
  ANNE HOLLINGSWORTH
  WHARTON

  [Illustration]


  PHILADELPHIA
  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY
  MDCCCC]




  COPYRIGHT, 1893,
  BY
  J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY.


  PRINTED BY J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY, PHILADELPHIA




  TO THE MEMORY OF

  MARGARET N. CARTER,

  WHOSE LIVING AND LOVING PRESENCE WAS AN INSPIRATION
  DURING THE PREPARATION OF THESE
  CHAPTERS, AND WHOSE SKETCHES ARE
  AMONG THOSE THAT ADORN ITS PAGES,

  THIS LITTLE VOLUME

  IS

  Dedicated.




[Illustration: PREFACE]


The revival of interest in Colonial and Revolutionary times has become
a marked feature of the life of to-day. Its manifestations are to be
found in the literature which has grown up around these periods, and
in the painstaking individual research being made among documents and
records of the past with genealogical and historical intent.

Not only has a desire been shown to learn more of the great events of
the last century, but with it has come an altogether natural curiosity
to gain some insight into the social and domestic life of Colonial
days. To read of councils, congresses, and battles is not enough: men
and women wish to know something more intimate and personal of the
life of the past, of how their ancestors lived and loved as well of how
they wrought, suffered, and died.

With some thought of gratifying this desire, by sounding the heavy
brass knocker, and inviting the reader to enter with us through the
broad doorways of some Colonial homes into the hospitable life within,
have these pages been written.

For original material placed at my disposal, in the form of letters and
manuscripts, I am indebted to numerous friends, among these to Mrs.
Oliver Hopkinson, the Misses Sharples, Miss Anna E. Peale, Miss F.
A. Logan, Mrs. Edward Wetherill, Mr. C. R. Hildeburn, and Mr. Edward
Shippen.

To the Editors of the _Atlantic Monthly_, the _Lippincott’s Magazine_,
and the _Philadelphia Ledger_ and _Times_, I wish to express my
appreciation of their courtesy in allowing me to use in some of these
chapters material to which they first gave place in their columns.

  A. H. W.

 PHILADELPHIA, March, 1893.




  CONTENTS.


  THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS                  7

  THE MESCHIANZA                            23

  NEW YORK BALLS AND RECEPTIONS             65

  THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY        97

  THE WISTAR PARTIES                       147

  A BUNDLE OF OLD LOVE LETTERS             177

  THE PHILADELPHIA DANCING ASSEMBLIES      197




[Illustration: THROUGH COLONIAL DOORWAYS]


The historian of the past has, as a rule, been pleased to treat with
dignified silence the lighter side of Colonial life, allowing the
procession of noble men and fair women to sweep on, grand, stately,
and imposing, but lacking the softer touches that belong to social and
domestic life. So much has been written and said of the stern virtues
of the fathers and mothers of the Republic, and of their sacrifices,
privations, and heroism, that we of this generation would be in danger
of regarding them as types of excellence to be placed upon pedestals,
rather than as men and women to be loved with human affection, were
it not for some old letter, or diary, or anecdote that floats down to
us from the past, revealing the touch of nature that makes them our
kinsfolk by the bond of sympathy and interest, of taste and habit, as
well as by that of blood.

The dignified Washington becomes to us a more approachable personality
when, in a letter written by Mrs. John M. Bowers, we read that when
she was a child of six he dandled her on his knee and sang to her
about “the old, old man and the old, old woman who lived in the
vinegar-bottle together,” or when we come across a facetious letter
of his own in which the general tells how his cook was “sometimes
minded to cut a figure,” notably, when ladies were entertained at camp,
and would, on such occasions, add to the ordinary roast and greens a
beefsteak pie or a dish of crabs, which left only six feet of space
between the different dishes instead of twelve; or again, when General
Greene writes from Middlebrook, “We had a little dance at my quarters.
His Excellency and Mrs. Greene danced upwards of three hours without
once sitting down. Upon the whole we had a pretty little frisk.”

We are not accustomed to associate minuets and “pretty frisks” with the
stern realities of Revolutionary days, yet as brief mention of them
comes down to us, they serve to light up the background of that rugged
picture, as when Miss Sally Wister tells, in her sprightly journal, of
the tricks played by herself and a bevy of gay girls upon the young
officers quartered in the old Foulke mansion, at Penllyn, soon after
the battle of Brandywine. Miss Wister’s confidences are addressed to
Miss Deborah Norris, afterwards the learned Mrs. George Logan, and
the principal actors in the century-old drama are the lively Miss
Sally, who dubs herself “Thy smart journalizer,” and Major Stoddert
from Maryland, who in the first scenes plays a _rôle_ somewhat similar
to that of Young Marlow, but later develops attractions of mind and
character that Miss Sally finds simply irresistible. She considers him
both “good natur’d and good humor’d,” and evinces a fine discrimination
in defining the application of these terms, which shows that a Quaker
maiden in love may still retain a modicum of the clear-headedness which
is one of the distinguishing characteristics of her sect. The cousinly
allusions to “chicken-hearted Liddy”--Miss Liddy Foulke, later known
as Mrs. John Spencer--and her numerous admirers are very interesting.
When Miss Sally, who is evidently reducing the heart of the gallant
major to “ashes of Sodom,” naively remarks, _à propos_ of Liddy’s
conquests, “When will Sally’s admirers appear? Ah! that, indeed. Why,
Sally has not charms sufficient to pierce the heart of a soldier. But
still I won’t despair. Who knows what mischief I yet may do?” we feel
that maidens’ hearts in 1777 were made on much the same plan that they
are nowadays, and that even to so rare a _confidante_ as Miss Deborah
Norris the whole was not revealed.

Through such old chroniclers or letter-writers we sometimes meet the
great ladies of the past at ball or dinner, or, better still, in the
informal intercourse of their own homes, and catch glimpses of their
husbands and lovers, the warriors, statesmen, and philosophers of the
time, at some social club, like the Hasty Pudding of Cambridge, the
State in Schuylkill or the Wistar Parties of Philadelphia, or the
Tuesday Club and the Delphian in Baltimore. Meeting them thus, enjoying
witticisms and good cheer in one another’s excellent company, we feel
a closer bond between their life and our own than if they were always
presented to us in public ceremonial or with pen and folio in hand.
When we read of Judge Peters crying out good-humoredly, as he pushed
his way between a fat and a slim man who blocked up a doorway, “Here
I go through thick and thin;” or when we think of the signers of the
Declaration, gathered together in the old State House on that memorable
July day of 1776, illuminating the solemnity of the occasion by jokes,
even as grim ones as those of Hancock and Franklin and Gerry, we are
conscious of a sense of comradeship inspired more by the mirth and
_bonhomie_ than by the heroism of these men, who labored yesterday that
we might laugh to-day. The great John Adams, who with all his greatness
was not a universal favorite among his contemporaries, comes down to
us irradiated with a nimbus of amiability, in a picture that his wife
draws of him, submitting to be driven about the room with a willow
stick by one of his small grandchildren; and when Mrs. Bache begs her
“dear papa” not to reprimand her so severely for desiring a little
finery, in which to appear at the Ambassador’s and when she “goes
abroad with the Washingtons,” because he is the last person to wish to
see her “dressed with singularity, or in a way that will not do credit
to her father and her husband,” we can fancy Dr. Franklin’s grave
features relaxing in a smile over the daughter’s diplomacy, inherited
from no stranger. The wedding of President Madison to the pretty Widow
Todd seems more real to us when we learn from eye-witnesses of the
various festivities that illuminated the occasion, and of how the
girls vied with one another in obtaining mementos of the evening,
cutting in bits the Mechlin lace that adorned the groom’s delicate
shirt-ruffles, and showering the happy pair with rice when they drove
off to Montpelier, old Mr. Madison’s estate in Virginia. Through it
all, we can hear Mrs. Washington’s earnest voice assuring “Dolly” that
she and General Washington approve of the match, and that even if Mr.
Madison is twenty years older than herself, he will still make her a
good husband. That this sensible advice from the stately matron should
have made the girl-widow blush and run away does not surprise us, for,
while acknowledging to an immense respect for Mrs. Washington, in
consequence not only of her position, but of the dignity and serenity
of her character, we are always conscious of a feeling of restraint in
her presence, which she makes no effort to overcome by word or smile.
We cannot imagine ourselves spending a pleasant evening with her,
discussing events of the day, or the last engagement or ball, as we
can with Mrs. John Adams, Mrs. John Jay, or sprightly Mrs. Bache. We
confess to the same emotions with regard to Mrs. Robert Morris, whose
character stands out, like that of her intimate friend Mrs. Washington,
surrounded by a halo of excellence. Is this the fault of these worthy
ladies, or is it that of their biographers, who, in presenting them
to the world with all the lofty virtues of Roman matrons, have added
no lighter touches to their pictures? In vain we search for some
shred of gayety, or mirth, or enthusiasm, on their part, and in sheer
desperation back out of their presence with a stately courtesy, and
take refuge with Rebecca Franks, or Sally Wister, or Eliza Southgate,
with whom we are always sure of passing a merry half-hour. Nor is it
frivolity and merry-making that we look for in the records of the
past: it is life, with its high hopes and homely cares, its simple
pleasures and small gayeties, that served to relieve the tension of
earnest endeavor needed to accomplish a great and difficult task. Mrs.
Adams’s letters about her children, her household economies, and her
experiments in farming are almost as interesting as those written from
abroad, because she approaches all subjects, even the most commonplace,
with a buoyant spirit and playful fancy. To her husband, during one
of his long absences from home, she writes, “I am a mortal enemy to
anything but a cheerful countenance and a merry heart, which, Solomon
tells us, does good like medicine.” And again, “I could give you a long
list of domestic affairs, but they would only serve to embarrass you
and in noways relieve me. All domestic pleasures are absorbed in the
great and important duty you owe your country, ‘for our country is, as
it were, a secondary god, and the first and greatest parent. It is to
be preferred to parents, wives, children, friends, and all things,--the
gods only excepted.’” It is not strange that to such a wife John Adams
should have written, “By the accounts in your last letter, it seems
the women in Boston begin to think themselves able to serve their
country. What a pity it is that our generals in the northern districts
had not Aspasias to their wives! I believe the two Howes have not very
great women for wives. If they had, we should suffer more from their
exertions than we do. This is our good fortune. A woman of sense would
not let her husband spend five weeks at sea in such a season of the
year. A smart wife would have put Howe in possession of Philadelphia
a long time ago.” It is evident that Mr. Adams did not need to be won
over to any modern theories with regard to the higher education of
women, and, as a relief to the sterner side of the picture, we find the
wife who penned such wise and inspiriting words to her husband entering
on other occasions with the delight of a _mondaine_ into a court or
republican function, describing the gowns of the women, their faces
and their manners, with the minuteness and accuracy of a Parisian. Was
there ever anything written more spirited than Mrs. Adams’s description
of Madame Helvetius at Passy, throwing her arms about the neck of
_ce cher Franklin_? or her picture of Queen Charlotte and the royal
princesses, for whom her admiration was of the scantest? With far
different touches was it her pleasure to describe some of the American
beauties abroad, for Mrs. Adams was always a true daughter of New
England, and we can read between the lines when she writes of Madame
Helvetius’s singular manners, “I should have been greatly astonished at
this conduct if the good Doctor [Franklin] had not told me that in this
lady I should see a genuine Frenchwoman, wholly free from affectation
or stiffness of behavior.”[1]

Pleasant it is, and not wholly unprofitable to the student of life and
manners, to look into the family room of some Colonial mansion, to hear
girlish laughter and raillery about balls and beaux in one corner,
while in another the father of the family writes of his aspirations
for the nation in which his hopes for his children are bound up, and
the mother, looking over his shoulder, sympathizes with his patriotic
and fatherly ambitions, while she turns over in her brain, for the
hundredth time, the important question of how she and Nancy are to make
a respectable appearance at the next Assembly ball, when silks, laces,
and feathers are so very dear,--worth their weight in gold, as Mrs.
Bache tells us. It is such touches of life as these that we find in the
diaries of Sarah Eve, who was living in Philadelphia in 1772, of Eliza
Southgate of Scarborough, and of Elizabeth Drinker; in Mrs. Grant’s
pictures of New York and Albany life, in which Madame Philip Schuyler
is the central figure; or in such letters as those of Thomas Jefferson
to his family, of Mrs. Bache, Miss Franks, Lady Cathcart, and Mrs. John
Morgan. The latter gives us charming glimpses of Cambridge society in
1776, and tells of dinners, tea-drinking, and reviews in company with
the Mifflins, Roberdeaus, and others, of handsome officers and pretty
girls. Of one of the latter she speaks, in a letter to her mother, in a
manner which reveals her own loveliness of character quite as clearly
as it does the external charms of the beauty whom all the world and
her own husband admire. “The one that drew every one’s attention,”
she writes, “was the famous Jersey beauty, Miss Keyes, who is now on
a visit to Mr. Roberdeau. She may justly be said to be fairest where
thousands are fair. I have had an opportunity of seeing her, and think
her a most beautiful creature, and what makes her still more engaging
is her not betraying the least consciousness of her own perfections.
I am, it seems, a most violent favorite with her; she is to dine here
to-morrow. You will wonder, perhaps, how this great intimacy took
place, but you must know she has been indisposed since her coming to
town, and Dr. Morgan had the honor of attending her,--you know what an
admirer of beauty he is; the rest followed, of course.”

In a different vein, but no less piquant, are Lady Cathcart’s remarks
on London personages and functions, in the midst of which her thoughts
fly back to her relatives and friends in America. One moment she is
describing the “Queen’s Birthnight Ball,” and the next is sending Mrs.
Jauncey a picture of her son with “Six Curles of a Side,” or commenting
upon Betty Shipton’s marriage to Major Giles, adding, “I am sure I
never believed her, last winter, when she used to talk so much about
him.”

There being many old letters and diaries still unread and unpublished,
it seems a task not unworthy of the later historian to gather
together such records, in order to present to this generation more
characteristic pictures of their grandfathers and grandmothers, drawn
with a freer hand and touched with the familiar light of every-day
intercourse. One young girl of the present time was strongly attracted
towards her own great-grandmother by reading a letter written by her to
her mother in Newport, asking her to send her from thence “a sprigged
muslin petticoat, and the making of an apron such as all the girls
are wearing.” A rather more modest request, this, than that of Miss
Eliza Southgate, who begged her mother for five dollars with which
to purchase a wig for the next Assembly, because Eleanor Coffin had
one, and it was quite impossible “to dress her hair stylish without
it.” Placed thus in touch with her great-grandmother’s longings and
aspirations, which flowed in the same frivolous channel as her own,
this young descendant suddenly realized that they two were of one
flesh and blood, and gathering and piecing together all that could
be learned from older members of the family of this lady of the last
century, she has become the heroine of romance so thrilling and so
sweet, that the girl of to-day may be said to entertain for her unknown
ancestress a more than ordinary affection.

The records that have come down to us are, after all, only a few out
of the great mass written. Many, perhaps equally interesting, have
in some garret fallen a prey to mould, decay, and the book-lizard;
or have found their way to the fireplace, impelled thither by some
family iconoclast possessed with a rage for clearing up; or, still
more ignoble fate, have been torn up for curl-papers! A narrator of
veracity tells how a bevy of gay young girls, gathered together in the
roomy old Hopkinson house in Bordentown, appropriated some letters
found in the garret to this purpose, and lighting on some interesting
passages, amused themselves by reading them aloud at what Macaulay
names the “curling hour.” Reports of these nocturnal revels being
carried down-stairs, a member of the family interested herself in the
preservation of the letters, which proved an historical treasure-trove.
Such treasure-troves will be less likely to be discovered as the years
go on, and those who would find love-letters like Esther Wynn’s, under
the cellar stairs, had better set about looking for them before mould
and dampness have utterly obliterated the characters traced in the
long-ago.

[Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[1] Letters of Mrs. John Adams, p. 253.




[Illustration: _The Meschianza_]

  “_Mars, conquest plumed, the Cyprian queen disarms:
  And victors, vanquished, yield to Beauty’s charms.
  Here then the laurel, here the palm we yield,
  And all the trophies of the tilted field;
  Here Whites and Blacks, with blended homage, pay
  To each device the honors of the day.
  Hard were the task and impious to decide,
  Where all are fairest, which the fairer side.
  Enough for us if by such sports we strove
  To grace this feast of military love
  And, joining in the wish of every heart,
  Honor’d the friend and leader ere we part._”

  _From the Gentleman’s Magazine of 1778._


If we could by any means turn back, for a moment, to certain May
days more than a hundred years ago, and enter one of the stately old
Philadelphia mansions in the eastern portion of our city, then the
court end of the town, what a gay scene would meet our eyes! Fair
ladies gathered in the spacious rooms, in their quaint but becoming
old-time dress, bending over brocades, laces, and ribbons, busied
in consulting upon and improvising ravishing costumes, in which to
grace the splendid _fête_ to be given to General Sir William Howe,
by the officers of the British army, previous to his departure for
England. This army then held possession of Penn’s “faire greene
country towne,” and had been busy during the past winter, in lieu of
more warlike employment, in introducing among its inhabitants many of
the amusements, follies, and vices of Old World courts. The Quaker
City had, at the pleasure of her conqueror, doffed her sober drab and
appeared in festal array; for, like the Babylonian victors of old, they
that wasted her required of her mirth. The best that the city afforded
was at the disposal of the enemy, who seem to have spent their days in
feasting and merry-making, while Washington and his army endured all
the hardships of the severe winter of 1777-78 upon the bleak hillsides
of Valley Forge. Dancing assemblies, theatrical entertainments, and
various gayeties marked the advent of the British in Philadelphia,
all of which formed a fitting prelude to the full-blown glories of
the Meschianza, which burst upon the admiring inhabitants on that
last-century May day.

It must be remembered, in looking back upon these times, that most
of our aristocratic citizens were descended from old English stock,
and, with an inherent loyalty to the monarchy under which they had
prospered, were still content to avow themselves subjects of King
George, or, as Graydon puts it, “stuck to their ease and Madeira,”
declaring themselves neutral, which rendered the lessons taught by
these gay, pleasure-loving British officers easy ones, learned with
few grimaces. Thus, although there were many sober Friends who cast
indignant side-glances at the elaborate preparations in progress for
this brilliant _fête_, and many hearts which beat in sympathy with the
patriot cause and could ill brook the thought of such frivolity in the
midst of the stern realities of war, there was still a large class
which entered with spirit into a festivity which was openly denounced
by British journals of the day as ill-timed and absurd, given, as it
was, in honor of a commander whose errors had well-nigh cost him his
cause, and who was severely censured for these months of inactivity
and trifling which his officers now proceeded to commemorate. Howe
was, notwithstanding his faults and failures, sincerely beloved by
his officers, who resolved to give him this entertainment that, as
they phrased it, their “sentiments might be more universally and
unequivocally known.”

Major André, who took a leading part in the preparations for the
Meschianza, composed some verses in Sir William’s praise, to be
repeated during the pageant; but, with a modesty that has not always
been attributed to him, he set them aside. The last stanza of this
strain proves to us how readily this child of monarchy, poet though he
was, had learned to cry, “The King is dead. Long live the King!” Howe
being at this very time superseded by Clinton, André writes:

  “On Hudson’s banks the sure presage we read,--
  Of other triumphs to our arms decreed:
  Nor fear but equal honors shall repay
  Each hardy deed where Clinton leads the way.”

André indulged in some bold flights of fancy in these verses, such as
the following:

  “Veterans appeared who never knew to yield
  When Howe and glory led them to the field.”

Which are in sharp contrast with the effusions of a Jerseyman of the
time, who, with more truth and less sentiment, wrote:

  “Threat’ning to drive us from the hill,
    Sir William marched to attack our men,
  But finding that we all stood still,
    Sir William he--marched back again.”

The day appointed for the Meschianza was the 18th of May. Cards of
invitation were sent out and tickets of admission given. The latter are
thus described by a Whig lady: “On the top is the crest of the Howe
arms, with _vive vale_ (live and farewell). To the sun setting in the
sea the other motto refers, and bears this translation: ‘He shines
as he sets, but shall rise again more luminous.’ General Howe being
recalled is the setting sun; while ploughing the ocean he is obscured,
but shall, on his return, and giving an account of his heroic deeds,
rise again with redoubled lustre. The wreath of laurel encompassing the
whole, encircling the arms, completes, I think, the burlesque.”

The names by which this _fête_ is known, Meschianza and Mischianza, are
derived from two Italian words,--_mescere_, to mix, and _mischiare_,
to mingle. Thus the entertainment, so varied in its nature, has been
named a mixture and a medley with equal propriety. We have adopted the
spelling of the original invitations, one of which lies before us, and
reads thus:

 The Favor of your meeting the Subscribers to the Meschianza at
 Knight’s Wharf, near Pool’s Bridge, to-morrow, at half-past three, is
 Desired.

  [Signed]      HENRY CALDER.

  Sunday, 17th May.
  MISS CLIFTON.


Knight’s wharf was at the edge of Green Street, in the Northern
Liberties; Poole’s bridge crossed Pegg’s Run at Front Street, and was
named after one Poole, a Friend, whose mansion lay quite near.

It is curious to notice that this invitation to Miss Eleanor Clifton,
whose portrait proclaims her one of the beauties of the period, is
dated but one day in advance of the _fête_, which would lead us
to fear that this lady was tempted to commit the sin of sewing at
her ball-dress on a Sunday, like that unfortunate damsel of Queen
Elizabeth’s time whom Mrs. Jarley holds up as a waxen warning to
all Sabbath-breakers, had we not good reason to infer that a verbal
invitation had been given long before.

The preparations for this magnificent entertainment, the erection of
the numerous and vast pavilions around the old Wharton mansion, and
their decoration by André, Delancey, and all the other gallant officers
who took part in the affair, were doubtless the talk of the town for
weeks. Yards and yards of painting must have been executed by the
indefatigable André, as the ceilings, sides, and decorations of the
long pavilions, designed for the supper- and ball-rooms, were to a
great extent the work of his hands. Here he used unsparingly the pencil
that had made its virgin essay on the features of lovely, unrequiting
Honora Sneyd, lingering, with true artistic fervor, over festoons of
roses and bouquets of drooping flowers.

The owner of this property was dubbed by his contemporaries “Duke
Wharton,” in consequence of the extreme haughtiness of his bearing and,
it is said, from the following circumstance: “One winter’s day, when
the sidewalks were rendered dangerously slippery from the accumulated
ice upon them, Mr. Wharton, while attempting to make his usual
dignified progress over the uncertain footing, was suddenly tripped up,
and would have measured his length upon the pavement, had not a jovial
Hibernian, passing at the moment, stretched forth a friendly hand to
his aid, crying out, ‘God save my Lord the Duke!’” Another amusing
passage of compliments, this time with Sir William Draper, is related
by Graydon: “Sir William, observing that Mr. Wharton entered the
room hat in hand, and remained uncovered, begged, as it was contrary
to the custom of his Society to do so, that the Quaker gentleman
would dispense with this unnecessary mark of respect. But the ‘Duke,’
feeling his pride piqued at the supposition that he would uncover
to Sir William or any other man, replied, with entire _sang-froid_,
that he had uncovered for his own comfort, the day being warm, and
that whenever he found it convenient he would resume his hat.” These
and other stories, all indicating a pride that seems to have been
considered commendable in those days, repeated with embellishments,
doubtless added to the merriment of many convivial after-dinner
gatherings, and passing from mouth to mouth, served to establish the
reputation and title of this old Quaker gentleman, whose death occurred
more than a year previous to the British occupation of Philadelphia.[2]
The fact that Walnut Grove was a country-seat, and in all probability
used by the Wharton family only during the summer months, may account
for the British officers having entire possession of the premises in
the spring of ’78, while its size and situation made it an appropriate
place in which to hold their revels. Surrounded by broad lawns and
lofty trees, situated at some distance west of the Delaware River, at
what is now Fifth Street near Washington Avenue, Walnut Grove was then
considered quite a rural residence. It has long since disappeared, the
encroaching streets of a busy city having rendered almost traditional
the theatre of this gay and brilliant scene, although there were those
still living, on the anniversary of the festival in 1878, who recalled
the old brick house as it stood in Colonial times, and one who slid
down the balusters of the stairway in boyish frolic, with never a
thought of all the gay and gallant throng which once passed over the
stairs and down the broad hall to the sound of music, merry jests,
courtly compliments, and rippling laughter.

