Says my friend Jack in his journal:
“The boys were in these times keen politicians whenever any unusual event occurred, and the great pot was like soon to boil furiously, and scald the cooks. Charles Townshend’s ministry was long over. The Stamp Act had come and gone. The Non-importation Agreement had been signed even by men like Andrew Allen and Mr. Penn. Lord North, a gentle and obstinate person, was minister. The Lord Hillsborough, a man after the king’s heart, had the colonial office. The troops had landed in Boston, and the letters of Dickinson and Vindex had fanned the embers of discontent into flame.
“Through it all we boys contrived to know everything that was happening. I had a sense of fear about it, but to Hugh I think it was delightful. A fire, a mob, confusion, and disorder appeal to most boys’ minds as desirable. My father was terrified at the disturbance of commerce, and the angry words which began to be heard. Mr. John Wynne very coolly adjusted his affairs, as I have heard, and settled down with the Friends, such as Wain and Shoemaker and Pemberton and the rest, to accept whatever the king might decree.”
Jack and I talked it all over in wild boy fashion, and went every day at six in the morning to Lowry’s on South street. At first we both hated the work, but this did not last; and, once we were used to it, the business had for fellows like ourselves a certain charm. The horses we learned to know and understand. Their owners were of a class with which in those days it was not thought seemly for persons of our degree to be familiar; here it was unavoidable, and I soon learned how deep in the hearts of the people was the determination to resist the authority of the crown.
The lads we knew of the gay set used to come and laugh at us, as we plied the hammer or blew the bellows; and one day Miss Franks and Miss Peggy Chew, and I think Miss Shippen, stood awhile without the forge, making very merry. Jack got red in the face, but I was angry, worked on doggedly, and said nothing. At last I thrashed soundly one Master Galloway, who called me a horse-cobbler, and after that no more trouble.
I became strong and muscular as the work went on, and got to like our master, who was all for liberty, and sang as he struck, and taught me much that was useful as to the management of horses, so that I was not long unhappy. My father, pleased at my diligence, once said to me that I seemed to be attentive to the business in hand; and, as far as I remember, this was the only time in my life that he ever gave me a word of even the mildest commendation.
It was what Jack most needed. His slight, graceful figure filled out and became very straight, losing a stoop it had, so that he grew to be a well-built, active young fellow, rosy, and quite too pretty, with his blond locks. After our third month began, Lowry married a widow, and moved away to her farm up the country and beyond the Blue Bell tavern, where he carried on his business, and where he was to appear again to me at a time when I sorely needed him. It was to be another instance of how a greater Master overrules our lives for good.
Just after we had heard the news of the widow, my father came into the forge one day with Joseph Warder. He stood and watched me shoe a horse, and asked Lowry if I had learned the business. When he replied that we both might become more expert, but that we could make nails, and shoe fairly well, my father said:
“Take off these aprons, and go home. There will be other work for both of you.”
We were glad enough to obey, and, dropping our leathern aprons, thus ended our apprenticeship. Next week Tom Lowry, our master, appeared with a fine beaver for me, saying, as I knew, that it was the custom to give an apprentice a beaver when his time was up, and that he had never been better served by any.
My Aunt Gainor kept away all this time, and made it clear that she did not wish my black hands at her table. My father, no doubt, felt sure that, so far as I was concerned, she would soon or late relent. This, in fact, came about in midwinter, upon her asking my mother to send me to see her. My father observed that he had no will to make quarrels, or to keep them alive. My mother smiled demurely, knowing him as none other did, and bade me go with her.
In her own room she had laid out on the bed a brown coat of velveteen, with breeches to match, and stockings with brown clocks, and also a brown beaver, the back looped up, all of which she had, with sweet craftiness, provided, that I might appear well before my Aunt Gainor.
“Thou wilt fight no one on the way, Hugh. And now, what shall be done with his hands, so rough and so hard? Scrub them well. Tell Gainor I have two new lilies for her, just come from Jamaica. Bulbs they are; I will care for them in the cellar. I was near to forget the marmalade of bitter orange. She must send; I cannot trust Tom. Thy father had him whipped at the jail yesterday, and he is sulky. Put on thy clothes, and I will come again to see how they fit thee.”
In a little while she was back again, declaring I looked a lord, and that if she were a girl she should fall in love with me, and then—“But I shall never let any woman but me kiss thee. I shall be jealous. And now, sir, a bow. That was better. Now, as I curtsey, it is bad manners to have it over before I am fully risen. Then it is permitted that les beaux yeux se rencontrent. Comme ca. Ca va bien. That is better done.”
“What vanities are these?” said my father at the door she had left open.
She was nowise alarmed. “Come in, John,” she cried. “He does not yet bow as well as thou. It would crack some Quaker backs, I think. I can hear Friend Wain’s joints creak when he gets up.”
“Nonsense, wife! Thou art a child to this day.”
“Then kiss me, mon pere.” And she ran to him and stood on tiptoe, so engaging and so pretty that he could not help but lift up her slight figure, and, kissing her, set her down. It was a moment of rare tenderness. Would I had known or seen more like it!
“Thou wilt ruin him, wife.”
As I ran down the garden she called after me, “Do not thou forget to kiss her hand. To-morrow will come the warehouse; but take the sweets of life as they offer. Adieu.” She stood to watch me, all her dear heart in her eyes, something pure, and, as it were, virginal in her look. God rest her soul!
