Pinderina Scribblerus,
an American Montagu

Pinderina Scribblerus, an American Montagu

WHEN the great Mrs. Elizabeth Montagu was receiving the bas-bleus of London in her Hill Street drawing-room there arose across the water a little American salon which reflected in a degree the spirit of the famous gatherings Admiral Boscawen named after the slovenly Dr. Stillingfleet's gray stockings. It is only recently that historians have taken a marked interest in the literature which followed in the wake of the Revolutionary War and the world has learned that in the newly-formed States there were a few bright spirits whose lives and aspirations reflected the culture of Europe. One of the most interesting of these was Elizabeth Kearny, née Lawrence, a daughter of Judge Lawrence, of Burlington, and a half-sister of Captain James Lawrence of "Don't give up the ship" fame. She formed a literary circle which flourished for a few years in old Perth Amboy, Jersey's fallen capital.

Elizabeth Lawrence passed her early youth in Burlington, where she pursued the study of Greek and Latin, to the mild astonishment of the community. Over her father's library table in the Lawrence mansion, still existing impervious to the encroachments of time, she chatted as a girl with the Tory satirist Jonathan Odell. She must have imbibed some of his sarcasm, for in later years her loquacious tongue was barbed with a wit almost Walpolian in its acrid cleverness. At nearby Philadelphia she met the famous Peggy Chew, and formed an intimacy with Anne Willing, better known as Mrs. William Bingham. The "dazzling Bingham" she made the subject of some animated verses, entitled,—

"LINES ON MRS. BINGHAM'S RECALL OF A SUPPER INVITATION.

There are very few records of this remarkable woman's girlhood still extant. Her brother John, for whom she cherished a strong attachment, was born after her marriage to Mr. Michael Kearny, "the beloved noble Michael," who erected her Perth Amboy cottage. There she lived as "the scribbling Mrs. Kearny, occupying the highest seat on Parnassus," a power in her world. Argus-eyed she evidently was, for nothing seems to have escaped her facile quill. There was scarcely a subject too great or too small for her to digress upon, and she wrote in the morning of "the shameful performance of certain gentlemen in Congress" and at night of "the sorrow she felt on finding a slave under the influence of pernicious rum."

About some of the streets of the city named in honor of the "passionately proud" Earl of Perth there lingers an air of decayed opulence. Although old Amboy of the scarlet coats died long ago, a few of her echoes live on undrowned by the din of new voices. In Mrs. Kearny's day many a stately garden crept down to the water-front. The great houses overlooking the smooth Raritan still sheltered a few of the noble Scotch and Irish families who had unwillingly relinquished their king and remained in the New World. In the letters of Sophia Brown, who lodged with the mother of William Dunlap, the art historian, there are glimpses of this society. The frail and aristocratic Misses Parker with their tea-drinkings, the gallant Captain Love, and other charming figures, look out at us from pages filled with the trivialities of every-day life. A child dreaming beside a broad pane overlooking the quiet street, where trees stood in line as if awaiting the call of Orpheus, saw many things. Now a youthful pair sauntered by in the spring-time of love, now an ancient crone in worn satin shoes that had once touched ever so lightly a king's feet in a long-forgotten dance, and now a tired veteran of the Revolution murmuring to himself of battles still unwon. Suddenly would come the rush of many footsteps. Off in the distance the bell of St. Peter's tolls. People of condition are to be married. Ladies in faded silk or humble erminetta mince past gentlemen in desay suits. Then the music creeps out of the chancel,—the faint, sweet air of an old English wedding-march. Even the sombre fronts of the houses seem to be ravished with it. The voices of the gentle choir may not be as pure as they were in the days of George III., but to the girl who listened then they were like strains from Paradise.

The city which had received its charter one day after New York was at that period beginning to lose its importance in the eyes of the Western world. No longer chariots drawn by white horses carried a supercilious nobility to the resort of the Knickerbockers. No longer big-wigs talked over the commercial supremacy of Perth Amboy in the Sweeting's Alley Coffee House. No longer were there stately minuets and revels at the Governor's palace. The old days were gone forever; but although the leading actors and the lights had fled, the stage remained unchanged. That sad-faced baggage Poverty loitered behind and came often to once proud dwelling-places. Pinderina heard the sighs of her friends, and decided to enliven the situation. In the Kearny Cottage, whose rooms seem to widen mysteriously as one enters, she held her gatherings of sympathetic souls. These affairs differed somewhat from the parties given at an earlier date by Mrs. Hugh Ferguson and Mrs. Richard Stockton, two other literary lights of the time, for the hostess suffered from a slender purse. Her guests came only for the pleasure of conversation, without the "stomach compensation" Mrs. Montagu and her American imitators thought so necessary.