It is said that there were not many ladies with the British officers
in Philadelphia, most of them having left their wives in New York;
so, there being few authorities to consult about the prevailing
fashions at the court of the beautiful Austrian or the less beautiful
Queen Charlotte, our young ladies were forced to rely upon their own
ingenuity in the arrangement of their toilets. Those chosen to be
knights’ ladies were assisted by the taste and skill of André, whose
water-color design for the costume of the ladies of the Blended Rose
is still preserved, representing a curious combination of Oriental
and Parisian styles, its flowing tunic over full Turkish trousers
being topped by the high _coiffure_ of the day. Miss Peggy Shippen’s
portrait[3] represents her in this head-dress, and in a letter written
to her in August, 1779, André playfully alludes to his millinery
experience gained during preparations for the _fête_:

 “You know the Mesquianza made me a complete milliner. Should you
 not have received supplies for your fullest equipment from that
 department, I shall be glad to enter into the whole details of
 cap-wire, needles, gauze, &c., and, to the best of my abilities,
 render you in these trifles services from which I hope you would infer
 a zeal to be further employed.”

A rash offer, it seems to us, for what knight, be he never so bold,
would be willing to enter into all the intricacies and mysteries of a
modern feminine toilet? And those of the days of powder, patch, and
high befeathered _coiffure_ were certainly not less bewildering to the
minds of the uninitiated.

Although from various sources we learn that André took an active part
in the preparations for the Meschianza, out of doors as well as among
laces and silks in fair ladies’ boudoirs, Mr. Sargent tells us that
Burgoyne[4] was the conductor of the elegant affair, which was on
the plan of a _fête champêtre_ given by Lord Derby, June, 1774, on
the occasion of Lord Stanley’s marriage with the Duke of Hamilton’s
daughter. Only about fifty young Philadelphia ladies were present at
the Meschianza; but if we are to credit history and the gossip of the
day, the destruction wrought by their charms upon the hearts of the
British officers must have been equal to that to have been expected
from twice their number, for all authorities unite in telling us that
the ladies of this city were justly celebrated for their beauty, of a
certain grand and noble type. Watson says that most of the American
gentlemen who took part in the Meschianza were “aged non-combatants,”
the young men of the city being Whigs, and generally, be it said to
their credit, with Washington’s army at Valley Forge.

There seems to be no doubt that a number of Whig ladies graced this
entertainment, and one of them, herself, describes the affair in
glowing colors. What shall we say for the erring fair ones? That they
were young, beautiful, anxious to see and perhaps to be seen. Shall
we, standing amid the lights and shadows of another century, be severe
in our judgment upon these fair, curious Eves of a hundred years ago?
They had read of grand doings among court ladies and gentlemen in
the exaggerated and stilted romances of the day, until their foolish
hearts were in an eager flutter of anticipation and delight. The whole
town was talking about the projected _fête_; the young officers were
constantly passing to and fro busied with the arrangements; so grand
a sight might never again dawn upon the Philadelphia world. Thus
reasoning, and dropping the while a tear for the braves at Valley
Forge, these inconsistent Whig ladies yielded.

From the windows of some dwellings belonging to Friends--opposed in
principle to such scenes of gayety and dissipation--eyes as eager
as any looked forth upon the busy scene of preparation, like doves
from behind imprisoning bars. Sweet young Quakeresses, gentle-eyed
as the dove and gentle-voiced, that gay land of enchantment down the
river--a seeming Elysium--is not for you! How they must have longed to
go--sitting by the fireside, like so many Cinderellas, watching their
happy sisters start off bravely attired to the ball! To them, alas!
came no fairy godmother, so they reluctantly folded their soft wings
and stayed at home.

In a little, old, commonplace-book found in a house in Southwark, and
now in the possession of the Historical Society of Pennsylvania, among
extracts from various authors--some in English, some in Latin, proving
the unknown writer to have been a person of taste and culture--is
a description of the Meschianza penned by an eyewitness. With the
exception of the well-known account of the _fête_ given by Major André
in a letter to a friend in England, this is the most detailed recital
that we have encountered. Opening the yellowed pages, we read:

 “Agreeable to an invitation of the managers of the Meschianza, Dr. M.,
 Mr. F., and myself went up about four o’clock in the afternoon, in
 Mr. F.’s Coach, to Knight’s wharf, where we found most of the company
 in the Boats. Some of these were on the water in the galley with Lord
 Howe, among them Mrs. Chew, Mrs. Hamilton, Mrs. Worrell, Mrs. Coxe,
 Miss Chew, Miss Auchmuty, Miss Redman, Miss Franks, &c., General Howe,
 Sir Henry Clinton, Lord Rawdon, &c.; and General Knyphausen and his
 attendants were in another Galley. We continued waiting on the water
 for the rest of the company near half an Hour, when, a Signal being
 given from the ‘Vigilant,’ we began to move in three divisions, a
 Galley and ten flatboats in each division. In the first was General
 Knyphausen, &c., in the third British and German officers, and in the
 middle, Lord General Howe, &c.--with three Barges, in each of which
 were bands of music playing.”

A lady in Philadelphia at this time who attended the Meschianza,
although she declares herself a noted Whig, thus describes this
portion of the entertainment in a letter addressed to Mrs. Colonel
Theodorick Bland, in Virginia:

 “On the back of the ticket, you observe, we are to attend at Knight’s
 wharf (you remember Pool’s bridge near Kensington). Thither we
 accordingly repaired in carriages at the appointed hour of three,
 where we found a vast number of boats, barges, and galleys to receive
 us, all adorned with small colors or jacks of different colors. On a
 signal from the ‘Vigilant’ we all embarked, forming lines, with all
 the music belonging to the army in the centre. The ladies interspersed
 in the different boats (the seats of which were covered with green
 cloth) with the red coats, colors flying, music playing, etc., you may
 easily suppose formed a very gay and grand appearance; nor were the
 shore and houses, lined with spectators, any bad object to those in
 the regatta (the water party so called). We were obliged to row gently
 on account of the galley sailing slow.

 “The armed ship--the ‘Fanny’--was drawn into the stream and decorated
 in the most beautiful manner with the colors of every Court or State
 streaming; amidst the number, the thirteen stripes waved with as much
 elegance, and as gracefully sported with the gentle zephyrs, as any
 of the number. After passing the above ship we reached the ‘Roebuck,’
 whose men were all fixed on her yards and gave us three cheers as we
 passed, and as soon as we had got to a distance not to be incommoded
 by the smoke she fired a salute and was answered by several other
 vessels in the harbor. At length we reached the place of destination
 (after lying awhile on our oars) opposite the ‘Roebuck,’ the music
 playing ‘God Save the King.’”

The regatta which headed the programme of the Meschianza was suggested
by a similar pageant on the Thames, June 23, 1775, and, being a
novelty even in old England, it is not strange that it should have set
provincial Philadelphia astir, nor that six barges were needed to keep
at a distance the numerous boats, filled with eager spectators, that
crowded the Delaware on the day of the entertainment, when:

  “There in the broad, clear afternoon,
  With myriad oars, and all in tune,
  A swarm of barges moved away
  In all their grand regatta pride.”

We doubt whether those who disapproved of the whole affair--the
Quakers, Whigs, and many sensible Tories--could forbear casting furtive
glances toward that fairy procession, which, Read says,--

  “Like tropic isles of flowery light,
  Unmoored by some enchanter’s might,
  O’erflowed with music, floated down
  Before the wharf-assembled town.”

Thus this gay and brilliant fleet proceeded down the river with flying
colors, while the band played stirring English airs, amid the soft
breezes and under the perfect skies of an old-time May day, until they
arrived opposite the scene of the festivity, where everything was in
readiness for joust and revelry. Salutes were fired by the “Roebuck”
as soon as General Howe stepped on shore, which were echoed by the
“Vigilant” and several smaller vessels up and down the river.

“The fleet at the wharves,” says our journalist, “consisting of
about three hundred sail, adorned with colors, and together with the
procession, exhibited a very grand and pleasing appearance.” Very
grand it must have been to see those knights, ladies, and officers, in
their rich costumes, leaving behind them the gay scene on the river,
and walking between two files of grenadiers up the avenue toward the
house! The bravest display of the kind that the New World could afford,
for Philadelphia then excelled all the other Colonial cities in size,
culture, and importance; and here, beside the flower of the English
army, were met some of the most beautiful women of the day.

Passing up this avenue, the company entered a lawn, four hundred
yards on every side, where all was prepared for the exhibition of a
tournament according to the laws of ancient chivalry. Here were two
pavilions, with rows of benches rising one above the other; on the
front row of each were placed seven of the principal young ladies
of the county, arrayed in white Poland dresses of Mantua with long
sleeves, a gauze turban spangled, and sashes round the waist. Seven
of them wore pink sashes with silver spangles, and the others white
with gold spangles. All bore in their turbans favors destined for
their respective knights. Those who wore pink and white were called
the Ladies of the Blended Rose, and were Miss Auchmuty, Miss Peggy
Chew, Miss Janet Craig, Miss Nancy Redman, Miss Nancy White, Miss
Williamina Bond, and Miss Shippen. Lord Cathcart, who led the Knights
of the Blended Rose in Miss Auchmuty’s honor, appeared upon a superb
charger. Two young black slaves, with sashes of blue and white silk,
wearing large silver clasps round their necks and arms, their breasts
and shoulders bare, held his stirrups. On his right hand walked Captain
Hazard, and on his left Captain Brownlow, his two esquires, the one
bearing his lance, the other his shield. His device was Cupid riding on
a Lion; the motto, “Surmounted by Love.”

The Ladies of the Burning Mountain, whose dress was white and gold,
and whose chief was Captain Watson, superbly mounted, and arrayed in a
magnificent suit of black and orange silk, were Miss Rebecca Franks, in
whose honor Captain Watson appeared, with the motto “Love and Glory,”
Miss Sarah Shippen, Miss P. Shippen, Miss Becky Bond, Miss Becky
Redman, Miss Sally Chew, and Miss Williamina Smith.

In all descriptions of the Meschianza related by eye-witnesses, the
Shippen sisters are spoken of as having taken a prominent part in the
entertainment. Only within a few years has a letter from a member of
the family controverted this statement, in the following terms:

 “The young ladies [the daughters of Chief Justice Edward Shippen]
 had been invited and had arranged to go [to the Meschianza]; their
 names were upon the programmes, and their dresses actually prepared;
 but at the last moment their father was visited by some of his
 friends, prominent members of the Society of Friends, who persuaded
 him that it would be by no means seemly that his daughters should
 appear in public in the Turkish dresses designed for the occasion.
 Consequently, although they are said to have been in a _dancing_ fury,
 they were obliged to stay away. This same story has, I know, come down
 independently through several branches of the family, and was told to
 me repeatedly, the last time not more than two years ago, by an old
 lady of the family, who was a niece of Mrs. Arnold and her sisters,
 and who has since died.”[5]

Major André includes the Shippens in his description of the
entertainment printed in the _Gentleman’s Magazine_ in August, 1778.
The discrepancy between his statement and the family letters can
be accounted for only upon the supposition that, like the modern
reporter, André sent off his copy before the ball had taken place; or
perhaps the “dancing fury” of his daughters had such an effect upon the
Chief Justice that, at the last moment, the girls were allowed to go.

Beautiful, brilliant, and fascinating, full of spirit and gayety, the
toast of the British officers, Miss Peggy Shippen seems so much a part
of the Meschianza that we incline to the latter theory, being almost
as unwilling to spare her and her sisters from the ranks of beauty as
were the gallant young officers who were prepared to do battle in their
honor.

As soon as the fair ladies were seated upon the benches prepared for
them, the crowd on the left gave way, and the Knights of the Blended
Rose appeared mounted on white steeds elegantly caparisoned and covered
with white satin ornamented with pink roses. “These knights,” says
our journalist, “were dressed in white and pink satin, with hats of
pink silk, the brims of which were covered with white feathers. Each
knight had his squire on foot, dressed also in white and pink, with
the addition of a cloak of white silk. Every squire carried a spear and
shield, each of which had a different device and motto.”

The knights, having all ridden around the lists and saluted the ladies,
sent their herald, with two trumpeters, to the Dulcineas with this
message: “The Knights of the Blended Rose, by me their herald, proclaim
and assert that the ladies of the Blended Rose excel in wit, beauty,
and every other accomplishment all other ladies in the world, and if
any knight or knights shall be so hardy as to deny this, they are
determined to support their assertion by deeds of arms, agreeable to
the laws of ancient chivalry.”

The trumpets then sounded, and the herald returned to the knights, who
rode by, saluted the Dulcineas, and took their places on the left hand,
about one hundred yards distant.

The crowd opening on the other side, a herald in orange and black, with
a picture of a burning mountain on his back, rode forward to assure
the fair ones of the Burning Mountain that their claims to wit, beauty,
and all other charms, _par excellence_, should be vindicated by the
knights whose colors they wore, “against the false and vainglorious
assertions of the Knights of the Blended Rose.”

The field marshal, Major Gwynne, now gave the signal, upon which a
glove was thrown down by the chief of the White Knights, which was
picked up by the esquire of the chief of the Black Knights; the trumpet
sounded, and the fight was on, under the fire of many bright eyes from
the pavilions where the Queens of Beauty were seated.

Lances were shivered, pistols fired, and finally, in the midst of
an engagement with broadswords, Major Gwynne rode in between the
combatants, declaring that the ladies were abundantly satisfied with
the proofs of valor and devotion displayed by their respective knights.
These fell back, and, joining their companies, passed on, the White
Knights to the left, the Black to the right, saluting their ladies
when they reached the pavilions, after which they passed through the
triumphal arch, in honor of Lord Howe, and ranged themselves on either
side. This arch was elegantly painted with naval ornaments. At the top
was a figure representing Neptune, with his trident and a ship. In the
interior were the attributes of that god. On each side of the arch was
placed a sailor, with his sword drawn. Lord Howe being an admiral in
the service, these emblems were most appropriate.

The knights’ ladies passed under the arch after the knights, who
dismounted and joined them, all proceeding together along a broad
avenue, brilliantly decorated, to another arch of the same size and
elegance as the first, this in honor of Sir William Howe. “Upon passing
this second arch,” our journalist tells us, “we entered a beautiful
Flower-Garden and up a Gravel Court, ascended a flight of Steps which
conducted us into the House, at the door of which we were received by
the Managers of the Meschianza,--namely, Sir John Wrottesley, Sir
Henry Calder, Colonel O’Hara, and Colonel Montrésor.” André mentions
the same, except that he substitutes Major Gardiner for Sir Henry
Calder.

Two folding-doors were opened, and the company was ushered into a large
hall, brilliantly lighted, where tea, coffee, and cakes were served,
and where the knights upon bended knee received the favors due them
from their respective ladies. This scene must have been one of the most
graceful and charming of the whole pageant, and had it not been for
the remembrance of that dear Honora whose miniature he always wore,
André certainly could not have remained insensible to the manifold
attractions of Miss Peggy Chew, who now rewarded him for having
“perilled life and limb” in her service, and whose praises are thus
sung by Mr. Joseph Shippen:

  “With either Chew such beauties dwell,
    Such charms by each are shared,
  No critic’s judging eye can tell
    Which merits most regard.

  “’Tis far beyond the painter’s skill
    To set their charms to view;
  As far beyond the poet’s quill
    To give the praise that’s due.”

Amid blushes, soft whisperings, and compliments such as the gentlemen
of that time were skilled in paying, the fair ones bestowed their
gracious favors; after which the company entered another hall,
elaborately decorated and hung with eighty-five mirrors, decked with
rose-pink silk ribbons and artificial flowers. In this ball-room,
whose walls were pale blue and rose-pink, with panels on which were
dropping festoons of flowers, “when the company was come up,” says our
authority, quaintly, “the Dulcineas danced first with the knights, and
then with the squires, and after them the rest of the company danced.”

At half-past ten o’clock the windows were thrown open to enable the
guests to enjoy the magnificent fireworks on the lawn, when the
triumphal arch near the house appeared brilliantly illuminated,
Fame blowing from her trumpet these words: “_Tes Lauriers sont
immortels_,”--meaning Sir William’s.

About this time Captain Allan McLane, with a company of infantry and
Clow’s dragoons, was endeavoring to win for himself immortal laurels by
firing the abatis at the north of the city, which connected the line
of the British redoubts. When the flames reddened the sky the ladies,
doubtless, clapped their hands with delight, wondering at the beauty of
the illumination, which illusion was encouraged by the officers; and
later, when the roll-call was sounded along the line and the guns of
the redoubts fired, the guests were assured that this was all a part
of the celebration, and the dancing continued. Although McLane did not
succeed in breaking up the party, as he had hoped, he gave the British
officers a fright, which must have considerably marred the enjoyment of
the evening for them. The dragoons sent in pursuit of the incendiaries
did not succeed in overtaking them, as they found a refuge among the
hills of the Wissahickon.

“After the fireworks the company returned, some to dancing and others
to a Faro-bank, which was opened by three German officers in one of
the Parlours. The Company continued dancing and playing until twelve
o’clock, when we were called to Supper, and two folding-doors at the
end of the hall being thrown open, we entered a room two hundred feet
long by forty wide. The Floor was covered with painted Canvas, and the
roof and sides adorned with paintings and ornamented with fifty large
mirrors. From the roof hung twelve Lustres, with twenty Spermaceti
candles in each. In this room were two Tables, reaching from one end
to the other. On the two tables were fifty large, elegant pyramids,
with Jellies, Syllabub, Cakes, and Sweetmeats.” Beside this there were
various substantials, soup being mentioned as the only viand served hot.

Major André, after describing the decorations of this supper-room,
says that “there were four hundred and thirty covers, twelve hundred
dishes, and twenty-four black slaves in Oriental dresses, with silver
collars and bracelets, ranged in two lines, and bending to the ground
as the general and admiral approached the saloon; all these, forming
together the most brilliant assemblage of gay objects, and appearing at
once as we entered by an easy descent, exhibited a _coup-d’œil_ beyond
description magnificent.”

Toward the end of supper, the herald of the Blended Rose, in his
habit of ceremony, attended by his trumpeters, entered the saloon
and proclaimed the King’s health, the Queen’s, and that of the royal
family. After the toast to the King, all the company rose and sang “God
Save the King,” which must have been a very trying moment to those Whig
ladies present, who through all the enjoyment of the day were doubtless
considerably pricked in their consciences. More loyal toasts followed,
to the army and navy, their commanders, and finally to the ladies and
their knights, the ladies’ toast being: “The Founder of the Feast.”

We are pained to read that some of the gentlemen, among them one of
the same party as our quaint journalist, were so ungallant as to
remain at table, declaring their intention of devoting the night to
Bacchus,--alas for Venus! The guests did not disperse until dawn began
to redden the eastern sky, and some tarried until the sun was up.

Here I cannot forbear transcribing some verses written by a lady--Miss
Hannah Griffitts--residing in Philadelphia at this time, in which,
though an ardent loyalist, she, as a member of the Society of Friends,
expressed her indignation against the whole affair. The poem is in
answer to the question, “What is it?” and the Quaker lady’s reply rings
forth with no uncertain sound.

  “A shameful scene of dissipation,
  The death of sense and reputation;
  A deep degeneracy of nature,
  A frolic ‘for the lush of satire.’
  A feast of grandeur fit for kings,
  Formed of the following empty things:
  Ribbons and gewgaws, tints and tinsel,
  To glow beneath the historic pencil;
  (For what though reason now stands neuter,
  How will it sparkle,--page the future?)
  Heroes that will not bear inspection,
  And glasses to affect reflection;

  “Triumphant arches raised in blunders,
  And true Don Quixotes made of wonders.
  Laurels, instead of weeping willows,
  To crown the bacchanalian fellows;
  The sound of victory complete,
  Loudly re-echoed from defeat;
  The fair of vanity profound,
  A madman’s dance,--a lover’s round.

  “In short, it’s one clear contradiction
  To every truth (except a fiction);
  Condemned by wisdom’s silver rules,
  The blush of sense and gaze of fools.

  “But recollection’s pained to know
  That ladies joined the frantic show;
  When female prudence thus can fail,
  It’s time the sex should wear the veil.”

So ended this afternoon and evening of brilliant and gorgeous
pageantry, resembling more nearly a chapter from one of the
richly-colored Eastern fairy-tales that delighted our childhood than
a story of Colonial days, which was speedily followed by the sober
realities of Sir William and Lord Howe’s return to England and by
Clinton’s evacuation of Philadelphia.

It may be interesting to follow the fates of those gay beauties who
held their brief, brilliant court through that spring afternoon,
especially so to that much maligned class who study the science of love
and courtship, crudely called match-makers.

Strange as it may seem, none of the queens of the Meschianza married
their respective knights. Miss Janet Craig, whose knight was Lieutenant
Bygrove, and who has described the whole scene as one of enchantment to
her young mind, was never married.

The chief lady of the Knights of the Blended Rose, although spoken of
frequently as an English girl, was the daughter of the Rev. Samuel
Auchmuty, D.D., of Trinity Church, New York, a devoted loyalist. Miss
Auchmuty was with her brother-in-law, Captain Montrésor, chief engineer
of General Gage’s army at Boston, to whose skill the success of the
fireworks at the Meschianza was largely due.

Williamina Smith, whose picture, with its bright eyes and tip-tilted
nose, lies before us, had for her knight Major Tarleton, who appeared
with the motto “Swift, vigilant, and bold.” He who was afterward
the terror of the South is described as a fine, soldierly fellow of
one-and-twenty, who, “when not riding races with Major Gwynne on the
commons,” spent his time in making love to the ladies. Miss Smith
became the wife of Charles Goldsborough, of Long Neck, Dorset County,
Maryland.

The Misses Redman, so often mentioned among the belles of the time,
were nieces of the famous Dr. John Redman. Miss Rebecca, whose knight
was Monsieur Montluisant[6] (lieutenant of Hessian Chasseurs), with the
emblem a sunflower turning to the sun, her motto “_Je vise à vous_,” is
said to have been the Queen of the Meschianza, whom Watson describes,
many years later, as old and blind, “fast waning from the things that
be,” yet able to paint in vivid colors the occurrences of this day.
She spoke of André as the life of the company. It is not strange that
this brave young officer and elegant and accomplished gentleman, who
added so much to the enjoyment of the loyalist ladies of Philadelphia
during the British occupation, should have been long held by them
in grateful remembrance. We know that he was on terms of intimate
friendship with one of these sisters, as it was for her he wrote those
tender, plaintive verses, commencing,--

  “Return, enraptured hours,
    When Delia’s heart was mine;
  When she with wreaths of flowers
    My temples would entwine.”

For her he cut silhouettes of mutual friends, and, on leaving the city,
severed one of the buttons of his coat, which he playfully presented to
her as a parting keepsake. Miss Rebecca Redman married Colonel Elisha
Lawrence in December, 1779.

Miss Margaret Chew, in whose honor Major André appeared with the motto
“No rival,” was married on the ninth anniversary of the Meschianza to
Colonel John Eager Howard, of Maryland. The Howards of Belvidere are
a well-known Baltimore family, and this young man filled a prominent
place in the war of the Revolution. He was present at the battle of
White Plains, distinguished himself at Germantown, where so many of our
heroes strove in vain to turn the tide of battle, served under Gates
in the South, and at the battle of Cowpens decided the fortunes of the
day by a successful bayonet charge. At one time, it is said, he held
in his hands the swords of seven British officers of the Seventy-First
Regiment. After the war he was Governor of Maryland and filled other
public offices of importance. Surely, in this case, “the brave deserved
the fair.”

One of the most striking figures in this brilliant assemblage was
Rebecca Franks, who was as celebrated for her ready wit as was Peggy
Shippen for her exquisite beauty and grace. Handsome, witty, and an
heiress, combining with these attractions that of being an ardent
loyalist, it is not strange that Miss Franks was given a high place at
the British revel. She won the affections of Colonel Sir Henry Johnson,
who while in Philadelphia was quartered on Edward Penington, a leading
Friend, living at the corner of Crown and Race Streets. The marriage
took place January 17, 1782, and after the surrender of Yorktown Sir
Henry and his bride sailed for England. Colonel Johnson was surprised
at Stony Point on the night of July 15, 1779, by Wayne, and made
prisoner with all his force. He afterwards distinguished himself in the
Irish rebellion, and was created Baronet. Although Cornwallis speaks
of Sir Henry as “a wrong-headed blockhead,” and thinks that he has
been unduly praised, we are inclined to say that he who was willing
to run the gauntlet of Miss Franks’s daring raillery must have been a
brave man. She seems to have spared neither friend nor foe and her wit
was always telling, whether flashing up in the quick rejoinder, “No;
Britons, go home, you mean,” when Sir Henry Clinton ordered the band
to play “Britons, Strike Home,” at a New York ball, or in her keen,
sharp rebuff when Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Steward, of Maryland, after
the evacuation of Philadelphia by the British, appeared before her in a
fine suit of scarlet, saying, “I have adopted your colors, my Princess,
the better to secure a courteous reception; deign to smile on a true
knight.” To this speech Miss Franks made no reply, but, turning to the
company who surrounded her, exclaimed, “How the ass glories in the
lion’s skin!”

