DUKE 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
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 in 2018 with funding from 
 Duke University Libraries 
 
 https://archive.org/details/romanceofassocia01dall_0 
 
THE ROMANCE OF THE ASSOCIATION; 
 
 ONE LAST GLIMPSE 
 
 CHARLOTTE TEMPLE AND ELIZA WHARTON. 
 
 (cWlctPe ) tElholattk j 
 
 A CURIOSITY OF LITERATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 Cav'olVvtf Hcnlgv 
 
 By MRS. a DALL, 
 
 AUTHOR OF “the COLLEGE, THE MARKET, AND THE COURT,” “SUNSHINE,’ 
 “HISTORICAL SKETCHES RETOUCHED,” ETC. 
 
 1 In the old age black was not counted fair ; 
 
 Or, if it were, it bore not beauty’s name ” 
 
 Shaksfiere. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 ^ 75 - 
 
THE ROMANCE OF THE ASSOCIATION. 
 
 1 
 
 i 
 
Printed by subscription and by request. All orders, criti¬ 
 cisms, and information bearing on the contents of this 
 volume may be sent to John Wilson arid Son, Printers, 
 Cambridge, Mass. 
 
THE ROMANCE OF THE ASSOCIATION; 
 
 OR, 
 
 ONE LAST GLIMPSE 
 
 OF 
 
 CHARLOTTE TEMPLE AND ELIZA WHARTON. 
 
 A CURIOSITY OF LITERATURE AND LIFE. 
 
 By MRS. DALL, 
 
 AUTHOR OF “THE COLLEGE, THE MARKET, AND THE COURT,” “SUNSHINE,” 
 “HISTORICAL SKETCHES RETOUCHED,” ETC. 
 
 “ In the old age black was not counted fair ; 
 
 Or, if it were, it bore not beauty’s name.” 
 
 Shakspere. 
 
 CAMBRIDGE: 
 
 PRESS OF JOHN WILSON AND SON. 
 
 1S75. 
 
 D’ Oti* 
 
Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1875, by 
 JOHN WILSON AND SON, 
 
 In the Office of the Librarian of Congress, at Washington. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 This little brochiire is published by request and by 
 subscription. It is not offered to those who read it as a 
 work of art; not even as a contribution to literature nor 
 as a satisfactory solution of the problem of Eliza Whar¬ 
 ton’s destiny. A work of art must have been mercilessly 
 shorn of details, and of all indirection that would detract 
 from its climax. A contribution to literature must chal¬ 
 lenge sympathies broad as the language. A solution of 
 an old mystery must bring justification and proof to every 
 assertion. No one of these things is here attempted. 
 
 On the contrary, it was the wish of those for whose 
 pleasure it was written to preserve all the details that 
 would recall hereafter the charmed week at Hartford, 
 although at times these might disguise the thread of the 
 story. 
 
 Again, the sympathies to which the story is addressed 
 are limited. The members of the Association present at 
 Hartford, during the last days in August, 1874; a few 
 persons who have heard the manuscript read; and 
 women with good memories in the rural homesteads up 
 and down the Connecticut River, — may be all who will 
 read it with interest. 
 
 Why then should it be printed? 
 
 For the same reason that Mr. Bigelow tells what he 
 knows of the History of Franklin’s manuscript. “ The 
 facts here set down if preserved may lead to the discovery 
 of others which will complete the story.” 
 
 It is impossible to prove Eliza Wharton’s marriage 
 here ; but it is surely worth while to show that those 
 
 2 
 
VI 
 
 PEE FA CE. 
 
 who watched by her death-bed fully believed in it as a 
 fact. Nothing short of such a statement could draw the 
 certificate from its hiding-place. Where we find a pop¬ 
 ular impression, surviving for a century, wrongly based 
 at the beginning and without any foundation in the sus¬ 
 picions of those best cognizant of the facts, justice to the 
 noble men and women who loved the subject of it de¬ 
 mands that matters should be put in train for her ultimate 
 justification. 
 
 When I had once heard the Shaksperian legends from 
 the believing lips of the last descendant of Abigail Stanley, 
 it was impossible for me to begin my story on this side of 
 the Atlantic. Its roots seemed to me to shoot over the 
 broad waves, as those of a willow sometimes cross a coun¬ 
 try road to seek a brook. Thomas Stanley, neighbor and 
 acquaintance of William Shakspere, “of more conse¬ 
 quence than most,” is a far more attractive person than 
 any man known merely as the first settler of Hartford. 
 When we find him in close company with other men 
 whose names are on the Stratford Register the interest 
 deepens. Little wonder if “Thong Church” should be 
 the last thought and the last boast of the last survivor of 
 Thomas Stanley’s sorely tried descendants. 
 
 It is well known to genealogists, and indeed to most 
 literary people, that a very exhaustive volume has lately 
 been published on the subject of Shakspere’s descend¬ 
 ants. In that volume Shakspere’s nephews, the Harts, 
 are all accounted for. Against the name of one, however, 
 there is no date but that of birth, and against that of 
 another are the decisive words, “dead sine prole.” For 
 this reason I said, “ There is no certainty that the chil¬ 
 dren of Joan Shakspere died childless because the regis¬ 
 ter is silent,” and my words seem to need interpretation. 
 
 Our late civil war may make clear some of the inci¬ 
 dents of the century in which New England was settled. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 Vll 
 
 Just as Southern slave-holders disinherited a recreant 
 son who had been educated at the North ; just as two 
 brothers reared under different influences met each other 
 in the fields of Shiloh or Manasseh, and if they could, 
 crossed swords and passed each other by, — so did the 
 children and the fathers of the first part of the seventeenth 
 century in England. If a Puritan son came to New 
 England with his family, the angry Cavalier left his name 
 standing on the household book a while. If the same 
 man returned in 1640 to take part with Oliver Cromwell, 
 the unhappy father wrote sternly against the name u dead 
 sine prole;" and this fact, not always capable of proof, 
 when encountered at the Herald’s office is one great 
 obstacle to establishing an American pedigree. But Cava¬ 
 liers die also, and sometimes without children ; so the 
 Massachusetts Bay Company, looking forward to the 
 Protectorate or some similar reverse, ordered each one 
 of its emigrants to keep a strict account of the pedigree 
 and increase of his family. 
 
 In writing the novel of “ Charlotte Temple,” Mrs. Row- 
 son adhered very strictly to her facts. The names of the real 
 actors in her story, and the fact of Charlotte’s connection 
 with the Stanleys, are now put in print for the first time. 
 I delayed the printing of my manuscript for a while, 
 hoping to discover one copy of the first edition of “ The 
 Coquette,” and to be able to account for the fact that 
 this work of the imagination was at once accepted as a 
 veritable history. I was not successful, and what little I 
 have been able to gather from the “ children’s children” 
 of the author I will state here. 
 
 Mrs. Forster was Hannah, daughter of Grant Webster, 
 celebrated in her youth for both wit and beauty. Dr. 
 Forster’s attention was first drawn to her by her political 
 articles in the newspapers. It would be a pleasant pict¬ 
 ure of the olden time, if I could paint the scene, as the 
 
Vlll 
 
 PREFACE. 
 
 whole parish at “ Little Cambridge ” turned out, ceremoni¬ 
 ously, to greet his bride when he took her home. 
 
 It is believed that the first edition of “ The Coquette” 
 was issued about the year 1800, twelve years after Eliza’s 
 death. There is little doubt that Mr. Boyer, Major San¬ 
 ford, and others were characters carefully studied from 
 the life, and immediately recognized ; but Mrs. Forster 
 was a woman of vivid imagination, and certainly made 
 no attempt to adhere to the facts of the story, if she had 
 ever known them. 
 
 That the tale, as I tell it, seems almost like a bit of au¬ 
 tobiography, I am well aware : I make no apology for it. 
 Psychologically the whole train of events forms a curious 
 study ; and, when I look back upon it, it amuses me to see 
 how easily a little more of indolence, selfishness, or indif¬ 
 ference, on my part, might have altered the whole course 
 of the story. More indolent, I should never have possessed 
 myself of Eliza’s letters ; more selfish, I should have taken 
 no heed to Mrs. Burton’s request; and then, what refresh¬ 
 ment, pleasure, and surprise not only I but many others 
 must have missed ! None of those who went to Salis¬ 
 bury on the 20th of August, 1S74, will ever forget the 
 tremulous excitement which changed for the nonce the 
 “Man of Science” to the “ Man of Feeling.” 
 
 To those accustomed to old letters, Eliza’s will seem 
 bright, innocent, and helpful; others may misunderstand 
 them, but to be misunderstood is the risk and the fate of 
 almost every creature. 
 
 It has seemed best to preserve the real names of most 
 of the actors in a narrative so privately printed. I trust 
 to the kindness of those whose sharp eyes may pierce 
 the half-worn veil to take no ungenerous advantage of 
 that fact. 
 
 CAROLINE H. DALL. 
 
 141 Warren Avenue, Boston, 
 
 March 1, 1S75. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 Introduction .xi 
 
 Part I. Separation. i 
 
 ,, II. Reunion.29 
 
 ,, III. The Story and the Letter. ... 63 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 I remember that one moist, warm summer morn¬ 
 ing, when I was a little girl, I wandered into an old 
 orchard before the sun had risen. The air seemed 
 full of loose silver threads, floating and swaying, 
 the aerial clues flung out by adventurous spiders 
 seeking the day’s fortune. 
 