One of the most distinguished frequenters of Mrs. Kearny's Blue-Stocking Club was Philip Freneau, whose mother had made a second matrimonial venture and wedded Captain James Kearny, of Kearny Port, a relative of the Perth Amboy family. "Small but well formed, his blue eyes sparkling with poetic fire," it is easy to imagine him the lion of Mrs. Kearny's evenings. Whenever the old sloop "King William"—changed to "Liberty"—sailed into Amboy, bringing Mr. Freneau to pass the night with his friends before journeying to Monmouth, there was always great excitement in the town. Mrs. Kearny's black Rebecca was sent forth in haste to inform the chosen few of the neighborhood that their leader bade them to her drawing-room. The seven romping Kearny boys were hurried up to the attic to bed, the furniture rearranged, and Madam Scribblerus, as her world called her, slipped on her brocade gown to be in readiness for the battle of wits sure to ensue. A happy woman was this quaint personage when footfalls began to sound on the gallery steps. The rap-tap of the knocker made her spirits buoyant, and each greeting took her farther away from the cares of a commonplace existence. Although she was a lover of nature, she too could have said with Mr. Robinson, the father of Mrs. Montagu, that living in the country was like sleeping with one's eyes open. Each breath of the world beyond Amboy brought new life to her.

We can picture to ourselves the evening. About the oddly-shaped room, on hard-seated, fiddle-backed chairs, sits Pinderina's little court. By the wide fireplace on the settle old Judge Nevill, the editor of the first American magazine, is blinking at the embers. Mr. Freneau has finished telling some of his recent adventures in New York City. Now Mrs. Kearny begins the story of Captain Kidd's black cat, which lived on long after her master had been condemned to death in Old Bailey, and for these two hundred years has haunted the spot where the bold adventurer is said to have buried some of his chests of rupees. Sleepy eyes grow wider as she advances in her narrative. Timid ladies feel for each other's hands in the flickering light. The hostess is in her element.

Taking a penetrating look at the company over the years, they are not as we would at first imagine them. There are holes in Mr. Freneau's wrist ruffles, and the worn brocade gown of the hostess no longer gives forth even faint protesting rustle as she walks. In this respect the circle is true-blue,—for Oliver Goldsmith went to Mrs. Montagu's in darned stockings and a laced coat, and the immortal Johnson and many of his confrères were naturally careless in their attire, or were helped to the state by the lack of pence.

The one great ambition of Elizabeth Kearny's life was to write like her "admired Mr. Freneau," and her many mild plagiarisms of his poems, if they failed in their object, were no doubt regarded by him as flattering homage to his genius. Theirs was an unusual friendship of which the world knows very little, but mute testimonials remain of it to-day in her letters and her autographs fading under those of Philip Freneau's in many of his favorite volumes. She could have written of him as Mrs. Montagu once wrote, thinking no doubt of her faithful Dr. Beattie:

When Philip Freneau lived for a short period over a little shop in the Fly-Market, New York City, and edited The Time Piece, Mrs. Kearny became one of its constant contributors. Among that sentimental group of female poets, numbering a Saraperina, Edena, Cynthea, Clara, Carolina, and a Petronella, her effusions—generally under the nome de guerre of "Scribelra"—stand forth in bold type. Turning the musty pages of a bound volume of the paper, we find

"LINES BY A LADY ON HEARING THE FROGS SING ON THE 17TH OF MARCH.

Although the merit of this poem lies much below mediocrity, in subject it is delightfully grotesque. Her style was varied and her pen strangely moody, judging from her productions extant. The following jeu d'esprit was written at the beginning of Jefferson's administration:

"AN EPIGRAM.

Among her poems are some pleasing verses, entitled "A Whim." These also appeared in The Time Piece, unsigned, and we have nothing to show whether they were a copy or the child of her own muse:

There was one yearly occasion when the world of Amboy did not flock with acceleration to the Kearny Cottage, and that was the anniversary of Michael Kearny's death. Mrs. Kearny was always fond of writing epitaphs to embellish the tombstones of departed Amboyites, but as the years progressed she developed a very morbid strain. To commemorate the demise of her husband she wrote poems of several hundred verses and then assembled her satellites to weep with her. Woe to the indifferent ones whose tears of sorrow were dry. They were pretty sure of indignant visits from her, or, worse still, her far-reaching pen was capable of dealing them swift retribution. She never spared the most loyal of her friends. When one of the distinguished men of the city came to her under the effects of toddy, she celebrated his fall from grace by lines which must have always rankled in his breast.

Mrs. Kearny longed to have her work admired for its worth alone, and, like Miss Burney, who visited the bookseller Mr. Lownes as a chance purchaser of "Evelina" to learn his opinion of its author, "Pinderina" was in the habit of calling upon her friends with her manuscripts, coyly reading them, and then requesting their criticism on the latest compositions she had copied from the Gazette. Tradition says that this plan did not always meet with pleasant results. Descending upon a Mrs. Golightly, a new-comer to Perth Amboy, with a batch of her poems, she was told that the productions were far from those of a genius and must have been written by some very foolish female. Pinderina, placidly awaiting praise, was astounded at the intelligence. Recovering herself, she informed the unfortunate woman that her own pen had given birth to the verses, and left her house in high indignation.

