The Chevalier de Silly and his Newport Sally
IN the old portion of Newport, where the houses are compact and the streets hilly and narrow, is the Vernon mansion, erected many years before the Revolution, when the city ranked second only to Boston in commercial supremacy. William Vernon, its first owner, was one of the wealthy old-time traders whose fleet of merchantmen made the long wharf famous. There, in the days before British guns were trained on the city and stanch, opulent warehouses flanked the quays, his jolly tars would unload the cargoes of West Indian sugar and bring out of some brave ship's hold the half a hundred blacks. Most of those ship-loads of sugar would be made into rum and sent back to Africa or the Indies for more blacks; but the savages never saw their native homes again, and became the faithful Cudjos and Pompeys of many a colonial household.
Quaint Mary Lane, or Street, as it is now called, running past the Vernon residence, is truly a thoroughfare of memories. For a period of three years it was trodden by the feet of thousands of British soldiers, and later the gallant Frenchmen of Rochambeau's fleet of seven ships of the line and five frigates walked there disconsolately in groups of three or four, hoping soon to sail away from the poverty-stricken place Newport was at that period of its existence. No longer were there gentlemen of fortune like Colonel Godfrey Malbone, who so often clinked silver goblets with his guests over groaning tables, to give entertainments. The town was almost destitute of wealth, and but a small number of the better class of its population came back to their former dwellings during the French fleet's stay there.
Life in Newport during 1780 and 1781 was for the most part a dreary thing to these Frenchmen, but a host of dashing chevaliers fresh from the Court of "the Austrian," as spiteful Madame Adélaïde had nicknamed her fair niece, were sure to find some amusement even in the dullest city. It is true there was no "prince of youth," as the court ringleader, the Comte d'Artois, was dubbed by his intimates, to lead them through days of delight as at Versailles and Fontainebleau, but Newport gallants soon introduced them to town beauties, and cards were laid for the ever new and exciting game of love. In lieu of the cabriolet races in the Bois de Boulogne they could skate in the little creeks about the Point, and when dreams of the Palais Royal made them long for "Armid" and "Alcestio," there was always a dame to finger a spinet. Old citizens of the past generation used to tell of window-panes in the Vernon mansion covered with the names of Newport's femininity. With the same spirit which later led their compatriots to jest and dance amid the grim shadows of the Conceirgerie, they made the best of a changed life.
Mrs. Cowley's assembly-room, famous in Newport annals, was made over into a salon for play, and there the youth of the army would often stray when the periods of duty were over. We can see the haughty Rochambeau with his muff bending over the tric-trac table, while about him flutter the very flower of France,—men bearing such names as Marquis de Chastelleux, Marquis de Laval, Baron de Closen, Vicomte de Noailles, Marquis de Custine, Comte de Fersen, and Duc de Lauzun. They who had lost and won their louis to the laughter of the fairest women of a famous court had for sole spectators little village gamins peering in at the windows. Before the glitter of gold these graceful gamesters forgot time and place. They were back again at tables in the gardens of Paris,—recreation spots as lovely as Little Trianon, where Oberkirche wrote, "The glades were perfumed with lilacs and peopled with nightingales—The air full of fragrant mist brightened by butterflies." Off came their tinselled coats, and in their stead some of them donned frieze great-coats, while the more intrepid rolled thin soft linen shirt-sleeves up to the elbow for luck. To guard their eyes from the light and keep their powdered wigs in place, they tied on straw-crowned hats festooned with some forgotten charmer's colors. The Maybud plucked many moons before, which nestled so often 'neath a tassel, was faded. Cliff flowers were in full bloom then.
The belles of Newport! What pages could be devoted to them! A more enchanting galaxy of femininity never enriched a New England town. The Duc de Lauzun, an ardent spirit in our struggle for liberty who left his countrymen enthusiastic over republican ideas, the ladies even going so far as to have their hair dressed aux insurgents, wrote home from Newport of their charms. The Misses Hunter, daughters of Dr. William Hunter, he particularly admired. "I was not in love with them," he coyly confided, "but had they been my sisters I could not have loved them more."
Three famous beauties were Miss Champlin, who danced with stately Washington; Miss Redwood, to whose charms the sailors in the street would doff their caps, holding them low until she passed; and Sally Church, the sprightly maiden who, tradition says, tripped into the hearts of a small army of Frenchmen when she returned from Providence to her native city about the time of the French fleet's arrival.
Sally Church! how prim the pseudonym, and yet very vivacious was its owner. A charming vision in her red wool gown and huge fur tippet, we see her mincing merrily through that Mary Street on a blustering March morning. The wind blows her wide London hat and gives it a saucy tilt, and the eyes of a long line of soldiers follow the wave of her skirt as it plays about her trim ankles. "Here comes Sally in her chair," or "Here comes Sally on foot," were among the most interesting pieces of news her admirers had to impart. They ogled and sang to her, wrote poems on her beauty; and yet at most of them she only laughed, and so they ended by worshipping her.