It was late when I got to my aunt’s, somewhere about eight, and the hum of voices warned me of her having company. As I entered she rose, expecting an older guest, and, as I had been bid, I bowed low and touched her hand with my lips, as I said:
“Dear Aunt Gainor, it has been so long!” I could have said nothing better. She laughed.
“Here is my nephew, Mr. Etherington”—this to an English major; “and, Captain Wallace of the king’s navy, my nephew.”
The captain was a rough, boisterous sailor, and the other a man with too much manner, and, as I heard later, risen from the ranks.
He saluted me with a lively thump on the shoulder, which I did not relish. “Zounds! sir, but you are a stout young Quaker!”
“We are most of us Quakers here, captain,” said a quiet gentleman, who saw, I fancy, by my face that this rude greeting was unpleasant to me.
“How are you, Hugh?” This was the Master of the Rolls, Mr. John Morris. Then my aunt said, “Go and speak to the ladies—you know them;” and as I turned aside, “I beg pardon, Sir William; this is my nephew, Hugh Wynne.” This was addressed to a high-coloured personage in yellow velvet with gold buttons, and a white flowered waistcoat, and with his queue in a fine hair-net.
“This is Sir William Draper, Hugh; he who took Manilla, as you must know.” I did not, nor did I know until later that he was one of the victims of the sharp pen of Junius, with whom, for the sake of the Marquis of Granby, he had rashly ventured to tilt. The famous soldier smiled as I saluted him with my best bow.
“Fine food for powder, Mistress Wynne, and already sixteen! I was in service three years earlier. Should he wish for an ensign’s commission, I am at your service.”
“Ah, Sir William, that might have been, a year or so ago, but now he may have to fight General Gage.”
“The gods forbid! Our poor general!”
“Mistress Wynne is a rank Whig,” put in Mrs. Ferguson. “She reads Dickinson’s ‘Farmer’s Letters,’ and all the wicked treason of that man Adams.”
“A low demagogue!” cried Mrs. Galloway. “I hear there have been disturbances in Boston, and that because one James Otis has been beaten by our officers, and because our bands play ‘Yankee Doodle’ on Sundays in front of the churches—I beg pardon, the meetings—Mr. Robinson, the king’s collector, has had to pay and apologise. Most shameful it is!”
“I should take short measures,” said the sailor.
“And I,” cried Etherington. “I have just come from Virginia, but not a recruit could I get. It is like a nest of ants in a turmoil, and the worst of all are the officers who served in the French war. There is, too, a noisy talker, Patrick Henry, and a Mr. Washington.”
“I think it was he who saved the wreck of the king’s army under Mr. Braddock,” said my aunt. “I can remember how they all looked. Not a wig among them. The lodges must have been full of them, but their legs saved their scalps.”
“Is it for this they call them wigwams?” cries naughty Miss Chew.
“Fie! fie!” says her mamma, while my aunt laughed merrily.
“A mere Potomac planter,” said Etherington, “‘pon my soul—and with such airs, as if they were gentlemen of the line.”
“Perhaps,” said my aunt, “they had not had your opportunities of knowing all grades of the service.”
The major flushed. “I have served the king as well as I know how, and I trust, madam, I shall have the pleasure to aid in the punishment of some of these insolent rebels.”
“May you be there to see, Hugh,” said my aunt, laughing.
Willing to make a diversion, Mrs. Chew said, “Let us defeat these Tories at the card-table, Gainor.”
“With all my heart,” said my aunt, glad of this turn in the talk.
“Come and give me luck, Hugh,” said Mrs. Ferguson. “What a big fellow you are! Your aunt must find you ruffles soon, and a steenkirk.”
With this I sat down beside her, and wondered to see how eager and interested they all became, and how the guineas and gold half-joes passed from one to another, while the gay Mrs. Ferguson, who was at the table with Mrs. Penn, Captain Wallace, and my aunt, gave me my first lesson in this form of industry.
A little later there was tea, chocolate, and rusks, with punch for the men; and Dr. Shippen came in, and the great Dr. Rush, with his delicate, clean-cut face under a full wig. Dr. Shippen was full of talk about some fine game-cocks, and others were busy with the spring races in Centre Square.
You may be sure I kept my ears open to hear what all these great men said. I chanced to hear Dr. Rush deep in talk behind the punch-table with a handsome young man, Dr. Morgan, newly come from London.
Dr. Rush said, “I have news to-day, in a letter from Mr. Adams, of things being unendurable. He is bold enough to talk of separation from England; but that is going far, too far.”
“I think so, indeed,” said Morgan. “I saw Dr. Franklin in London. He advises conciliation, and not to act with rash haste. These gentlemen yonder make it difficult.”
“Yes; there is no insolence like that of the soldier.” And this was all I heard or remember, for my aunt bade me run home and thank my mother, telling me to come again and soon.
The plot was indeed thickening, and even a lad as young as I could scent peril in the air. At home I heard nothing of it. No doubt my father read at his warehouse the “Pennsylvania Journal,” or more likely Galloway’s gazette, the “Chronicle,” which was rank Tory, and was suppressed in 1773. But outside of the house I learned the news readily. Mr. Warder took papers on both sides, and also the Boston “Packet,” so that Jack and I were well informed, and used to take the gazettes when his father had read them, and devour them safely in our boat, when by rare chance I had a holiday.