One of this lady’s pointed shafts was directed at General Charles
Lee, and this time the daring beauty met her match, for he not only
vindicated himself from her charge of having worn “green breeches
patched with leather,” but in language more caustic than courtly
alluded to her own Jewish ancestry. There is a flavor of the wit of
Lady Mary Wortley Montagu and Walpole in these jokes; but they raised
a great laugh at the time, and were perhaps of a sort to be better
relished in Miss Franks’s future home than in America.

General Winfield Scott gives a description of an interview held with
this lady at her residence, at Bath, when years had sadly impaired
the beauty that had once captivated all hearts. A bright-eyed old
lady in an easy-chair met Scott with an eager, kindly gaze and the
query, “Is this the young rebel?” Such were her words, yet, before the
conversation ended, Lady Johnson confessed that she had learned to
glory in her rebel countrymen and wished that she had been a patriot,
too. “Not that heaven had failed to bless her with a good husband,
either,” she replied to Sir Henry’s gentle remonstrances.

When the Americans regained possession of Philadelphia an effort was
made by the Whigs to exclude from their gatherings those ladies who had
taken part in the Meschianza and other British entertainments.[7] With
this object in view, a ball was given at the City Tavern “to the young
ladies who had manifested their attachment to the cause of virtue
and freedom by sacrificing every convenience to the love of their
country.”[8] This sounded patriotic enough, but we learn that General
Arnold soon after gave an entertainment at which the Tory ladies
appeared in full force, which is not to be wondered at in view of the
intelligence that Mrs. Robert Morris communicated to her mother about
this time: “I must tell you that Cupid has given our little General
a more mortal wound than all the hosts of Britons could, unless his
present conduct can expiate for his past,--Miss Peggy Shippen is the
fair one.”

With Cupid thus taking a hand in the game, and bringing to the feet
of one of the brightest of the Tory belles the military commandant
of Philadelphia, we can readily believe that General Wayne’s severe
strictures upon the foolish fair fell upon unheeding ears:

 “Tell those Philadelphia ladies, who attended Howe’s assemblies &
 levees,” he writes in July, 1778, “that the heavenly, sweet, pretty
 red-coats--the accomplished gentlemen of the guards & grenadiers have
 been humbled on the plains of Monmouth.

 “The Knights of the _Blended Roses_ and of the _Burning Mount_ have
 resigned their laurels to Rebel officers, who will lay them at the
 feet of _those_ virtuous daughters of America, who cheerfully gave
 up ease and affluence in a city, for liberty and peace of mind in a
 cottage.”[9]

[Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[2] It is pleasant to learn that Mr. Joseph Wharton, the owner of
Walnut Grove, if proud was also benevolent, as we find his name among
liberal contributors to one of the first Philadelphia almshouses.

[3] This sketch, by Major André, is in the possession of Mr. Edward
Shippen, of Philadelphia.

[4] “We all know of Burgoyne’s surrender, but hardly one knows
Burgoyne’s comedies, and yet there are few cleverer or more brilliant,
of a second order, than ‘The Heiress,’ and ‘Maid of Oaks.’ In a letter,
dated New York, June 2, 1777, he says, ‘You cannot imagine anything
half so beautiful as this country. It is impossible to conceive
anything so delightful. Lady Holland, in spite of her politics, would,
I am sure, feel for it, if she could see the ruin and desolation we
have introduced into the most beautiful and, I verily believe, happiest
part of the universe.’”--_World Essays_: William B. Reed, pp. 176, 177.

[5] From a letter of the late Lawrence Lewis, Jr., written in 1879.

[6] It appears that this knight with the shining name and emblem had
not a reputation to match them. We learn that he entered the army only
to get to America, was discharged, tried to join the Colonial army, and
was seized and sent to England. (German Allied Troops, 1776-1783, p.
333.)

[7] Fred. D. Stone. Pennsylvania Magazine, vol. iii. p. 336.

[8] Watson’s Annals of Philadelphia, vol. ii. p. 297.

[9] Biographical Sketch of General Anthony Wayne, Hazard’s Register, p.
389.




[Illustration: NEW YORK BALLS & Receptions]


Amid elaborate ceremonials attending the reception and inauguration
of the first President of the Republic, we find some homely touches
of nature, as when those two admirable housewives Mrs. Washington and
Mrs. Adams were detained at home, in April and May, 1789, by domestic
duties, and so missed all the joyful demonstrations along the route, as
well as the brave welcome accorded their distinguished husbands in the
city of New York. Mrs. Washington was busied in putting her household
in order, and shipping china, cut glass, silver-ware, and linen from
Mount Vernon to the capital, while from John Adams’s letters we gather
that the wife, whom he so trusted that he permitted her to dispose
of sheep, cows, and other live-stock, on her own responsibility, was
attending to such matters at Braintree, Massachusetts, prior to the
removal of her household goods to the fine country-place at Richmond
Hill that Mr. Adams had rented for the season.[10]

Although Mr. Samuel Breck, recently arrived from Europe, found New York
in 1787 “a poor town, with about twenty-three thousand people, not yet
recovered from its Revolutionary wounds” and the great fire that swept
over its western portion, he is pleased, two years later, to admire
the improvements recently made, especially some beautiful houses built
on Broadway by Mr. Macomb, one of which was occupied by General Knox,
the Secretary of War. As soon as it transpired that New York was to be
the meeting-place of the new Congress, and that General Washington
was elected President, the selection of a suitable residence for
the Chief Magistrate became a matter of considerable interest in
Republican circles. The President later occupied Mr. Macomb’s house on
Broadway near Bowling Green, subsequently known as the Mansion House
and Bunker’s Hotel; but his first residence was the house of Walter
Franklin, as is proved by a letter written from New York, April 30,
1789, which with other family papers furnishes us some interesting
facts relating to this old homestead, and its renovation preparatory to
the advent of the President and his wife, that have not yet appeared
in the histories of the time. The clever chronicler is Mrs. William
T. Robinson, and the letter is addressed to Miss Kitty Wistar, of
Brandywine, afterwards Mrs. Sharples, through the courtesy of whose
descendants it has come into the writer’s hands.

 “Great rejoicing in New York,” she says, “on the arrival of General
 Washington. An elegant Barge decorated with an awning of Sattin, 12
 oarsmen drest in white frocks and blue ribbons, went down to E. Town
 [Elizabeth] last fourth day to bring him up. A Stage was erected at
 the Coffee House wharf covered with a carpet for him to step on,
 where a company of light horse, one of Artillery, and most of the
 Inhabitants were waiting to receive him.[11] They Paraded through
 Queen Street in great form, while the music, the Drums and ringing of
 bells were enough to stun one with the noise. Previous to his coming
 Uncle Walter’s house in Cherry Street was taken for him and every room
 furnished in the most elegant manner.

 “The evening after his Excellency’s arrival a general Illumination
 took place, excepting among Friends, and those styled
 Anti-Federalists: the latter’s windows suffered some, thou may
 imagine. As soon as the General has sworn in, a grand exhibition of
 fire-works is to be displayed, which it is expected will be to-morrow.
 There is scarcely anything talked of now but General Washington and
 the Palace.”

The palace referred to is, evidently, the former residence of Walter
Franklin, situated at the corner of Pearl and Cherry Streets,
then owned by his widow, who had married Mr. Samuel Osgood,
Postmaster-General under the new administration. Watson says that the
Franklin House on Pearl Street was “No. 1 in pre-eminence,” and, from
the wealth and position of its owner, it was evidently considered the
best in the city for the purpose. Mrs. Robinson describes it as having
been very sumptuously fitted up; and so it doubtless was, according to
the prevailing idea of elegance. Miss Wistar’s correspondent adds

 “Thou must know that Uncle Osgood and Duer were appointed to procure a
 house and furnish it; accordingly they pitched on their wives as being
 likely to do it better. Aunt Osgood and Lady Kitty Duer had the whole
 management of it. I went the morning before the General’s arrival to
 look at it. The house really did honour to my Aunt and Lady Kitty,
 they spared no pains nor expense in it. I have not done yet, my dear,
 is thee not almost tired? The best of furniture in every room, and the
 greatest quantity of plate and China that I ever saw before. The whole
 of the first and second Story is papered, and the floor covered with
 the richest kind of Turkey and Wilton Carpets.”

The Mr. Duer spoken of by Mrs. Robinson is Colonel William Duer, who
had early in life been aide-de-camp to Lord Clive in India, and who
later held important positions under the Federal government. His wife
was one of the daughters of General William Alexander, claimant to the
Scottish earldom of Stirling. She consequently figured in New York
society as Lady Kitty Duer, giving, with her own sister, Lady Mary
Watts, and Lady Temple, a flavor of British aristocracy to republican
circles. Lady Kitty is described by John Quincy Adams as “one of the
sweetest-looking women in the city,”--which testimony is scarcely
corroborated by her portrait in the exaggerated coiffure of the day.

Walter Franklin’s house on Cherry Street, and that of his brother
Samuel, which was around the corner on Pearl Street, were both near
the shipping quarter of the town, in which respect they resembled
fashionable Philadelphia residences of the same period. A number of
interesting family traditions cluster about these fine old houses,
in which a bevy of gay girls was gathered together, who charmed the
British officers during their occupation of the city, just as their
Quaker sisters were doing in old Philadelphia. Some of the officers
were quartered on the Franklins, among them Lord Rawdon and Admiral
Lord Richard Howe, who respectively commanded the army and the fleet.
Sally Franklin, the writer of the letter from which we have quoted,
was then a young girl, and a very beautiful one. Her marriage with
Mr. Robinson took place while the British had possession of New York.
She was evidently a great favorite with the officers in command, who
begged to be permitted to attend her wedding in Quaker meeting. This
request was refused, on the plea that the wedding was to be a very
quiet one. British officers, as Miss Rebecca Franks has informed us,
were not accustomed to take no for an answer, unless accompanied with
shot and shell. Accordingly, on the morning of the marriage, when the
beautiful bride, in her white silk dress and white bonnet, stood in
the quaint old meeting, listening to the words of her lover, “I take
this Friend, Sarah Franklin, to be my wedded wife,” a sudden sound of
footsteps and clattering of swords against the benches was heard, and,
lo! Lord Rawdon, Lord Howe, and a train of young officers, resplendent
in gay uniforms and gold lace, stood within the solemn enclosure of the
meeting. They seated themselves, with malice aforethought, on a long
bench opposite the bride, whose turn had now come to speak. Trembling,
and carefully avoiding the eyes of the strangers, who had vowed that
they would make her smile in the midst of the ceremony, she performed
her part, declaring her intention to take Friend William to be her
wedded husband. When the marriage certificate was signed, the names of
Lord Howe, Lord Rawdon, and the other officers were appended, beautiful
Sarah Robinson showing her forgiving spirit still further by allowing
those, among the intruders, who were well known to her to return to the
house and partake of the wedding-feast.

The New York girls had a longer time in which to enjoy the society
of the gallant red-coats than their Philadelphia sisters, and were
consequently in greater danger of losing their hearts to them. There
were some marriages with British officers, as in the family of Andrew
Elliot, Lieutenant-Governor of New York, one of whose daughters married
Admiral Robert Digby, while another, Elizabeth, became the wife of
William, tenth Baron and first Earl of Cathcart, the same who as Lord
Cathcart had figured as chief of the Knights of the Blended Rose in the
Meschianza.[12] Miss Philipse was also one of those who yielded to
the attractions of the enemy, as she married the Hon. Lionel Smythe,
son of Philip, fourth Viscount Strafford, at the time captain of the
Twenty-Third British Foot. Most of the New York belles had, as Graydon
puts it, “sufficient toleration for our cause to marry officers of the
Continental army,” and when the new administration came in, we find
them as ready to dance to Whig music as they had been to Tory. The
Comte de Moustier soon gave these impartial fair ones an opportunity
to display their Terpsichorean powers at a very elegant ball, given
to President Washington, two weeks after his inauguration, at the
Macomb house, on Broadway, which was afterwards occupied by President
Washington. On this occasion the alliance between France and America
was represented in a cotillon, half the dancers being in French costume
and the other half in American; the ladies who represented France
wearing red roses and flowers of France, and the American ladies blue
ribbons and American flowers. Mr. Elias Boudinot, chairman of the
committee of Congress, in a description of this ball sent to his wife
in Philadelphia, speaks of these representatives of the allied powers
entering the room, two by two, and engaging in what he ingeniously
calls “a most curious dance, called _en ballet_, to show the happy
union between the two nations.”[13]

The Comte de Moustier had succeeded Barbé-Marbois as French minister to
the United States, and was so addicted to entertaining that he was wont
to say that he was “but a tavern-keeper;” adding, facetiously, that
“the Americans had the complaisance not to demand his recall.”[14] Of
the new ambassador Mr. Madison wrote to Mr. Jefferson, in Paris, “It is
with much pleasure I inform you that Moustier begins to make himself
acceptable; and with still more that Madame Bréhan begins to be viewed
in the light which I hope she merits.” This lady was Anne-Flore Millet,
Marquise de Bréhan, a sister of the Comte de Moustier, who assisted
him in doing the honors of his house. She is described as a singular,
whimsical old woman, who delighted in playing with a negro child and
caressing a monkey. With all her eccentricities, she seems to have been
possessed of some talent and considerable skill as an artist, as she
not only executed several portraits of Washington, but achieved a feat
known to few portrait-painters, that of pleasing the sitter himself.

About a week before the Comte de Moustier’s entertainment, the
inauguration ball was held, and, if we are to credit contemporaneous
gossip, was a very grand and imposing function. Although those were
days of stage-coaching and slow travel, a number of visitors from other
cities were in New York, as appears from a letter written by Miss
Bertha Ingersoll, from the scene of the festivities, to Miss Sallie
McKean in Philadelphia.

 “We shall remain here,” she writes, “even if we have to sleep in
 tents, as so many will have to do. Mr. Williamson had promised to
 engage us rooms at Frauncis’s, but that was jammed long ago, as was
 every other decent public house, and now while we are waiting at Mrs.
 Vandervoort’s, in Maiden Lane, till after dinner, two of our beaux
 are running about town determined to obtain the best places for us to
 stay at which can be opened for love or money or the most persuasive
 speeches.”

Mrs. Washington was still at Mount Vernon on the 7th of May, the date
of the inauguration ball,[15] consequently the story of a sofa raised
some steps above the floor of the ball-room for the accommodation
of the President and his wife during the dancing is quite without
foundation, as is the equally absurd story of portly Mrs. Knox pushing
her way up to this circle and having to descend suddenly from her
elevated position because there was no room for her on the platform.
Even if there was no dais for the President and his wife, there was no
lack of form and ceremony at this Republican entertainment, where the
men all wore the small-clothes of the day, which so well became their
stately proportions, and where, says Huntingdon, many powdered heads
were still to be seen, among men as well as women. The President’s
costume on such occasions was a full suit of black velvet, with long
black silk stockings, white vest, silver knee- and shoe-buckles, the
hair being powdered and gathered together at the back in a black silk
bag tied with a bow of black ribbon. He wore a light dress sword,
with a richly-ornamented hilt, and often carried in his hand a cocked
hat, decorated with the American cockade. The Vice-President, John
Adams, wore a full suit of drab, with bag-wig and wrist-ruffles. The
gentlemen’s laces seem to have rivalled those of the ladies, although
in their costumes rich silks, satins, and brocades had begun to give
place to cloth of various colors, as if to forecast the less ornate
masculine costume of later date.

“The collection of ladies” at this ball, writes a contemporary, “was
numerous and brilliant, and they were dressed with consummate taste
and elegance. The number of persons present was upwards of three
hundred, and satisfaction, vivacity, and delight beamed from every
countenance.” Colonel William Leet Stone, of New York, thus describes
one of the costumes: “It was a plain celestial blue satin gown, with
a white satin petticoat. On the neck was worn a very large Italian
gauze handkerchief, with border stripes of satin. The head-dress was a
_pouf_ of satin in the form of a globe, the _créneaux_ or head-piece of
which was composed of white satin, having a double wing in large pleats
and trimmed with a wreath of artificial roses. The hair was dressed
all over in detached curls, four of which in two ranks fell on each
side of the neck and were relieved behind by a floating chignon.” We
have Colonel Stone’s word for it that this was an attractive costume,
although the description does not sound so to modern ears, especially
with the heavy head decorations. It appears, however, that the ladies
of the first administration had made one important departure, for
which thanksgivings should have been devoutly uttered. They had by this
time renounced the ungainly head-dress that had reared its pyramid
skyward for some years, and which, accompanied as it was with scant
drapery about the shoulders and bust, had led some wit of the day to
accuse the fair ones of robbing their breasts of gauze, cambric, and
muslin for the use of their heads, while another satirist wrote,--

  “Give Chloe a bushel of horse-hair and wool,
    Of paste and pomatum a pound;
  Ten yards of gay ribbon to deck her sweet skull,
    And gauze to encompass it round.”

Perhaps some such witticisms as these had led to the change of fashion;
or, more likely, a little bird from France had whispered in the ladies’
ears that the mighty pyramid had fallen there. From whatever cause, the
structure of hair, flowers, feathers, and jewels no longer reared its
imposing pinnacle above the brow of beauty, and many of the Stuart,
Malbone, Trumbull, and Copley paintings of women of this period
represent the hair dressed low, with curls and bandeaux _à la Grecque_
or rolled moderately high _à la Pompadour_.

In one of the journals of the day we read that

 “On Thursday evening, the subscribers of the Dancing Assembly, gave
 an elegant Ball and Entertainment. The President of the United
 States, was pleased to honor the company with his presence--His
 Excellency the Vice President--most of the members of both Houses of
 Congress--His Excellency the Governor [Clinton] and a great many other
 dignified public characters: His Excellency Count de Moustier--His
 Most Christian Majesty’s Ambassador--The Baron Steuben, and other
 foreigners of distinction were present, as well as the most beautiful
 ladies of New York.”[16]

Among these were the Misses Livingston, one of whom married Mr. Ridley,
of Baltimore, the Misses Van Horne, “avowed Whigs,” says Graydon,
“notwithstanding their civility to the British officers,” and the
Misses White, who lived on Wall Street near Broadway, to one of whom
was addressed the following epigram by a beau of the period named Brown:

  “My lovely maid, I’ve often thought
  Whether thy name be just or not;
  Thy bosom is as cold as snow,
  Which we for matchless _white_ may show;
  But when thy beauteous face is seen,
  Thou’rt of _brunettes_ the charming queen.
  Resolve our doubts: let it be known
  Thou rather art inclined to _Brown_.”

It is evident that this fair White did not permanently incline to
Brown, as one sister became Lady Hayes, and the other married one of
the Monroes. Here also, in goodly array, were Osgoods, Philipses,
Rutherfurds, Van Cortlandts, Van Zandts, Clintons, Montgomerys, De
Lanceys, De Peysters, Kissams, Bleeckers, Clarksons, Verplancks,
Schuylers, Van Rensselaers, and Macombs. How the old names repeat
themselves in the social life of to-day! Prominent in these inaugural
festivities were the Livingstons of Clermont, Chief Justice Yates, of
New York, the handsome soldierly figure of Morgan Lewis, Grand Marshal
of the Inauguration ceremonies, Mrs. Dominick Lynch, Mrs. Edgar,
Mrs. Provoost, Lady Stirling, and her two daughters, Lady Mary Watts
and Lady Kitty Duer. We learn that their aunt, Mrs. Peter Van Brugh
Livingston, had the honor of dancing a cotillon with the President,
who opened the ball with the wife of the Mayor of New York, Mrs. James
Duane. He also danced in the minuet with Mrs. James Homer Maxwell, with
whom as Miss Catharine Van Zandt he had repeatedly danced while the
army was quartered at Morristown. When Washington entered the lists,
dancing seemed to be elevated to the dignity of a function of the
state, and in proof of the grace with which his Excellency could tread
a measure it is related that a French gentleman, after observing him
in the dance, paid him the high compliment of saying that a Parisian
education could not have rendered his execution more admirable.
Mrs. James Beekman,[17] born Jane Keteletas, was the belle of the de
Moustier ball, a week later, and gazing upon her serene face, framed
in by a little cap of gauze and ribbon, that would have been trying to
features less perfect, we can readily believe that she also occupied
a prominent place in the inaugural festivities. Mrs. William Smith,
who had returned from London, where her husband was Secretary of the
American legation, was present, as was also Lady Temple, the American
wife of Sir John Temple, British Consul-General, whom the Marquis de
Chastellux found so distinguished that it was unnecessary to pronounce
her beautiful. Her husband, Sir John, took upon himself “singular
airs,” says Mrs. William Smith, and this spirited little woman declined
to visit my lady because she did not consider that Sir John treated her
spouse with proper deference. Lady Christiana Griffin, the Scotch wife
of Cyrus Griffin, President of Congress, was also one of the guests of
the evening.

Among New York women whose husbands held high positions were Mrs.
Alexander Hamilton; Mrs. Ralph Izard, wife of the Senator from South
Carolina, whose surname furnished Mrs. Bache a peg on which to hang
her _bon-mot_ about knowing everything South Carolinian from B[18] to
Z (izzard); Mrs. Robert R. Livingston, the daughter of Colonel Henry
Beekman, whose husband had a week earlier administered the oath of
office to the President; Mrs. King, born Mary Alsop, of whose marriage
to Rufus King John Adams speaks as “additional bonds to cement the
love between New York and old Massachusetts;” and Mrs. Elbridge Gerry,
wife of the Senator from Massachusetts. The Rev. Manasseh Cutler
visited the Gerrys when they were living in Philadelphia, and speaks
of the beauty and accomplishments of the New York lady. He expressed
to her his surprise that Philadelphia ladies rose so early, saying
that he saw them at breakfast at half-past five, when in Boston they
could hardly see a breakfast-table before nine without falling into
hysterics. To which Mrs. Gerry replied that she had become inured to
early rising and found it conducive to her health.

Stately courtesy and dignity, combined with a certain simplicity
begotten of pioneer living in a new country, seem to have been the
distinguishing characteristics of this old-time society, and of the
couple who presided over it and knew so well how to balance the
functions of public office with the sacred demands of home life.

In days of retirement at Mount Vernon, when engaged in instructing her
maidens, or in household pursuits, Mrs. Washington was always simply
attired, and in cloth of home manufacture. She could, however, on
occasions of state appear in rich costumes of satin, velvet, and lace,
while the President, although appearing at the inaugural ceremonies in
a suit of cloth of American manufacture, on festal occasions donned
the velvet and satin that so well became him. With his republicanism
in national affairs, it is evident that Washington inclined more
to the state and ceremony of Old-World courts than to the extreme,
almost bald, simplicity that came in with a later administration. The
statement of that unknown “Virginia colonel” who said that General
Washington’s “bows were more distant and stiff than anything he had
seen at St. James’s” savors of probability, although disputed by some
of his contemporaries, and Mr. Breck tells us that the President “had
a stud of twelve or fourteen horses, and occasionally rode out to take
the air with six horses to his coach, and always two footmen behind his
carriage;” adding, “He knew how to maintain the dignity of his station.
None of his successors, except the elder Adams, has placed a proper
value on a certain degree of display that seems suitable for the chief
magistrate of a great nation. I do not mean pageantry, but the decent
exterior of a well-bred gentleman.” A President who thus realized all
the dignity that his office implied naturally introduced a certain
amount of form and ceremony into the social life of the capital, and
when Mrs. Washington came from Mount Vernon, on the 27th of May,
receptions were held at the old Franklin house on Cherry Street, whose
like, for a certain state and fine aroma of old-time courtesy, we shall
never see again. Those who, “with the earliest attention and respect,
paid their devoirs to the amiable consort of our beloved President
were,” says one of the newspapers of the time, “the Ladies of the
Most Hon. Mr. Langdon [State Senator from New Hampshire] and the Most
Hon. Mr. Dalton, the Mayoress [Mrs. James Duane], Mrs. Livingston of
Clermont, Mrs. Chancellor Livingston, Mrs. Montgomery, Mrs. McComb,
Mrs. Lynch, the Misses Bayard, and a great number of other respectable
characters. Mrs. Washington from Philadelphia was accompanied by the
Lady of Mr. Robert Morris.” We also learn that the President met his
wife at Trenton, and that with a gayly-decorated and well-manned barge
she made her journey to the seat of government.

Although we are not disposed to agree with the Chevalier de Crèvecœur,
that “if there is a town on the American continent where English luxury
displayed its follies, it was in New York,” Philadelphia, with Mrs.
William Bingham as its social leader, having continued to assert its
supremacy in this line, we are willing to believe that there was a
fair amount of both folly and luxury in the national capital. This
gentleman, Saint-John de Crèvecœur, sometime Consul-General at New
York, was probably surprised to find anything approaching civilization
in this city and country, as he exclaims, “You will find here the
English fashions. In the dress of the women you will see the most
brilliant silks, gauzes, hats, and borrowed hair.” It is amusing, in
this connection, to note the French gentleman’s ideal of what a woman
should be. He happened to be looking for a wife himself just then, and,
like Solomon’s perfect woman, she was expected to look well to the ways
of her household, to be skilled in the spinning of flax and the making
of cheese and butter, and withal she was to have her mind cultivated a
little, just enough to enable her to enjoy reading with her husband.

