THE OLD AND THE NEW
Grandmother sat at her spinning wheel
In the dust of the long ago,
And listened, with scarlet dyeing her cheeks,
For the step she had learned to know.
A courtly lover, was he who came,
With frill and ruffle and curl—
They dressed so queerly in the days
When grandmother was a girl!
“Knickerbockers” they called them then,
When they spoke of the things at all—
Grandfather wore them, buckled and trim,
When he sallied forth to call.
Grandmother’s eyes were youthful then—
His “guiding stars,” he said;
While she demurely watched her wheel
And spun with a shining thread.
Frill, and ruffle, and curl are gone,
But the “knickers” are with us still—
And so is love and the spinning wheel,
But we ride it now—if you will!
In grandfather’s “knickers” I sit and watch
For the gleam of a lamp afar;
And my heart still turns, as theirs, methinks,
To my wheel and my guiding star.
THE LOVE STORY OF THE “SAGE OF MONTICELLO”
American history holds no more beautiful love-story than that of Thomas Jefferson, third President of the United States, and author of the Declaration of Independence. It is a tale of single-hearted, unswerving devotion, worthy of this illustrious statesman. His love for his wife was not the first outpouring of his nature, but it was the strongest and best—the love, not of the boy, but of the man.
Jefferson was not particularly handsome as a young man, for he was red-haired, awkward, and knew not what to do with his hands, though he played the violin passably well. But his friend, Patrick Henry, suave, tactful and popular, exerted himself to improve Jefferson’s manners and fit him for general society, attaining at last very pleasing results, although there was a certain roughness in his nature, shown in his correspondence, which no amount of polishing seemed able to overcome.
John Page was Jefferson’s closest friend, and to him he wrote very fully concerning the state of his mind and heart, and with a certain quaint, uncouth humour, which to this day is irresistible.
For instance, at Fairfield, Christmas day, 1762, he wrote to his friend as follows:
Dear Page
“This very day, to others the day of greatest mirth and jolity, sees me overwhelmed with more and greater misfortunes than have befallen a descendant of Adam for these thousand years past, I am sure; and perhaps, after excepting Job, since the creation of the world.
“You must know, Dear Page, that I am now in a house surrounded by enemies, who take counsel together against my soul; and when I lay me down to rest, they say among themselves, ‘Come let us destroy him.’
“I am sure if there is such a thing as a Devil in this world, he must have been here last night, and have had some hand in what happened to me. Do you think the cursed rats (at his instigation I suppose) did not eat up my pocket book, which was in my pocket, within an inch of my head? And not contented with plenty for the present, they carried away my gemmy worked silk garters, and half a dozen new minuets I had just got, to serve, I suppose, as provision for the winter.
“You know it rained last night, or if you do not know it, I am sure I do. When I went to bed I laid my watch in the usual place, and going to take her up after I arose this morning, I found her in the same place, it is true, but all afloat in water, let in at a leak in the roof of the house, and as silent, and as still as the rats that had eaten my pocket book.
“Now, you know if chance had anything to do in this matter, there were a thousand other spots where it might have chanced to leak as well as this one which was perpendicularly over my watch. But I’ll tell you, it’s my opinion that the Devil came and bored the hole over it on purpose.
“Well, as I was saying, my poor watch had lost her speech. I would not have cared much for this, but something worse attended it—the subtle particles of water with which the case was filled had, by their penetration, so overcome the cohesion of the particles of the paper, of which my dear picture, and watch patch paper, were composed, that in attempting to take them out to dry them, my cursed fingers gave them such a rent as I fear I shall never get over.
“... And now, though her picture be defaced, there is so lively an image of her imprinted in my mind, that I shall think of her too often, I fear for my peace of mind; and too often I am sure to get through old Coke this winter, for I have not seen him since I packed him up in my trunk in Williamsburg. Well, Page, I do wish the Devil had old Coke for I am sure I never was so tired of the dull old scoundrel in my life....