And so passed the years 1770, 1771, and 1772, when Lord North precipitated the crisis by attempting to control the judges in Massachusetts, who were in future to be paid by the crown, and would thus pass under its control. Adams now suggested committees of correspondence, and thus the first step toward united action was taken.
These years, up to the autumn of 1772, were not without influence on my own life for both good and evil. I was, of course, kept sedulously at work at our business, and, though liking it even less than farriery, learned it well enough. It was not without its pleasures. Certainly it was an agreeable thing to know the old merchant captains, and to talk to their men or themselves. The sea had not lost its romance. Men could remember Kidd and Blackbeard. In the low-lying dens below Dock Creek and on King street, were many, it is to be feared, who had seen the black flag flying, and who knew too well the keys and shoals of the West Indies. The captain who put to sea with such sailors had need to be resolute and ready. Ships went armed, and I was amazed to see, in the holds of our own ships, carronades, which out on the ocean were hoisted up and set in place on deck; also cutlasses and muskets in the cabin, and good store of pikes. I ventured once to ask my father if this were consistent with non-resistance. He replied that pirates were like to wild beasts, and that I had better attend to my business; after which I said no more, having food for thought.
These captains got thus a noble training, were splendid seamen, and not unused to arms and danger, as proved fortunate in days to come. Once I would have gone to the Madeiras with Captain Biddle, but unluckily my mother prevailed with my father to forbid it. It had been better for me had it been decided otherwise, because I was fast getting an education which did me no good.
“Indeed,” says Jack later on in his diary, “I was much troubled in those seventies” (he means up to ‘74, when we were full twenty-one) “about my friend Hugh. The town was full of officers of all grades, who came and went, and brought with them much licence and contempt for colonists in general, and a silly way of parading their own sentiments on all occasions. Gambling, hard drinking, and all manner of worse things became common and more openly indulged in. Neither here nor in Boston could young women walk about unattended, a new and strange thing in our quiet town.
“Mistress Gainor’s house was full of these gentlemen, whom she entertained with a freedom only equalled by that with which she spoke her good Whig mind. The air was full of excitement. Business fell off, and Hugh and I had ample leisure to do much as we liked.
“I must honestly declare that I deserve no praise for having escaped the temptations which beset Hugh. I hated all excess, and suffered in body if I drank or ate more than was wise. As regards worse things than wine and cards, I think Miss Wynne was right when she described me as a girl-boy; for the least rudeness or laxity of talk in women I disliked, and as to the mere modesties of the person, I have always been like some well-nurtured maid.
“Thus it was that when Hugh, encouraged by his aunt, fell into the company of these loose, swaggering captains and cornets, I had either to give up him, who was unable to resist them, or to share in their vicious ways myself. It was my personal disgust at drunkenness or loose society which saved me, not any moral or religious safeguards, although. I trust I was not altogether without these helps. I have seen now and then that to be refined in tastes and feelings is a great aid to a virtuous life. Also I have known some who would have been drunkards but for their heads and stomachs, which so behaved as to be good substitutes for conscience. It is sometimes the body which saves the soul. Both of these helps I had, but my dear Hugh had neither. He was a great, strong, masculine fellow, and if I may seem to have said that he wanted refined feelings, that is not so, and to him, who will never read these lines, and to myself, I must apologise.”
I did come to see these pages, as you know. I think he meant, that with the wine of youth and at times of other vintages, in my veins, the strong paternal blood, which in my father only a true, if hard, religion kept in order, was too much for me. If I state this awkwardly it is because all excuses are awkward. Looking back, I wonder that I was not worse, and that I did not go to the uttermost devil. I was vigorous, and had the stomach of a temperate ox, and a head which made no complaints. The morning after some mad revel I could rise at five, and go out in my boat and overboard, and then home in a glow, with a fine appetite for breakfast; and I was so big and tall that I was thought to be many years older than I was.
I should have been less able unwatched to go down this easy descent, had it not been for a train of circumstances which not only left me freer than I ought to have been, but, in the matter of money, made it only too possible for me to hold my own amid evil or lavish company. My aunt had lived in London, and in a society which had all the charm of breeding, and all the vices of a period more coarse than ours. She detested my father’s notions, and if she meant to win me to her own she took an ill way to do it. I was presented to the English officers, and freely supplied with money, to which I had been quite unused, so long as my father was the only source of supply. We were out late when I was presumed to be at my Aunt Gainor’s; and to drink and bet, or to see a race or cock-fight, or to pull off knockers, or to bother the ancient watchmen, were now some of my most reputable amusements. I began to be talked about as a bit of a rake, and my Aunt Gainor was not too greatly displeased; she would hear of our exploits and say “Fie! fie!” and then give me more guineas. Worse than all, my father was deep in his business, lessening his ventures, and thus leaving me more time to sow the seed of idleness. Everything, as I now see it, combined to make easy for me the downward path. I went along it without the company of Jack Warder, and so we drew apart; he would none of it.
When my father began to withdraw his capital my mother was highly pleased, and more than once in my presence said to him: “Why, John, dost thou strive for more and more money? Hast thou not enough? Let us give up all this care and go to our great farm at Merion, and live as peaceful as our cattle.” She did not reckon upon the force with which the habits of a life bound my father to his business.