Mrs. William Smith, a less prejudiced observer than M. de Crèvecœur,
in writing to her mother of a dinner at Chief Justice Jay’s which was
served _à la mode française_, says that there was more fashion and
state in New York than she would fancy. Brissot de Warville speaks
of another dinner, this one at the house of Cyrus Griffin, at which
seven or eight women appeared dressed in great hats and plumes. If the
hats were as graceful and becoming as that worn by Mrs. John Jay in
her portrait by Pine, we have no word of censure for those old-time
beauties, although a plumed hat does seem a rather peculiar finish to
a dinner costume, almost as odd as Mrs. William Smith’s elbow-sleeves,
bare arms, and muff.

At her formal receptions, which Mr. Daniel Huntingdon has represented
in his famous picture, Mrs. Washington stood with the Cabinet ladies
around her, stately Mrs. Robert Morris by her side, herself the
stateliest figure in the group. The President passed from guest to
guest, exchanging a word with one and another, and pleasing all by
the fine courtesy of his manner. The lovely ladies and the dignified
gentlemen, many of the latter with powdered heads and bag-wigs, like
his Excellency, trooped up by twos and threes to pay their respects
to the first lady in the land. If around the Chief Magistrate were
gathered the great men of the nation, those who, like John Adams,
Robert Morris, Alexander Hamilton, and John Jay, had already impressed
themselves deeply upon the past, and in connection with such younger
minds as those of James Madison, Rufus King, Elbridge Gerry, and Oliver
Ellsworth, the Cerberus of the Treasury, were destined to outline
the serener history of the future, Mrs. Washington numbered in her
Republican Court the noblest and most beautiful women in the land.
Among these were many who, like her, had shared with their husbands the
anxieties of the Revolutionary period,--notably, Mrs. General Knox,
Mrs. Robert Morris, and Mrs. Adams,--while in a younger group were Mrs.
Rufus King, who is described as singularly handsome, Mrs. Gerry, Mrs.
George Clinton, Mrs. William Smith, John Adams’s daughter, Mrs. Walter
Livingston, whom General Washington had once entertained, in rustic
style, when encamped near New York, and, not the least attractive among
these lovely dames, Mrs. John Jay, a daughter of Governor Livingston,
who shared with Mrs. William Bingham, of Philadelphia, the distinction
of being called the most beautiful and charming woman in America.
Honors seem to have been easy between these two high-born dames,
as both were beloved, admired, and _fêted_ at home and abroad. The
Marquise de Lafayette, who entertained a warm friendship for Mrs. Jay,
said, with charming simplicity, that “Mrs. Jay and she thought alike,
that pleasure might be found abroad, but happiness only at home.” All
of Mrs. Jay’s portraits represent a face of such exquisite beauty that
it is not difficult to imagine the furore she created at foreign and
Republican courts.

Does there not seem to have been an indefinable charm of exquisiteness
and dignity about these old-time dames, like the fragrance that
surrounds some fine and stately exotic? They had abundant leisure to
make their daily sacrifice to the graces, and they always appear before
us in full _toilette_,--hair rolled or curled, slippers high of heel,
and gown of stiff brocade or satin. We never catch these fair ladies
_en déshabille_, nor do we desire to do so; their charm would as surely
vanish before the inglorious ease of a loose morning gown and roomy
slippers as does that of an American Indian when he divests himself
of his war-paint and feathers. We read with equanimity of some of the
belles of the period sitting all night with their pyramidal heads
propped up against pillows, because the hair-dresser could not make his
round without attending to some heads the night before the ball. This
was “_souffrir pour être belle_” with a vengeance; yet, deeming it all
in keeping with their stately elegance, for which they had to pay a
price, we never stop to think of how their poor necks must have ached,
choosing rather to dwell upon their triumphs when they entered the
ball-room. We can hear Mr. Swanwick, or some other poet of the day, pay
them the most extravagant compliments, while lamenting the void left by
the absence of another fair one:

  “Say why, amid the splendid rows
  Of graceful belles and polish’d beaux,
    Does not Markoe appear?
  Has some intrusive pain dismay’d
  From festive scenes the lov’ly maid,
    Or does she illness fear?”

Is it possible that Markoe could not get her head dressed in time,
and thus missed the ball? We wonder, and, wondering, lavish so much
sympathy upon her for the pleasure she has lost that we forget to
moralize upon the impropriety of Mr. Swanwick’s paying such exaggerated
compliments, which would turn the head of any girl of to-day. We of
this generation reverse the order of nature; like doting grandparents
we enjoy the picturesque beauty of these stately ancestors, and, with
never a thought of their higher good, retail their triumphs with
enthusiasm, wishing that for one brief moment we could turn back and
feel what they felt when their world was at their feet. It was a very
small world, according to our ideas, but it was the largest that they
knew, and it was all their own.

What a gay pageant that old social life seems as it passes before
us! We almost forget that the picture is limned against the stern
background of war, for it is one in which the shadows have all faded
out, leaving only the bright colors upon the canvas. Let it remain
so. Why should we weep over sorrows so long past? The sting has all
gone from them, and surely there can no harm come to this generation
from dwelling upon the beauty and grace of those fair ladies, who
ruled society in New York a hundred years ago, or upon the bravery and
strength of the noble men who gathered around them. _Sic transit gloria
mundi!_ cries the moralist; but the glory has not all passed away, as
is proved by our lingering over it now, nor need it be quite effaced
from the gay life of to-day, if hearts still beat as true under silk
and broadcloth as did those of the fathers and mothers of the Republic
beneath brocaded bodices and satin waistcoats.

[Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[10] This house was the residence of Aaron Burr at the time of his duel
with Alexander Hamilton.

[11] Mrs. Robinson’s statement that a carpet was spread from the wharf
for the President to walk upon was authenticated, more than sixty
years later, by an eyewitness of the scene. Dr. Atlee, in 1850, while
substitute-resident at the Pennsylvania Hospital in Philadelphia, met
a man of eighty-two who, when he learned that the young physician was
named Walter Franklin Atlee, exclaimed at the coincidence, saying that
he remembered having seen General Washington come up the river in a
boat, and walk on a carpet to Walter Franklin’s house, where he and
Mrs. Washington were to reside.

[12] “Lady Cathcart was Lady of the Bedchamber to Queen Charlotte.
Peter Pindar celebrates her at Weymouth in connection with the king’s
insensate manners:

  ‘Cæsar spies Lady Cathcart with a book;
  He flies to know what ’tis--he longs to look.
  “What’s in your hand, my lady? let me know?”--
  “A book, an’t please your majesty?”--“Oho!
  Book’s a good thing--good thing,--I like a book.
  Very good thing, my lady,--let me look.
  War of America! my lady, hae?
  Bad thing, my lady! fling, fling _that_ away.”’”

_Life of Major John André_, by Winthrop Sargent, p. 147.

[13] See Army List, 1778.

[14] This pleasantry on the part of the French minister seems to
have been taken _au sérieux_ by certain writers as pointing to some
obscurity of origin, while the fact is substantiated by various
authorities that Eléonore-François-Elie, Comte de Moustier, entered the
diplomatic service at eighteen, and after representing his country at
several foreign courts was twice offered the position of Minister of
Foreign Affairs by Louis XVI.

[15] United States Gazette, May 9, 1789.

[16] It is interesting to turn from these Republican festivities to
read in the journal of a Moravian minister, written in New York during
the occupation of the British, of King’s and Queen’s “Birthnight
Balls,” “Coronation Day” celebrations, and rejoicings over the arrival
of “His Royal Highness, Prince William Henry, the third son of our dear
King, an amiable young Prince, who gave satisfaction to all who saw
him.”--_Diary of Ewald Gustav Schaukirk._

[17] “The old Beekman house, built by James Beekman, and standing
three miles from the City Hall in New York, was the scene of a number
of interesting events. During the British possession of the city it
was occupied by the commander-in-chief of their army, and one room at
the head of a flight of stairs was occupied by Major André the night
before proceeding up the river on his ill-fated expedition to West
Point, while (strange providence) but a few yards distant still stands
[1848] the green house where Captain Nathan Hale, of the American army,
received his trial and condemnation as a spy.”--JEROME B. HOLGATE.

[18] Evidently referring to the Bee family of S. C.




[Illustration: THE AMERICAN PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY]


In none of his schemes and foundations did Dr. Franklin more signally
display the breadth and catholicity of his mind than in his plan
for the establishment, in the New World, of an association for the
general diffusion of useful knowledge, to which the Old World should
be tributary, and from which it should in time be recipient. With this
end in view, he, in 1743, issued a proposal for the organization and
government of an American Philosophical Society, whose object was to
bring into correspondence with a central association in Philadelphia
all scientists, philosophers, and inventors, on this continent and
in Europe. Bold as was this scheme in its breadth and reach, in its
smaller details it was marked by the practical characteristics of
the projector. The Hamiltons and Franklins might “dream dreams and
see visions” to the end of the chapter; but they would have framed
no governments, or have founded no learned institutions destined to
outlast the centuries, had not their ideality been well balanced by
the strong common sense that Guizot calls “the genius of humanity.” It
was this union of the ideal and the practical that caused Franklin to
be so appreciated by the French. Mirabeau named him “the sage of two
worlds,” with a larger grasp of thought than that of our own day, when
he is still claimed, like the debatable baby brought to King Solomon,
by two cities,--by Boston, in which he first saw the light, and by
Philadelphia, in which he disseminated it so liberally.

Although there is a vast amount of documentary evidence to prove
that the American Philosophical Society was the direct outcome of
Franklin’s proposal of 1743, and that before the breaking out of the
war with Great Britain it was an active and useful organization,
having a large native and foreign membership, two of Dr. Franklin’s
biographers have done but scant justice to his work in this direction.
Professor McMaster, in his recent interesting life of Franklin as a
man of letters, dismisses his proposal to establish such a society
as a failure;[19] while Mr. Parton, after mentioning the fact of
Franklin having founded the Philosophical Society, in accordance with
his proposal of 1743, adds, “The society was formed, and continued in
existence for some years. Nevertheless, its success was neither great
nor permanent, for at that day the circle of men capable of taking much
interest in science was too limited for the proper support of such an
organization.”[20]

As both of these historians mention the Philosophical Society later,
and Mr. Parton at some length in his Life of Jefferson, it is probable
that they did not consider that this early society was identical with
that which in 1767 took a fresh start, elected a number of influential
members, and made for itself an enviable reputation in Europe and
America, in the latter years of the century. Sparks and Bigelow,
however, take what is, according to the historian of the society,
Dr. Robert M. Patterson, a true view of the case, tracing it back,
a continuous organization, to the proposal of Dr. Franklin issued
in 1743. Indeed, they carry it back even further than this period,
deriving it primarily from the old Junto of 1727. After describing the
workings of the Junto, or Leather Apron Society, formed from among
Franklin’s “ingenious acquaintance,” a sort of debating club of clever
young men, Jared Sparks says, “Forty years after its establishment,
it became the basis of the American Philosophical Society, of which
Franklin was the first president, and the published Transactions of
which have contributed to the advancement of science and the diffusion
of valuable knowledge in the United States.”[21] As most of Franklin’s
projects were discussed in the congenial circle that composed the
Junto, this statement does not conflict with that of Dr. Patterson.

Dr. Franklin, in his proposal, gave a list of the subjects that were
to claim the attention of these New World philosophers. It included
“investigations in botany; in medicine; in mineralogy and mining;
in chemistry; in mechanics; in arts, trades, and manufactures; in
geography and topography; in agriculture;” and, lest something should
have been left out of this rather comprehensive list of subjects,
it was added that the association should “give its attention to all
philosophical experiments that let light into the nature of things,
tend to increase the power of man over matter, and multiply the
conveniences or pleasures of life.” The duties of the secretary of the
society were laid down, and were especially arduous, including much
foreign correspondence, in addition to the correcting, abstracting, and
methodizing of such papers as required it. This office Dr. Franklin
took upon himself, saying, with a touch of modesty that seems a trifle
strained, that he “would be secretary until they should be provided
with one more capable.” He, however, tells us in the Autobiography that
he one day added humility to his list of virtues at the suggestion of
a Quaker friend, and this form of expression may have been one of his
self-imposed exercises.

The Philosophical Society, once established, was destined to exert
an important influence on American science, life, and letters. Among
its members were literary men, statesmen, and artists, as well as
scientists and inventors. Before its meetings were read learned papers
on government, history, education, philanthropy, politics, religion,
worship, above all, on common sense: these in addition to the numerous
scientific papers, read and communicated, while among its eulogiums and
_oraisons funèbres_, pronounced upon deceased members, are to be found
compositions worthy of Bossuet.

As early as 1769, the society had members in the different colonies,
in the Barbadoes, in Antigua, in Heidelberg and Stockholm; while in
Edinburgh the distinguished Dr. William Cullen was a member, in London
Dr. John Fothergill, and in Paris the learned Count de Buffon. At
home it numbered such men as Francis Hopkinson, statesman and writer
of prose and poetry; Dr. Phineas Bond and his brother Thomas, both
original members; Dr. Adam Kuhn and Daniel Dulany, of Maryland. Upon
these early lists we find Pierre Eugène du Simitière, who was one
of the committee appointed to prepare a design for a national seal;
Benjamin West; John Dickinson, who was writing his “Farmer’s Letters,”
destined to make him known on both sides of the sea; and John Bartram,
botanist to his majesty, who planted his celebrated botanical garden
near Gray’s Ferry, and built with his own hands the house, above the
study window of which is his devout confession of faith:

  “’TIS GOD ALONE, ALMIGHTY LORD,
  THE HOLY ONE, BY ME ADORED.

  JOHN BARTRAM, 1770.”

A pioneer in this field, he is recognized as the greatest of American
botanists, and, contrary to the rule generally proved by great
men’s sons, had the satisfaction of seeing his studies successfully
prosecuted by his son, William Bartram, who also contributed original
papers to the society.

Writing in 1744 to the Honorable Cadwallader Colden,
Lieutenant-Governor of New York, a distinguished scientist and original
worker in certain lines, Dr. Franklin says,--

 “Happening to be in this City about some particular Affairs, I have
 the Pleasure of receiving yours of the 28ᵗʰ past, here. And can now
 acquaint you, that a Society, as far as relates to Philadelphia,
 is actually formed, and has had several Meetings to mutual
 Satisfaction;--assoon [_sic_] as I get home, I shall send you a short
 Acct. of what has been done and proposed at these meetings.”

Here follows a list of members from Philadelphia, New York, and New
Jersey, to which the writer adds,--

 “Mr. Nicholls tells me of several other Gentlemen of this City [New
 York] that incline to encourage the Thing.--There are a Number of
 others in Virginia, Maryland, Carolina, and the New England States who
 we expect to join us assoon [_sic_] as they are acquainted that the
 Society has begun to form itself. I am, Sir, with much respect,

  “Your most humᵉ sevᵗ
  “B. FRANKLIN.”[22]


The Honorable Cadwallader Colden was one of the original members of
the American Philosophical Society, and took an active interest in its
establishment and advance. He and Dr. Franklin were intimate friends,
and in the habit of communicating to each other their scientific
discoveries. It was Dr. Colden who introduced into the study of botany
in America the system of Linnæus.

One of the founders and the first president of this society was Mr.
Thomas Hopkinson, whom Dr. Franklin called his “ingenious friend,”
and to whom he acknowledges his indebtedness for demonstrating “the
power of points to _throw off_ the electrical fire.” Another “ingenious
friend,” to whom he makes no profound acknowledgment, was the Rev.
Ebenezer Kinnersley, a professor in the College of Philadelphia, to
whom it is now generally conceded that Franklin owed much of his
success in important electrical discoveries. Mr. Parton says that, in
1748, “Mr. Kinnersley contrived the amusing experiment of the magical
picture. A figure of his majesty King George II. (‘God preserve him,’
says the loyal Franklin, in parenthesis, when telling the story) was
so arranged that any one who attempted to take his crown from his head
received a tremendous shock.” By this clever contrivance Mr. Kinnersley
proves himself something of a prophet as well as a scientist, for
notwithstanding the violent shock received by the friends of royalty in
the colonies, a few years later, it was conclusively demonstrated that
the crown could be taken off.

In drawing up rules for the government of the Philosophical Society,
Dr. Franklin advises that correspondence be maintained not only
between the central organization and its members in the different
colonies, but with the Royal Society of London and the Dublin Society.
Thus persons residing in remote districts of the United States would
be placed in direct communication with the latest discoveries of Old
World scientists in all their lines of work. What such correspondence
meant to men of intelligence, living far from the centres of education
and enlightenment, in those days of few books and fewer magazines and
journals, it is impossible for us to imagine. Many years later, when
the French botanist, André Michaux, was appointed by his government to
examine the trees of this continent, with a view to their introduction
into France, he carried letters from the Philosophical Society to one
of its members, living in Lexington, Kentucky.

 “During my stay at Lexington,” Michaux writes, “I frequently saw Dr.
 Samuel Brown, from Virginia, a physician of the College of Edinburgh,
 and a member of the Philosophical Society.... Receiving regularly the
 scientific journals from London, he is always in the channel of new
 discoveries, and turns them to the advantage of his fellow-citizens.
 It is to him that they are indebted for the introduction of the
 cow-pox. He had at that time inoculated upwards of five hundred
 persons in Kentucky, when they were making their first attempts in New
 York and Philadelphia.”

Agreeable as it must have been to Michaux to find flowers of science
blooming in these western wilds, we can imagine the even greater
delight that such a man as Dr. Brown must have experienced in meeting
and conversing with this foreigner, fresh from Old World haunts of
learning, with his interesting budget of news, political as well as
scientific. Those were the exciting days of the Consulate in France,
when Lord Nelson was gaining victories for England in the Northern
seas; and we can picture to ourselves these two learned gentlemen,
seated before a great fire of logs, with a steaming bowl of punch, made
from the famous Kentucky apple-jack beside them, turning away from
the paths of science to discuss Napoleon’s victories, the coalition
against England, and the assassination of the Emperor Paul in Russia,
which was followed by a treaty between his successor and the English
sovereign.

American science must have been in a condition of encouraging activity
between 1750 and 1767, for in those years there were no less than
three societies in Philadelphia whose aims and pursuits were in the
main identical,--the promotion of useful knowledge and the drawing
together of its votaries. These societies were a second Junto, of
which the indefatigable Dr. Franklin was a member, the American
Philosophical Society, and the American Society. This division in the
ranks of science probably arose from the feeling existing between the
adherents of the Penn family and those averse to them; these parties
being as violently opposed to each other as were, later, Federalist
and Democratic-Republican; or, still later, the Whig and Democratic
parties. Happily for the historian, who is sadly confused by Juntos
and Juntolings, and by American Societies which were philosophical,
and Philosophical Societies which were also American, these different
bodies showed a disposition to unite, and in 1769 were incorporated
into one society, under the title of American Philosophical Society,
held at Philadelphia, for Promoting Useful Knowledge. This title
proving a trifle “unhandy for every-day use,” to borrow the phraseology
of a patriotic farmer’s wife, who bestowed upon one of her offspring
the entire heading of the Republican ticket in 1860, “Abraham Lincoln
Hannibal Hamlin,” it has gradually been abbreviated into the American
Philosophical Society, there being now no other.

Of this united society Dr. Franklin was elected president, the first
of an honorable line of presidents, whose portraits adorn the walls of
the old rooms on Fifth Street, where the philosophers met more than
a hundred years ago. The society obtained a grant of land from the
State of Pennsylvania in 1785, and in 1787 its hall was completed,
the one still used, in whose sunshiny rooms are now gathered the
relics, the treasures, and the memories of a century. Here is the
old chair on whose broad arm Jefferson wrote the Declaration, and
here are autograph letters and autographs of such value as to fill
the soul of the collector with “envy, hatred, and malice, and all
uncharitableness.” On one side of the hall is the well-known and most
characteristic portrait of Dr. Franklin,[23] in his blue coat, large
wig, and spectacles, while near by is his marble effigy by Houdon,
whose statue of Washington bears the proud inscription, “_Fait par
Houdon, citoyen Français._”

Dr. Franklin was annually elected president of the society, Dr.
Thomas Cadwalader officiating during his residence abroad. Brissot de
Warville, coming to Philadelphia in 1788, exclaims, with devoutness
rare in a Frenchman, “Thanks be to God, he still exists! This great
man, for so many years the preceptor of the Americans, who so
gloriously contributed to their independence; death had threatened his
days, but our fears are dissipated, and his health is restored.” Two
years later the same chronicler records, “Franklin has enjoyed this
year the blessing of death, for which he waited so long a time.”

As president of the Philosophical Society, he was succeeded, in 1791,
by Dr. Rittenhouse, the greatest American astronomer, of whom Jefferson
said, “We have supposed Rittenhouse second to no astronomer living;
in genius he must be first, because he is self-taught.” It was he who
contributed to the society the first purely scientific paper in its
series of Transactions, a calculation on the transit of Venus. He also
described a wonderful orrery, which represented the revolution of the
heavenly bodies more completely than it had ever been done before, and
which he had himself constructed at the age of twenty-three. In June,
1769, he made observations on the transit of Venus. “The whole horizon
was without a cloud,” says Rittenhouse, in his report of this event;
and so greatly excited was the young astronomer that, in the instant of
one of the contacts of the planet with the sun, he actually fainted
with emotion. Rittenhouse’s interesting report on this phenomenon,
which had never been seen but twice before by any inhabitant of the
earth, was received with satisfaction by learned and scientific men
everywhere. Those who visit the hall of the society to-day may look
out upon the State-House yard from the same window through which
Rittenhouse made his observations, and note the passing hours upon
the face of a clock constructed by his hands, which, the curator says,
“still keeps good time.”

Prominent among the portraits of early officers is an interesting
picture of Thomas Jefferson, who was third president of the
Philosophical Society, as well as of the United States. This painting,
which well portrays the intellectual and spirited face of the original,
was executed at Monticello by Mr. Sully, who was invited there for
this purpose. Jefferson, who would have been a great scientist had he
not been called upon by his country to use his powers as a statesman,
naturally took a warm interest in the Philosophical Society, and was a
member long before he was made its president in 1797. While abroad he
disputed the arguments of the learned Count de Buffon on the degeneracy
of American animals, and finally made his position secure by sending
the astonished Frenchman the bones, skin, and horns of an enormous
New Hampshire moose. Equally convincing was this, and more agreeable
than the manner in which Dr. Franklin answered a similar argument on
the degeneracy of American men, by making all the Americans at table,
and all the Frenchmen, stand up. As those of his compatriots present
happened to be fine specimens physically, towering above the little
Gauls, the good doctor had the argument all his own way.

It seemed, indeed, as if these two great men, who so harmoniously
combined the ideal and the practical, were born to prove to the world
that genius of the highest order, in science, letters, and statecraft,
is not incompatible with the same sort of ability that is essential to
the success of a Western farmer or a skilled mechanic. Hence, if Dr.
Franklin employed his leisure hours in inventing an improved stove, or
explaining to the Philosophical Society why certain chimneys smoked;
Mr. Jefferson used his in designing a plough, for which he received a
gold medal from France, and in calculating the number of bushels of
wheat to the acre, at Monticello. One day, he is interesting himself
in the importation of seed-rice from Italy, from the Levant, and from
Egypt; while on another, he is helping the Philosophical Society to
frame instructions for the guidance of André Michaux in his Western
explorations. It was life that interested them both,--life in the
smaller details that affect home comfort, as well as in the broader
issues that bear upon the happiness of states and nations. In Mr.
Jefferson’s minute directions regarding the education of his daughters,
and in his grasp of the details of farming, we recognize the same
sort of practical common sense that so eminently distinguished Dr.
Franklin, of whom his latest biographer says, in his own forcible
and epigrammatic style,--“Whatever he has said on domestic economy,
or thrift, is sound and striking. No other writer has left so many
just and original observations on success in life. No other writer has
pointed out so clearly the way to obtain the greatest amount of comfort
out of life. What Solomon did for the spiritual man, that did Franklin
for the earthly man. The book of Proverbs is a collection of receipts
for laying up treasure in heaven. ‘Poor Richard’ is a collection of
receipts for laying up treasure on earth.”[24]

In addition to its regular meetings for business and for scientific
purposes, the Philosophical Society had its gala days, its annual
dinners, and its especial receptions and entertainments given to
distinguished strangers. Hither, in 1794, came the Rev. Joseph
Priestley, of Birmingham, counted in France too devout for a scientist,
and in England too broad for the clergy. As the discoverer of oxygen,
the friend of Franklin, whose experiments in electricity he had
described, and a devotee to the cause of liberty, Dr. Priestley was
warmly welcomed by the Philosophical Society, which not only received
him into its own learned brotherhood, but adopted him into American
citizenship. This first reception was followed by a dinner given by the
learned coterie in honor of Dr. Priestley.