“I would fain ask the favor of Miss Bettey Burwell to give me another watch paper of her own cutting, which I should esteem much more though it were a plain round one, than the nicest in the world cut by other hands; however I am afraid she would think this presumption, after my suffering the other to get spoiled. If you think you can excuse me to her for this, I should be glad if you would ask her....”
Page was a little older than Jefferson, and the young man thought much of his advice. Six months later we find Page advising him to go to Miss Rebecca Burwell and “lay siege in form.”
There were many objections to this—first, the necessity of keeping the matter secret, and of “treating with a ward before obtaining the consent of her guardian,” which at that time was considered dishonourable, and second, Jefferson’s own state of suspense and uneasiness, since the lady had given him no grounds for hope.
“If I am to succeed [he wrote], the sooner I know it the less uneasiness I shall have to go through. If I am to meet with disappointment, the sooner I know it, the more of life I shall have to wear it off; and if I do meet with one, I hope and verily believe it will be the last.
“I assure you that I almost envy you your present freedom and I assure you that if Belinda will not accept of my heart, it shall never be offered to another.”
In his letters he habitually spoke of Miss Burwell as “Belinda,” presumably on account of the fear which he expresses to Page, that the letters might possibly fall into other hands. In some of his letters he spells “Belinda” backward, and with exaggerated caution, in Greek letters.
Finally, with much fear and trembling, he took his friend’s advice, and laid siege to the fair Rebecca in due form. The day afterward—October 7, 1763—he confided in Page:
“In the most melancholy fit that ever a poor soul was, I sit down to write you. Last night, as merry as agreeable company and dancing with Belinda could make me, I never could have thought that the succeeding sun would have seen me so wretched as I now am!
“I was prepared to say a great deal. I had dressed up in my own mind, such thoughts as occurred to me, in as moving language as I knew how, and expected to have performed in a tolerably creditable manner. But ... when I had an opportunity of venting them, a few broken sentences, uttered in great disorder, and interrupted by pauses of uncommon length were the too visible marks of my strange confusion!
“The whole confab I will tell you, word for word if I can when I see you which God send, may be soon.”
After this, he dates his letters at “Devilsburg,” instead of Williamsburg, and says in one of them, “I believe I never told you that we had another occasion.” This time he behaved more creditably, told “Belinda” that it was necessary for him to go to England, explained the inevitable delays and told how he should conduct himself until his return. He says that he asked no questions which would admit of a categorical answer—there was something of the lawyer in this wooing! He assured Miss Rebecca that such a question would one day be asked. In this letter she is called “Adinleb” and spoken of as “he.”
Miss Burwell did not wait, however, until Jefferson was in a position to seek her hand openly, but was suddenly married to another. The news was a great shock to Jefferson, who refused to believe it until Page confirmed it; but the love-lorn swain gradually recovered from his disappointment.
With youthful ardour they had planned to buy adjoining estates and have a carriage in common, when each married the lady of his love, that they might attend all the dances. A little later, when Page was also crossed in love, both forswore marriage forever.
For five or six years, Jefferson was faithful to his vow—rather an unusual record. He met his fate at last in the person of a charming widow—Martha Skelton.
The death of his sister, his devotion to his books, and his disappointment made him a sadder and a wiser man. His home at Shadwell had been burned, and he removed to Monticello, a house built on the same estate on a spur of the Blue Ridge Mountains, five hundred feet above the common level.
He went often to visit Mrs. Skelton who made her home with her father after her bereavement. Usually he took his violin under his arm, and out of the harmonies which came from the instrument and the lady’s spinet came the greater one of love.
They were married in January of 1772. The ceremony took place at “The Forest” in Charles City County. The chronicles describe the bride as a beautiful woman, a little above medium height, finely formed, and with graceful carriage. She was well educated, read a great deal, and played the spinet unusually well.