 Near me was a bare limb of a half-dead apple- 
 tree; and, while I looked and wondered, many of 
 these clues attached themselves to the splitting bark, 
 and the proprietors of these "ropewalks in the air” 
 began to pull their cables in, and to run back and 
 forth, clearing away superfluous knots, yet holding 
 safe the diamond setting of their silver chains. 
 
 They were natives of many far-sundered homes : 
 there was the big wood spider, clad in a heavy 
 set of winter furs, first cousin to the tarantula ; the 
 spotted mite, terror of nursery beds; the loose- 
 jointed "spinner,” full of nursery cares; but, how¬ 
 ever they looked and whatever they did, each was 
 a deft workman, and kept unsullied the charm of 
 the new-born day. 
 
Xll 
 
 INTRODUCTION. 
 
 Why should all those tiny threads have floated to 
 that one branch ? 
 
 I asked myself again and again, but I could not 
 tell. Perhaps it was because the branch was bare, 
 and had no proper function of its own. Perhaps 
 its purposeless existence left it free, to entertain the 
 vagaries of its many-legged visitors. 
 
 For some such reason, it may be, the threads of 
 the following story floated before my asking eyes, 
 and have been gathered into my waiting hand. 
 
 Because I would not shake the dew-drops from 
 the web, I tell the story in my proper person. 
 
PART I. —SEPARATION. 
 
‘ What is jour substance, whereof are you made 
 That millions of strange shadows on you tend?” 
 
 53 d Sonnet. Shakspere. 
 
 ‘ If there be nothing new, but that which is 
 Hath been before, — how are our brains beguil’d ! 
 Which, laboring for invention, bear amiss 
 The second burthen of a former child.” 
 
 59 tk Sonnet. 
 
I. 
 
 VERYBODY smiled a little incredulously the 
 
 other day when I said, innocently enough, 
 that probably we had here in Boston the only 
 portrait of Shakspere that could be proved to be 
 painted from the life, — the portrait painted by 
 Frederico Zucchero for the old Globe Tavern. 
 
 Before I had time to prove my words, the only 
 remaining personal relic of the great poet followed 
 the picture. The gloves which Garrick received 
 from one of the Harts at Stratford, which he left 
 to his wife as his chief treasure, and which she 
 afterwards gave to Mrs. Siddons, Fanny Kemble 
 — the only woman who ever had a right to wear 
 them — has now sent in friendly sympathy to 
 Horace Furness. 
 
 If Betterton had been a little wiser, he might 
 have sought in other places than Stratford for news 
 of the dead poet. There his Puritan relatives felt 
 themselves disgraced by his fame; they hid his 
 
4 
 
 SEPARATION. 
 
 papers, and would not consent to the publication 
 of his immortal plays, — the only reason why we 
 got them first from the stage itself. 
 
 The "preacher at New Place,” daintily enter¬ 
 tained with the Stratford publicans’ "best ale and 
 sacke,” did his work well; and, gentle and catholic 
 as the singer of Avon might be, there is no doubt 
 that those nearest to him in the world were fanat¬ 
 ics in the new faith. Charles Hart, who fought at 
 Edgehill and was the best tragic actor of his time, 
 alone justified the tenderness shown by Shakspere 
 to the kin of his sister Joan by a just pride in the 
 great plays. 
 
 But, in Betterton’s time, there were traces just 
 across the sea. 
 
 Before me, as I write, is a picture of Hamlet, 
 copied from one ‘hanging in the Royal Gallery at 
 Copenhagen, which the Danish tradition tells us 
 Shakspere himself saw before he wrote his play ; 
 and very easy to believe this any one will find it 
 who looks at the speculative eyes, undecided mouth, 
 and inky cloak of this portrait, painted in the twelfth 
 century. 
 
 It was on this journey also, the Wurtembergers 
 tell us, that Duke Frederick, who had made the ac¬ 
 quaintance of Bacon, Raleigh, and Ben Jonson, at 
 Elizabeth's court, heard of Shakspere in the Low 
 Countries, and summoned him to Frankfort, hang¬ 
 ing a gold chain about the poet’s neck after he had 
 
SEPARATION. 
 
 5 
 
 given Romeo and Juliet in the New Palace, through 
 the broad halls of which a span of horses might have 
 been driven to his chamber door, and where, in the 
 month of May, 1597, he found the first suggestion of 
 the "Midsummer Night’s Dream,” and held a Latin 
 debate with the old schoolmaster whom he was to 
 immortalize as Quarles. 
 
 This pretty story is told by those who have been 
 long attached to the ducal court. If Betterton had 
 looked, he might have found its fresh traces. 
 
 But it never would have occurred to Betterton 
 to cross the Atlantic with Shakspere’s " kinsfolk 
 and acquaintance,” nor to Garrick long after; and 
 yet, possibly as late as Garrick’s time, such traces 
 might have been found along our own Connecticut 
 River. 
 
 Dr. Hall, who married the great poet’s favorite 
 daughter, was a Puritan of the "strictest lace,” yet 
 so "wise was he in all appertaining to his craft, 
 that the gentry were forced to have him in their 
 straits,” wrote Drake, commenting on his post¬ 
 humous medical work. 
 
 Fanatic though Hall might be, he had loved his 
 great father-in-law; for, in that epitaph upon his 
 wife which Dugdale copied, he speaks of her as 
 like her father in both wit and piety, and still more 
 in the heart that " wept with all,” and was not con¬ 
 tented to weep only, but set itself to cheer with 
 "comforts cordiall.” Surely, kith and kin, and 
 
6 
 
 SEPARA T10N. 
 
 brethren in the faith, emigrating from Stratford 
 and its neighborhood, within fourteen years of 
 Shakspere’s death, must sometime have heard the 
 poet’s name in the household of " good Mistress 
 Hall ” ? 
 
 Who, then, were Edmund and Stephen Hart, 
 who crossed the Atlantic in the "John and Mary” 
 in 1634, in company with Thomas Greene and 
 Thomas Stanley, all of whom are found soon after 
 with Hooker at Hartford? Stephen Hart went to 
 Farmington, but on the old maps we find " Hart’s 
 Ford” where the modern city stands. These Harts 
 were younger than Shakspere’s nephews ; yet, as 
 they were Puritan, there is no certainty that the 
 children of Joan Shakspere died childless because 
 the register is silent. If of kin to that William 
 Hart who married Joan Shakspere, might not 
 this very Edmund have been named for the 
 "player” whom the great poet buried so proudly 
 at St. Savior’s ; and may not Thomas Greene have 
 been the grandson at least of that Thomas who 
 was buried at Stratford, March 6, 1589, — Thomas 
 Greene, alias Shakspere? 
 
 These are not mere idle fancies; for, in the first 
 place, our tale goes back to Shakspere’s time, 
 and, in the next, we know certain things of the 
 Thomas Stanley who came with these men, and 
 went with them to Hartford, which give us leave 
 to entertain these questions. 
 
SEPARA TION. 
 
 , 7 
 
 The answers probably perished, when the old 
 parsonage of Elnathan Whitman, containing the 
 most valuable collection of papers in Connecticut, 
 was burned at Hartford, in 1831 ; but from these 
 three names are descended many of the most dis¬ 
 tinguished citizens of that State. The Hookers, the 
 Wadsworths, and the Porters all carry Stanley 
 blood; the Lees are the descendants of Stephen 
 Hart; and the old graveyard still shows the name 
 of Bennet, wife of Thomas Stanley; who was born 
 in 1600. 
 
 In Shropshire, not very far away from Stratford, 
 is the old "Thong Church,” built on the land which 
 Hengist begged of Vortigern, promising to cover it 
 all with "an ox-hide,” which he shrewdly cut into 
 thongs. 
 
 There lies the body of Thomas Stanley, second 
 son of the Earl of Derby', beneath an inscription 
 which Dugdale tells us Shakspere wrote, and 
 indeed when we read in the last line, that — 
 
 “ Standley, for whom this stands, shall stand in Heaven,” 
 
 we seem to recognize the quaint speech, nor did 
 it much astonish me to hear it recited by r the last 
 of the direct Stanley line in Hartford the other 
 day, with this information added, — 
 
 "This was what John Milton thought of when 
 he wrote his famous epitaph on Shakspere, for 
 when he sings, — 
 
8 
 
 SEP A RA TION. 
 
 “ What needs m3' Shakspere for his honored bones, 
 
 The labor of an age in pilfed stones, 
 
 Or that his hallowed reliques should be hid 
 Under a star-j'-pointing pyramid ” 
 
 he merely quotes what Shakspere had said of 
 Stanley, — 
 
 “Not monumental stone preserves our fame, 
 
 Nor star-j'-pointing pj'ramid our name, 
 
 The memorj' of him for whom this stands 
 Shall outlive marble and defacer’s hands.” 
 
 It will be seen that " star-y-pointing ” has been 
 deftly substituted for " skye-aspiring ” in this tradi¬ 
 tional Connecticut version. 
 
 But we must not hurry away from " Thong 
 Church.” Here, soon after " Thomas Stanley ” 
 was laid to rest, a daughter of Thomas Harris 
 married William Pierrepont, last Duke of Kingston ; 
 and the dust beneath the monumental slabs of that 
 race was to rise again in the New England in a 
 form of grace and beauty, which brought poetr}' into 
 the arid pages of Jonathan Edwards when Sarah 
 Pierrepont was only a child of fourteen, and her 
 family and that of the Stanleys, in the new land, 
 were to work fresh woe for each other. 
 
 " Thomas Stanley, of more consequence than 
 most, came to Hartford in 1636,” wrote James Savage 
 years ago. 
 