Many anecdotes of these old dinners have been handed down, showing that
when the good philosophers put science aside they could be as lively
_raconteurs_ and _bons vivants_ as the world has ever seen. On such
festive occasions, the witty old Abbé Correa de Serra, Judge Peters,
Mr. Du Ponceau, Dr. Caspar Wistar, Mr. John Vaughan, and later, Robert
Walsh, LL.D., and the Honorable William Short of Virginia, both most
delightful talkers, George Ord, William Strickland the architect, and
the ever-ready wits Dr. Nathaniel Chapman and Nicholas Biddle, gathered
around the board.

Of Judge Peters’s clever sayings we find numerous records. As he
grew older, his sharp nose and chin approached each other closely. A
friend observed to him, one day, that his nose and chin would soon be
at loggerheads. “Very likely,” he replied, “for hard words often pass
between them.” Once, while he was Speaker of the House of Assembly, one
of the members, in crossing the room, tripped on the carpet and fell
flat. The House burst into laughter, while the judge, with the utmost
gravity, cried, “Order, order, gentlemen! Do you not see that a member
is on the floor?” Unceremonious, communicative, friendly, Judge Peters
was the life of every circle that he entered; correcting Mayor Wharton
at a dinner when he called to the waiter, “John, more wine,” saying
that it was a _demi_john that he needed, while he himself “drank like
a fish,” as he expressed it, from his goblet of water, requiring no
artificial aid to brighten wits that were always keen and scintillating.

Mr. George Ord, who was a delightful _raconteur_ as well as a learned
naturalist, took great pleasure in relating a story of his friend Dr.
Abercrombie, a fellow-member of the society. Dr. James Abercrombie,
sometime rector of Christ and St. Peter’s Churches, was a divine of
the old school, who despised not the good things of this lower world
while engaged in preparation for those of the higher. Once, while on
a pastoral visit to the small town of Shrewsbury, New Jersey, where
an Episcopal church had been established, Dr. Abercrombie was regaled
with some very fine old Madeira wine, which he drank with evident
appreciation, and probably some surprise at finding anything so
choice in that region of the country. The next day, according to Mr.
Ord’s story, the good parson chose for his text that most appropriate
verse from the Acts of the Apostles, in which St. Paul says, “And the
barbarous people showed us no little kindness.”

Another clerical member of the learned fraternity was William White,
one of our early American bishops, who was an ardent patriot and a
genial companion, as well as the most devout of churchmen. A warm
friend of Benjamin West, the artist, Bishop White was fond of telling
how he helped West to secure his bride, Miss Betty Shewell. Mr. West
was in England, and so busy painting for the court and royal family
that he could not come over to America to marry his _fiancée_; but, as
his father was about to sail for England, he wrote to Miss Shewell,
begging her to join his father, and make the voyage with him. Miss
Shewell’s brother, who was averse to the match, chiefly because West
was an impecunious genius, put a stop to the proceedings by confining
the fair bride-elect in an upper room. Bishop White, then a very
young man, Dr. Franklin, and Mr. Francis Hopkinson determined to help
on the “course of true love” by facilitating Miss Shewell’s escape
to the ship, which was waiting for her at Chester. This they did by
means of a romantic rope-ladder and a carriage around the corner.
Miss Shewell with her maid reached the ship in good time, and a few
weeks after was married to Benjamin West in the English chapel of St.
Martin’s-in-the-Fields. In telling this story, the kindly bishop was
wont to add, gleefully, “Ben was a good fellow, and deserved a good
wife, and I would do the same thing over again to-day,”--a sentiment,
we may be sure, that was greeted with applause by the gravest of the
philosophers, they being no exception to the rule that “all the world
loves a lover.” An active member of the society, and for years one of
its counsellors, Bishop White was present on all important occasions,
grave or gay. Having known General Washington and the other great men
of the Revolution, and met and conversed with Samuel Johnson while in
England, his was one of the few familiar faces that greeted the Marquis
de Lafayette when he revisited America in 1824.

Another face to be seen for many successive years at the meetings
of the society, and at its annual dinners, was that of Peter S. Du
Ponceau, the French lawyer and philologist, who lived here for so
many years. He has left behind him pictures of some of his learned
associates that prove to us that these gentlemen, whose faces look
down upon us gravely from century-old portraits, were, on occasions,
as full of quips and quirks and fun and frolic as the most jovial
collegian of our day. Of his frequent journeys to Washington to attend
the sessions of the Supreme Court of the United States, in company with
Mr. Ingersoll, Mr. William Rawle, Mr. Lewis, and Mr. Edward Tilghman,
he says,--

 “As soon as we were out of the city and felt the flush of air, we
 were like school-boys in the playground on a holiday; and we began
 to kill time by all the means that our imagination could suggest.
 Flashes of wit shot their coruscations on all sides; puns of the
 genuine Philadelphia stamp were handed about; old college stories
 were revived; macaroni Latin was spoken with great purity; songs
 were sung,--even classical songs, among which I recollect the famous
 Bacchanalian of the Archdeacon of Oxford, _Mihi est propositum in
 tabernâ mori_; in short, we might have been taken for anything else
 but the grave counsellors of the celebrated bar of Philadelphia.”

Mr. Du Ponceau it is who is accredited with the well-known story of the
lawyer whose client came in and deposed that “his brother had died and
made a will.” A gentleman who read law with the facetious Frenchman
relates that it was only when a fee was placed in Mr. Du Ponceau’s
hand that he translated the phrase into, “Ah! you mean that your
brother made a will and died.” We can imagine the laugh with which the
philosophers would greet this most practical of jokes.

Quite as celebrated as the dinners of the society were Mr. John
Vaughan’s breakfasts, which held the same prominence in the social
life of the time as Dr. Wistar’s evening parties or as the Sunday
afternoon vespers of Mr. Henry C. Carey, where, during the late war,
and after its close, soldiers, politicians, statesmen, and civilians
met together and discussed the great issues and events that shook the
nation from 1860 to 1865. So at Mr. Vaughan’s breakfasts were discussed
the agitating questions of the last decade of the century, Federalists
and Democratic-Republicans, as they were beginning to be called,
meeting together around his hospitable board. Mr. Vaughan himself was
a Federalist, although not a violent partisan. Riding, one day, with
Mr. Jefferson, his horse became unmanageable, disturbing somewhat
Mr. Vaughan’s serenity, upon which the latter, gathering his reins
firmly, muttered under his breath, “This horse--this horse is as bad
as a Democrat!” “Oh, no,” replied the high-priest and leader of the
party; “if he were a Democrat, he would have thrown _you_ long ago.”
Mr. Vaughan, for many years librarian and treasurer of the society, had
his rooms in the building on Fifth Street, in one of which, before its
generous old-fashioned fireplace and high carved mantel, Washington
sat for his well-known portrait by the elder Peale. The general, whom
Mr. Vaughan numbered among his friends, had already been elected a
member of the society; but we find few records of his presence at its
meetings or at the famous breakfasts. One of these breakfasts, given
in the latter years of Mr. Vaughan’s life, is still remembered by Dr.
William H. Furness, then a young man, recently come from New England
to take charge of the First Unitarian Church of Philadelphia. The
breakfast lasted from nine until one. Whether the guests breakfasted
upon roast peacocks and nightingales’ tongues, or upon plain beefsteak
and chops, Dr. Furness does not remember; but he will never forget
the circle gathered around that table. There were John Quincy Adams,
Colonel Drayton of South Carolina, Mr. Du Ponceau, and Dr. Channing,
who exercised such an influence on the religious thought of New
England, and of whom the orthodox clergy were wont to say that his
theology was “Calvinism with the bones taken out.” A goodly company of
leading minds, “joined later,” says Dr. Furness, by Albert Gallatin
and the Rev. William Ware, pastor of the First Unitarian Church in New
York. Among other visitors of note entertained by Mr. Vaughan were Sir
Charles Lyell, and George Robins Gliddon, the Egyptologist, who were
both in this country about 1841.

Mr. John Vaughan, whose most distinguishing trait was love for his
fellow-men, whom, it was said, he took more delight in serving than
most men take in making and hoarding dollars, belonged to a family
distinguished in statesmanship, letters, and affairs. The Vaughan
brothers were of English birth, sons of Samuel Vaughan, a London
merchant trading with America. The most prominent of this large
family was Benjamin Vaughan, M.D., LL.D., sometime secretary to
Lord Shelburne, and acting as confidential messenger in the peace
negotiations between Great Britain and America in 1783. Deeply
tinctured with the revolutionary spirit of the time, a liberal to
the extent of admiring the system of the Directory in France, and
writing in favor of it, Benjamin Vaughan finally found it expedient
to quit the Old World for the more congenial political atmosphere of
the New. He settled in Hallowell, Maine, as did his brother Charles,
where descendants of the name still reside. The death of Dr. Benjamin
Vaughan, of Hallowell, was announced to the society in 1836, and Mr.
Merrick, his kinsman, was appointed to prepare a notice of him. Another
brother, Samuel, settled in Jamaica; William, the successful banker
of the family, remained in London; while John, one of the younger
brothers, came to Philadelphia, where he established himself as a
wine merchant, and a prominent member of the First Unitarian Church.
Generous to a fault, “Johnny Vaughan,” as his intimates were wont
to call him, seems to have objected to parting with but one single
earthly possession,--his umbrella. A lady who knew Mr. Vaughan when
he was a very old gentleman remembers one of flaming red, whose color
should have insured its staying qualities. A story is also told of
his having printed on the outside of another one in large characters,
“This umbrella was stolen from John Vaughan.” One day a friend of
Mr. Vaughan’s started off with this umbrella, and, quite unconscious
of its equivocal inscription, hoisted it in broad day. Mr. Vaughan’s
Portuguese office boy, who could speak or read no English, but who
knew the umbrella, and what the printing stood for, chanced to meet
the gentleman who carried it, and with speechless but entire devotion
to his master’s interests followed it, and “froze on to it,” as the
narrator expressed it, with such persistency that the holder was fain
to relinquish it and make his escape from the jeers of the by-standers.

It was over such a circle of learned men and _beaux-esprits_ that Mr.
Jefferson was called to preside, when he came to Philadelphia, in
1797, to act as Vice-President of the United States in an uncongenial
Federal administration. It is not strange that, with his scholarly and
scientific tastes, he found in the rooms of the Philosophical Society a
grateful retreat from political wrangling and the cares of state. Party
feeling ran so high, at this period, that “social intercourse between
members of the two parties ceased,” says Mr. Parton, “and old friends
crossed the street to avoid saluting one another. Jefferson declined
invitations to ordinary social gatherings, and spent his leisure hours
in the circle that met in the rooms of the Philosophical Society.”
Not that its membership was Republican, many of its prominent members
being Federalists; notably, Dr. Benjamin Rush, Chief Justice Tilghman,
Judge Peters, Jared Ingersoll, who was Federalist candidate for the
Vice-Presidency of the United States in 1812, Dr. Robert Patterson,
and Mr. Du Ponceau. This was a place, however, where science, art, and
literature occupied the ground and where politics and party differences
were forgotten in the discussion of some subject that touched the
general weal, as when Dr. Caspar Wistar discovered a new bone; or
Robert Patterson presented a paper on improved ship-pumps; or Jonathan
Williams one on a new mode of refining sugar; or when John Fitch
exhibited “the model, with a drawing and description, of a machine for
working a boat against the stream by means of a steam-engine;” or,
later, when Mr. Charles Goodyear was induced, by Franklin Peale, to
demonstrate to the society that vulcanized rubber could be made from
the juice of the _cahuchu_ tree. And here, as if to prove that science
and religion may be allied in closest union, came two distinguished
Moravian divines, John Heckewelder and the Rev. Lewis D. de
Schweinitz, the latter with his “_Synopsis Fungorum in America_.”

John Adams, the Federalist President, was a member of the Philosophical
Society, and speaks of it with warm admiration. Comparing Massachusetts
and Pennsylvania, he says, in one of his letters to his wife,--

 “Particular gentlemen here [in Philadelphia], who have improved upon
 their education by travel, shine; but in general old Massachusetts
 outshines her younger sisters. Still, in several particulars they
 have more wit than we. They have societies, the Philosophical Society
 particularly, which excites a scientific emulation, and propagates
 their fame. If ever I get through this scene of politics and war,
 I will spend the remainder of my days in endeavoring to instruct
 my countrymen in the art of making the most of their abilities and
 virtues, an art which they have hitherto too much neglected. A
 philosophical society shall be established at Boston, if I have wit
 and address enough to accomplish it, some time or other. Pray, set
 Brother Cranch’s philosophical head plodding upon this project. Many
 of his lucubrations would have been published and preserved for the
 benefit of mankind, and for his honor, if such a club had existed.”

Mr. Madison, who was far more congenial to Mr. Jefferson, politically,
than the sturdy New Englander, had been for years a member of the
society; but he was out of office now, and living quietly at his rural
home in Orange County, Virginia. It was during his residence here, in
1794, that the sprightly widow, who afterwards became his wife, writes
of her first meeting with “the great little Madison.” She tells us, in
her charming letters, that Aaron Burr brought him to see her. On this
occasion she wore “a mulberry-colored satin, with a silk tulle kerchief
over her neck, and on her head an exquisitely dainty little cap, from
which an occasional uncropped curl would escape.”

These were still days of picturesque dressing, with both men and
women. “Jeffersonian simplicity” had not yet come in, in full force.
Watson, the annalist, describes Mr. Jefferson, a few years earlier, in
“a long-waisted white cloth coat, scarlet breeches and vest, a cocked
hat, shoes and buckles, and white silk hose,”--an elegant figure, the
life and centre of the group of men gathered together in the society’s
rooms on Fifth Street. The great Rittenhouse had, in 1797, set
forth upon a wider range among the stars; but Dr. Benjamin Rush was
there,--physician, scientist, philanthropist, and statesman, a host in
himself. His kindly face and the recollections of his contemporaries
tell us that he was a pleasant companion, with all his learning,
which cannot always be said of the learned ones of the earth. There
also was the Rev. William Smith, first provost of the University of
Pennsylvania, a man of science as well as an able divine; Dr. Barton,
nephew of Dr. Rittenhouse, an original worker, who contributed largely
to the scientific literature of the day, and gave to Americans their
first elementary treatise on botany; and Dr. Caspar Wistar, the learned
physician and genial companion, who not only enriched the society by
his own work and teachings, but by his correspondence with Humboldt and
Soemmering in Germany, Camper in Holland, Sylvester in Geneva, Pole and
Hope in Great Britain, and many more of that ilk, kept its members _en
rapport_ with scientific work abroad. Dr. Wistar succeeded Dr. Rush as
President of the Pennsylvania Abolition Society, which early uttered
its protest against slavery. Nor was Dr. Wistar solely interested in
the cause of the negro; that of the American Indian, which we are wont
to regard as one of the latest fads in the philanthropic world, also
engaged his attention at this early date.

Dr. Wistar was elected president of the Philosophical Society on the
resignation of Mr. Jefferson, in 1815. Some years prior to this,
Dr. Wistar introduced to its circle the Baron von Humboldt, whom he
invited to that smaller coterie of learned men, at his own house,
which composed the Wistar Club. A gala day it must have been at the
Philosophical Society when it opened its doors to this greatest
naturalist of his time, perhaps of any time. The Baron von Humboldt was
returning from an extended tour in South America, Mexico, and the West
Indies. His young friends Montufar and Bonpland were with him,--the
same Bonpland who later gave the Empress Josephine flower-seeds from
the West Indies to plant at Malmaison, who became her intendant there,
and who stood by her bedside when she was dying.

Another attractive figure in this group of learned men is William
Tilghman, Chief Justice of Pennsylvania, the sound lawyer, ripe
scholar, and true gentleman, as his biographer calls him. Perhaps the
highest praise we can award to him now is to record that, although
Southern born and owning slaves, he expressed, with regard to slavery,
a “fervent wish to see the evils of this institution mitigated, and if
possible extinguished,” freeing his own slaves by a plan of gradual
emancipation. Mr. Tilghman was connected through his mother, Anne
Francis, with the supposed author of the Letters of Junius; and,
curiously enough, the strongest evidence yet found that the letters
were written by Sir Philip Francis has come through correspondence
with his American relatives. Interesting as is all that relates to
this literary puzzle of more than a century, the incident that led to
the recent discoveries is like a _conte de fées_, turning upon some
anonymous verses sent to a lady at Bath, in which she is told that

  “In the School of the Graces, by Venus attended,
  Belinda improves every hour.”

The fair “Belinda,” Miss Giles in every-day life, is quite sure
that the clever verses came from Sir Philip Francis, who danced
with her through a whole evening at Bath. In fact, she recognized
the handwriting of some of Woodfall’s fac-similes of the letters of
Junius. She has an anonymous note that accompanied the verses, which
is, she thinks, very like the Junius handwriting. The investigation
becomes exciting; the experts, Messrs. Chabot and Netherclift, study
the note and verses profoundly, and finally come to the conclusion
that Junius might have written the note, but not the verses. The Hon.
Edward Twisleton is deeply interested in the search, and is loath to
give up this promising leading, when lo! there comes from over the sea
a letter, nearly a hundred years old, in which Richard Tilghman, in
Philadelphia, writes to his cousin, Sir Philip Francis,--

 “You are very tenacious of your epigram. I observe you contend for
 it, as if your reputation as a Poet depended on it. I did not condemn
 the Composition, I only said that it was not an Original, and I say
 so still; but yet I am ready to allow that you can _weave_ Originals,
 because in the School of the Graces by Venus attended, Belinda
 improves every Hour.”

Was not this a coincidence? The Franciscans were delighted, especially
as the experts were ready to affirm that the handwriting of the verses
was that of Richard Tilghman, and that it was evident that he had
copied the verses for Sir Philip. As if to make all complete, it was
found that Richard Tilghman was at Bath, with his kinsman, at the time
the verses were sent. Nothing, that has not been absolutely proven,
has ever come closer to proof, and so it remains the Tantalus cup of
the _littérateur_, although there are many who find the evidence quite
conclusive that Francis and Junius were one and the same.

Charles Willson Peale, the artist, known as the elder Peale, was
curator of the Philosophical Society for many years, and one of its
most active members. He did good work in many lines, being a man of
scientific tastes and large public spirit. The society owes him a debt
of gratitude for handing down to this generation portraits of its most
illustrious officers and members. Mr. Peale rented a number of rooms in
the old house on Fifth Street, having his museum in the building, and
bringing up there his family of artist children, Raphael, Rembrandt,
Titian, Van-dyck, and Rubens,--names still known in American art, that
of Rembrandt being the most distinguished. In 1796 Mr. Peale presented
to the assembled philosophers a son four months and four days old, born
in the building, requesting them to name him. The society, upon this,
unanimously agreed that the child should be called Franklin, after
their chief founder and first president. “Franklin Peale,” says his
biographer, “did not disgrace his sponsors. He grew up thoughtful and
philosophical.” His genius was in the mechanical line. He was one of
the founders of the Franklin Institute, and for many years discharged
with great ability the office of chief coiner at the United States
Mint.

One of Mr. Peale’s friends, who became an active and valued member of
the society, was the learned Abbé de Serra, Portuguese Minister to the
United States. This reverend gentleman scandalized Mrs. Peale, whose
neatness was phenomenal, by appearing at her door so dusty and shabby
(he was not a handsome man at his best) that the dainty Quakeress
waved him away from her spotless threshold, saying, “No, my good man,
I have no time to attend to you now;” little thinking that the “good
man” was the expected guest in whose honor she had donned her best
satin gown, and prepared a savory repast, whose crowning triumph was a
dish of asparagus from Mr. Peale’s garden, then a greater rarity than
now. The Abbé had been on a geological tramp with Mr. Peale, and when
that gentleman rallied his wife on treating his friend and guest like
a beggar, the excellent lady justified herself by saying that, after
all, he could not be much of a gentleman, as he “helped himself to the
asparagus with his fingers;” eating it, of course, after the French
fashion.

Another _habitué_ of Mr. Peale’s house, and a frequent attendant at
the meetings of the society, was Charles Lucien Bonaparte, Prince de
Canino. He was the nephew and son-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte, ex-king
of Spain, and while in America resided in a house on the estate of
his uncle, near Bordentown, New Jersey. This young prince pursued
his studies in ornithology in the United States, making important
contributions to the works of Wilson. A man of wide scientific
knowledge, and a member of nearly all the learned societies of Europe,
the Prince de Canino gave a decided impulse to the study of natural
history in Italy, which was his home, and while in Philadelphia was an
active and interested member of the Philosophical Society, contributing
original papers and making valuable donations of books to its library.

A few women of distinguished ability have been, early and late, members
of the Philosophical Society: notably Mary Somerville, the English
astronomer; Professor Maria Mitchell, of Vassar; Mrs. Louis Agassiz,
and Madame Emma Seiler. The earliest woman member was the Russian
Princess Daschkof, lady-in-waiting to the Empress Catherine II. A
great traveller, for those days, the princess profited by all that she
saw and heard in the countries which she visited. A student and an
observer, the friend of Diderot in France, and associating in Edinburgh
with such men as Dr. Blair, Adam Smith, and Ferguson, she returned to
Russia to become director of the Academy of Arts and Sciences, and
later to establish another academy for the improvement and cultivation
of the Russian language. Of the manner in which the news of her
election to the Philosophical Society reached her, the princess says,--

“I was at my country house, and was not a little surprised on hearing
that a messenger from the council of state wished to see me. The
case and letter were introduced, the former of which contained a
large packet from Dr. Franklin, and the letter a very complimentary
communication on the part of the Duke of Sudermania. These
despatches,” says the princess, “were sent without any examination,”
and it was necessary to explain their nature at once to the despotic
Catherine. “Accordingly I drove to town,” adds the princess, “or
rather straight to court; and on entering the Empress’s dressing-room
I told the _valet de chambre_ in waiting that if her majesty was not
then engaged I should be happy in having permission to speak to her,
and to show her some papers which I had that morning received. The
Empress desired I might be shown into her bed-chamber, where I found
her writing at a little table. Having delivered into her hands the
letter of the Duke of Sudermania, ‘These others, madame,’ said I,
‘are from Dr. Franklin and from the secretary of the Philosophical
Society of Philadelphia, of which I have been admitted a most unworthy
member.’” The Empress made no comment on this matter; but after
reading the letter of the duke, desired the princess not to answer his
grace’s complimentary effusion. She had no objection, it appears, to
a correspondence between the princess and the octogenarian Franklin,
on the other side of the sea; but with the Duke of Sudermania it was
quite a different affair. The duke was a brother of the King of Sweden,
there was a coolness between the courts of Russia and Sweden, and, to
complicate matters, his grace had admired the princess at Aix and Spa,
who, with all her vast experience of life and long years of widowhood,
was only a little over forty, and speaks herself of her _beaux yeux_.

From the time of the election of the Princess Daschkof, in 1789, the
society has always had a Russian membership, generally from among the
members of the St. Petersburg Academy. In 1864 it was presented with
a superb copy of the Codex Sinaiticus, published in St. Petersburg in
1862, from the parchment rolls found by Tischendorf in the monastery of
St. Catharine on Mount Sinai.

A day never to be forgotten by the members of the Philosophical
Society--and there are some persons living whose memory runs back to
that period--was that upon which the Marquis de Lafayette was welcomed
to its hall, on his return to America in 1824. No words can more fitly
describe the emotions of the hour, certainly none can bring back more
perfectly the aroma of that olden time adulation, than the address of
welcome pronounced, on this occasion, by Mr. Charles J. Ingersoll:

 “America does not forget the romantic forthcoming of the most
 generous, consistent, and heroic of the knights of the old world
 to the rescue of the new. She has always dwelt delighted on the
 constancy of the nobleman who could renounce titles and wealth for
 more historical and philanthropic honors; the commander renouncing
 power, who never shed a drop of blood for conquest or vainglory. She
 has often trembled, but never blushed, for her oriental champion, when
 tried by the alternate caresses and rage of the most terrific mobs,
 and imposing monarchs. She knows that his hospitable mansion was the
 shrine at which her citizens in France consecrated their faith in
 independence. Invited to revisit the scenes of his first eminence,
 the very idolatry of welcome abounds with redeeming characteristics
 of self-government.... They raise him before the world as its image,
 and bear him through illuminated cities and widely-cultivated regions,
 all redolent with festivity and every device of hospitality and
 entertainment, where, when their independence was declared, there was
 little else than wilderness and war.”

Could tongue or pen say more?