The wedding journey was a strange one. It was a hundred miles from “The Forest” to Monticello, and years afterward their eldest daughter, Martha Jefferson Randolph, described it as follows:
“They left ‘The Forest’ after a fall of snow, light then, but increasing in depth as they advanced up the country. They were finally obliged to quit the carriage and proceed on horseback. They arrived late at night, the fires were all out, and the servants had retired to their own houses for the night. The horrible dreariness of such a house, at the end of such a journey, I have often heard both relate.”
Yet, the walls of Monticello, that afterwards looked down upon so much sorrow and so much joy, must have long remembered the home-coming of master and mistress, for the young husband found a bottle of old wine “on a shelf behind some books,” built a fire in the open fireplace, and “they laughed and sang together like two children.”
And that life upon the hills proved very nearly ideal. They walked and planned and rode together, and kept house and garden books in the most minute fashion.
Births and deaths followed each other at Monticello, but there was nothing else to mar the peace of that happy home. Between husband and wife there was no strife or discord, not a jar nor a rift in that unity of life and purpose which welds two souls into one.
Childish voices came and went, but two daughters grew to womanhood, and in the evening, the day’s duties done, violin and harpsichord sounded sweet strains together.
They reared other children besides their own, taking the helpless brood of Jefferson’s sister into their hearts and home when Dabney Carr died. Those three sons and three daughters were educated with his own children, and lived to bless him as a second father.
One letter is extant which was written to one of the nieces whom Jefferson so cheerfully supported. It reads as follows:
“Paris, June 14, 1787.
“I send you, my dear Patsey, the fifteen livres you desired. You propose this to me as an anticipation of five weeks’ allowance, but do you not see, my dear, how imprudent it is to lay out in one moment what should accommodate you for five weeks? This is a departure from that rule which I wish to see you governed by, thro’ your whole life, of never buying anything which you have not the money in your pocket to pay for.
“Be sure that it gives much more pain to the mind to be in debt than to do without any article whatever which we may seem to want.
“The purchase you have made is one I am always ready to make for you because it is my wish to see you dressed always cleanly and a little more than decently; but apply to me first for the money before making the purchase, if only to avoid breaking through your rule.
“Learn yourself the habit of adhering vigorously to the rules you lay down for yourself. I will come for you about eleven o’clock on Saturday. Hurry the making of your gown, and also your redingcote. You will go with me some day next week to dine at the Marquis Fayette. Adieu, my dear daughter,
“Yours affectionately,
“Th. Jefferson”
Mrs. Jefferson’s concern for her husband, the loss of her children, and the weary round of domestic duties at last told upon her strong constitution.
After the birth of her sixth child, Lucy Elizabeth, she sank rapidly, until at last it was plain to every one, except the distracted husband, that she could never recover.
Finally the blow fell. His daughter Martha wrote of it as follows:
“As a nurse no female ever had more tenderness or anxiety. He nursed my poor mother in turn with Aunt Carr, and her own sister—sitting up with her and administering her medicines and drink to the last.
“When at last he left his room, three weeks after my mother’s death, he rode out, and from that time, he was incessantly on horseback, rambling about the mountain.”
Shortly afterward he received the appointment of Plenipotentiary to Europe, to be associated with Franklin and Adams in negotiating peace. He had twice refused the same appointment, as he had promised his wife that he would never again enter public life, as long as she lived.
COLUMBIA
She comes along old Ocean’s trackless way—
A warrior scenting conflict from afar
And fearing not defeat nor battle-scar
Nor all the might of wind and dashing spray;
Her foaming path to triumph none may stay
For in the East, there shines her morning star;
She feels her strength in every shining spar
As one who grasps his sword and waits for day.
Columbia, Defender! dost thou hear?
The clarion challenge sweeps the sea
And straight toward the lightship doth she steer,
Her steadfast pulses sounding jubilee;
Arise, Defender! for thy way is clear
And all thy country’s heart goes out to thee.
THE STORY OF A DAUGHTER’S LOVE
Aaron Burr was past-master of what Whistler calls “the gentle art of making enemies!” Probably no man ever lived who was more bitterly hated or more fiercely reviled. Even at this day, when he has been dead more than half a century, his memory is still assailed.