As the months flew by there lay in one of the rooms of the Vernon mansion, which Rochambeau had made his head-quarters, a young lieutenant by the name of Chevalier de Silly, suffering from a disease protracted by the severe cold. Having heard his brother officers dilate on the charms of the lovely Sally, he desired that his bed be removed close to the window, in hope that he might obtain a glimpse of her. Many a weary hour he spent gazing out into the gray line of the street unrewarded, and then one happy day he espied her. The fates favored him, and Sally, chancing to look up at his window, smiled and thereby added another soldier to her own little army. Soon the Chevalier grew better and was able to assume the duties of his post. His friendship with Sally had progressed by this time and she was becoming the torment of his life,—an agony far worse than bodily illness. As he stood on duty—a grim sentinel—before the Vernon mansion, the maiden would happen to stroll by.
"Come, Silly," she would call, "take me for a walk to the old mill."
"I cannot, mademoiselle," was his usual sad answer; "the king's service goes before everything."
"You do not love me or you would take me," she always mocked, and with a proud toss of her head she would hasten past him, heedless of his torrent of reproaches.
And so "Silly and his Sally," as the youth and the maiden came to be dubbed by the garrison, spent their days. Tradition says that she was fonder of him than of any other of her French swains, but, womanlike, enjoyed the power of her fascinations. But she was not to keep him in her train forever. The springlike day dawned when General Washington, "the Atlas of America," Silly called him, was to arrive. At Barney's Ferry he landed in a gayly decorated barge, and all Newport was out to greet him. The troops formed a solid line three deep on either side from the long wharf to the very door of the Vernon mansion, where he was to be entertained by Rochambeau. The following night all Newport was illuminated, and old records say that the Town Council ordered candles to be purchased and given to all who were too poor to use them, so that every house should show a light. About the streets the hero rode, followed by the French officers, their aides, and hundreds of patriotic citizens bearing candle torches to make the occasion joyful. The night was clear, the sea calm, and the wind still. Those who participated in the affair never forgot the beauty of the scene. Sally was in the crowd, but there was no Silly by her side, for the disconsolate Chevalier wrote to a friend that, "after General Washington, she who attracted my attention was the amiable Sally Church accompanied, alas! by a faithful townsman who was free of a touch of the gout."
A few days later, when the gout departed, the Chevalier had his revenge on her other suitors at a ball given by the city of Newport to General Washington and Admiral Rochambeau, in Mrs. Cowley's assembly-room. There, to the rippling airs of Gluck, so beloved by musical little Marie Antoinette, he showed the company many of the famous Guimard steps, as he essayed the gavottes of his king. Sally would look at him often, admiration springing forth from her sparkling eyes, as he gracefully swayed to music, one moment gay and the next sinking into a gentle cadence. This is one of the last records we have of Sally and her Silly dancing out the swift-footed hours in the taper-lighted ballroom.
Numerous accounts of the ball have come down to us. The decorations were intrusted to Dezoteux, one of the aides of the Baron de Vioménil, and the guests are said to have been loud in the appreciation of his efforts. Washington opened the festivities by leading out Miss Champlin in a minuet. When midnight was near at hand and frolic and mirth at their highest pitch, the gallant Rochambeau and several of his officers led an assault on the startled musicians, and, seizing their instruments, played the tune, "A Successful Campaign,"—a graceful token of respect to the Commander-in-Chief of the army.
We picture them together when he homeward walks beside her chair, the constant lover, to her very gate. With the memory of the music in her ears, the stars overspreading the sky a dazzling canopy, and a cavalier by her side, could she ask for more? And yet she did, and, alack-a-day, as she herself would have said, the stream of her life was not always so fresh and frolicking. Could the chairmen tell us more? No doubt; but leave the door tight shut and spare a lady's blushes.
The day came when the Chevalier de Silly sailed away to Yorktown, and the maiden was left to work her witcheries on her townsmen. Newport was a changed place after the French departed. Many a true heart was exchanged that morning for a golden button or some other token. The mothers only were happy, and back to households came a troop of long-exiled femininity, free from the fret of love. Twelve years later, it is said, one summer dawn in Paris there rolled through the streets a tumbril on its way to a guillotine erected near the gardens of the Luxembourg. One of its occupants was De Silly. In the hush which always fell on the mob when a victim reached the last step of the stairway of death we wonder whether the fair face of Sally Church came before the eyes of her poor Chevalier. The answer is lost in the length of long-dead years. Over the cries of that surging mass of humanity when the blade snapped the thread of his life we see them once again living out their Newport romance.