An old Philadelphia lady, who, in her youth, had the honor of walking
to church with Lafayette, vividly recalls her keen disappointment when
she first saw him,--short and stout, not by any means the typical hero
of her romantic dreams. His son, George Washington Lafayette, was with
him, and at a dinner given him, when called upon to respond to a toast,
arose, and, struggling with his emotion and his feeble command of
English, placed his hand upon his heart, and said, “I am zo happy to be
ze son of my fadder!”--words which so touched the sympathetic chord in
the hearts of all present that they felt that the entire vocabulary of
the language could have furnished him with no more fitting phrase.

Among later members of the society have been such men as Noah Webster,
Josiah Quincy, Washington Irving, Elisha Kent Kane, the Arctic
explorer, the Count de Lesseps, Mr. Gladstone, Dr. Oliver Wendell
Holmes, George Bancroft, the historian, James Russell Lowell, and the
two great naturalists, Louis Agassiz, and Joseph Leidy, both of whom,
with their vast learning, retained through life a childlike frankness
and simplicity that endeared them to all who approached them. Those
who met Professor Agassiz by the sea, during his vacation seasons, and
heard from his own lips of the wonders of the shore, and those who
listened to a popular lecture of Dr. Leidy, in which he described the
life and customs of the minute creatures to be found in a drop of pond
water, will always rejoice that it was their privilege to journey even
a little way into the fairy-land of science with such masters for their
guides. Of the pleasure and profit of a more thorough penetration into
its mysteries and enchantments under such preceptors, those who were
fortunate enough to be numbered among the students of Agassiz and Leidy
speak with enthusiasm.

The Philosophical Society, grown gray and venerable, now celebrates,
May, 1893, its one hundred and fiftieth birthday. Although numbering
a large corps of native and foreign members, working in various
branches of knowledge, and contributing to its regularly issued
publications valuable papers, the present fraternity feel that the
society’s proudest claim to distinction lies in the fact that it
fostered literature, science, and invention in the young nation, and
thus became the _alma mater_ of many institutions that have gone forth
from its protecting arms to become, in their turn, centres of light and
usefulness.

[Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[19] Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, by John Bach McMaster, p.
137.

[20] Life of Benjamin Franklin, by James Parton, vol. i. p. 263.

[21] Works of Franklin, by Jared Sparks, vol. ii. p. 9.

[22] Proceedings of the American Philosophical Society, pp. 1, 2.

[23] Charles Willson Peale’s copy of Martin’s Franklin, the original of
which is owned by Mr. Henry Pratt McKean.

[24] Benjamin Franklin as a Man of Letters, by John Bach McMaster, p.
277.




[Illustration: THE WISTAR PARTIES]


If the impulse towards learning early given by the American
Philosophical Society has found expression in Philadelphia, and other
cities, in historical societies, scientific schools, academies of
natural science, and kindred institutions, its more genial and social
side has long been represented in the city of its birth by the Wistar
Parties.

As this old club has, within a few years, been reorganized, it may
be interesting to turn back to the period of its inception, and even
further back into the past century, when Dr. Caspar Wistar held, at
his own house, those informal gatherings to which the Wistar Parties
of to-day owe their name. How large a place this club filled in the
social life of the period may be gathered from the fact that most
Philadelphians of distinction, if not actual members, were its frequent
guests, while all strangers of note were introduced into the circle
of choice spirits,--choice in the full sense of the word, because
chosen for particular gifts or attainments, the original Wistar Club
being composed of members of the American Philosophical Society, a
close organization that has ever striven to keep its eye single to the
interests of science, literature, art, history, and the promotion of
all useful knowledge. Although Silas Deane, the Marquis de Chastellux,
and John Adams grow quite enthusiastic when describing the luxurious
living prevalent among “the nobles of Pennsylvania,” the latter admits,
with what in a New-Englander may be considered rare generosity, that
there was something to be found here better than our high living, as he
speaks of the “high thinking” of some of those old Philadelphians, in
one of his charming letters to his wife which are only less charming
than her own.

That John Adams does not mention Dr. Wistar’s hospitable house, and
the company met there, is attributable to the fact that the seat
of government, and with it John Adams as its head, removed from
Philadelphia to Washington about the time that these receptions began.

The Wistar Parties have frequently been spoken of as first held on
Sunday, which erroneous impression was probably due to the fact that
Dr. Wistar’s family and friends were in the habit of dropping in upon
him on Sunday evenings, knowing him to be more at leisure then than
through the week. The following account, from the pen of Dr. Hugh L.
Hodge, entirely disproves the Sunday origin of these parties, which
were begun before Dr. Wistar’s second marriage:[25]

 “His [Dr. Wistar’s] house had become the centre of the literary and
 scientific society of Philadelphia. He was in the habit of receiving
 his friends to a frugal entertainment every Saturday evening. To these
 reunions the most distinguished foreign visitors in the city brought
 introductions, and the most intellectual of the professional residents
 gathered.

 “Mrs. Bache, a very superior and high-toned woman, had, previous to
 her marriage [in 1797], kept house for her brother for several years,
 during which time she, with her friend Miss Eddy, afterwards Mrs. Dr.
 Hosack, of New York, had the great pleasure and advantage of attending
 these remarkable Saturday evening meetings.”

These early reunions were informal, but as years rolled on a pleasant
custom crystallized into an established usage, the same friends
meeting, week after week, in Dr. Wistar’s house, at the southwest
corner of Fourth and Prune Streets, whose beautiful garden extended
to St. Mary’s church-yard. The entertainment was simple, as the
host’s idea was an intellectual rather than a convivial gathering.
Tea, coffee, and other light refreshments were offered to the guests;
ice-creams, raisins, and almonds were later added to the regale.
Even then the name of Sybarite could not be applied to those early
convives: the terrapin and oyster decadence was of much later date.
A table was seldom spread. The number of guests varied from ten to
fifty, but usually included between fifteen and twenty-five persons.
The invitations were commenced in October or November, and continued
to March or April. During this period Dr. Wistar welcomed to his home,
each week, his old friends and colleagues, and any strangers whom they
chose to bring with them.

In 1804 Dr. Wistar issued an invitation to his friends to meet Baron
von Humboldt, the great naturalist, and his young friend the botanist
Bonpland, who stopped in Philadelphia on their return from a scientific
expedition through Mexico and the West Indies. Here also was introduced
the latest sensation, in the form of Captain Riley, long a prisoner
among the Arabs; also the learned and eccentric Dr. Mitchill, first
Surgeon-General of New York, later satirized by Halleck and Drake in
“The Croakers:”

  “We hail thee!--mammoth of the State,
    Steam frigate on the waves of physic,
  Equal in practice or debate
    To cure the nation or the phthisic!”

Dr. Hosack, of the same city, who was present at the fatal duel between
Hamilton and Burr, was another early guest; while under the formal
organization of 1818, and in a time nearer our own, England’s most
brilliant novelist recalls an evening spent at what he is pleased to
call a “Whister party.”

It is not strange that Philadelphians were glad to take the guests of
the city to these parties, where was gathered together, both in the
last century and in this, the best that our New World civilization
could produce, whether of talent and learning or of courtly grace and
good breeding, and here down all the varied years has flashed that
genial flow of wit without which no social gathering is complete.
Here, in early days, came the learned and witty Abbé Correa de Serra,
Mr. Samuel Breck, of Boston, and Dr. John W. Francis, of New York,
whose wit and social qualities were said to resemble those of the
much-loved Lamb; and later came Robert Walsh and Joseph Hopkinson, both
distinguished for their brilliant colloquial abilities, while Nicholas
Biddle would save for the learned brotherhood his freshest _bon mot_,
and Dr. Nathaniel Chapman would bring hither his most irresistible
witticism.

If the older physicians, whose portraits were recently collected at
the centenary of the College of Physicians, could step down from their
frames, after the fashion of a scene in a well-known drama, we should
have before us, _in propria persona_, a number of Dr. Wistar’s guests
of the medical fraternity. Presumably among these was Dr. Benjamin
Rush, who has been called the American Sydenham, but who combined so
many gifts that, like certain plants of various characteristics, it is
almost impossible to classify him. Perhaps in a larger sense than it
can be said of most men, even of the good physician, he belonged to
humanity.[26]

A frequent guest was Dr. Adam Kuhn, who studied in Edinburgh, and
brought home treasures of learning as his contribution to this
“feast of reason.” Here were also the Shippens, father and son,--both
Williams, both practising at the same time, and both so eminent that
they have frequently been confused by the historian. An honorable line
of Shippens, in different callings, but notably in law and medicine,
has come from that Edward Shippen of whom Boston was not worthy, and
who, after being lashed and driven through the town at the cart’s
tail, because, forsooth, good Puritans couldn’t abide good Quakers,
came to Philadelphia in 1693, to be its first mayor and the founder
of a distinguished family.[27] Here also shone the kindly face of Dr.
Samuel Powel Griffitts, who seems to have brought with him, wherever he
went, an atmosphere of “peace and good will to men.” And here, these
gatherings being formed of men of various callings and professions,
came such lawyers as William Rawle, who was ready to discuss theology
as well as law,--perhaps a little readier to talk of the one than of
the other. One day he is writing his notes on the Constitution of the
United States, while upon another such subjects as Original Sin and the
Evidences of Christianity engage his versatile pen.

Among legal gentlemen who were frequent guests of Dr. Wistar were
William Tilghman, of Maryland, later Chief Justice of Pennsylvania,
who in an interesting biographical sketch has embalmed the memory of
his host; George Clymer, statesman and patriot, whose name is appended
to the Declaration; and Peter Du Ponceau, who, although a Frenchman,
had an ardent admiration for American institutions and the primitive
simplicity that characterized the old Quaker _régime_ in Philadelphia.
And that the cure of souls might not be neglected, we find here John
Heckewelder, the Moravian missionary, an intimate of Wistar, and
a correspondent of Du Ponceau, who later translated Heckewelder’s
interesting work on Indian manners and customs into the French. Here
also was John Vaughan, the Unitarian philanthropist, of whom it has
been said that “he represented this city as faithfully as its own name
‘Brotherly Love.’” Did they meet and talk together, these two at the
extreme poles of doctrine, the devout Moravian and the Arian whose life
was consecrated to the service of his brother man? If they met, and in
their discourse fell upon such subjects as engage the characters in
“Paradise Lost” and the “Divina Commedia,” we may be sure that in their
large mutual love for mankind they found abundant sympathy,

  “Nor melted in the acid waters of a creed
  The Christian pearl of charity.”

A goodly company, among whose members there is no one more worthy to be
remembered than the host, generally known as Dr. Caspar Wistar, Jr.,
being descended from another Caspar Wistar, who came to this country
in 1717. We are informed by a German scholar and a genealogist that
all the Wisters, whether _ter_ or _tar_, come from one common stock
in Germany, where the name is written Wüster, and that Caspar, who
came to Philadelphia in 1717, son of Hans Caspar and Anna Katerina
Wüster or Wister, in having a deed of conveyance prepared was put
down Wistar by the clerk. This mistake he did not take the trouble
to correct, and from this first Caspar has come a line of _tars_, of
which Dr. Caspar Wistar, Jr., was the most distinguished. A second son
of old Hans Caspar Wister, of Hilsbach, Germany, coming over later,
had his papers made out properly, according to the German orthography
of the name, and thus established the Philadelphia line of _ters_. We
venture to give this rather lengthy explanation in view of the fact
that the spelling of Wister has been a fertile subject for discussion
in the Quaker City for some years, and because it is a most reasonable
one, as will be admitted by all who have studied the records of past
generations. In old letters and papers of the last century it is not
unusual to find a surname variously spelled in the same letter, or even
on the same page. This is notably the case in the voluminous “Penn and
Logan Correspondence,” where Jenings and Jennings, Ashton and Assheton,
Blaithwaite and Blathwayt, used interchangeably, hopelessly confuse the
reader.

A student of the schools of Edinburgh, Professor in the College of
Philadelphia, and later in the University, Dr. Wistar has the honor of
being the author of the first American treatise on anatomy. Eminent as
a physician, teacher, and man of science, this large-brained and busy
man found life incomplete without the cultivation of its social side.

It is to be regretted that Mr. Vaughan, Mr. Du Ponceau, or the learned
Dr. Benjamin Rush, who at times used a pen with a humorous nib, or
some of the other _habitués_ of these unique gatherings, have not
left us pleasant and gossiping reminiscences of the Wistar Club,
which would serve to render us as familiar with these old figures
as contemporaneous writers have made us with the frequenters of the
Kit-Cat Club, where the wits of Queen Anne’s time gathered, or that
later circle at the Turk’s Head, dominated by the great burly figure
of the dictionary-maker. Garrick, Reynolds, and all the rest are
grouped about him; and Boswell is ever at hand, taking notes. Did
humble Boswell realize that he was painting pictures for the future, as
well as, even better than, the elegant Sir Joshua, who sat near him?
Goldsmith was at it too, giving us life as it was, not some fanciful
picture of it; and to them we owe it that these men live before us
now. The following is the nearest approach that we can find to such a
picture, and this, from the pen of the late Chief Justice Tilghman,
gives us only one figure, when we would like to be presented to the
whole company.

After dwelling upon the modest dignity and bland courtesy of Dr.
Wistar’s bearing as President of the Philosophical Society, and the
ardor with which he incited its members to diligence in collecting,
before it should be too late, the perishing materials of American
history, Mr. Tilghman says,--

 “The meetings of this committee he [Dr. Wistar] regularly attended. It
 was their custom, after the business of the evening was concluded, to
 enter upon an unconstrained conversation on literary subjects. Then,
 without intending it, our lamented friend would insensibly take the
 lead; and so interesting were his anecdotes, and so just his remarks,
 that, drawing close to the dying embers, we often forgot the lapse
 of time, until warned by the unwelcome clock that we had entered on
 another day.”

Here is another pen-sketch from a writer signing himself “Antiquary,”
which has a touch of life in it, and shows the good doctor’s ready tact
in setting a _gauche_ stranger at his ease. Mr. John Vaughan introduced
into the learned circle what the narrator is pleased to call “a living,
live Yankee, a specimen of humanity more rare,” he says, “forty or
fifty years ago than now.” It would appear that this compatriot was
received into the company with emotions similar to those awakened,
later, by the advent of the “American Cousin” in England.

 “He was,” says the writer, “a man remarkable for his mechanical turn
 of mind, but entirely unused to society. No workshop could turn
 out a more uncouth individual. I was standing near the door when
 John Vaughan brought him in. Between the blaze of light, the hum of
 conversation, and the number of well-dressed men, he was completely
 overcome, and sank into the first chair he could reach. Mr. Vaughan
 could not coax him out of it, and I expected every minute the door
 opened that he would make a bolt for the street. Presently Dr. Wistar,
 who had the happy knack of suiting his conversation to all ages and
 classes, was introduced to the shy Yankee. Soon the ice was broken,
 and I saw the shy mechanic conversing freely with scientific men,
 explaining to them his views upon mechanism, etc.”

When, in 1818, the good old doctor went out to join “the innumerable
company,” the little circle here, which he had drawn together, resolved
to commemorate the pleasant meetings at his house, and to keep fresh
his memory, by forming an organization called the Wistar Parties. This
is, in brief, the _raison d’être_ of the association, as given by a
subsequent member, Mr. Job R. Tyson, in his interesting paper entitled
“Sketch of the Wistar Party,” read before that honorable society
September 26, 1845. He says,--

 “I have ascertained that the following gentlemen, in the autumn of the
 year 1818, formed themselves into an association and agreed to give
 three parties every year, during the season: William Tilghman, Robert
 M. Patterson, Peter S. Du Ponceau, John Vaughan, Reuben Haines, Robert
 Walsh, Jr., Zacheus Collins, and Thomas C. James.”

There were only eight to begin with; in 1821 the number had increased
to sixteen, and in 1828 to twenty-four.

Mr. Tyson tells us that two essential laws of the existence of the
organization were, “_first_, that no one is eligible to membership who
is not a member of the American Philosophical Society; and, _second_,
that unanimity is necessary to a choice.” Numerous regulations were
added, “which,” he says, “with some modifications, have since been
observed.”

The number of Philadelphians who could be invited to one party was
twenty, and these it appears were picked citizens, selected rather for
their attainments and attributes than for their “long descent.” With
regard to the number of strangers invited, no limit was set.

The members were pledged to attend themselves, and procure the
attendance of strangers, punctually at the hour of eight o’clock;
and “the sumptuary code enjoined, as consentaneous with the scheme
and objects in view, that the entertainments should be marked by
unexpensive, if not frugal, simplicity.” No tea, coffee, cakes, or wine
were to be served before supper. It was recommended that the collation
consist of one course, and be so prepared as to dispense with the use
of knives at table. No ice-creams were allowed. This in 1828.

In 1835 Mr. Job R. Tyson bought Dr. Caspar Wistar’s old house, at
Fourth and Prune Streets, when once more it opened its doors to the
learned and jovial brotherhood.

In 1840 the number of citizens who could be invited was raised to
forty, while in the years succeeding the organization of the club many
guests from over the sea, and from the different States of the Union,
had been welcomed to the Wistar Parties. One of the latter writes,--

 “During my stay in Philadelphia I was present at several of these
 Wistar meetings, and always returned from them with increased
 conviction of their beneficial tendency.

 “These meetings are held by rotation at the houses of the different
 members. The conversation is generally literary or scientific, and,
 as the party is usually very large, it can be varied at pleasure.
 Philosophers eat like other men, and the precaution of an excellent
 supper is by no means found to be superfluous. It acts, too, as a
 gentle emollient on the acrimony of debate. No man can say a harsh
 thing with his mouth full of turkey, and disputants forget their
 differences in unity of enjoyment.”

Better known abroad in the early part of the century than any other
American city, all travellers of consequence came to Philadelphia.
Among these we find such men as General Moreau, counted after Bonaparte
the greatest general in the French Republic; the younger Murat, who
married Miss Fraser, of South Carolina; the Marquis de Grouchy, whose
name will be forever associated with the defeat of Waterloo; the poet
Moore, whose singing drew tears from the beautiful eyes of Mrs. Joseph
Hopkinson; the Prince de Canino, son-in-law of Joseph Bonaparte,
ex-king of Spain, who, himself residing at Bordentown until 1830, was
doubtless a guest of the Wistar Association, although, after the
fashion of princes, it was his pleasure to entertain rather than to
be entertained. These and many more, including President Madison, and
the witty and able Virginia gentleman William Short, who, as secretary
of legation under Thomas Jefferson, chargé-d’affaires to the French
Republic, and minister to Spain and the Netherlands, had seen much
of foreign official and social life. An acquaintance of Talleyrand,
himself a diplomatist, life abroad offered Mr. Short many attractions,
which a friend and contemporary assures us were more than balanced by
the terrors of the sea, which menaced him in the form of sea-sickness.
This gentleman, a surviving member of the Wistar Association of 1837,
recalls no social intercourse in Old-World cities more delightful than
that of this informal club.

While on a visit to Philadelphia in 1825, the Duke of Saxe-Weimar makes
the following entry in his journal:

 “At Mr. Walsh’s I found a numerous assembly, mostly of scientific and
 literary gentlemen. This assembly is called ‘Wistar Party.’... The
 conversation generally relates to literary and scientific topics.
 I unexpectedly met Mr. E. Livingston in this assembly. I was also
 introduced to the mayor of the city, Mr. [Joseph] Watson, as well
 as to most of the gentlemen present, whose interesting conversation
 afforded me much entertainment.”

This German nobleman, who was well “wined and dined” in old
Philadelphia, seems to have possessed a happy faculty of replying aptly
to the pretty compliments paid him and his country by Judge Peters, Mr.
Charles J. Ingersoll, and other social magnates of the period. To the
toast “Weimar, the native country of letters,” he replied, with ready
wit, “Pennsylvania, the asylum of unfortunate Germans.” Can we not
hear the laughter and applause that greeted that toast? They were not
allowed to subside, either, as the venerable Judge Peters followed the
toast with a song which he had composed the previous evening, and which
he sang with great vivacity and spirit. Are there any such gatherings
now, and do our octogenarians sing songs of their own composing with
vivacity?

The Duke of Saxe-Weimar describes another Wistar Party, this at the
house of Colonel Clement C. Biddle, at which John Quincy Adams, then
President of the United States, was a guest. Of him he says,--

 “The President is about sixty years old, of rather short stature, with
 a bald head, and of a very plain and worthy appearance. He speaks
 little, but what he does speak is to the purpose. I must confess that
 I seldom in my life felt so true and sincere a reverence as at the
 moment when this honorable gentleman, whom eleven millions of people
 have thought worthy to elect as their chief magistrate, shook hands
 with me.”

In the same year Chief Justice Tilghman records a Wistar Party held at
his house, at which were present such citizens as Roberts Vaux, Mathew
Carey, the Irish protectionist, his son Henry C. Carey, political
economist and writer, Joseph Hopkinson, the elder Peale, who had
studied at the Royal Academy in London and came home to paint portraits
of Washington and his generals, Dr. Frederick Beasley, and many more,
with a sprinkling of foreigners,--Mr. Pedersen, Minister from Denmark
to the United States, the Prince de Canino, who was an enthusiastic
ornithologist, Colonel Beckwith, who had left a leg upon the field of
Waterloo, and several French chevaliers. The whole company, numbering
about one hundred, was regaled with chicken salad, oysters, ices,
wine, punch, and the like, at an expense of twenty-four dollars and
eighty-nine cents. This moderate sum, the accurate transcriber tells
us, included the whiskey for the punch, the spermaceti candles, oil for
the lamps, and extra fire in one room.

Later in the history of the Wistar Club, after the good founders had
gone, and left it to its own devices, serious innovations were made in
the old sumptuary code, whereupon severe strictures were instituted
against the dainty fare set before the wise men, in the local journals
and elsewhere. One of these attacks upon the Wistarians appeared in
the then recently established _Daily Courier_, and is interesting
not only because the slashing editorial of the young writer ended
the brief career of his paper, but because its demise is intimately
connected with the rise of two prominent journals of to-day. It
happened that many of the subscribers to the _Daily Courier_ were
members or guests of the Wistar Parties. These persons instantly
withdrew their patronage. The _Courier_ was shaken to its foundations,
and the unfortunate young Scotchman, James Gordon Bennett, whose pen
had proved too sharp for Philadelphia, sold his journal to Mr. Jesper
Harding, upon which the _Daily Courier_ was merged in the _Pennsylvania
Inquirer_, and Mr. Bennett, having transplanted his talents to the more
congenial soil of New York, later employed them in founding the _New
York Herald_.[28]

Written invitations to the Wistar Parties seem to have been used up to
1835, when Mr. Vaughan first speaks of a printed invitation. This bore
the quaint queued head of Dr. Wistar, and is in all respects similar to
that issued by the Wistar Association _redivivus_ of 1886.

In 1838 and 1839 printed lists appeared, naming the hosts of the
season, and giving the dates of the several entertainments. To these
were appended sumptuary regulations, which were of course born to die.
Just when the terrapin, game, croquette, and like dainties replaced
the original decanters, flanked with ice, cakes, and one substantial
course, Mr. Tyson does not record. When the terrapin came, however, it
came to stay, until the hot discussions incident to the disturbances of
the late civil war routed it and the guests alike.

Thackeray carried away from Philadelphia such pleasant recollections of
the Wistar Parties, and the mirth and good cheer there enjoyed, that
he thus refers to them in a letter written to Mr. William B. Reed from
Washington in 1853. He has just heard of the death of his friend Mr.
William Peter, British Consul to Philadelphia.

 “Saturday I was to have dined with him, and Mrs. Peter wrote saying he
 was ill with influenza: he was in bed with his last illness, and there
 were to be no more Whister parties for him. Will Whister himself,
 hospitable pig-tailed shade, welcome him to Hades? And will they sit
 down--no, stand up--to a ghostly supper, devouring the ιφθιμους ψυχας
 of oysters and all sorts of birds?”

Something else than the mighty oysters impressed the genial novelist,
and that was the face and figure of John Irwin, a well-known
head-waiter, who so resembled the terrapin over which he presided that
Thackeray has, in a few rapid pencil-strokes, put him down on paper as
a fine specimen of a diamond-back. Those who still remember Irwin’s
great paunch and shining face will recognize his portrait in Mr.
Thackeray’s “Orphan of Pimlico.” Thus, this latter-day Bogle, although
there arose in his time no poet, like Nicholas Biddle, to embalm his
virtues in humorous verse, has, like the “colorless colored man,” been
immortalized by the hand of genius.

The pleasing side of Philadelphia social life must have left its
impress upon the receptive mind of Thackeray, as he writes from
Switzerland in July of the same year,--

 “Since my return from the West, it was flying from London to Paris,
 and _vice versa_, dinners right and left, parties every night. If I
 had been in Philadelphia I could scarcely have been more feasted. Oh,
 you unhappy Reed! I see you (after that little supper with McMichael)
 on Sunday at your own table, when we had that good Sherry-Madeira,
 turning aside from the wine-cup with your pale face! That cup has gone
 down this well so often (meaning my own private cavity) that I wonder
 the cup isn’t broken, and the well as well as it is.... I always
 remember you and yours, and honest Mac, and Wharton, and Lewis, and
 kind fellows who have been kind to me and I hope will be kind to me
 again.”