 Stanley had buried a young brother at sea; he 
 brought with him a curious old silver salver and 
 chiselled tea-service which attested his kinship to 
 
SEPARA TION. 
 
 9 
 
 that Thomas who called Shakspere friend. His 
 silver spoons bore the same crest as the old tomb, 
 and proud were the men and fair the women of 
 his line. He was himself one of the Governor’s 
 assistants, and died early. It was his great grand¬ 
 son, Nathaniel Stanley, Treasurer of the Colony of 
 Connecticut, who in 1750 gave his daughter Abi¬ 
 gail in marriage, at Hartford, to the Rev. Elnathan 
 Whitman, pastor of the Second Church, and one 
 of the Fellows of the Corporation of Yale College, 
 — a man distinguished for scholarly traits, for the 
 love of rare manuscripts and forgotten books, and 
 whose library at the time of its destruction was 
 the envy of many a college. 
 
 And here I pause, with the first faint conscious¬ 
 ness of what I have undertaken. 
 
 To revive the memory of a dead tale? 
 
 Not dead : for, even while I write, the newspapers 
 tell of new editions of the well-known stories of "Cla¬ 
 rissa Harlowe,” "Charlotte Temple,” and "Eliza 
 Wharton,” and, in less than a week after its first an¬ 
 nouncement, an order sent to Philadelphia for the last 
 book is returned with the words, " not one copy left ” ! 
 
 "Clarissa Harlowe” has been called a masterly 
 book ; but for the present generation it has been 
 found necessary to cut its eight volumes of horror 
 down to one, and so unnatural and impossible do 
 its situations appear, that more than once the single 
 volume is laid aside with a shudder. 
 
 3 
 
IO 
 
 SEPARA TION. 
 
 Can it be possible that this cruel story really rep¬ 
 resents society which existed but little more than a cen¬ 
 tury ago ? Did parental tyranny, fraternal censorship, 
 and social abandonment, really reach such a height 
 in the very year which gave Eliza Wharton birth? 
 If so, the reverses of that unfortunate woman are 
 the more easily understood, and it becomes less 
 impossible to believe that a woman connected with 
 her by marriage, and herself gifted and good, should 
 have found it necessary to point a moral with the 
 sad story of her life. 
 
 Although I do not mean to dwell at this moment 
 on any details, either actual or assumed, I cannot 
 refrain from pointing out the singular circumstance 
 that the first two American fictions— and, so far as 
 I know, the fictions which have had the largest and 
 steadiest sale, up to the publication of "Uncle 
 Tom’s Cabin,” and a very large sale since that 
 time — have been founded upon the real histories of 
 two lovely women of the Stanley blood, descend¬ 
 ants of the Great Earl, King of Man, and Char¬ 
 lotte de la Tremouille. 
 
 Did they inherit, with her beauty and grace, some 
 restless blood which had surged through all the 
 tumults of the Fronde, or battled loyally for the 
 rights of the Pretender? 
 
 "Charlotte Temple,” although first published in 
 London I believe in 1790, was immediately re¬ 
 printed in this country. It was written by Susanna 
 Haswell Rowson, born in England, but brought 
 
SEP All A TION. 
 
 II 
 
 early to America, and endeared to hundreds of our 
 most eminent women as the principal of a girls’ 
 school, which w r as at the head of all institutions of 
 the kind in New England for twenty-five years. 
 "Charlotte Temple ” w r as in reality Charlotte Stanley, 
 the granddaughter of the Earl of Derby by a son 
 whom he had disinherited. 
 
 Mrs. Rowson wrote her story with deep feel¬ 
 ing ; for the man who abandoned her heroine was 
 Colonel John Montressor of the British service, one 
 of the author’s own kinsmen. 
 
 It is still possible to read "Charlotte Temple” 
 with pleasure; but the extraordinary sale of the 
 book is only to be explained by the well-known 
 truth of the facts, and the romantic interest attached 
 to the consequences of Montressor’s sin. 
 
 Charlotte may have been beautiful and winning; 
 but only her extreme youth, and the simple habits 
 of the English parsonage in which she was reared, 
 could excuse the folly of her life. Cruelly aban¬ 
 doned by her lover in the city of New York, she 
 drank patiently the bitter cup she had filled for 
 herself; and the loving hands of an American 
 woman of unquestioned rank and purity laid her 
 in the grave at the early age of nineteen. 
 
 About twenty feet north of the upper entrance to 
 Trinity Church, and not more than twelve from the 
 living tide which surges through Broadway, a 
 broad brown stone, bedded in the sward, bears 
 
12 
 
 SEPARATION. 
 
 the name of "Charlotte Temple,” to which Mrs. 
 Rowson’s pen had given a distinction that " Stan¬ 
 ley ” could not boast. 
 
 But romance did not die with Charlotte. The 
 child she left, and which she gave to her father in 
 her dying moments, was adopted by Lieutenant- 
 Colonel Grice Blakeney, of the 14th Royal Dra¬ 
 goons. Mr. Stanley, who had gone to New York 
 in search of his child, died of grief soon after his 
 return from America, and his wife soon followed 
 him. Lucy Blakeney inherited a handsome for¬ 
 tune from her adopted father. Colonel Montressor 
 had married in the city of New York before the 
 death of his victim. He took his wife’s name 
 for reasons connected with her family property; 
 and so, unsuspected by all the parties, his oldest 
 legitimate son, some twenty years after, engaged 
 himself in marriage to Lucy Blakeney, a girl of 
 sterling strength and principle. At the time when 
 they exchanged .promises, Colonel Montressor was 
 ill. His son was summoned to his death-bed at 
 the very moment of betrothal. The dying man 
 was impatient to see the face of the young girl who 
 would soon have been his daughter. There was 
 no portrait of Lucy, but her resemblance to Char¬ 
 lotte was perfect, and it was a miniature of her 
 mother, taken for Colonel Montressor himself, that 
 the young man held before his father’s horror- 
 stricken and dying eyes ! 
 
SEPARA TION. 
 
 13 
 
 In the course of time the lover married, but 
 Lucy devoted her remaining years to works of 
 charity. In 1810 she came to this country, and 
 visited the friends and the grave of her mother. 
 The quarterings of the house of Derby, with the 
 date of Charlotte’s birth and death, were then set 
 into the brown stone, on a heavy silver plate; but 
 it did not long escape the greedy clutch of street 
 thieves. 
 
 Mrs. Rowson did not fail to write out this 
 "Sequel” to Charlotte’s story; and, after her death 
 in 1828, it was published. It has never lost its hold 
 on the public mind; and a new edition of the two 
 stories, wretchedly printed, in 1874 finds as many 
 readers as that of 1790. 
 
 Charlotte Stanley was a near cousin of Abigail, 
 the mother of Eliza Wharton ; but far deeper in its 
 hold upon the popular heart was the novel which 
 told the story of the beautiful Connecticut girl. 
 
 Charlotte was the lost treasure of a ducal house, 
 and her grave lies comparatively desolate in the 
 streets of a great city; but the strength and beauty 
 of Eliza’s character have kept her memory green 
 even under the suspicion of a great error. She, too, 
 was the daughter of a clergyman, the honored Puri¬ 
 tan minister of a provincial town. Her grave lies 
 in an obscure country village where no living flesh 
 has ever called hers kin, yet her grave stone is 
 battered to the sod by the loving blows of those 
 
J 4 
 
 SEPARATION. 
 
 who would keep some relic of that brave heart 
 which, through despair and death, kept faith with a 
 faithless lover; and, in the greenest summer grass, 
 the constant tread of pilgrim feet still writes her 
 name into the soil in characters more lasting than 
 those upon the stone. 
 
 Eliza inherited all the grace and culture of the 
 Stanley blood. 
 
 Her maternal ancestor, Thomas Stanley, had kept 
 and transmitted the record of Shaksperian friend¬ 
 ships ; and her mother, Abigail Stanley, was a 
 woman whose portrait, now hanging in the Hart¬ 
 ford Athenaeum, bears witness to the rare intelli¬ 
 gence she bequeathed with her beauty. Her father 
 was a man of prominent and significant character. 
 Connected with Yale College from his youth, re¬ 
 lated to all the State dignitaries by his marriage, 
 his own descent from the Stoddards, made Eliza 
 cousin to the poet Trumbull, to Jeremiah Wads¬ 
 worth,— the wealthy benefactor of Hartford, — to 
 Pierrepont Edwards, and Joseph Buckminster. His 
 learning and antiquarian tastes brought him the 
 warm friendship of young men like Barlow, Bald¬ 
 win, and Dwight, and those college lads who after¬ 
 ward became the well-known " Club of Hartford 
 Wits.” 
 
 Eliza Wharton was born into the best society of 
 her State and time. Without the aid of wealth she 
 won, through her beauty and gentleness, a wide dis- 
 
SEPARATION. 
 
 15 
 
 tinction, — a distinction never equalled in its kind in 
 this country. 
 
 Hereafter I shall speak of the novel which bears 
 her name: here I would only draw attention to 
 the fact that it was by the great wealth of her 
 intellect and the generosity of her sympathies, 
 even more than by her personal beauty, that Eliza 
 won her early triumphs, and attracted towards 
 her all that was distinguished among the young 
 men of the college and the State. 
 