It is the popular impression that he was a villain. Perhaps he was, since “where there is smoke, there must be fire,” but happily we have no concern with the political part of his life. Whatever he may have been, and whatever dark deeds he may have done, there still remains a redeeming feature which no one has denied him—his love for his daughter, Theodosia.
One must remember that before Burr was two years old, his father, mother, and grandparents were all dead. He was reared by an uncle, Timothy Edwards, who doubtless did his best, but the odds were against the homeless child. Neither must we forget that he fought in the Revolution, bravely and well.
From his early years he was very attractive to women. He was handsome, distinguished, well dressed, and gifted in many ways. He was generous, ready at compliments and gallantry, and possessed an all-compelling charm.
In the autumn of 1777, his regiment was detailed for scouting duty in New Jersey, which was then the debatable ground between colonial and British armies. In January of 1779, Colonel Burr was given command of the “lines” in Westchester County, New York. It was at this time that he first met Mrs. Prevost, the widow of a British officer. She lived across the Hudson, some fifteen miles from shore, and the river was patrolled by the gunboats of the British, and the land by their sentries.
In spite of these difficulties, however, Burr managed to make two calls upon the lady, although they were both necessarily informal. He sent six of his trusted soldiers to a place on the Hudson, where there was an overhanging bank under which they moored a large boat, well supplied with blankets and buffalo robes. At nine o’clock in the evening he left White Plains on the smallest and swiftest horse he could procure, and when he reached the rendezvous, the horse was quickly bound and laid in the boat. Burr and the six troopers stepped in, and in half an hour they were across the ferry. The horse was lifted out, and unbound, and with a little rubbing he was again ready for duty.
Before midnight, Burr was at the house of his beloved, and at four in the morning he came back to the troopers awaiting him on the river bank, and the return trip was made in the same manner.
For a year and a half after leaving the army, Burr was an invalid, but in July, 1782, he married Mrs. Prevost. She was a widow with two sons, and was ten years older than her husband. Her health was delicate and she had a scar on her forehead, but her mind was finely cultivated and her manners charming.
Long after her death he said that if his manners were more graceful than those of some men, it was due to her influence, and that his wife was the truest woman, and most charming lady he had ever known.
It has been claimed by some that Burr’s married life was not a happy one, but there are many letters still extant which passed between them which seemed to prove the contrary. Before marriage he did not often write to her, but during his absences afterward, the fondest wife could have no reason to complain.
For instance:
“This morning came your truly welcome letter of Monday evening,” he wrote her at one time. “Where did it loiter so long?
“Nothing in my absence is so flattering to me as your health and cheerfulness. I then contemplate nothing so eagerly as my return, amuse myself with ideas of my own happiness, and dwell upon the sweet domestic joys which I fancy prepared for me.
“Nothing is so unfriendly to every species of enjoyment as melancholy. Gloom, however dressed, however caused, is incompatible with friendship. They cannot have place in the mind at the same time. It is the secret, the malignant foe of sentiment and love.”
He always wrote fondly of the children:
“My love to the smiling little girl,” he said in one letter. “I continually plan my return with childish impatience, and fancy a thousand incidents which are most interesting.”
After five years of married life the wife wrote him as follows:
“Your letters always afford me a singular satisfaction, a sensation entirely my own. This was peculiarly so. It wrought strangely upon my mind and spirits. My Aaron, it was replete with tenderness and with the most lively affection. I read and re-read till afraid I should get it by rote, and mingle it with common ideas.”
Soon after Burr entered politics, his wife developed cancer of the most virulent character. Everything that money or available skill could accomplish was done for her, but she died after a lingering and painful illness, in the spring of 1794.
They had lived together happily for twelve years, and he grieved for her deeply and sincerely. Yet the greatest and most absorbing passion of his life was for his daughter, Theodosia, who was named for her mother and was born in the first year of their marriage. When little Theodosia was first laid in her father’s arms, all that was best in him answered to her mute plea for his affection, and later, all that was best in him responded to her baby smile.