I remember that it was far on in April, 1773, when my Aunt Gainer appeared one day in my father’s counting-house. Hers was a well-known figure on King street, and even in the unpleasant region alongshore to the south of Dock street. She would dismount, leave her horse to the groom, and, with a heavily mounted, silver-topped whip in hand, and her riding-petticoat gathered up, would march along, picking her way through mud and filth. Here she contrived to find the queer china things she desired, or in some mysterious way she secured cordials and such liquors as no one else could get.
Once she took my mother with her, and loaded her with gods of the Orient and fine China pongee silks.
“But, Hugh,” said the dear lady, “il n’est pas possible de vous la decrire. Mon Dieu! she can say terrible words, and I have seen a man who ventured some rudeness to me—no, no, mon cher, nothing to anger you; il avait peur de cette femme. He was afraid of her—her and her whip. He was so alarmed that he let her have a great china mandarin for a mere nothing. I think he was glad to see her well out of his low tavern.”
“But the man,” I urged; “what did he say to thee, mother?”
“N’importe, mon fils. I did want the mandarin. He nodded this way—this way. He wagged his head as a dog wags his tail, like Thomas Scattergood in the Meeting. Comme ca.” She became that man in a moment, turning up the edge of her silk shawl, and nodding solemnly. I screamed with laughter. Ever since I was a child, despite my father’s dislikes, she had taught me French, and when alone with me liked me to chatter in her mother language. In fact, I learned it well.
On the occasion of which I began just now to speak, my Aunt Gainor entered, with a graver face than common, and I rising to leave her with my father, she put her whip across my breast as I turned, and said, “No; I want you to hear what I have to say.”
“What is it, Gainor?”
“This business of the ship ‘Gaspee’ the Rhode Island men burned is making trouble in the East. The chief justice of Rhode Island, Hopkins, has refused to honour the order to arrest these Rhode-Islanders.”
“Pirates!” said my father.
“Pirates, if you like. We shall all be pirates before long.”
“Well, Gainor, is that all? It does not concern me.”
“No; I have letters from London which inform me that the Lord North is but a puppet, and as the king pulls the wires he will dance to whatever tune the king likes. He was a nice, amiable young fellow when I stayed at his father’s, my Lord Guilford’s, and not without learning and judgment. But for the Exchequer—a queer choice, I must say.”
“It is to be presumed that the king knows how to choose his ministers. Thou knowest what I think, Gainor. We have but to obey those whom the Lord has set over us. We are told to render unto Caesar the things which are Caesar’s, and to go our ways in peace.”
“The question is, What are Caesar’s?” said my aunt. “Shall Caesar judge always? I came to tell you that it is understood in London, although not public, that it is meant to tax our tea. Now we do not buy; we smuggle it from Holland; but if the India Company should get a drawback on tea, we shall be forced to take it for its cheapness, even with the duty on it of threepence a pound.”
“It were but a silly scheme, Gainor. I cannot credit it.”
“Who could, John? and yet it is to be tried, and all for a matter of a few hundred pounds a year. It will be tried not now or soon, but next fall when the tea-ships come from China.”
“And if it is to be as thou art informed, what of it?”
“A storm—a tempest in a teapot,” said she.
My father stood still, deep in thought. He had a profound respect for the commercial sagacity of this clear-headed woman. Moreover, he was sure, as usual, to be asked to act in Philadelphia as a consignee of the India Company.
She seemed to see through her brother, as one sees through glass. “You got into trouble when the stamps came.”
“What has that got to do with this?”
“And again when you would not sign the Non-importation Agreement in ‘68.”
“Well?”
“They will ask you to receive the tea.”
“And I will do it. How can I refuse? I should lose all their India trade.”
“There will soon be no trade to lose. You are, as I know, drawing in your capital. Go abroad. Wind up your affairs in England; do the same in Holland. Use all your ships this summer. Go to Madeira from London. Buy freely, and pay at once so as to save interest; it will rise fast. Come home in the fall of ‘74 late. Hold the goods, and, above all, see that in your absence no consignments be taken. Am I clear, John?”
I heard her with such amazement as was shared by my father. The boldness and sagacity of the scheme impressed a man trained to skill in commerce, and ever given to courageous ventures.
“You must sail in October or before; you will need a year. No less will do.”
“Yes—yes.”
I saw from his look that he was captured. He walked to and fro, while my Aunt Gainor switched the dust off her petticoat or looked out of the window. At last she turned to me. “What think you of it, Hugh?”
“Mr. Wilson says we shall have war, aunt, and Mr. Attorney-General Chew is of the same opinion. I heard them talking of it last night at thy house. I think the king’s officers want a war.” I took refuge, shrewdly, in the notions of my elders. I had no wiser thing to say. “I myself do not know,” I added.
“How shouldst thou?” said my father, sharply,
I was silent.
“And what think you, John?”
“What will my wife say, Gainor? We have never been a month apart.”
“Let me talk to her.”
“Wilt thou share in the venture?” He was testing the sincerity of her advice. “And to what extent?”
“Five thousand pounds. You may draw on me from London, and buy powder and muskets,” she added, with a smile.
“Not I. Why dost thou talk such folly?”
“Then Holland blankets and good cloth. I will take them off your hands at a fair profit.”
“I see no objection to that.”
My aunt gave me a queer look, saying, “The poor will need them. I shall sell them cheap.”