 Her first accepted lover was the Rev. Joseph 
 Howe, of Church Green, in Boston, a young man of 
 rare talents. He was driven from Boston at the 
 time of the siege, and took refuge with a party of 
 friends at Norwich, Connecticut. His health failed ; 
 and, as the state of the city made it impossible for 
 him to return, Eliza’s father invited him to Hart¬ 
 ford, where he died, after a long sickness, perhaps 
 early in 1776. 
 
 Eliza watched over his last hours with tenderness ; 
 but, as she had loved him with moderation, she 
 mourned for him without despair. She had been 
 early betrothed with her own consent, and yet it 
 would seem chiefly to please those who loved her. 
 A far more serious grief to her was her father’s 
 death, which soon followed. 
 
 She had two sisters, Abigail and Mary. They 
 both lived to extreme old age, — Abigail unmarried, 
 and Mary as the widow of a Mr. Skinner. Neither 
 
16 
 
 SEPARATION. 
 
 possessed any remarkable share of beauty or intel¬ 
 lect. 
 
 Her only brother was preparing for college at the 
 time of his father’s death, and in more than one of 
 her letters she expresses a thoughtful and tender 
 anxiety about his future. The family should have 
 been wealthy, but William Stanley, her mother’s 
 brother, was persuaded to leave a large property to 
 the church of which her father had been pastor. 
 The estate, including some of the finest land in 
 Hartford, has been once before the courts, and it is 
 rumored is soon to be put into litigation again. It 
 is now worth between three and four millions ; and 
 collateral heirs claim it, on the ground that the 
 terms of the bequest are no longer complied with. 
 
 In this way it came to pass that the famity of the 
 old minister were seriously embarrassed by the 
 loss of his salary; and, perhaps for that reason, 
 Eliza was again urged to marry, and this time her 
 lover was one whose name and memory are dis¬ 
 tinctly stamped upon the Congregational Churches 
 of New England. 
 
 The Rev. Joseph Buckminster, afterward settled 
 at Portsmouth, N.H., was now a tutor at Yale, 
 where he had been educated. Eliza had relatives 
 and friends in New Haven, and a visit to the Presi¬ 
 dent’s family was urged as a relief from the depres¬ 
 sion into which she had naturally fallen. The 
 unusual stimulus restored her fine spirits, admira- 
 
SEP All A TION. 
 
 17 
 
 tion followed her every movement and her lightest 
 word. She did not belong to the country or the 
 century into which she had been born, and when 
 the equivocal admiration of Aaron Burr, Pierre- 
 pont Edwards, and foreign secretaries was added to 
 the reverent affection of the finest young men in the 
 ministry, it was quite natural that the source of her 
 extraordinary power should be questioned by the 
 Puritan women of her coterie. 
 
 I make the suggestion of this possibility here, be¬ 
 cause, in addition to the fact that she was beloved 
 to the very end by some very noble women, the 
 closest scrutiny of the past fails to discover in her 
 character any evidence of that coquetry which the 
 novel has attached to her name. 
 
 She shrank from the love of Buckminster, — 
 although there is no doubt that she returned it, — 
 not only from an indisposition to cope with his 
 terrible hypochondria, but because she felt that its 
 acceptance would bind her to a narrow field of 
 duty, and require of her an abstinence and self- 
 renunciation fatal to her best development. 
 
 There was an absolute w r ant of sympathy for her 
 in her own home after her father’s death, and this 
 circumstance gradually conquered her reluctance. 
 " I don’t think I should grieve if I did not see a 
 Wharton for some months,” she wrote once. She 
 made up her mind to accept Buckminster, but 
 against the counsel of many of her younger friends, 
 
i8 
 
 SEPARA TION. 
 
 and she discussed the matter thoroughly with some 
 of her kindred, men of the world, who had a wider 
 out-look into the future than her lover could boast. 
 
 To one of these, her cousin, but a man whose 
 personal character was wholly disapproved by her 
 lover, she was explaining her reasons for this step 
 when he surprised them both. He had come for 
 his final answer, and found her in the arbor con¬ 
 fiding in a man he hated. He retreated in dis¬ 
 pleasure, which he would not allow to abate. 
 
 After waiting a reasonable time, she wrote to him, 
 and told him that she could not be happy unless 
 he knew how she was employed when he surprised 
 her, and what she had intended her answer to be. 
 The reply was the announcement of his approach¬ 
 ing marriage, — a marriage which did not prevent 
 him from remembering her with tenderness as long 
 as he lived. 
 
 Eliza Wharton has been accused of " fluctuating 
 moods.” Her letters bear no trace of these, but 
 surely Fate never laid a naore ruthless hand upon a 
 young girl’s life ! For many years she struggled 
 on, unable to attach herself to any who sought her 
 favor, but faithful to her friendships, active in behalf 
 of all those who were sufferinsr, and with no sus- 
 
 o 7 
 
 picion of the fatal future impending. 
 
 The latest letter of hers that I possess was writ¬ 
 ten in November, 1782, and was sent to Mrs. Joel 
 Barlow. It is full of practical kindness and cheer- 
 
SEPARA TION. 
 
 J 9 
 
 ful common-sense; but in some New-Year’s verses, 
 written to Barlow himself about six weeks later, the 
 tone is sad in spite of its generous kind wishes. 
 
 Five years later, at the age of thirty-six, she had 
 undoubtedly linked her fate to that of some one 
 who hesitated to acknowledge her publicly. 
 
 Her health falters, her spirits are unequal, and 
 she passes nights away from her own home ; but, 
 as it afterwards appeared, only with the Laurences, 
 well-known neighbors and friends. 
 
 One visitor, her cousin Jeremiah Wadsworth, 
 was often seen leaving her society at what the 
 neighborhood called unseemly hours; and in May, 
 1788, she was reported to have changed at the 
 bank a large quantity of foreign gold. In the 
 midst of the perplexities occasioned by the state of 
 her health and the comments of the neighborhood, 
 an invitation came to her from Mrs. Henry Hill of 
 Boston, and was eagerly accepted. She left home 
 suitably at mid-day in the ordinary Boston stage¬ 
 coach, but it did not carry her to her friend's house. 
 She probably alighted at Watertown, where she 
 may have delayed some days, and then went to 
 the little town of Danvers, near Salem, where her 
 faded features were hardly likely to be recognized. 
 
 In some pleasant summer drive, accompanied by 
 troops of friends, she may have first laid eyes on 
 the retired country inn and tranquil graveyard, so 
 soon to become for ever significant for her sake ! 
 
20 
 
 SEPARATION. 
 
 Never more did those who loved her look upon 
 her eloquent face. 
 
 For two long months, Mrs. Hill watched for her 
 guest, while the widowed mother patiently endured 
 her anguish. Scandal was not yet busy with the 
 beloved name ; for, although the strength of Puritan 
 feeling found something to condemn or comment 
 upon in Eliza’s habits, yet her only questionable 
 companions had been her own near relatives, men 
 still too young to have an evil character perma¬ 
 nently attached to them. 
 
 Then a brief paragraph in the " Boston Chroni¬ 
 cle” told to aching hearts the whole story. 
 
 Early in June, she had arrived in Danvers, driven 
 in a chaise from Watertown by a boy whom she 
 had hired at the coach-house there. She went to 
 the Bell Tavern, giving her name as a Mrs. 
 Walker, who wished to wait there for her hus¬ 
 band’s arrival. As the weeks went on, her spirits 
 sank. She walked frequently from her lodgings 
 to the graveyard, — the very spot where she often 
 stood, and where her body was afterwards laid, 
 then commanding a pleasant shady slope. In July, 
 1788, she gave birth to a dead child, and died her¬ 
 self, a fortnight later, not so much of consumption, 
 
 I 
 
 I think, as a broken heart. 
 
 Poor crushed flower! There was no proof, as I 
 shall hereafter show, if we except vulgar suspicion, 
 that Eliza Wharton sinned further than by marry- 
 
SEPARA TION. 
 
 21 
 
 ing, possibly against counsel, the man whom she 
 loved, at the mature age of thirty-six. On what 
 pretence she was persuaded to conceal her mar¬ 
 riage, and was so compelled to leave her home, we 
 shall probably never know; but the motive must 
 have been a strong one. It is certain that she ex¬ 
 pected her husband — it is equally certain that he 
 sought her anxiously — in the way she had indi¬ 
 cated ; but, when disappointed, refrained from mak¬ 
 ing a single inquiry in the town. Only a very 
 conspicuous person, I think, would have carried his 
 caution so far. 
 
 It was not Mrs. Henry Hill, but some still more 
 loving heart, that erected a monument over that 
 lonely grave. The brown stone of the Portland 
 quarries holds and keeps her secret, standing lonely 
 among the cold granite of the eastern coast. 
 
 Never once had the dying creature lisped a 
 word of her history; and only a few unfinished 
 letters and poems, in her own hand and written 
 from various places, remained among her posses¬ 
 sions. She had insisted that she was married; 
 would have her ring buried with her; expressed 
 no sense of guilt, but a living trust in God’s love, 
 quite unintelligible to most people of that genera¬ 
 tion. 
 
 When asked if her friends might not be sent for, 
 she said she should soon go to them ; but privately 
 she added to one who waited on her, that her death 
 
22 
 
 SEPARATION. 
 
 was wisely ordered, and was the easiest solution of 
 many problems. 
 
 Her gravestone recorded her humility and be¬ 
 nevolence, and added, — 
 
 "Let candor throw a veil over her frailties, for 
 great was her charity to others.” 
 
 After her death, her family, which had been so 
 beloved and so distinguished, seemed to melt away. 
 The survivors lost all courage ; and, after the death 
 of her mother in 1795, her childless sisters were 
 assisted by the parish, to which William Stanley 
 had so unwisely left his whole property. 
 