Between those two, there was ever the fullest confidence, never tarnished by doubt or mistrust, and when all the world forsook him, Theodosia, grown to womanhood, stood proudly by her father’s side and shared his blame as if it had been the highest honour.
When she was a year or two old, they moved to a large house at the corner of Cedar and Nassau Streets, in New York City. A large garden surrounded it and there were grapevines in the rear. Here the child grew strong and healthy, and laid the foundations of her girlish beauty and mature charm. When she was but three years old her mother wrote to the father, saying:
“Your dear little Theodosia cannot hear you spoken of without an apparent melancholy; insomuch, that her nurse is obliged to exert her invention to divert her, and myself avoid the mention of you in her presence. She was one whole day indifferent to everything but your name. Her attachment is not of a common nature.”
And again:
“Your dear little daughter seeks you twenty times a day, calls you to your meals, and will not suffer your chair to be filled by any of the family.”
The child was educated as if she had been a boy. She learned to read Latin and Greek fluently, and the accomplishments of her time were not neglected. When she was at school, the father wrote her regularly, and did not allow one of her letters to wait a day for its affectionate answer. He corrected her spelling and her grammar, instilled sound truths into her mind, and formed her habits. From this plastic clay, with inexpressible love and patient toil, he shaped his ideal woman.
She grew into a beautiful girl. Her features were much like her father’s. She was petite, graceful, plump, rosy, dignified, and gracious. In her manner, there was a calm assurance—the air of mastery over all situations—which she doubtless inherited from him.
When she was eighteen years of age, she married Joseph Alston of South Carolina, and, with much pain at parting from her father, she went there to live, after seeing him inaugurated as Jefferson’s Vice-President. His only consolation was her happiness, and when he returned to New York, he wrote her that he approached the old house as if it had been the sepulchre of all his friends. “Dreary, solitary, comfortless—it was no longer home.”
After her mother’s death, Theodosia had been the lady of his household and reigned at the head of his table. When he went back there was no loved face opposite him, and the chill and loneliness struck him to the heart.
For three years after her marriage, Theodosia was blissfully happy. A boy was born to her, and was named Aaron Burr Alston. The Vice-President visited them in the South and took his namesake unreservedly into his heart. “If I can see without prejudice,” he said, “there never was a finer boy.”
His last act before fighting the duel with Hamilton, was writing to his daughter—a happy, gay, care-free letter, giving no hint of what was impending. To her husband he wrote in a different strain, begging him to keep the event from her as long as possible, to make her happy always, and to encourage her in those habits of study which he himself had taught her.
She had parted from him with no other pain in her heart than the approaching separation. When they met again, he was a fugitive from justice, travel-stained from his long journey in an open canoe, indicted for murder in New York, and in New Jersey, although still President of the Senate, and Vice-President of the United States.
The girl’s heart ached bitterly, yet no word of censure escaped her lips, and she still held her head high. When his Mexican scheme was overthrown, Theodosia sat beside him at his trial, wearing her absolute faith, so that all the world might see.
When he was preparing for his flight to Europe, Theodosia was in New York, and they met by night, secretly, at the house of friends. Just before he sailed, they spent a whole night together, making the best of the little time that remained to them before the inevitable separation. Early in June they parted, little dreaming that they should see each other no more.
During the years of exile, Theodosia suffered no less than he. Mr. Alston had lost his faith in Aaron Burr, and the woman’s heart strained beneath the burden. Her health failed, her friends shrank from her, yet openly and bravely she clung to her father.
Public opinion showed no signs of relenting, and his evil genius followed him across the sea. He was expelled from England, and in Paris he was almost a prisoner. At one time he was obliged to live upon potatoes and dry bread, and his devoted daughter could not help him.