It was singular that I caught her meaning, while my father, reflecting on the venture as a whole, did not.
“I will do it,” he said.
“Then a word more. Be careful here as to debts. Why not wind up your business, and retire with the profit you will make?” It was the same advice my mother had given, as I well knew.
“Hast thou been talking to my wife?” he said.
“No,” she replied, surprised; “may I?”
“Yes. As to going out of business, Gainor, I should be but a lost man. I am not as well-to-do as thou dost seem to think.”
“Stuff and nonsense!” cried my aunt. “I believe Thomas Willing is no better off in what you call this world’s gear, nor Franks, nor any of them. You like the game, and, after all, what is it but a kind of gambling? How do you know what hands the ocean holds? Your ventures are no better than my guineas cast down on the loo-table.” These two could never discuss anything but what it must end in a difference.
“Thou art a fool, Gainor, to talk such wicked nonsense before this boy. It is not worth an answer. I hear no good of Hugh of late. He hath been a concern to James Pemberton and to my friend, Nicholas Wain, and to me—to me. Thy gambling and idle redcoats are snares to his soul. He has begun to have opinions of his own as to taxes, and concerning the plain duty of non-resistance. As if an idle dog like him had any right to have an opinion at all!”
“Tut! tut!” cried Miss Wynne.
“I am not idle,” I said, “if I am a dog.”
He turned and seized me by the collar. “I will teach thee to answer thy elders.” And with this he shook me violently, and caught up a cane from a chair where he had laid it.
And now, once again, that disposition to be merry came over me, and, perfectly passive, I looked up at him and smiled. As I think of it, it was strange in a young fellow of my age.
{Illustration: “I WILL TEACH THEE TO ANSWER THY ELDERS” Page 84 Hugh Wynne}
{Transcriber’s Note: In the illustration, two men and a woman stand in a room. One of the men is holding a stick over his head; the woman has grabbed his hand at the wrist. The other man looks on.}
“Wouldst thou laugh?” he cried. “Has it gone that far?” and he raised his stick. My Aunt Gainor jerked it out of his hand, and, standing, broke it over her knee as if it had been a willow wand.
He fell back, crying, “Gainor! Gainor!”
“My God! man,” she cried, “are you mad? If I were you I would take some heed to that hot Welsh blood. What would my good Marie say? Why have you not had the sense to make a friend of the boy? He is worth ten of you, and has kept his temper like the gentleman he is.”
It was true. I had some queer sense of amusement in the feeling that I really was not angry; neither was I ashamed; but an hour later I was both angry and ashamed. Just now I felt sorry for my father, and shared the humiliation he evidently felt.
My aunt turned to her brother, where, having let me go, he stood with set features, looking from her to me, and from me to her. Something in his look disturbed her.
“You should be proud of his self-command. Cannot you see that it is your accursed repression and dry, dreary life at home that has put you two apart?”
“I have been put to scorn before my son, Gainor Wynne. It is thy evil ways that have brought this about. I have lost my temper and would have struck in anger, when I should have reflected, and, after prayer, chastised this insolence at home.”
“I heard no insolence.”
“Go away, Hugh, and thou, Gainor. Why dost thou always provoke me? I will hear no more!”
“Come, Hugh,” she said; and then: “It seems to me that the boy has had a good lesson in meekness, and as to turning that other cheek.”
“Don’t, Aunt Gainor!” said I, interrupting her.
“Oh, go!” exclaimed my father. “Go! go, both of you!”
“Certainly; but, John, do not mention my news or my London letter.”
“I shall not.”
“Then by-by! Come, Hugh!”
There must have been in this troubled country many such sad scenes as I have tried to recall. Father and son were to part with hot words, brother to take sides against brother. My unpleasant half-hour was but prophetic of that which was to come in worse shape, and to last for years.
My Aunt Gainor said, “Do not tell your mother,” and I assuredly did not.
“He will tell her. He tells her everything, soon or late. I must see her at once. Your father is becoming, as the French say, impossible. The times, and these wrangling Friends, with their stupid testimonies, irritate him daily until he is like a great, strong bull, such as the Spaniards tease to madness with little darts and fireworks. You see, Hugh, events are prickly things. They play the deuce with obstinate people. Your father will be better away from home. He has never been in England, and he will see how many, like Mr. Pitt and Colonel Barre, are with us. As for myself, I have been a bit of a fool about you, and your father is more or less right. We must abjure sack and take physic.”
“What?” said I.
“To be plain, we must—that is, you must—play less and drink less, and in your father’s absence look sharply, with my help, to his business.”
I was to need other doctors before I mended my ways. I said my aunt was right, and I made certain good resolutions, which were but short-lived and never reached adult maturity of usefulness.
My aunt walked with me north between the warehouses, taverns, and ship-chandlers on the riverfront, and so across the bridge over Dock Creek, and up to Third street. She said I must not talk to her. She had thinking to do, and for this cause, I suppose, turning, took me down to Pine street. At St. Peter’s Church she stopped, and bade me wait without, adding, “If I take you in I shall hear of it; wait.”
There was a midday service at this time, it being Lent. I waited idly, thinking of my father, and, as I before said, vexed and sorry and ashamed by turns. Often now I pause before I enter this sacred edifice, and think of that hour of tribulation. I could hear the fine, full voice of the Rev. Dr. Duche as he intoned the Litany. He lies now where I stood, and under the arms on his tomb is no record of the political foolishness and instability of a life otherwise free from blame. As I stood, Mrs. Ferguson came out, she who in days to come helped to get the unlucky parson into trouble. With her came my aunt.