 The young brother for whom Eliza had watched 
 and prayed so anxiously was known in his later 
 years as an antiquarian, the habitud of the Hart¬ 
 ford Athenaeum. 
 
 Her death sobered his gay spirits ; and it was not 
 until the year 1800 that he married. His wife, a 
 woman of the first social standing, died in April, 
 1801, in giving birth to his only child. 
 
 And here we take our first step into the still un¬ 
 published " Romance of the Association.” 
 
 The brother of Eliza Wharton seemed only the 
 sadder for the brief sunshine which had streamed 
 over his hearth. 
 
 At the time of his young wife’s death, a dear 
 friend of his dead sister, living not far away, had 
 lost her first baby. She had been a Hinsdale, 
 cousin to Emma Willard of Troy, to Aurora 
 
 / 
 
SEPARA TION. 
 
 23 
 
 Phelps, to Elihu and Elijah Burritt, and many 
 more distinguished for intellect and power. 
 
 To her this only scion of the Wharton family 
 was carried; and in this happy home, in the sim¬ 
 plicity of her farm life, he grew up until it was 
 necessary to send him to school. His foster-mother 
 had nine children, and his favorite companion was 
 Harriet, — the little girl nearest his own age. 
 
 When he went back to Hartford, he was old 
 enough to worship the beautiful picture over his 
 father’s mantel. 
 
 "It is your aunt Elizabeth, who died before you 
 were born,” was the answer to all his curious ques¬ 
 tions. As he grew older, he saw and felt the 
 shadow hanging over his father. When he entered 
 college, the strange old Stanley silver, carved into 
 rare figures with a chisel, was pledged to a family 
 connexion to carry him through. 
 
 During all these years, he had kept up a tender 
 intimacy with his foster-sister, who on her side 
 thought him " graceful and charming as Pericles,” 
 but kept, nevertheless, to her own anxious way in 
 life. It will be seen that hers was no common 
 career. Her father, prostrated by asthma, passed 
 the last thirty years of his life propped into an arm¬ 
 chair. He was wholly unable to support his family. 
 It was Harriet’s brave hands that lifted the mort¬ 
 gage from his farm, built the new house, and filled 
 it with every comfort for the sick brothers, who, one 
 
2 4 
 
 SEP All A TION. 
 
 after another, dropped wearily out of life as they 
 drew near to manhood. It was she who educated 
 her younger sister, and finally gave her in marriage 
 to the Hon. Pinckney Hill of Georgia, who em¬ 
 igrated to Texas, where his two sons are now dis¬ 
 tinguished lawyers. 
 
 It was Harriet who opened the well-known Acad¬ 
 emy at Selma, after a perilous journey through the 
 country of the Creeks. Here she married, and 
 her husband, associating himself with Mr. Hill in 
 the practice of the law, removed with her to Texas. 
 
 Twice shipwrecked, with an infant only five 
 months old in her arms, this heroic woman, res¬ 
 cued by a British brig, was thrown upon the island 
 of Galveston. It was in keeping with her whole 
 story that it should be just a week after a tornado 
 had laid every roof in the town flat. Here she was 
 tenderly nursed by some of La Fitte’s pirates, 
 who had been pardoned by our government for 
 services rendered to General Jackson at New 
 Orleans. 
 
 All the books, stationery, and provisions the emi¬ 
 grants had provided for a two years’ stay, were 
 thrown overboard at the time of the wreck. A 
 little money in a belt about his waist Harriet’s hus¬ 
 band had saved ; and so at last they made their way 
 to Bastrop, where they lived six happy prosperous 
 months before the Comanches broke in upon their 
 peace. 
 
SEPARA TION. 
 
 25 
 
 Young friends came out from Connecticut to join 
 them ; and one night, when her husband was away 
 at court, Harriet opened her gate to admit one 
 dying man, while the dead body of his companion 
 lay scalped and bleeding a little farther away in 
 the grass. 
 
 A dozen romances are wrapt in this brave woman’s 
 life, but it is not mine to relate them. 
 
 I hurry through this night, when, having rushed 
 in the darkness to summon the guard, she is brought 
 back to watch by the dying and the dead, her wail¬ 
 ing child within her arms. I hurry through the three 
 years of starvation and terror — when, all escape to 
 the coast cut oft' by prowling bands, they endured 
 until endurance was no longer possible — to the 
 morning when her husband said, — 
 
 " Harriet, death is here, and it is yonder; but, if 
 you will risk it, I will start for the coast.” 
 
 And they started, the suffering child nestled in 
 their wraps, lying on blankets under the wagon at 
 night, creeping slowly through the tall grass by 
 day, until at last the lights of Galveston shone 
 through the gathering dusk. Then the overtaxed 
 nerves gave way, and very soon the poor young 
 mother must be sent back to Hartford to rest. 
 
 Disappointed in these more ambitious hopes, her 
 husband went back to Alabama, and laid the founda¬ 
 tion of a seminary for both sexes, which for twenty- 
 five years had no equal in the South. Here, old 
 
 4 
 
26 
 
 SEPARATION. 
 
 friends welcomed Harriet back. The years went 
 on : her husband died of yellow-fever; five little 
 ones were laid away among the magnolias in the 
 graveyard; and, at the close of the war, two of 
 Sherman’s raids turned the seminary into barracks, 
 and destroyed the noble prosperity she had been 
 half a century in accumulating. 
 
 One daughter who had survived these horrors, and 
 was both beautiful and accomplished, had a pleasant 
 home in New Orleans. 
 
 Here at the close of the war, and more than 
 sixty years old, our brave Harriet went, just in 
 time to receive a little granddaughter and accept 
 its mother’s last sigh. Here in poverty, isolation, 
 and sorrow, she chanced upon an old copy of 
 "Eliza Wharton.” In the preface to this edition, 
 printed in 1855, a so-called history of Eliza’s family 
 was given, and in it she saw recorded the death of 
 her foster-brother in a far-off city. The family 
 was said to be extinct. 
 
 The boy who had shared her nursery had never 
 married. When Harriet left home, he was still 
 studying law. Soon after, the old parsonage was 
 burned down, his father barely escaping with his 
 life. The magnificent collection of manuscripts for 
 which his grandfather had been famous, perished ; 
 and, when the young man shook the dust from his 
 feet and turned away from Hartford, he carried, for 
 his sole inheritance, an exquisite miniature upon 
 
SEPARATION. 
 
 27 
 
 ivory of his Aunt Elizabeth; a ring of amethyst 
 set in diamonds, which Buckminster had given her, 
 — which was never worn and probably forgotten 
 by both, — a dozen old Stanley spoons bearing the 
 Derby crest, and the ewer and sugar basin cut with 
 the chisel, that still told of the ancient tea-service 
 never yet reclaimed. 
 
 Harriet had seen him from time to time as she 
 went home to her dying brothers, to her father and 
 mother. In the hurried years of the civil war, 
 letters were impossible; and now, as she read the 
 record of his death by her daughter’s new-made 
 grave, she wept with a fresh sense of loneliness. 
 
 On the other hand, this "graceful and accom¬ 
 plished Pericles ” had easily cut his way through 
 the world. He turned southward from the city 
 which he hated, out of which his home had van¬ 
 ished, and which had not bestirred itself to save the 
 burning papers which were even more than his 
 home. He wrote and spoke several languages. 
 He loved literature and ease. His was the true 
 Stanley blood. He was a loving son, but fascinat¬ 
 ing' as he was, never cared to perpetuate his race. 
 He took care to let the ladies know that he was 
 "not rich enough to marry,” and that he never 
 meant to ask anybody till he " got back the family 
 plate.” 
 
 When the war broke out, he was utterly alone in 
 the world. Prompt to sustain all Union measures 
 
28 
 
 SEPARA TION. 
 
 in the border city where he lived, he kept a keen 
 watch on North and South. His father had died 
 in his arms, and his foster-sister was his sole kin¬ 
 dred tie. When he heard that Sherman’s army 
 had twice ravaged the beautiful town where she 
 lived, he roused himself to inquire. 
 
 The graveyard showed the graves of husband 
 and children. The trampled soil of Alabama bore 
 the wreck of the once dainty seminary buildings, 
 and Rumor added, " She too is dead, away in 
 Louisiana.” 
 
 It did not seem strange to him. Why should she 
 not die when her usefulness perished, when Hope 
 and Love took to flight? 
 
 So they rested in their misapprehensions, — she, 
 returned to that Northern hearth, cold for so many 
 years; and he, in the daily practice of the law in 
 his Southern home. 
 
PART II. —REUNION. 
 
1 O let me, true in love, but truly write! ” 
 
 215/ Sonnet. Shcikspcre. 
 
 ‘Then of thy beauty do I question make, 
 
 That thou among the wastes of time must go.” 
 
 12 th Sonnet. 
 
 ‘Then can I grieve, at grievances foregone, . 
 
 And weep afresh Love’s long-since cancelled woe.” 
 
 30 th Sonnet. 
 
 ‘ So all my best is dressing old words new.” 
 
 76 th Sonnet. 
 
 ‘ No praise to thee but what in thee doth lie ! ” 
 
 • 7 y th Sonnet. 
 
II. 
 