He was despised by his countrymen, but Theodosia’s adoring love never faltered. In one of her letters she said:
“I witness your extraordinary fortitude with new wonder at every misfortune. Often, after reflecting on this subject, you appear to me so superior, so elevated above other men—I contemplate you with such a strange mixture of humility, admiration, reverence, love, and pride, that a very little superstition would be necessary to make me worship you as a superior being, such enthusiasm does your character excite in me.
“When I afterward revert to myself, how insignificant do my best qualities appear! My own vanity would be greater if I had not been placed so near you, and yet, my pride is in our relationship. I had rather not live than not to be the daughter of such a man.”
She wrote to Mrs. Madison and asked her to intercede with the President for her father. The answer gave the required assurance, and she wrote to her father, urging him to go boldly to New York and resume the practice of his profession. “If worse comes to worst,” she wrote, “I will leave everything to suffer with you.”
He landed in Boston and went on to New York in May of 1812, where his reception was better than he had hoped, and where he soon had a lucrative practice. They planned for him to come South in the summer, and she was almost happy again, when her child died and her mother’s heart was broken.
She had borne much, and she never recovered from that last blow. Her health failed rapidly, and though she was too weak to undertake the trip, she insisted upon going to New York to see her father.
Thinking the voyage might prove beneficial, her husband reluctantly consented, and passage was engaged for her on a pilot-boat that had been out privateering, and had stopped for supplies before going on to New York.
The vessel sailed—and a storm swept the Atlantic coast from Maine to Florida. It was supposed that the ship went down off Cape Hatteras, but forty years afterward, a sailor, who died in Texas, confessed on his death-bed that he was one of a crew of mutineers who took possession of the Patriot and forced the passengers, as well as the officers and men, to walk the plank. He professed to remember Mrs. Alston well, and said she was the last one who perished. He never forgot her look of despair as she stepped into the sea—with her head held high even in the face of death.
Among Theodosia’s papers was found a letter addressed to her husband, written at a time when she was weary of the struggle. On the envelope was written: “My Husband. To be delivered after my death. I wish this to be read immediately and before my burial.”
He never saw the letter, for he never had the courage to go through her papers, and after his death it was sent to her father. It came to him like a message from the grave:
“Let my father see my son, sometimes,” she had written. “Do not be unkind to him whom I have loved so much, I beseech of you. Burn all my papers except my father’s letters, which I beg you to return to him.”
A long time afterward, her father married Madame Jumel, a rich New York woman who was many years his junior, but the alliance was unfortunate, and was soon annulled. Through all the rest of his life, he never wholly gave up the hope that Theodosia might return. He clung fondly to the belief that she had been picked up by another ship, and some day would be brought back to him.
Day by day, he haunted the Battery, anxiously searching the faces of the incoming passengers, asking some of them for tidings of his daughter, and always believing that the next ship would bring her back.
He became a familiar figure, for he was almost always there—a bent, shrunken little man, white-haired, leaning heavily upon his cane, asking questions in a thin piping voice, and straining his dim eyes forever toward the unsounded waters, from whence the idol of his heart never came.
For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;
A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
And I—I hear the sea-voice calling me.
THE SEA-VOICE
Beyond the sands I hear the sea-voice calling
With passion all but human in its pain,
While from my eyes the bitter tears are falling,
And all the summer land seems blind with rain;
For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea,
A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
And I—I hear the sea-voice calling me.
The tide comes in. The moonlight flood and glory
Of that unresting surge thrill earth with bliss,
And I can hear the passionate sweet story
Of waves that waited round her for her kiss.
Sweetheart, they love you; silent and unseeing,
Old Ocean holds his court around you there,
And while I reach out through the dark to find you
His fingers twine the sea-weed in your hair.
The tide goes out and in the dawn’s new splendour
The dreams of dark first fade, then pass away,
And I awake from visions soft and tender
To face the shuddering agony of day
For out within those waters, cruel, changeless,
She sleeps, beyond all rage of earth or sea;
A smile upon her dear lips, dumb, but waiting,
And I—I hear the sea-voice calling me.