“I said a prayer for thee, Hugh,” she whispered. “No; no cards in Lent, my dear Bess. Fie! for shame! This way, Hugh;” and we went east, through Pine street, and so to the back of our garden, where we found a way in, and, walking under the peach-trees, came to where my mother sat beneath a plum-tree, shelling peas, her great Manx cat by her side.
She wore a thin cap on top of the curly head, which was now wind-blown out of all order. “Come, Gainor,” she cried, seeing us; “help me to shell my peas. Thou shalt have some. They are come in a ship from the Bermudas. What a pretty pale green the pods are! I should like an apron of that colour.”
“I have the very thing, dear. Shall it be the minuet pattern, or plain?”
“Oh, plain. Am I not a Friend? Une Amie? Ciel! but it is droll in French. Sarah Logan is twice as gay as I, but John does not love such vanities. Quant a moi, je les adore. It seems odd to have a colour to a religion. I wonder if drab goodness be better than red goodness. But what is wrong, Gainor? Yes, there is something. Hugh, thy collar is torn; how careless of me not to have mended it!”
Then my Aunt Gainor, saying nothing of my especial difficulty, and leaving out, too, her London news, related with remarkable clearness the reasons why my father should go overseas in the early fall and be gone for a year. The mother went on quietly shelling the peas, and losing no word. When Gainor had done, the bowl of peas was set aside, and my mother put back her curls, fixed her blue eyes on her sister-in-law, and was silent for a moment longer. At last she said, “It were best, for many reasons best. I see it,” and she nodded her head affirmatively. “But my son? my Hugh?”
“You will have him with you at home. Everything will go on as usual, except that John will be amusing himself in London.”
At this the little lady leaped up, all ablaze, so to speak. Never had I seen her so moved. “What manner of woman am I, Gainer Wynne, that I should let my husband go alone on the seas, and here and there, without me? I will not have it. My boy is my boy; God knows I love him; but my husband comes first now and always, and thou art cruel to wish to part us.”
“But I never wished to part you. Go with him, Marie. God bless your sweet heart! Leave me your boy; he cannot go. As God lives, I will take care of him!”
Upon this the two women fell to weeping in each other’s arms, a thing most uncommon for my Aunt Gainor. Then they talked it all over, as if John Wynne were not; when it would be, and what room I was to have, and my clothes, and the business, and so on—all the endless details wherewith the cunning affection of good women knows to provide comfort for us, who are so apt to be unthankful.
It amazed me to see how quickly it was settled, and still more to learn that my father did not oppose, but fell in with all their plans.
Now back of all my weaknesses and folly I had, as I have said, some of the sense of honour and proud rectitude of my father, who strictly abided by his creed and his conscience. I returned no more that day to the counting-house, but, saying to my mother I had business, I went off, with a hunk of bread, to my boat, and down the creek to the Delaware. I pulled out, past our old playground on the island, and far away toward the Jersey shore, and then, as the sun fell, drifted with the tide, noting the ruddy lines of the brick houses far away, and began to think.
The scene I had gone through had made a deep impression. It has been ever so with me. Drinking, gaming, betting, and worse, never awakened my conscience or set me reflecting, until some sudden, unlooked-for thing took place, in which sentiment or affection was concerned. Then I would set to work to balance my books and determine my course. At such times it was the dear mother who spoke in me, and the father who resolutely carried out my decision.
The boat drifted slowly with the flood-tide, and I, lying on the bottom, fell to thought of what the day had brought me. The setting sun touched the single spire of Christ Church, and lit up yellow squares of light in the westward-looking windows of the rare farm-houses on the Jersey shore. Presently I was aground on the south end of Petty’s Island, where in after-years lay rotting the “Alliance,” the remnant ship of the greatest sea-fight that ever was since Grenville lay in the “Revenge,” with the Spanish fleet about him. I came to ground amid the reeds and spatter-docks, where the water-lilies were just in bud. A noisy orchestra of frogs, with, as Jack said, fiddles and bassoons in their throats, ceased as I came, and pitched headlong off the broad green floats. Only one old fellow, with a great bass voice, and secure on the bank, protested loudly at intervals, like the owl in Mr. Gray’s noble poem, which my Jack loved to repeat.
At last he—I mean my frog—whose monastery I had disturbed, so vexed me, who wanted stillness, that I smacked the water with the flat of an oar, which he took to be a hint, and ceased to lament my intrusion.
I was now well on to twenty, and old enough to begin at times to deal thoughtfully with events. A young fellow’s feelings are apt to be extreme, and even despotic, so that they rule the hour with such strength of sway as may be out of proportion to the cause. I might have seen that I had no just cause to blame myself, but that did not help me. The mood of distressful self-accusation was on me. I had no repeated impulse to smile at what, in my father’s conduct, had appeared to me a little while ago odd, and even amusing. I could never please him. I had grinned as I always did when risks were upon me. He never understood me, and I was tired of trying. What use was it to try? I had one of those minutes of wishing to die, which come even to the wholesome young. I was well aware that of late I had not, on the whole, satisfied my conscience; I knew this quite too well; and now, as I lay in the boat discontented, I felt, as the youthful do sometimes feel, as if I were old, and the ending of things were near. It was but a mood, but it led up to serious thought. There are surely hours in youth when we are older than our years, and times in age when we are again young. Sometimes I wonder whether Jack was right, who used to say it may be we are never young or old, but merely seem to be so. This is the queer kind of reflection which I find now and then in Jack’s diary, or with which he used to puzzle me and please James Wilson. Of course a man is young or is old, and there’s an end on ‘t, as a greater man has said. But Jack has imagination, and I have none.