 T FOUND "Charlotte Temple” and "Eliza Whar¬ 
 ton ” on my father’s book-shelves when I was a 
 very little girl. They were in a dusty corner by the 
 side of Mackenzie’s "Man of Feeling” and " Dor- 
 casina Shelton,” the only representatives of what 
 my father was pleased to call " works of fiction” 
 
 Charlotte’s story seemed pitiful enough, yet 
 uninteresting, because her own character offered 
 neither points nor variety, but " Eliza Wharton ” 
 interested and perplexed me. Of course, I was 
 too young to take in the whole meaning of her 
 stdry: still I detected its inconsistencies; I won¬ 
 dered over its stilted sentiment, the severe rebukes 
 she received, and the almost idolatrous love she 
 inspired ; and, the older I grew, the more perplexed 
 I became. 
 
 It is no small tribute to the literary skill with 
 which its heterogeneous material is welded together 
 that I read this book several times, could not easily 
 dismiss the troubled interest it excited, and finally 
 went to the nursery with my questions. 
 
32 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 " I cannot tell you any thing about her,” said my 
 mother. "When I went to stay with the Hackers 
 in Salem, we used to walk out to her grave. Even 
 in winter, there was always a foot-track to the very 
 spot, and all the young people round about went to 
 it to plight their troth. You must go to your grand¬ 
 mother. She was born in Danvers.” 
 
 Now my grandmother was only my grand¬ 
 mother’s cousin. 
 
 That is to say, my grandfather was twice married. 
 His first wife, a beautiful and dainty creature from 
 the old Essex family of Symonds, had died soon 
 after my mother’s birth. The far-off cousin who 
 came to nurse her in her last illness, and to take 
 care of the two babies she left, had been her room¬ 
 mate at Madame Rowson’s, and remained her most 
 intimate friend. She was now my grandfather’s sec¬ 
 ond wife. She was born within a hundred yards of 
 the spot where Eliza Wharton was laid. She was 
 twenty years old when the deal coffin, borne by 
 four kind-hearted strangers, was slowly carried past 
 her mother’s door; and this was her answer, deliv¬ 
 ered in Mrs. Rowson’s stateliest way, and with due 
 attention to the rhetoric of the occasion, — 
 
 " There is only one lesson for you to learn from 
 'The Coquette.’ You are to mind your mother. If 
 Eliza Wharton had done as her mother bade her, 
 she would have died quietly in Hartford, and nobody 
 would have called her hard names.” 
 
REUNION. 
 
 33 
 
 "But, grandmamma, was she a bad woman ? If 
 she was, what did you go to her grave for, and 
 why do the young lovers like to talk of her ? ” 
 
 "I don’t think she was,” my grandmother re¬ 
 luctantly admitted. "She said she was a married 
 woman with her dying breath, and her ring was 
 buried with her. Her husband must have been a 
 cruel man. She was always expecting him, but he 
 never came. If he had loved her as he ought, she 
 would not have died alone. But, whatever he was, 
 she was true to him : she never gave the least hint 
 of his name; she burned all her papers, and kept 
 his secrets, and so perhaps some other woman loved 
 him after she was dead. Her faithfulness was what 
 the young lovers liked. Why, child, your own 
 grandmother came home in tears from her grave 
 the night she was promised to your grandfather ! ” 
 
 " Then the book can’t tell the truth ! ” 
 
 " Can’t it ? ” It was an old story to my grand¬ 
 mother, and she would not pursue it. But I 
 thought of it all through my maiden life, never 
 once accepting the conclusions of the novel, and 
 always wishing that I could go to Danvers and 
 stand upon her grave. 
 
 Soon after my marriage, I went to Portsmouth to 
 live, and it happened that one of the dearest friends 
 I found there was Mrs. Alexander Ladd, a lady 
 nearly as old as my grandmother, yet as sweet 
 and charming as a young girl of eighteen. We 
 
34 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 chanced one day to speak of Buckminster, and 
 she gave me one or two of his manuscript sermons. 
 
 "I think Eliza Wharton loved him,” I said. "Why 
 couldn’t she make up her mind to marry him? Do 
 you think she was a coquette?” 
 
 "Buckminster did not,” said Mrs. Ladd, "and 
 he ought to know. He would never allow any one 
 to blame her in his presence. There were reasons 
 enough why no woman should marry him. He 
 was subject to terrible attacks of hypochondria even 
 in college, and after Eliza’s death they became still 
 more prostrating. Mrs. Lee said she would not 
 dare unveil her father’s journal to a generation that 
 felt no sympathy with his religious convictions.” 
 
 "But I have heard that he liked the novel,” I 
 continued: "the family of the author insist that he 
 thought the letters written to Boyer so like those 
 written to himself as to make it probable they were 
 copies.” 
 
 " It is possible that he may sometime have spoken 
 on some particular point to the author’s husband,” 
 answered my friend, "for Mr. Foster was his rela¬ 
 tive in just the same degree as Eliza herself; but I 
 can hardly conceive it. The book does him great 
 injustice by representing him as discussing his love 
 and her affairs with his friend. That is something 
 he never would have done. As to the rest, I can 
 tell you what happened in this very room. Just 
 after the book was published, Mr. Buckminster 
 
REUNION. 
 
 35 
 
 came to call on my mother. She was not quite 
 ready to receive him, and probably forgot that a 
 fresh copy of the book, just received from Boston, 
 lay upon the table. 
 
 " When she came down, she found the doctor 
 thrusting something under the coals upon the 
 hearth. As he turned round to greet her with 
 flaming eyes, she saw its leather covers curling in 
 the blaze. 'Madam,’said he, pointing to the spot, 
 'there lies your book. It ought never to have 
 been written, and it shall never be read, — at least, 
 not in my parish. Bid the ladies take notice, 
 wherever I find a copy I shall treat it in the same 
 way,’ and so saying he stalked out of the room, 
 leaving my poor mother speechless.” 
 
 So, little by little, my first feeling gathered 
 strength. The years went by, and my son, old 
 enough now to have a romance of his own, was 
 leaving me the second time for Alaska. 
 
 We parted as those part who know that all the 
 issues of life lie between that moment and their 
 next meeting. We asked nothing of each other, 
 but from San Francisco he wrote back, — 
 
 "While I am gone, write briefly some record of 
 your own life, and a few words about my ancestors. 
 I don’t believe I know the name of my great-grand¬ 
 father, and I think that is disgraceful.” 
 
 I read the letter to my mother. 
 
 "You ought to do it,” she said: "you promised 
 
3 6 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 me long ago that you would go to Middleton and 
 look up the history of my mother’s family. Do it 
 now.” 
 
 My mother’s mother had been the last of her 
 line. My mother had never seen any one of her 
 blood. In the earlier part of her life she had 
 thought little about it; but, as she grew older and 
 came nearer to the veil which covered the past, 
 she became restless and impatient of her own igno¬ 
 rance. 
 
 So it happened that for her sake I went to Mid¬ 
 dleton, and stood upon the lovely beech-covered 
 knolls, and pursued the crystal brooks which had 
 replaced to my ancestors the fertile fields and purl¬ 
 ing streams of Kent. But I could not work so fast 
 as she faded, and her sweet eyes were closed in 
 death when I first laid my hand upon the old 
 register. 
 
 I stood there dreaming, my cheeks wet and a 
 soft mist over all the distance, when the harsh 
 voice of the old clerk jarred upon my ear. 
 
 "They burnt up the records, — some of the folks 
 at the Hall. Perhaps you’ll find ’em at Danvers. 
 A great-aunt of your mother’s was there when Eliza 
 Wharton died. The S}’mondses owned the Bell 
 Tavern once.” 
 
 Even here this shadow of a shade pursued me ! 
 
 The course of weeks brought me to Danvers, and 
 there a lady well known to every kind and gener- 
 
REUNION. 
 
 37 
 
 ous work drove me about in her own carriage, 
 and helped me in my earnest quest. 
 
 "That is where the Bell Tavern stood,” she said, 
 as we drove, " my father owned that at one time.” 
 
 " Not while Eliza Wharton was in it ? ” I cried 
 breathlessly. 
 
 "No,” she said, "it was afterwards. He was 
 building a house for himself, and bought the 
 tavern to live in while it was building. It was a 
 great deal larger than he needed, and so it some¬ 
 times happened that he kept a traveller overnight.” 
 
 "Did you ever hear your mother talk of Eliza? ” 
 
 " Oh, yes! very often, and I remember the 
 Southwicks very well. Mrs. Southwick was with 
 her to the end, and loved her so much ! ” 
 
 " Did she ever know who her husband was ? ” I 
 asked, "or guess why he did not come to her in her 
 last agony ? ” 
 
 " He did come,” answered my friend, " but why he 
 did not find her is still a mystery. Eliza had written 
 to him and expected him ; but it was after she was 
 very feeble, and she took no one into her confi¬ 
 dence. One afternoon, when the end was near, one 
 of the Symonds boys was sitting at the door and 
 saw some chalk letters on the flag. Thinking 
 that they had been written in play, he stooped 
 down and rubbed them out. Still later in the dusk, 
 a man in a military dress, and of a distinguished 
 appearance, came on horseback down the road. 
 
38 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 As he drew near the tavern, he looked carefully 
 about, rode up close to the door-steps, and at the 
 tavern itself dismounted and seemed to search for 
 something. 
 
 " He made no inquiries : no one happened to be 
 about the tavern door; and, although he was ob¬ 
 served by some children and a few of the neighbors, 
 no one thought to connect him with the dying 
 woman until the following day, when the scattered 
 chalk upon the door-stone still showed faint traces 
 of the letters E. W., and the unconscious author of 
 Eliza’s disappointment owned that he had tried to 
 wipe them out. 
 