A new book was an event in the Perth Amboy world at the beginning of the century. When Simeon Drake, who received the mail from Woodbridge three times a week, brought a packet to the door of Mrs. Andrew Bell, the wealthiest member of the circle, a flutter of envy arose in every breast. What anxious hours were passed before it started on its round from house to house. Ofttimes an impatient dame sent her little Abigail to gaze through the low windows of Mrs. Bell's study, where the lady usually sat reading, to see if she were nearly through with the volume. When the first month of its Amboy life was over, how it had been discussed! The golden urns and garlands of roses which decorated the cover were already worn. To-day high up in the dust of dim attics the books of old Amboy are content to rest neglected and forgotten. The love that was given to them was stronger and truer than that bestowed upon their modern kindred. Through the long years of summer suns and wintry rains they had been happy in the thought of a mission fulfilled. When the wind creeps through the cracks in the casements and stirs their musty pages, one can almost fancy that they are whispering to the ghosts of the long ago.

A letter written by Mrs. Kearny to Mrs. Bell has been preserved:

The close of Mrs. Kearny's life was blighted and narrowed by adversity. Money matters estranged her from many of her old intimates, and she wrote pathetically to each member of the circle after a lawsuit with Richard Stevens: "Have you too entered the lists against me?" Unlike Mrs. Montagu, of whom Wraxall recorded that she wore glittering jewels to dazzle those her reputation failed to astound, Mrs. Kearny's last years were tinctured by the plaintiveness of homespun.

In the fall-time of the year 1799 the Amboyites who wandered past the wide lawns of Franklin Palace often saw by one of the windows of Kearny Cottage a figure bent low over a writing-table. It was Mrs. Kearny working industriously. Soon the rumor went abroad that Pinderina was completing her works for publication. No one dared question her. Covert glances were bestowed upon her when she entered her pew in old St. Peter's on a Sabbath morning. The thoughts of their former leader were to be handed down to posterity in print. Betsey Parker, one of the sisters at the castle who had scoffed her effusions in secret, decided to call at the cottage as soon as etiquette would permit. Feuds over money matters seemed trivial things after this great news.

Pinderina's star was again in the ascendancy. She smiled fondly on the pages of finely-written manuscript she was putting together. A glorious triumph seemed near at hand. One morning Mr. Freneau was seen leaving Kearny Cottage. After him trotted a black boy, bearing aloft a heavy bundle. Curious eyes watched him from behind the partly closed shutters of many a sedate-looking building facing the green. The gossips felt sure that the fruit of Mrs. Kearny's genius was being borne away for the approval of the New York publishers. They circulated the tale industriously. The élite of the town had not been so excited since the day an irate Mrs. Franklin broke all the mirrors of the palace on finding that her husband had been made a prisoner of war.

Three times the "Liberty" sailed into Amboy. On each occasion bevies of ladies found it necessary to transact business near the wharf. A case of fine nabobs, which had lain at old John's for a fortnight, was suddenly discovered. Captain Goelet had brought home some necklaces of Indian sea-shells. Anything plausible was used as an excuse to parade along the water-front.

And after all the weary watching Mr. Freneau arrived by coach. A gray mist enveloped the roadway that night, as if to keep his return a secret. But it was decreed that he should be observed. A member of the circle, who lived close by the cottage, chanced to bring out on her balcony a plant thirsting for rain. She recognized the figure which alighted from the mud-bespattered vehicle before Mrs. Kearny's door. The wind spread wide his great-coat. Its fluttering folds guarded from view the package of manuscript which had been rejected by the lords of New York's Printing House Lane. The woman on the balcony saw him enter the house; then she ran into her own dwelling. It took but a few moments to find the Hanway umbrella and the lantern. Excitement overcoming her timidity, she hurried out into the night to share her news with the neighbors.

An hour later a few courageous souls were wending their way to Pinderina's. Each carried some peace-offering. A bowl of white jelly, an ounce of Mr. Stebben's snuff, an orange that had colored in some sunlit Amboy window were hidden beneath wet garments. Before the worn door, which the darkness and the rain made grim and sinister looking, they huddled together. Suddenly there was a noise inside. A thrill went over the company as it swung back and showed Pinderina holding a candle aloft in her hands. "I know why you are here," she said, gazing at them mockingly. "It is not true. The villains have refused my work." Some faithful member of the circle started to speak, then stopped. "As the poetess of Perth Amboy I have lived, and as the poetess of Perth Amboy I shall die," she continued. There were smiles in the darkness,—the smiles akin to tears.