I asked myself if I had done wrong in what I had said. I could not see that I had. With all my lifelong fear of my father, I greatly honoured and respected him, finding in myself something akin to the unyielding firmness with which he stood fast when he had made up his mind.
That this proud and steadfast man, so looked up to by every one, no matter what might be their convictions religious or political, should have been humiliated by a woman, seemed to me intolerable; this was the chief outcome of my reflections. It is true I considered, but I fear lightly, my own misdoings. I made up my mind to do better, and then again the image of my father in his wrath and his shame came back anew. I turned the boat, and pulled steadily across the river to our landing.
My father was in the counting-house in his own room, alone, although it was full late. “Well?” he said, spinning round on his high stool. “What is it? Thou hast been absent, and no leave asked.”
“Father,” I said, “if I was wrong this morning I wish to ask thy pardon.”
“Well, it is full time.”
“And I am come to say that I will take the punishment here and now. I did not run away from that.”
“Very good,” he replied, rising. “Take off thy fine coat.”
I wished he had not said this of my coat. I was in a heroic temper, and the sarcasm bit cruelly, but I did as I was bid. He went to the corner, and picked up a rattan cane. To whip fellows of nineteen or twenty was not then by any means unusual. What would have happened I know not, nor ever shall. He said, “There, I hear thy mother’s voice. Put on thy coat.” I hastened to obey him.
The dear lady came in with eyes full of tears, “What is this, John, I hear? I have seen Gainor. I could not wait. I shall go with thee.”
“No,” he said; “that is not to be.” But she fell on his neck, and pleaded, and I, for my part, went away, not sorry for the interruption. As usual she had her way.
I remember well this spring of ‘73. It was early by some weeks, and everything was green and blossoming in April. My father and mother were not to sail until the autumn, but already he was arranging for the voyage, and she as busily preparing or thinking over what was needed.
When next I saw my Aunt Gainor, she cried out, “Sit down there, bad boy, and take care of my mandarin. He and my great bronze Buddha are my only counsellors. If I want to do a thing I ask Mr. Mandarin—he can only nod yes; and if I want not to do a thing I ask Buddha, and as he can neither say no nor yes, I do as I please. What a wretch you are!”
I said I could not see it; and then I put my head in her lap, as I sat on the stool, and told her of my last interview with my father, and how for two days he had hardly so much as bade me good-night.
“It is his way, Hugh,” said my aunt. “I am sorry; but neither love nor time will mend him. He is what his nature and the hard ways of Friends have made him.”
I said that this was not all, nor the worst, and went on to tell her my latest grievance. Our family worship at home was, as usual with Friends in those days, conducted at times in total silence, and was spoken of by Friends as “religious retirement.” At other times, indeed commonly, a chapter of the Bible was read aloud, and after that my father would sometimes pray openly. On this last occasion he took advantage of the opportunity to dilate on my sins, and before our servants to ask of Heaven that I be brought to a due sense of my iniquities. It troubled my mother, who arose from her knees in tears, and went out of the room, whilst I, overcome with anger, stood looking out of the window. My father spoke to her as she opened the door, but she made no answer, nor even so much as turned her head. It brought to my memory a day of my childhood, when my father was vexed because she taught me to say the Lord’s Prayer. He did not approve, and would have no set form of words taught me. My mother was angry too, and I remember my own amazement that any one should resist my father.
When I had told my aunt of the indignity put upon me, and of the fading remembrance thus recalled, she said, “John Wynne has not changed, nor will he ever.” She declared that, after all, it was her fault—to have treated me as if I were a man, and to have given me too much money. I shook my head, but she would have it she was to blame, and then said of a sudden, “Are you in debt, you scamp? Did John pray for me!” I replied that I owed no one a penny, and that she had not been remembered. She was glad I was not in debt, and added, “Never play unless you have the means to pay. I have been very foolish. That uneasy woman, Bessy Ferguson, must needs tell me so. I could have slapped her. They will have thy sad case up in Meeting, I can tell thee.”
“But what have I done!” I knew well enough.
“Tut! you must not talk that way to me; but it is my fault. Oh, the time I have had with your mother! I am not fit, it seems, to be left to take care of you. They talk of leaving you with Abijah Hapworthy—sour old dog! I wish you joy of him!”
“Good heavens!” I exclaimed; for among my aunt’s gay friends I had picked up such exclamatory phrases as, used at home, would have astonished my father.
“Rest easy,” said Mistress Wynne; “it is not to be. I have fought your battle, and won it. But I have had to make such promises to your father, and—woe is me!—to your mother, as will damn me forever if you do not help me to keep them. I can fib to your father and not care a snap, but lie to those blue eyes I cannot.”
“I will try, Aunt Gainor; indeed I will try.” Indeed, I did mean to.