 "No one told her what had happened, and it is 
 certain that from that moment her spirits sank.” 
 
 I could not speak for a few moments. I was 
 thinking sadly of the disproportioned measure 
 meted out to the sinners of the world. 
 
 Slight indeed compared to many, successfully 
 concealed and never punished even by the re¬ 
 proaches of society, was the error of this rare and 
 beautiful woman. Was it the love of God that so 
 watched over her, and would not bear with the 
 least backsliding from the good old way of her 
 fathers ? 
 
 While I was thinking, my friend spoke,— 
 
 " I wish you could tell me who it was that used to 
 come every year, for many years after her death, 
 to look at that lonely grave. Soon after the stone 
 
REUNION. 
 
 39 
 
 was put up, a lady and gentleman came in a chaise 
 to look at it. My father was in the tavern at the 
 time, and entertained them. No one thought of 
 asking who they were. Every year at the same 
 time, they appeared, growing older and sadder till 
 both were white-haired and bent. They sought us 
 out wherever we were. Leaving the horse to be 
 cared for, they walked away to Eliza’s grave, stayed 
 there a while, dined with us, and then went away. 
 They never gave us any names, and we never asked 
 for any. Who were they? ” 
 
 I could not tell her then, but I know now. How 
 their hearts must have ached as they sat there, 
 wondering who had robbed them of their treasure, 
 trying in vain to penetrate the secret those sods had 
 covered ! 
 
 In the summer of 1873, the American Associa¬ 
 tion for the Advancement of Science met at Port¬ 
 land in Maine. 
 
 Now there lives in Portland a lady who years 
 ago fell heir to many valuable papers, and among 
 them to various letters of distinguished persons in 
 Europe and this country at the close of the last 
 century, letters which once belonged to the diplo¬ 
 matic correspondence of one of our ministers to 
 France. On various pretences of writing histories or 
 biographies, many of these papers had been wiled 
 away from their possessor; and one who loved her 
 and her many daughters had more than once begged 
 
4 ° 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 me to look at them and see if among the "nothing 
 left ” something could not be found of real value. 
 When it was certain that I should go down to the 
 meeting of the Association, my friend again ap¬ 
 peared. "Go and look at those papers,” she said: 
 " it will entertain you at least, and it may be worth 
 something to their owner.” 
 
 So I promised with the usual reservations. It 
 was a busy week, as everybody knows who was 
 there. Excursions to the White Mountains, to the 
 Islands, to Jackson and Professor Baird, kept us all 
 busy; so the very last night came, and I had not 
 done as I promised. 
 
 On that last night, however, I strolled in the warm 
 sunset to the very outskirts of the town, where the 
 papers were to be found. 
 
 The contents of the desk were laid before me, 
 almost in the very first moment of a gracious South¬ 
 ern welcome ; and I saw that it would be impossible 
 to do justice to the files, even though I sat up all 
 night. I asked permission to take them back to 
 Boston, and, giving a formal receipt for them, took 
 them away. 
 
 Weeks passed before I had time to look at them ; 
 but although, in a very proper sense of the words, 
 there was " nothing left ” of what had once been a 
 most valuable collection, there was one pile of 
 papers which riveted my attention, and would 
 have well repaid me for a far greater fatigue, — 
 
REUNION. 
 
 4 1 
 
 have justified, to my eyes, a far greater expenditure 
 of time. One of these two was labelled "Bessie 
 Wharton’s Letters,” in the handwriting of Joel Bar- 
 low. I wonder if there be among all my readers 
 one young girl, interested to lift a cloud from some 
 dead name, who can understand the thrill with 
 which I took those papers into my hands? 
 
 A little more hesitation, and I should never have 
 seen them ! Written six years before her death, they 
 were not likely to hold the clue I sought; yet for 
 the first time I saw something which Eliza Whar¬ 
 ton’s own pen had written, for the first time I had 
 opportunity to see how her own mind worked. 
 
 When the old parsonage burned down, in 1831, 
 there must have been many papers in it, written by 
 her pen, which we should have been glad to see ; 
 but her brother was alive then, and his heart still 
 sore. The box which held them mocked him 
 with long past hopes, — seemed to him only a funeral 
 urn. These letters ranged from 1778 to 1782. 
 Many of them were sealed with the Stanley crest. 
 They were written under circumstances which 
 might have given room for some unseemly jesting, 
 when the manners of the period are considered ; but 
 I rose from my reading surer than ever of the 
 purity and strength of Eliza Wharton’s nature,— surer 
 than ever that she followed no earth-born phantom, 
 when she turned away from the beaten path. But 
 in one respect I was utterly surprised. No reader 
 
 5 
 
4 2 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 of these pages can be more amazed at any thing 
 they contain than I was at the practical character 
 of these letters. In them, she names many of her 
 young friends, still students at Yale, men upon 
 whose character no shadow of reproach ever fell. 
 Some of them are poor: for them she plans and 
 works, in the wisest way. 
 
 Buckminster graduated in 1779 * 1 ° be 
 
 married his fair bride in Kittery. According to the 
 novel, this year should have found Eliza Wharton 
 depressed and lifeless. It really finds her busy in 
 household concerns, cheerfully planning household 
 economies for Mr. and Mrs. Barlow, in Hartford, 
 — calmly inquiring into the prices of crockery and 
 provisions ! 
 
 In the third part of this history, I shall gather 
 together such papers as remain to indicate the char¬ 
 acter of this beautiful woman. I will not speak for 
 them : they shall speak for themselves. 
 
 When I had done reading, I laid my head down 
 upon my hands, and wondered seriously whether I 
 should ever discover the secret of this unuttered life. 
 
 For a whole year I steadily bore the purpose in 
 mind. I sought out the family of the author of 
 "The Coquette.” I corresponded with all who re¬ 
 mained of the two families implicated by the story; 
 but no one knew any better than I who was the 
 father of Eliza’s child, no one knew any better 
 than I whether any of her blood survived. An edi- 
 
REUNION. 
 
 43 
 
 tion of " The Coquette,” published in 1855, claimed 
 that the family was extinct. Yet I determined to 
 challenge everybody who bore that fateful name ; 
 and as one slender silvery clue had floated upward 
 from that yellow parcel of letters, so I felt a dim 
 hope might another from the latest grave among 
 her kin, if ever I could hope to find it. 
 
 The year passed. I saw many persons of the 
 name in its passage; yet, in spite of all this, it 
 never occurred to me to question one of them. 
 
 In August, 1874, American Association was 
 to hold its meeting in Hartford. Just before I left 
 home to attend it, it happened that I read the 
 whole of Eliza’s letters aloud to a friend ; but so 
 little did I know of that city that I wholly forgot 
 that I was going to the very spot still pregnant with 
 the memories of her tragic end. 
 
 If I had remembered, I should have put her let¬ 
 ters into my pocket. As it was, I left them at 
 home. 
 
 On the evening of Tuesday, August nth, I 
 reached Hartford. Owing to some misapprehen¬ 
 sion, the room which had been engaged for me at 
 Mrs. House’s proved entirely unsuitable, and, with 
 4 a feeling of lively gratitude to that lady for the 
 grace with which she made a change possible, a 
 gratitude which will always keep the memory of 
 Hartford green, I went out into the night to find a 
 place for myself. 
 
44 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 I found it in a perfectly quiet little house, at what 
 I believe was the north end of the town; a house 
 which gave me a large, light, airy room, but where 
 I neither expected nor wished to find society, and 
 where I certainly never should have found myself 
 under any other circumstances. At breakfast the 
 next morning, my attention was attracted to a lady 
 who sat opposite to me. She bore the unmistak¬ 
 able marks of a Southern woman accustomed to 
 the best society ; but her dress showed traces not 
 only of the war, but of that quaintness which is 
 inseparable from an isolated life. 
 
 While I was wondering what she thought of the 
 omelette on her plate, and whether she was not 
 secretly longing for a slice of "pone,” she spoke, 
 told me who she was, and asked some questions 
 about the Association whose members were filling 
 all the hotels in town. 
 
 So it happened that, when I came home at night, 
 
 I brought a printed programme including a list of 
 members already arrived, and offered it to the 
 bright little lady. The next time I entered the 
 dining-room I found Mrs. Burton anxiously waiting 
 for me, programme in hand. 
 
 " I have been watching for you, so long,” she* 
 said. " I have been quite impatientthen, pointing 
 to her paper, "Can you tell me who this lady is, 
 this Miss Roberts from the West? I told you I 
 had come to Hartford to see a Connecticut lady, 
 
REUNION. 
 
 45 
 
 who was ruined by the war, that I came to this 
 house to be near her? Well, she had a lady in her 
 Southern school as a teacher for nine years, of this 
 name. That Miss Roberts came North in 1861. 
 We loved her very much. I have only seen her 
 once in all these years; and then it was in New 
 Orleans, and by a miracle. How can I get at her? 
 What does she look like?” 
 
 My answers to these impetuous questions excited 
 her still more, and she begged me to bring her 
 face to face with Miss Roberts. 
 
 It was a service somewhat unwelcome, and one 
 that I might easily have evaded. It would certainly 
 bring me into contact with several persons whom 
 I had no desire to seek; so I took the night to 
 reflect upon it. If I introduced Mrs. Burton, I 
 should feel obliged to provide excursion tickets 
 for her, and the Mrs. Munson she had come North 
 to visit. It was very possible that this might hamper 
 me in many ways, interrupt my work, and separate 
 me from the society I'most desired to keep. 
 