The “Mac” is evidently Mr. Morton McMichael, to whose whiskey punch
Mr. Thackeray alludes with tenderness in another letter, and who
is described by all who knew him as the most genial of men, a very
“king of good fellows.” So great were his social talents that, like
Shenstone’s Frenchwoman who could “draw wit out of a stone,” he
possessed the power to redeem from stagnation the dullest of dinners by
his happy faculty of giving his best and leading others to do the same.

The “Lewis” alluded to by Mr. Thackeray is Mr. William D. Lewis, more
recently dead; another delightful dinner-talker. Possessed of rare
_bonhomie_, and furnished with a fund of anecdotes of travel,--for he
had lived some years in Russia,--he brought mirth and cheer into the
circles to which he was welcomed, and was even known, on occasions,
to sing some familiar household verses, as “Home, Sweet Home,” in the
Russian language, to the great amusement, if not to the edification, of
his hearers.

In 1842, Mr. Tyson records only two of the original members of 1818
still surviving, Dr. R. M. Patterson and Robert Walsh. The kindly
face of Mr. Vaughan (Johnny Vaughan, as his intimates called him),
first Dean of the Wistar Association, had only lately disappeared from
the circle. Although death had sadly thinned the ranks of original
membership, a number of honored names filled the blanks: among these,
Horace Binney, William M. Meredith, John Sergeant, Joshua Francis
Fisher, Judge Kane, Langdon Cheves, from South Carolina, Thomas Isaac
Wharton, and, there always being a large proportion of medical men,
such distinguished sons of the healing art as Dr. Robert Hare, Dr.
Thomas C. James, Dr. John K. Mitchell, Dr. Isaac Hays, physician and
writer, Dr. Franklin Bache and his friend Dr. George B. Wood closely
associated with him in medical literature, Dr. Charles D. Meigs, and
Moncure Robinson, Esq., who, among the many who have come and gone,
still [1887] recalls delightful evenings spent at the Wistar Parties.
Dr. Isaac Lea was in 1843 Dean of the association, which office he held
until the stirring events of ’60 and ’61 scattered its members, not
again to unite until 1886, within a few months of his death, when he
was succeeded in this office by his son, Mr. Henry C. Lea.[29]

Writing during this hiatus of many years, Dr. George B. Wood says,--

 “I have always regarded the Wistar Club not merely as an ornamental
 feature of Philadelphia society, but as a very useful institution;
 bringing as it did persons together of various pursuits, who would not
 otherwise perhaps have met, thus removing prejudices and conciliating
 friendly feeling; and, by a regulation regarding strangers which
 gave each member the right to introduce one or more to the meetings,
 facilitating their intercourse with citizens, and contributing to the
 reputation of our city for hospitality.”

It may be that these words hold something of a prophecy for the
future, as well as a _résumé_ of the past; and now that the old-time
invitation, bearing the “hospitable pig-tailed” head of the founder,
has once more begun to circulate, an important influence may be
exercised by it, in drawing together the best and ablest of the
various professions and callings of this city, and in affording,
as of old, a pleasant and informal means of entertaining stranger
guests. Such a club as this forecasts a meeting-ground where British
and Continental scientists and literati, professional men and men of
affairs, may clasp hands with American workers on the same lines;
where the large philanthropy of England may meet an even larger
New-World philanthropy; where, under some hospitable roof, questions in
social and political science, or the latest discovery in chemistry or
physics, may be discussed over croquettes and oysters, and with a dash
of hock or sherry (no sparkling wines are allowed) the seas that wash
widely-separated shores shall be bridged in an instant, and, meeting
on some congenial ground of knowledge, of thought, or of interest, Old
and New World denizens shall feel the delightful thrill of a common
brotherhood.

[Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[25] Dr. Wistar married, in 1798, Elizabeth Mifflin, granddaughter of
John Mifflin, the Councillor.

[26] Dr. Rush himself humorously related how his patriotism had
interfered with his practice, a number of persons refusing to be
treated by him for yellow fever for the very good reason that he had
signed the Declaration of Independence.

[27] Since writing the above, it appears upon the indisputable
authority of the first charter for the city of Philadelphia, discovered
in 1887 by Messrs. Edward P. Allinson and Boies Penrose, that the
honored name of Edward Shippen, which so long headed the list of
Philadelphia mayors, must be relegated to a second place, Humphrey
Morray having been the first mayor of Philadelphia.

[28] Casper Souder’s History of Chestnut Street.

[29] The Saturday Night Parties, held during the war and for some
years after, have been spoken of as direct successors of the Wistar
Association. These, however, were not composed of members of the
Philosophical Society, and the discussions at the meetings naturally
partook of the heat and excitement of the hour, rather than of the
calmer literary and scientific debate for which the Wistar Parties were
designed. The only lineal descendants of the Wistar Association of 1818
are the parties recently organized, which bear the name of the great
physician and scientist in whose honor they were founded.




[Illustration: A BUNDLE OF OLD LOVE LETTERS]


Strange it is that the maiden meditations of more than two centuries
ago should have recently been brought to light in the love-letters of
Dorothy Osborne, so full of womanly tenderness, so humorous, so grave
and gay by turns, and so valuable for the spirited pictures they give
of the life and personages of the day.

Among stacks of dry-as-dust manuscripts, awaiting the discriminating
inspection of the antiquarian, are doubtless other letters of sentiment
worthy of the world’s reading, even if there are few equal in grace
and style to those of the lovely mistress of Chicksands. A few such
unknown or forgotten love-letters have come under the observation of
the writer,--among these some yellowed pages traced by the hand of
William Penn and addressed to Hannah Callowhill, whose name is now
handed down to Philadelphians by the street which bears her family
name, but who was known to her contemporaries as a woman of strong
character and noble qualities, well fitted to be a helpmeet to the good
Proprietary. These letters form pleasant reading for a leisure hour,
not only on account of their quaint simplicity, but also because of the
insight they give into the delicate and refined nature of the man who
wrote them.[30]

We are wont to think of the founder of the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
as a man deeply immersed in religious questions, in legal business,
land surveys and titles,--indeed, in all that affected the welfare of
the little colony that he established on the banks of the Delaware. To
picture him as an ardent lover requires some imagination, especially
at a period when the early romance of his life was buried in the grave
of his beloved Gulielma, and he figures on the pages of history as a
widower, past middle age, with three children. Yet among his letters
to his betrothed are some that glow with all the warmth and ardor of
youthful affection, while, as befits a man of his years and position,
they contain wise reflections on life, and passages marked by the
prudence, the forethought, and the practical grasp that come with riper
age; and always they are deeply and sincerely religious.

This Quaker lover does not write a sonnet to the eyebrows of his
mistress, nor does he say, like a modern widower whose _billet doux_
has come under our notice, that he has “lost his married partner and
would be glad to renew his loss.” He tells her, in grave and simple
language, that it is for the qualities of her heart and mind that he
loves her and desires to win her, as in the following written from
Worminghurst, Penn’s English home, in 1695:

 “And now let me tell thee, my Dearest, that tho’ there are many
 qualitys, for which I admire thee, as well as love thee, yet yt of
 Compassionating the unhappy is none of the least. And whatsoever
 pittys has love, for it springs out of the same soft ground; and can
 never fail, as often as there is occasion to try it. That my Dearest
 H. has been a Mourner, a Sympathizer, an inhabitant of Dust, and so
 wean’d from the common tastes of pleasure, yt gratefy other Pallats,
 does so much exalt her character with me, yt if this were all she
 brought, she must be a treasure to yt happy man yt has a Title to her.
 And since, by an unusual goodness, she has made it my Lot, it shall be
 as much my pleasure as she has made it my duty to make her constantly
 sensible how much I am so of my obligation to her.”

One of the most tender of these missives includes some family details
about Billy’s[31] health, who “is lively yet tender” and has just had
his hair cut, and winds up with the following description of a most
unromantic hamper which was intended as an offering to the beloved one:

 “I presume by the next wagon, there comes an Hamper directed to thy
 father, the Contents for thee. Viz 3 Gallons of light french Brandy,
 one of wh’ pray present thy Mother. I ordered 2 lbs of Chocolate to
 keep them company. My Daughter prays thee to accept of 3 small pots of
 venson, yt she says will keep well & are of her own manufacture, as
 were all the last. She is concerned her pig brawn was not ready wc’h
 she fancys would not have been a disagreeable way of eating a pig, but
 another season will do. These are little things and yet would express
 tho’ meanly Love that is Great.”

Was Letitia Penn’s brawn the same sort as that over which dear old Lamb
waxed so eloquent in a letter to his friend Manning? It had been sent
to him by the cook of Trinity Hall and Caius College, and he says of
it,--

 “’Tis of all my hobbies the supreme in the eating way. He might have
 sent sops from the pan, skimmings, crumpets, chips, hog’s lard, the
 tender brown judiciously scalped from a fillet of veal (dexterously
 replaced by a salamander), the tops of asparagus, fugitive livers,
 run-away gizzards of fowls, the eyes of martyred pigs, the red spawn
 of lobsters, leverets’ ears, and such pretty filchings common to
 cooks; but these had been ordinary presents, the every-day courtesies
 of dish-washers to their sweethearts. Brawn was a noble thought.”

At another time William Penn is concerned about the health of his
betrothed, and concludes his missive with an earnest recommendation to
her to take some pills, that he sends her, at certain hours of the
day, and a specified medicinal water, to be imbibed “three days before
the full and changes of the moon.”

It appears to have been a not unusual practice among lovers of this
period to prescribe for their sweethearts, as we find Dorothy Osborne
writing about some infusion of steel in which she drinks Sir William
Temple’s health every morning. She vows that it makes her horribly ill,
says that it is a “drench that would poison a horse,” and declines to
continue its use unless her lover insists upon her doing so. In another
of her charming letters she gives Sir William many directions about the
care of his precious health, and even does a little quacking on his
behalf, sending him a new medicine for his cold, of which she says,--

 “’Tis like the rest of my medicines: if it do no good ’twill do no
 harm and ’twill be no great trouble to take a little on’t now and
 then; for the taste on’t as it is not excellent, so ’tis not very ill.”

It is well that some of these old letters of sentiment and domestic
life are left us, for did we not occasionally catch glimpses of the
great men of the past penning tender messages to beloved objects
(sometimes, indeed, spelling them very ill), writing about their
children and sending them trinkets and gewgaws, they would become to us
shadowy personages, very spectres, and hauntings of a dream.

To those who are only acquainted with James Logan, William Penn’s young
secretary, through his official correspondence and endless business
letters, he must appear a very didactic and uninteresting personage;
yet reading between the lines, or scanning a stray letter addressed
to some friend or relative, we catch a sight of the real man, of like
passions with ourselves. Mrs. Hannah Penn, who survived her lover’s
generous hampers and curious medical prescriptions and became a
happy wife and the mother of a brood of sturdy young Penns, was well
qualified to be a lover’s _confidante_, and to her James Logan was
pleased to unburden his numerous and, it must be admitted, unsuccessful
love-affairs. A disappointed lover may not be the most attractive
object in every-day life, but for some indefinable reason it adds to
the historic interest of a man, especially to the feminine reader, to
know that he loved and wooed in vain and bewailed his fate in prose or
verse. Otherwise, why should generations of school-girls weep over the
sorrows of Werther? The young secretary was enamoured of Letitia Penn,
her of the pig’s brawn, and Rebecca Moore, and several others, if we
are to judge from his letters. Letitia married William Aubrey, for whom
James Logan’s admiration was ever after of the scantest. His allusion
to his rival’s rapacity in money-matters, saying that he was “a tiger
for returns,” by which he referred to quit-rents and the like, may not
have been high-minded, but was it not natural? and also that he should
have found few words in which to praise Governor Evans, whom the fair
Rebecca Moore made supremely happy? It was not, however, written in
the book of fate that this excellent Quaker youth should forever woo
in vain, and from some family treasure-trove there comes a charming
letter that succeeded in bringing to his side the lady of his love,
with whom he lived as long and as happily as the princes and princesses
of fairy lore. After dwelling at length upon the “excellent virtues”
and qualifications of this adorable Quaker maiden, and upon his ardent
desire to claim them and her for his own, the writer says, with noble
self-abnegation,--

 “Yet, my Dearest, I cannot press it further, than thou with freedom
 canst condescend to it, and enjoy Peace and Satisfaction in thy own
 mind, for without this, I cannot so much as desire to obtain thee.
 I therefore here resign thee to that Gracious God, thy tender and
 merciful father, to whom thy innocent life and virtuous inclinations
 have certainly rendered thee very dear that He may dispose of thee
 according to His divine Pleasure, and as it may best suit thy
 happiness--humbly imploring at the same time, and beseeching His
 divine Goodness, that I may be made worthy to receive thee as a holy
 gift from his hands: and then thou wilt truly prove a Blessing, and we
 shall forever be happy in each other.”[32]

This letter of the young secretary is in striking contrast to the
overloaded verbiage so prevalent in that day, which is exhibited in
another Colonial letter of a few years’ earlier date, and which reads
as if modelled on the style of Sir Charles Grandison. The writer of
this last effusion, who calls himself the Rev. Elias Keach, apologizes
elaborately for “rushing his rude and unpolished lines into the Heroik
and most Excelent Presence” of his sweetheart, Mistress Mary Helm.
After defining his financial status, which is at a rather low ebb, and
giving forth as his opinion that “Pure Righteousness and Zeal exceeds a
portion with a wife, so also in a Husband,” Mr. Keach launches his bark
upon a troubled sea of rhetorical affection, in which he pleads the
advantages of his person, mind, and estate, of whose claims he never
loses sight, even when involved in the most high-flown metaphorical
descriptions of the charms of his mistress. The style of Mr. Keach,
however, is not to be described. Like Charles Lamb’s favorite dish,
it must be tasted to be enjoyed. From the carefully pen-printed pages
before us, we transcribe the following passages:

 “Lady let me crave the mantle of your Virtue the which Noble and
 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,--

 “I cannot say that she was a Regular Beauty, but she was Such that
 few could find any Fault with what Dame Nature had done for her....
 When I view’d her I thought all the Statues I ever beheld, was so much
 inferior to her in Beauty that she was more capable of Converting
 a man into a Statue, than of being Imitated by the Greatest Master
 of that Art, & I surely had as much delight in Surveying her as the
 Organs of Sight are capable of conveying to the Soul.”

Few names were better known in the old-time social life than that of
Franks. David Franks was a brother of Phila Franks, afterwards Mrs.
Oliver De Lancey, and father of Rebecca Franks, who was a reigning
belle during the British occupation of Philadelphia, when General Howe
was in the habit of tying his horse before David Franks’s house and
going in to have a chat with the ladies, and probably to enjoy a laugh
at some of Miss Rebecca’s spirited sallies. Although the beautiful
Jewess shared the honors of belledom with fair Willings and Shippens,
no person seems to have disputed her title to be considered the wit
of the day among womankind. Abigail Franks, who became Mrs. Andrew
Hamilton, was another daughter of David Franks. It was to this sister
in Philadelphia that Miss Rebecca wrote a long gossipy letter from New
York in 1781, in which she contrasted the manners of the belles of that
city and her own very much to the advantage of those of the latter
place, always excepting the Van Hornes, with whom she is staying,
and whom she describes as most attractive, Miss Kitty Van Horne much
resembling the greatly admired Mrs. Galloway.

 “By the way,” she writes, “few New York ladies know how to entertain
 company in their own houses, unless they introduce the card-table.
 Except this family, who are remarkable for their good sense and ease,
 I don’t know a woman or girl that can chat above half an hour, and
 that on the form of a cap, the color of a ribbon, or the set of a
 hoop, stay, or jupon. I will do our ladies, that is in Philadelphia,
 the justice to say they have more cleverness in the turn of an eye
 than the New York girls have in their whole composition. With what
 ease have I seen a Chew, a Penn, Oswald, Allen, and a thousand
 others entertain a large circle of both sexes, and the conversation,
 without the aid of cards, not flag or seem in the least strained or
 stupid.”[40]

In Mr. Joseph Shippen’s “Lines Written in an Assembly Room” we
find a graceful picture of the beauties of the ante-Revolutionary
period. “Fair, charming Swift,” the eldest daughter of John Swift,
who afterwards became Mrs. Livingston; “lovely White,” a sister of
Bishop White, who, as Mrs. Robert Morris, was the chosen friend of
Mrs. Washington while in Philadelphia; “sweet, smiling, fair M’Call;”
Katharine Inglis; Polly Franks, an elder daughter of David Franks;
Sally Coxe, who married Andrew Allen, the loyalist; and Chews so fair
that Mr. Shippen cannot decide which is the fairer. Two of these
bewildering sisters, Mary and Elizabeth Chew, married respectively
Alexander Wilcocks and Edward Tilghman. Another poet, of a period a
little later than this, happening to pick up a knot of ribbon dropped
by Miss Chew on the ball-room floor, thus descants upon her charms:

  “If I mistake not--’tis the accomplish’d Chew,
  To whom this ornamental bow is due;
  Its taste like hers, so neat, so void of art--
  Just as her mind and gentle as her heart.
  I haste to send it--to resume its place,
  For beaux should sorrow o’er a bow’s disgrace.”

It does not appear to have taken great inspirations to set the muse
to rhyming in those days. Mr. John Swanwick seems always to have
found his prompt to obey his call, and whether he is disappointed in
a walk with Miss Markoe, or whether he takes such a walk; whether it
is Miss Meredith’s canary-bird that dies or the great astronomer David
Rittenhouse, all alike give wings to his Pegasus. He lends Miss Abby
Willing his Biographical Dictionary, and with it encloses a dozen
verses or more on those inscribed in this “splendid roll of fame.”
Another occasion of poetic inspiration is when tears are observed to
stream down a young lady’s cheek on listening to a sermon from the Rev.
William White. Must it not have been delightful to possess such a fancy?

As early as 1765 some of the good old Quaker names are to be found
on the Assembly lists, as Mifflin, Fishbourne, Dickinson, Galloway,
Nixon, Powell, and Cadwalader, the latter family being, like the
Ingersolls, Montgomerys, Sergeants, Tilghmans, Wisters, and Markoes,
among later arrivals in Philadelphia from other States or from abroad.
Margaret Cadwalader married Samuel Meredith, first Treasurer of the
United States, while her elder sister Polly became the wife of Philemon
Dickinson, from Crosia-doré, Maryland, a brother of John Dickinson,
himself distinguished as a soldier and statesman, while General John
Cadwalader carried off one of the Meschianza belles, Miss Williamina
Bond.[41] Among names upon other Assembly lists, early and late, are
those of Clymer, Hazlehurst, Evans, Burd, Lewis, McMurtrie, McPherson,
Sims, Ross, Watmough, Biddle, Wharton, Meade, etc., while in that
of 1765 there is a curious record of “Miss Allen, alias Governess,”
which evidently refers to Ann Allen, who married Governor John Penn, a
grandson of the Proprietary. Of this fair lady the ever-ready Swanwick
sings,--

  “When youthful Allen of majestic mien
  Seems as she moves of every beauty queen--
  And by refinements of a polish’d mind,
  To decorate a throne design’d.”

The regular Assembly balls seem to have been discontinued during the
War of the Revolution, although most of this time there was no lack
of gayety in Philadelphia, especially in Tory circles, as is shown by
contemporaneous letters. Miss Franks writes to Mrs. William Paca[42] in
1778, while the British were in possession of the city,--

 “You can have no idea of the life of continued amusement I live in. I
 can scarce have a moment to myself. I have stole this while everybody
 is retired to dress for dinner. I am but just come from under Mr. J.
 Black’s hands and most elegantly am I dressed for a ball this evening
 at Smith’s where we have one every Thursday. You would not Know the
 room ’tis so much improv’d.

 “I wish to Heaven you were going with us this evening to judge for
 yourself. I spent Tuesday evening at Sir Wᵐ Howes where we had a
 concert and Dance. I asked his leave to send you a Handkerchief to
 show the fashions. He very politely gave me leave to send anything you
 wanted, tho’ I told him you were a Delegate’s Lady....

 “The Dress is more ridiculous and pretty than any thing I ever
 saw--great quantity of different colored feathers on the head at a
 time besides a thousand other things. The Hair dress’d very high in
 the shape Miss Vining’s was the night we returned from Smiths--the Hat
 we found in your Mother’s Closet wou’d be of a proper size. I have
 an afternoon cap with one wing--tho’ I assure you I go less in the
 fashion than most of the Ladies--no being dress’d without a hoop. B.
 Bond makes her first appearance tonight at the rooms.”

In B. Bond we recognize one of the Meschianza belles, while the Miss
Vining to whom Miss Franks refers was a Wilmington girl, whose beauty,
grace, and fluency in speaking their language made her a great favorite
with the French officers in America, who wrote home so enthusiastically
of her charms that her name became known at the court of France,
the queen herself expressing a desire to meet the famous American
beauty.[43]

 “No loss for partners,” the lively lady continues, “even I am engaged
 to seven different gentlemen for you must know ’tis a fix’d rule
 never to dance but two dances at a time with the same person. Oh how
 I wish Mr. P. wou’d let you come in for a week or two--tell him I’ll
 answer for your being let to return. I know you are as fond of a gay
 life as myself--you’d have an opportunity of rakeing as much as you
 choose either at Plays, Balls, Concerts or Assemblys. I’ve been but
 3 evenings alone since we mov’d to town. I begin now to be almost
 tired.”[44]

It is probably to the revival of the hoop about 1778, of which Miss
Franks speaks, that some humorous verses refer, in which the hoop and
anti-hoop factions are described as arraying themselves for battle
upon the floor of the Assembly room. The anti-hoop party was under the
leadership of Narcissa, who with her followers declared that it was
their opinion

                  “That unless
  They had it in their Power to dress
  As they thought proper, nought would be
  At last left to their Option free,
  And so concluded, one and all,
  Hoopless to go to the next Ball.”

The hoop party was conducted by Fribeto, the Nash of the time, a
miniature beau, who suggests to the mind Pope’s _dramatis personæ_ in
the “Rape of the Lock:”

          “A gayly brilliant thing
  That sparkled in the shining ring.

         *       *       *       *       *

  This same Fribeto once was chose
  Director of the Belles and Beaux,
  When’er in full Assembly they
  Should meet to dance an hour away.”

Indeed, the scheme and treatment of this rhymed _Bataille de Dames_
are evidently borrowed from Pope’s brilliant satire, and some verses
seem not unworthy the pen of Francis Hopkinson, as, for instance, a
description of the two factions upon the Assembly night:

  “Here walks a Fair, from Head to toe
  As straight as ever she can go;
  And here a Dame with wings so wide,
  Three Yards at least from side to side.

  “Hoops and no Hoops dividing stand
  In dread array on either Hand,
  Resolved to try th’ important Cause
  By that Assembly’s fixed Laws.”

In the conflict which ensues, Fribeto is worsted by the slim damsels,
and takes refuge under Melisinda’s ample wing, from whose pocket he
surveys the field of battle. Enraged by the impertinent popping up of
the dandy’s head from Melisinda’s pocket, Narcissa aims a blow at him,
which glances aside and falls upon the bosom of his protectress, who
starts up with a cry of pain and makes her escape, leaving Fribeto
prone upon the ball-room floor, a pitiable object.

  “One peal of laughter fills the place.
  The Hoops their Hero now despise,
  And view him with disdainful Eyes,
  And with one Voice at once agree
  To cry aloud for Liberty”--

declaring

                “That Women still
  In dress at least should have their will.”

Upon which the humiliated Fribeto announces,--

      “My office and my Right
  To govern, I resign this Night,
  Nor will I meddle should you come
  In greasy night Caps to this Room,
  Or sit in Rows in yonder Benches,
  As black with Dirt as Cynder-wenches.”