“You must, you must. I am to be a sort of godmother-in-law to you, and renounce for you the world, the flesh, and the devil; and that for one of our breed! I shall be like a sign-post, and never go the way I point. That was Bessy Ferguson s malice. Oh, I have suffered, I can tell you. It is I, and not you, that have repented.”
“But I will; I do.”
“That is all very well; but I have had my whipping, and you got off yours.”
“What do you mean, aunt?”
“What do I mean? Here came yesterday Sarah Fisher, pretty gay for a Quaker, and that solemn Master Savory, with his sweet, low voice like a nice girl’s tongue, and his gentle ways. And they are friends of thy people, who are distressed at thy goings on; and Nicholas Waln has seen thee with two sons of Belial in red coats, come out of the coffeehouse last month at evening, singing songs such as are not to be described, and no better able to take care of yourself than you should be. They did think it well and kind—hang ‘em, Hugh!—to consider the matter with me. We considered it—we did, indeed. There be five people whose consciences I am to make you respect. And not one of them do I care for, but Mother Blue-eyes. But I must! I must! It was all true, sir, what Friend Wain said; for you had reason enough left to come hither, and did I not put you to bed and send for Dr. Chovet, who grinned famously, and said, ‘Je comprends’ and went to call on your father on a hint from me, to declare you were enrhume’’, and threatened with I know not what; in fact, he lied like a gentleman. You made a noble recovery, and are a credit to the doctor. I hope you will pay the bill, and are ashamed.”
I was, and I said so.
“But that is not all. These dear Quakers were the worst. They were really sorry, and I had to put on my best manners and listen; and now everybody knows, and you are the talk of the town. Those drab geese must out with the whole naughtiness, despite the company which came in on us, and here were Mr. Montresor and that ape Etherington grinning, and, worst of all, a charming young woman just come to live here with her aunt, and she too must have her say when the Quakers and the men were gone.”
“And what did she say?” I did not care much. “And what is her name?”
“Oh, she said the Quakers were rather outspoken people, and it was a pity, and she was sorry, because she knew you once, and you had taken her part at school.”
“At school?”
“Yes. She is Darthea Peniston, and some kin of that Miss de Lancey, whom Sir William Draper will marry if he can.”
“Darthea Peniston?” I said, and my thoughts went back to the tender little maid who wept when I was punished, and for whom I had revenged myself on Master Dove.
“Quite a Spanish beauty,” said my Aunt Wynne; “a pretty mite of a girl, and not more money than will clothe her, they say; but the men mad about her. Come and see her to-morrow if you are sober.”
“O Aunt Gainor!”
“Yes, sir. I hear Mr. Montresor has leave from Anthony Morris to invite you to ‘The Colony in Schuylkill’ to-morrow. It is well your father has gone to visit Mr. Yeates at Lancaster.”
“I shall behave myself, Aunt Gainer.”
“I hope so. The Fish House punch is strong.”
I went home thinking of Miss Darthea Peniston, and filled with desire to lead a wiser life. It was full time. My aunt’s lavish generosity had, as I have said, given me means to live freely among the officers, who were, with some exceptions, a dissolute set. To be with them made it needful to become deceitful and to frame excuses, so that, when I was supposed to be at my aunt’s, or riding, I was free that past winter to go on sleighing-parties or to frequent taverns, pleased with the notice I got from men like Montresor and the officers of the Scotch Grays.
I have dwelt not at all on these scenes of dissipation. It is enough to mention them. My father was wrapped up in his business, and full of cares both worldly and spiritual; for now Friends were becoming politically divided, and the meetings were long and sometimes agitated.
My good mother was neither deceived nor unconcerned. She talked to me often, and in such a way as brings tears to my eyes even now to think of the pain I gave her. Alas! it is our dearest who have the greatest power to wound us. I wept and promised, and went back to my husks and evil company.
I have no wish to conceal these things from my children. It is well that our offspring when young should think us angels; but it were as well that when they are older they should learn that we have been men of like passions with themselves, and have known temptation, and have fought, and won or lost, our battles with sin. It is one of the weaknesses of nations, as well as of children, that they come to consider their political fathers as saints. I smile when I think of the way people nowadays think of our great President, as of a mild genius, incapable of being moved to anger or great mirth, a man unspotted of the world. They should have heard him at Monmouth, when Lee failed him in a time of peril, or seen him, as I have seen him, soberly merry over his wine with Knox. But some day you shall see him as my friend Jack and I saw him, and you will, I trust, think no worse of him for being as human as he was just.
The day of my more honest repentance was near, and I knew not that it was to be both terrible and of lasting value. I sometimes reflect upon the curious conditions with which my early manhood was surrounded. Here was I, brought up in the strictest ways of a sect to which I do no injustice if I describe it as ascetic. At home I saw plain living, and no luxury, save in regard to food, which my father would have of the best money could buy. I was taught the extreme of non-resistance, and absolute simplicity as to dress and language. Amusements there were none, and my father read no books except such as dealt with things spiritual, or things commercial. At my aunt’s, and in the society I saw at her house, there were men and women who loved to dance, gamble, and amuse themselves. The talk was of bets, racing, and the like. To be drunk was a thing to be expected of officers and gentlemen. To avenge an insult with sword or pistol was the only way to deal with it. My father was a passive Tory, my aunt a furious Whig. What wonder that I fell a victim to temptation?