This important battle probably occurred after the British evacuation
of the city, as Philadelphia gayety did not cease with the departure
of the red-coats, an article of apparel that General Knox declared
the American girls loved too well. Arnold’s advent as Commandant, we
know, was inaugurated by a series of festivities from which the Tory
belles were not excluded. Indeed, when such a measure was contemplated
in connection with a grand ball to be given to the French and American
officers, it was found impossible to make up the company without
them, consequently they appeared in full feather, at this and other
entertainments, it being alleged by more than one authority that far
from being slighted these loyalist ladies were given the preference
over Whig belles. Among leading Tory women were Miss Polly Riché, her
friend Miss Christian Amiel, the Bards, Bonds, Odells, Oswalds, and
Cliftons. It has been whispered that Miss Amiel was the fair lady to
whom General Arnold was engaged in writing amatory epistles before
Miss Shippen’s charms conquered the hero of many battles. A note from
the Commandant to Miss Riché is still extant, in which he thanks her
for a picture conveyed to him, in language so guarded that no reading
between the lines serves to reveal the original of the miniature,
although there are those who shrewdly suspect that it was a picture of
General Arnold, which, for reasons best known to herself, Miss Amiel
returned to him through Miss Riché. Miss Amiel afterwards married
Colonel Richard Armstrong who was in America with Major Simcoe’s
British Foot, while her friend Miss Riché became the wife of Charles
Swift. It is evidently to her approaching marriage that Miss White
refers in a letter written in 1785, in which she relates the disasters
that have befallen the wardrobes of several mutual friends, among them
Miss B. Lawrence, who has lost “three elegant lisk robes, and seventy
yards of Lace, beside the rest of her Cloaths. There is,” she adds,
“no dependence on these stage boats, pray be careful how you send
your wedding Cloaths up when you come to Town for it must be horribly
mortifying to lose them.”

It is evident that the Assembly Balls were revived soon after peace
was declared, and held occasionally, if not regularly, as Mrs. John
Adams speaks of attending an Assembly while in Philadelphia during the
administration of President Washington. The dancing she pronounces
“very good and the company of the best kind,” adding that the ladies
are more beautiful than those she has seen at foreign courts. Mrs.
Adams must have been subject to variable moods at this time, as she
writes to her daughter one week of the dazzling brilliancy of Mrs.
Washington’s drawing-room, concluding that Mrs. Bingham had given
laws to the Philadelphia women in fashion and elegance, while in
another letter she says of an Assembly Ball, “the room despicable; the
etiquette,--it was difficult to say where it was to be found. Indeed,
it was not New York; but you must not report this from me.” This was
probably written after one of their long drives to town over muddy
roads, which made Bush Hill seem so undesirable a residence to the
Vice-President and his wife. Mrs. Adams writes in more amiable mood
upon another occasion, and is pleased to find “Mrs. Powell of all the
ladies she has met the best informed, beside which she is friendly,
affable, good, sprightly, and full of conversation.” This lady who
combines so many charms is Mrs. Samuel Powel, born Elizabeth Willing,
the aunt of Mrs. Bingham, who also came in for a large share of the
New England lady’s admiration, being included in her “constellation of
beauties,” with her sister Elizabeth, soon to become the wife of Major
William Jackson, whose portrait represents one of the handsomest men
of the time. The Chews of whom Mrs. Adams speaks are younger sisters
of the Meschianza belles, little Sophia, Juliana, and Maria, grown up
to take their sisters’ places. Old Chief Justice Benjamin Chew had a
host of pretty daughters, and in the gay world of society, as in court
circles, there is always a laudable disposition to hail the rising
sun. Instead of Mrs. Benedict Arnold, her sisters, the Redmans, the
Bonds, and Miss Wilhelmina Smith, who has gone off to Maryland with her
husband Charles Goldsborough, we find a new bevy of beauties, Sally
McKean, who afterwards married the Marquis de Yrujo, and whose languid
beauty seemed made for a Southern court, Mrs. Walter Stewart, born
Deborah McClenachan, Mrs. Henry Clymer, Mrs. Theodore Sedgwick, from
Massachusetts, and Miss Wolcott, from Connecticut, whom New England
gentlemen were wont to boast equal in beauty and grace to Mrs. Bingham.
Mrs. Adams comments upon the gayety and prodigality of Philadelphia
living at this period, as General Greene had done a little earlier, the
latter having declared the luxury of Boston “an infant babe” to that
of the Quaker City. Much of the extravagance which prevailed for some
years in Philadelphia was an outcome of the speculation and the pursuit
of private gain induced by the enormous inflation of the Continental
currency. “Wealth thus easily acquired was as freely squandered,” says
Mr. F. D. Stone in his admirable paper on Philadelphia society during
the period of the new tender, “and while luxuries were being enjoyed by
one class of citizens, the expenses and burdens of others were greatly
increased.” In the diary of the moderate and abstemious Washington we
read of a number of entertainments and numerous dinners attended by him
at the Ingersolls’, Morrises’, Chews’, Rosses’, Willings’, Hamiltons’,
and Binghams’; at the latter place “I dined in great splendor,” writes
the President, who was well content with one dish of meat and one or
two glasses of wine at his own table. Again, in a letter written from
Philadelphia to General Wayne by a brother officer we read,--

 “Permit me to say a little of the dress, manners, and customs of
 the town’s people. In respect to the first, great alterations have
 taken place since I was last here. It is all gayety, and from what I
 can observe, every lady and gentleman endeavors to outdo the other
 in splendor and show.... The manner of entertaining in this place
 has likewise undergone its change. You cannot conceive anything more
 elegant than the present taste. You can hardly dine at a table but
 they present you with three courses, and each of them in the most
 elegant manner.”

Miss Sally McKean, in writing to a friend in New York of Mrs.
Washington’s first levee, says,--

 “You never could have such a drawing-room; it was brilliant beyond
 anything you can imagine; and though there was a great deal of
 extravagance, there was so much of Philadelphia taste in everything
 that it must be confessed the most delightful occasion of the kind
 ever known in this country.”

Some of the old names run down the Assembly list through all the years
to our own time, as Chew, Shippen, M’Call, Hopkinson, McIlvaine,
White, Barclay, Cadwalader, Coxe, Lardner, and many more, while others
have quite disappeared from Philadelphia society. There are no more
Hamiltons, Oswalds, Cliftons, Plumsteds, Allens, Swifts, Inglises, or
Francises to be found on the lists of to-day. Some of these families
are no longer represented in the male line, while others have married
and settled abroad, notably the Binghams, Allens, Hamiltons, and
Elliots. Into the social circles where they once held sway have come
such Southern names as Randolph, Byrd, Page, Robinson, Carter, Hunter,
and Neilson from Virginia, and Tilghman, Cheston, Murray, and many
other well-known names from that Eastern Shore of Maryland famed for
its good cheer, and for its hospitable Colonial mansions presided over
by beautiful matrons.

[Illustration]

[Illustration]


FOOTNOTES:

[35] Evidently intended for Mrs. Mayoress, as Charles Willing was
elected Mayor of Philadelphia in 1748.

[36] Mr. Richard Penn Lardner, a descendant of this Lynford Lardner,
in 1878, owned the original list of the subscribers to the Assembly
of 1749, and the manner in which this list and the rules for its
government came into the possession of the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania is in itself an interesting bit of local history. The
rules were the property of Mr. Charles Riché Hildeburn, a direct
descendant of John Swift. He offered to give them to the society if
the old list should also be forthcoming. Mr. Lardner signified his
willingness to donate the list, and the formal presentation was made
by the late President of the Historical Society, the Hon. John William
Wallace. Thus, after a separation of one hundred and thirty years, the
old documents came together through the agency of descendants of three
of the managers of the very Assembly to which they pertained.

[37] Chronicles of the Plumsted Family, by Eugene Devereux.

[38] Some of these old playing-cards, with invitations to the Assembly
printed on the backs, are still in the possession of a descendant of
the first Edward Shippen.

[39] This Mrs. Bingham was the mother of William Bingham, who married a
daughter of Thomas Willing, whose wife, Anne McCall, may well be spoken
of as “the beautiful mother of a beautiful race.”

[40] From manuscript letter in possession of the Historical Society of
Pennsylvania.

[41] The name Williamina was inherited from a beautiful grandmother,
Williamina Wemyss Moore.

[42] This letter was forwarded by Edward Tilghman, who was “out on his
parole,” with the gauze handkerchiefs, ribbons, etc, to Mrs. Paca,
born Anne Harrison, the second wife of William Paca, of Wye Island,
Maryland, who was a delegate to Congress. (Pennsylvania Magazine, vol.
xvi. p. 216.)

[43] This story, on the authority of Thomas Jefferson, is related by
Miss Elizabeth Montgomery in her “Reminiscences of Wilmington.”

[44] Pennsylvania Magazine, vol. xvi. pp. 216, 217.




INDEX.


  A.

  Abercrombie, Dr. James, 119.

  Adams, John, 11, 66, 88, 130, 148, 192.

  Adams, Mrs. John, 13, 16, 65, 191, 224.

  Adams, John Quincy, 70, 125, 167.

  Agassiz, Louis, 145.

  Agassiz, Mrs. Louis, 140.

  Alexander, General William, 70.

  Allen, Andrew, 214.

  Allen, Ann, 216.

  Allinson, Edward P., 154.

  Alsop, Mary, 85. (Mrs. Rufus King.)

  American Philosophical Society, 97-147.

  Amiel, Christian, 223.

  André, Major John, 26, 33, 44, 52, 84.

  Armand, Colonel, 210.

  Armstrong, Colonel Richard, 223.

  Arnold, General Benedict, 63, 194, 223.

  Arnold, Mrs. Benedict, 44. (Peggy Shippen.)

  Atlee, Dr. W. F., 68.

  Aubrey, William, 184.

  Auchmuty, Miss, 38, 42.

  Auchmuty, Rev. Samuel, 56.


  B.

  Bache, Dr. Franklin, 174.

  Bache, Mrs. Richard, 12, 17, 85.

  Barclay, 200, 228.

  Bard, 223.

  Barton, Dr. Benjamin S., 132.

  Bartram, John, 103, 104.

  Bartram, William, 104.

  Bayard, The Misses, 88.

  Beasley, Dr. Frederick, 167.

  Beckwith, Colonel, 168.

  Beekman, Colonel Henry, 85.

  Beekman, Mrs. James, 84.

  Biddle, Clement C., 167.

  Biddle, Nicholas, 117, 152.

  Bingham, William, 211.

  Bingham, William, United States Senator, 211 (note).

  Bingham, Mrs. William, 89, 92, 224, 226.

  Binney, Horace, 173.

  Black, William, 199, 210.

  Bleecker, 82.

  Blended Rose, Ladies of the, 33, 42.

  Bonaparte, Charles Lucien, 139.

  Bonaparte, Joseph, 164.

  Bond, Becky, 43, 218.

  Bond, Dr. Phineas, 103.

  Bond, Williamina, 42, 216.

  Boudinot, Elias, 74.

  Bowers, Mrs. John M., 8.

  Breck, Samuel, 66, 152.

  Bunker’s Hotel, 67.

  Burd, 200, 216.

  Burgoyne, General, 34.

  Burning Mountain, Ladies of the, 43.

  Burr, Aaron, 66, 131.

  Bush Hill, 225.

  Byrd, 229.


  C.

  Cadwalader, General John, 216.

  Cadwalader, Margaret, 216.

  Cadwalader, Polly, 216.

  Cadwalader, Dr. Thomas, 111.

  Calder, Sir Henry, 28, 49.

  Callowhill, Hannah, 178. (Hannah Penn.)

  Canino, Prince de, 164, 168.

  Carey, Henry C., 123, 167.

  Carey, Mathew, 167.

  Carey Vespers, 123.

  Carter, 229.

  Cathcart, Lady, 18, 19, 205.

  Cathcart, Lord, 42.

  Chapman, Dr. Nathaniel, 117, 153.

  Chastellux, Marquis de, 84, 148.

  Cheston, 229.

  Cheves, Langdon, 173.

  Chew, Elizabeth, 214.

  Chew, Mary, 214.

  Chew, Peggy, 42, 49, 58.

  Chew, Sally, 43.

  Clarkson, 82.

  Clifton, Eleanor, 28, 29.

  Clinton, Governor George, 81.

  Clinton, Mrs. George, 92.

  Clinton, Sir Henry, 38, 61.

  Clymer, George, 155.

  Clymer, Mrs. Henry, 226.

  Coffin, Eleanor, 20.

  Colden, Dr. Cadwallader, 104, 105.

  Collins, Zacheus, 162.

  Conyngham, 200.

  Coxe, Sally, 214.

  Craig, Janet, 42, 56.


  D.

  Daschkof, Princess, 140, 142.

  Deane, Silas, 148.

  De Lancey, Mrs. Oliver, 212.

  De Peyster, 82.

  Dickinson, John, 103, 205, 216.

  Digby, Admiral Robert, 73.

  Draper, Sir William, 30.

  Drayton, Colonel, of South Carolina, 125.

  Drinker, Elizabeth, 18.

  Duane, Mrs. James, 83, 88.

  Duer, Colonel William, 70.

  Duer, Lady Kitty, 69, 70, 83.

  Dulany, Daniel, 103.

  Du Ponceau, Peter S., 121-129, 155, 162.


  E.

  Elliot, Governor Andrew, 73, 204, 205.

  Elliot, Elizabeth, 205.

  Emlen, 200.

  Evans, 216.

  Evans, Governor John, 184.

  Eve, Sarah, 18, 199.


  F.

  Fishbourne, 215.

  Fisher, 200, 203.

  Fisher, Joshua Francis, 173.

  Foulke, Liddy, 10.

  Francis, Anne, 134.

  Francis, Dr. John W., 152.

  Francis, Sir Philip, 134-136.

  Francis’s Hotel, 207.

  Franklin, Benjamin, 12, 17, 106, 112, 114, 120, 140;
    founder of Philosophical Society, 97-102.

  Franklin, Samuel, 70.

  Franklin, Sarah, 71. (Mrs. Richard Bache.)

  Franklin, Walter, house of, New York residence of General Washington,
  67-70.

  Franks, Abigail, 212.

  Franks, David, 212.

  Franks, Phila, 212.

  Franks, Polly, 214.

  Franks, Rebecca, 14, 38, 43, 59-61, 213, 219.

  Fraser, Caroline, 164.

  Furness, Dr. William H., 124.


  G.

  Gallatin, Albert, 125.

  Galloway, Mrs., 213.

  Gerry, Elbridge, 91.

  Gerry, Mrs. Elbridge, 86.

  Gliddon, George Robins, 125.

  Goldsborough, Charles, 57, 226.

  Greene, General Nathaniel, 8, 226.

  Griffin, Lady Christiana, 85.

  Griffin, Cyrus, 85, 90.

  Griffitts, Hannah, 54.

  Griffitts, Dr. Samuel Powel, 154.

  Grouchy, Marquis de, 164.


  H.

  Haines, Reuben, 162.

  Hale, Captain Nathan, 84.

  Hamilton, Alexander, 66, 91.

  Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander, 85.

  Hamilton, Andrew, 201.

  Hamilton, Mrs. Andrew, 212.

  Hamilton, Governor James, 200.

  Hamilton’s Wharf, 206.

  Hancock, John, 11.

  Harrison, Anne, 217.

  Hays, Dr. Isaac, 174.

  Hazlehurst, 216.

  Heckewelder, John, 129, 155.

  Helm, Mary, 186, 190.

  Helvetius, Madame, 16, 17.

  Hildeburn, Charles Riché, 203.

  Hopkinson, Francis, 103, 120, 220.

  Hopkinson House, 21.

  Hopkinson, Joseph, 152, 167.

  Hopkinson, Thomas, 105, 198.

  Hosack, Dr., 151.

  Howard, Colonel John Eager, 59.

  Howe, Admiral Lord Richard, 38, 48, 55, 71.

  Howe, General Sir William, 24, 28, 41, 48, 55, 218.

  Humboldt, Baron von, 133, 151.

  Hunter, 229.

  Huntington, Daniel, 91.


  I.

  Ingersoll, Bertha, 76.

  Ingersoll, Charles J., 143, 166.

  Ingersoll, Jared, 129.

  Inglis, John, 203.

  Inglis, Katharine, 214.

  Izard, Mrs. Ralph, 85.


  J.

  Jackson, Major William, 225.

  James, Dr. Thomas C., 162, 174.

  Jauncey, Mrs., 19, 204, 205.

  Jay, John, 90, 91.

  Jay, Mrs. John, 13, 90, 92, 93.

  Jefferson, Thomas, 18, 75, 111, 124, 128.

  Jekyll, John, 206.

  Johnson, Lady, 62. (Rebecca Franks.)

  Johnson, Sir Henry, 60, 62.

  Junto, 100, 101, 109.


  K.

  Kane, Judge, 173.

  Keach, Rev. Elias, 186-191.

  Keteletas, Jane, 84.

  Keyes, Miss, 18.

  King, Rufus, 91.

  King, Mrs. Rufus, 92.

  Kinnersley, Ebenezer, 106.

  Kissam, 82.

  Knight’s Wharf, 28, 38, 39.

  Knox, General, 66, 222.

  Knox, Mrs. General, 77, 92.

  Knyphausen, General, 38.

  Kuhn, Dr. Adam, 103, 153.


  L.

  Lafayette, Marquis de, 142, 144.

  Lardner, Lynford, 203.

  Lardner, Richard Penn, 203, 204.

  Lawrence, Becky, 223.

  Lawrence, Colonel Elisha, 58.

  Lea, Dr. Isaac, 174.

  Lea, Henry C., 174.

  Leather Apron Society, 100.

  Lee, General Charles, 61.

  Leidy, Joseph, 145.

  Levy, Hettie, 211.

  Levy, Samson, 211.

  Lewis, Lawrence, Jr., 44.

  Lewis, Morgan, 83.

  Lewis, William D., 172.

  Livingston, Mrs. Robert R., 85.

  Livingston, Mrs. Walter, 92.

  Lloyd, 200.

  Logan, Deborah, 9.

  Logan, James, 183, 184.

  Lynch, Mrs. Dominick, 83.


  M.

  Macomb’s House occupied by President Washington, 67.

  Madison, James, 12, 75, 130, 165.

  Marbois, Barbé-, 75.

  Markoe, Miss, 94, 215.

  Maxwell, Mrs. James Homer, 83.

  M’Call, 200, 214, 228.

  McIlvaine, 200, 228.

  McKean, Henry Pratt, 111.

  McKean, Sally, 77, 226, 228.

  McLane, Captain Allan, 51.

  McMaster, John Bach, 99.

  McMichael, Morton, 172.

  McMurtrie, 216.

  McPherson, 216.

  Meade, 216.

  Meigs, Dr. Charles D., 174.

  Meredith, Samuel, 216.

  Meredith, William M., 173.

  Meschianza, 23-64.

  Michaux, André, 107, 115.

  Mifflin, Elizabeth, 149.

  Mifflin, John, 149.

  Mitchell, Dr. John K., 174.

  Mitchell, Maria, 139.

  Montgomery, 82, 216.

  More, Chief Justice Nicholas, 190.

  Morgan, Dr. John, 19.

  Morgan, Mrs. John, 18.

  Morray, Humphrey, 154.

  Morris, Robert, 91, 205.

  Morris, Mrs. Robert, 13, 63, 91, 214.

  Montrésor, Colonel, 49, 56.

  Moustier, Comte de, 74, 75, 81.


  N.

  Neilson, 229.

  New York Balls and Receptions, 65-96.

  Nixon, 216.

  Norris, Deborah, 10.


  O.

  Odell, 223.

  O’Hara, Colonel, 49.

  Ord, George, 117, 118, 119.

  Osgood, Samuel, 69.

  Oswald, 213, 223.


  P.

  Paca, Mrs. William, 217.

  Page, 229.

  Parton, James, 99, 106, 128.

  Patterson, Dr. Robert, 129.

  Patterson, Dr. Robert M., 100, 101, 162, 173.

  Peale, Charles Willson, 111, 136-139.

  Peale, Franklin, 129, 137.

  Pegg’s Run, 29.

  Pemberton, 200.

  Penington, Edward, 60.

  Penn, Governor John, 216.

  Penn, Hannah, 183.

  Penn, Letitia, 181, 184.

  Penn, Thomas, 201.

  Penn, William, 178, 181.

  Penn, William, Jr., 180.

  Penrose, Boies, 154.

  Peter, William, 170.

  Peters, Judge Richard, 11, 117, 129, 166.

  Peters, Richard, 200-202.

  Philadelphia Dancing Assemblies, 197-229.

  Philipse, 82.

  Philipse, Miss, 73.

  Plumsted, 229.

  Pool’s Bridge, 28, 39.

  Powel, Mrs. Samuel, 225.

  Priestley, Rev. Joseph, 116, 117.

  Provoost, Mrs. Samuel, 83.


  R.

  Randolph, 229.

  Rawdon, Lord, 38, 71, 72.

  Rawle, William, 122, 155.

  Read, Sarah, 185.

  Redman, Dr. John, 57.

  Redman, Nancy, 42.

  Redman, Rebecca, 43, 57, 58.

  Reed, William B., 170.

  Riché, Polly, 210, 223.

  Rittenhouse, David, 112, 131, 215.

  Roberdeau, 18.

  Robinson, Moncure, 174.

  Robinson, Mrs. William T., 67-69.

  Ross, 216, 227.

  Rush, Dr. Benjamin, 129, 132, 153, 158.

  Rutherfurd, 82.


  S.

  Saxe-Weimar, Duke of, 165, 167.

  Schuyler, Madame Philip, 18.

  Schweinitz, Rev. Lewis D. de, 130.

  Sedgwick, Mrs. Theodore, 226.

  Sergeant, John, 173.

  Serra, Abbé Correa de, 117, 138, 152.

  Shewell, Betty, 120. (Mrs. Benjamin West.)

  Shippen, Chief Justice Edward, 44, 205.

  Shippen, Joseph, 49, 214.

  Shippen, Peggy, 33, 42, 63, 194, 223.

  Shippen, William, 154.

  Shipton, Betty, 19.

  Short, William, 117, 165.

  Simcoe, Major, 223.

  Sims, 216.

  Smith, Abigail, 191. (Mrs. John Adams.)

  Smith, Williamina, 43, 56, 226.

  Smythe, Hon. Lionel, 74.

  Sneyd, Honora, 30.

  Somerville, Mary, 139.

  Southgate, Eliza, 14, 18, 20.

  Sparks, Jared, 100.

  Stamper, Mollie, 211.

  State in Schuylkill, 11.

  Steuben, Baron, 81.

  Steward, Lieutenant-Colonel Jack, 61.

  Stewart, Mrs. Walter, 226.

  Stirling, Lady, 83.

  Stoddert, Major, 9.

  Stone, Colonel William Leet, 79.

  Strickland, William, 117.

  Swanwick, John M. P., 94, 215.

  Swift, Charles, 223.

  Swift, John, 203, 214.


  T.

  Tarleton, Major, 56.

  Taylor, Mrs. Abraham, 201, 202.

  Temple, Lady, 70, 84.

  Temple, Sir John, 84.

  Thackeray, William M., 170.

  Tilghman, Chief Justice, 129, 134, 155, 162, 167.

  Tilghman, Edward, 214, 217.

  Tilghman, Richard, 135, 136.

  Twisleton, Hon. Edward, 135.

  Tyson, Job R., 161.


  V.

  Van Cortland, 82.

  Van Horne, Kitty, 213.

  Van Rensselaer, 82.

  Van Zandt, Catharine, 83.

  Vaughan, Benjamin, M. D., 126.

  Vaughan, Mr. John, 117, 123, 125, 127, 160.

  Vaughan, Samuel, 126.

  Vaux, Roberts, 167.

  Verplanck, 82.

  Vining, Miss, 218.


  W.

  Wallace, John, 203, 204.

  Walnut Grove, 31, 32. (Meschianza House.)

  Walsh, Robert, LL. D., 117, 152, 173.

  Ware, Rev. William, 125.

  Washington, George, 8, 66, 87, 124.

  Washington, Martha, 65, 86, 91, 224.

  Watmough, 216.

  Watson, Joseph, 35, 166, 199.

  Watts, Lady Mary, 83.

  Wayne, General Anthony, 63, 227.

  West, Benjamin, 103, 120.

  Wharton, Joseph, Sr., 30-32.

  Wharton, Mayor Robert, 118.

  Wharton, Thomas Isaac, 173.

  White, Bishop, 119, 120, 214.

  White, Nancy, 42.

  Wilcocks, Alexander, 214.

  Willing, Abby, 215.

  Willing, Elizabeth, 225.

  Willing, Mrs. Charles, 201.

  Willing, Mrs. Thomas, 211.

  Wistar, Dr. Caspar, 117, 129, 149, 157, 159, 161.

  Wistar, Mrs. Caspar, 150.

  Wistar, Kitty, 67.

  Wistar Parties, 147-176.

  Wister, Sally, 9, 14, 199.

  Wolcott, Miss, 226.

  Wood, Dr. George B., 174.

  Wrottesley, John, 49.

  Wüster, Katerina, 157.


  Y.

  Yates, Chief Justice, 83.


[Illustration: THE END]




Transcriber’s Notes

Obvious errors in punctuation have been corrected.

Page 31: “entered the oom” corrected to “entered the room”

Page 42: “Miss Achmuty’s honor” changed to “Miss Auchmuty’s honor”

Page 47: “Major Gywnne rode in” changed to “Major Gwynne rode in”

Page 66: “removal of her household gods” changed to “removal of her
household goods”

Page 81: In the footnote, “Diary of Ewala” changed to “Diary of Ewald”