 However, the next morning I took Mrs. Burton 
 to the Hall; and very soon certain melodramatic 
 outcries on the ed^e of the audience £ave me fair 
 warning that a recognition had taken place. 
 
 During the first week of our meeting, to get tick¬ 
 ets was an easy matter enough. The week closed 
 with an excursion down the river to the sea; for 
 which, owing to the small size of the boat, few invi- 
 
4 6 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 tations were allowed. I made no attempt to get any 
 for the Southern part}', but promised I would secure 
 some to the Portland quarries, and to Ore Moun¬ 
 tain, on the following Wednesday and Thursday. 
 
 Indeed, we were wedged into our boat with a 
 closeness which far outdid that of the proverbial sar¬ 
 dines ; and so cramped was my position, that, though 
 I might use my eyes, I could hardly use my tongue, 
 and a brief respite only came when, dropping some 
 of our party near the mouth of the river, Pro¬ 
 fessor Haldimand sat down beside me, and showed 
 me a lovely enamelled bead dug out of an Indian 
 grave in Pennsylvania, which had started on its 
 travels from "Tyre by the Sea,” and, after coasting 
 Cornwall, had served the belles of Iceland and 
 Eskimo-land in turn, and, having kept faithful com¬ 
 pany with wampum, was now floating down the 
 tide with us, in the society of Dr. Steiner’s emer¬ 
 ald, and a nameless Hartford lady’s solitaires. 
 
 It was pleasant to have this atom of enamel as a 
 make-weight in the balance kept with a certain dis¬ 
 tracting paper on " The Conservation of Molecules ” 
 literally "thrown in” to our discussion the night 
 before. The lovely lights and shadows of an ex¬ 
 quisite sunset, stealing through the columns of the 
 wooded heights, and mirrored under the bank, 
 seemed in soft keeping with the weird story of the 
 bead, and the tender radiance of the moon which 
 had shone upon Eden and its "molecules” as well 
 
REUNION. 
 
 47 
 
 as now upon us. But none of these distractions 
 could draw my eyes from the tall figure of a white- 
 haired man, who stood against the door of the 
 saloon, leaning on his staff' and gazing out into the 
 shadows. When I found myself persistently looking 
 at him, I inquired, at those odd moments when 
 speech was possible, who he might be, but no one 
 knew him ; and then I decided that he must be 
 lame, and that my sympathy was stirred because 
 he had been standing, like many younger people, 
 nearly all the day. There he stood, however, his 
 genial, glowing face giving no great evidence of 
 fatigue, until the boat turned to ascend the river, 
 and then I missed him. 
 
 Monday morning found me at the State House, 
 wearily bobbing up and down between the papers that 
 I wanted to hear and the crowded committee room 
 below, where were dealt out the excursion tickets 
 that I wanted, yet did not want, to secure. My 
 New York friend laughed at me, as she sat lazily 
 in the shadows of " evolution ; ” but cried out, " Since 
 you are in for it, get mine also ! ” which I meekly 
 accomplished. 
 
 Now it happened that as days went by, I had 
 seen something of the lady whom Mrs. Burton had 
 come North to visit. 
 
 She interested me profoundly. In her calm and 
 lovely face, I saw the traces of a life of action and 
 a life of sorrow. 
 
4 8 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 I heard that, although her years were as three¬ 
 score years and ten, she still desired to earn her 
 own bread, and was anxious to find some vacant post 
 to fill. So, oddly enough, as it afterwards seemed, 
 on the very day we were to go to the quarries, I 
 went to Mrs. Aurora Phelps, — a lady more than 
 eighty years of age, and who has still a wide con¬ 
 nection among the teachers of young girls, — to see 
 if any thing could be found for her. 
 
 Mrs. Phelps gave me some little encouragement, 
 and, with my heart a little lighter on Mrs. Munson’s 
 account, I went with my own party to the Middle- 
 town train. 
 
 The excursion tickets for this day were double. 
 They took us first to the lovely little chapel con¬ 
 nected with the Church school, and called by 
 Bishop Berkeley’s name. Thence to the Wesleyan 
 University, where we inspected museum, observa¬ 
 tory, and library, and afterwards ate at the expense 
 of the citizens a hot dinner at the hotel. As we 
 came out of the library, I saw again the tall figure 
 of my "unknown,” limping a little as he seemed to 
 walk and talk and think alone. I did not see my 
 Southern friends. 
 
 After dinner, at least a hundred new people 
 joined our part}', for an excursion to the quarries. 
 
 My companion and myself loitered a little on the 
 way to the ferry,—lost the first boat, and so found our¬ 
 selves alone on the wharf, to meditate on " structure ” 
 
REUNION. 
 
 49 
 
 at our leisure. Once over the river, we sat down 
 on the trunk of an ancient tree, long since con¬ 
 verted into a fine slab of "brown front,” and I gave 
 up a late search for fossils in the far dearer chance 
 of penetrating a live heart, and listening to a love 
 story whose tides swept round the globe. Thank 
 God for the living power which now and then 
 bursts through conventional fetters, melts strange 
 hearts into one, and gives to those grown cold in 
 disappointment and isolation a passing glimpse at 
 least of the great central fires of Life and Motion ! 
 
 Just as my eyes overflowed and my heart softened, 
 a little ragged child, with fagots in her arms, came 
 along the sandy track of the brown quarry, and, 
 lifting her great shy eyes to the elegant dress of my 
 companion, stopped short and said softly, " How 
 pretty ! ” 
 
 "Yes, indeed,” I responded, and was going to 
 bring the child, that she might touch the soft velvet, 
 and see the shimmer of the lustrous silvery silk, 
 when I caught sight of Mrs. Burton, Mrs. Munson, 
 and Miss Roberts hurrying in troubled agitation 
 towards the town. It was quite clear that the 
 strength of threescore and ten had been overtaxed 
 by the effort to keep up with younger explorers ; 
 and so I hurried towards the hotel also, advising 
 Mrs. Munson to rest until the very moment of 
 return. 
 
 I meant to keep her in sight, for I was less a 
 
REUNION. 
 
 50 
 
 stranger than any of her party; but other matters 
 occupied me, and I saw her only when she started, 
 a long hour too soon for the depot, in the hope that 
 a slow walk would prevent utter exhaustion. 
 
 As for our part}', — starting later, we were invited 
 to rest in Professor Gardiner’s fine old house, where 
 we were all needlessly startled by the whistle of an 
 approaching freight train, and finally stood in the 
 darkness on the platform a full hour. 
 
 In the midst of this, when no one could see an¬ 
 other’s face, I heard the weary voice of Mrs. 
 Munson, and succeeded in piloting her to the little 
 ticket-office, — so crowded that nothing less than 
 her white face and fainting body could have secured 
 a seat. Her party had lost its way, had doubled or 
 trebled its distance, and reached the point of depart¬ 
 ure long after the rest of us. 
 
 I left her there with her friends and a glass of 
 water, and returned to the outer air. 
 
 Of the horrors of that hour of waiting, when three 
 hundred people stood crowded together on the nar¬ 
 row plank, I need say nothing to any one who has 
 ever arrived at Middletown by night. When the 
 train came rushing up, the reason of the delay was 
 apparent. 
 
 It was freighted with a large excursion party of 
 a ruder kind, from a more remote point, and into 
 the cracks of its huddled hundreds the already 
 "molten metal” of our party was to be poured! 
 
REUNION. 
 
 51 
 
 Naturally enough, those of us who had our wits 
 about us crow'ded towards the car. 
 
 Suddenly, a strong voice made itself heard. 
 "Gentlemen, stand back! Don’t you see there are 
 no seats for you? Let the ladies come first;” and 
 the diminished pressure made it certain that a strong 
 arm seconded the strong voice, that the crowd sifted 
 under it, — the women passing on, the men kept 
 back. While I waited below, the voice of Mrs. 
 Burton rang back from the platform like a bell. 
 
 "Oh, sir! protect my friend! She is old and 
 very,tired. They will hurt her, if they press on 
 her;” and then I felt rather than saw in the dim 
 air, how the man who had been speaking put his 
 cane between his legs, both hands behind the shoul¬ 
 ders of poor Mrs. Munson, and gave her a steady 
 lift upwards. This done, we both followed her. 
 Mrs. Munson passed into the third seat from the 
 door, and began to rearrange her disordered dress. 
 I stood near. 
 
 The man, sheltered by the obscurity, found an 
 odd seat near the door by a lady whose expressive 
 tones soon indicated Miss Roberts. With her he 
 kept up some geological discussion, which so inter¬ 
 ested Mrs. Munson, that, leaning backward, she 
 said to a gentleman who sat opposite,— 
 
 "Will you change seats wfith me, sir? I should 
 like to hear what my friend is saying.” 
 
 The change was made in a moment. There was 
 
5 2 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 a rustle, a cough, and then I heard Miss Roberts 
 say, — 
 
 " But I must introduce you to m}r friend; ” and 
 then it appeared, that, in strict conformity to her 
 frank Western habit, Miss Roberts did not know 
 the name of the gentleman to whom she was talk- 
 ing. 
 
 She turned, " Will you give me your name, sir, 
 if you please ? ” 
 
 I cannot tell why at that moment there was such 
 utter silence in the car. The coarse .factory folk 
 we had fallen among could have had no sympathy 
 with what was coming; but I heard the answer 
 clearly, — 
 
 " William Wharton ! ” 
 
 Mrs. Munson sprang to her feet. "What? what 
 did you say ? William ? —” she gasped out, and, 
 rising.also, he answered in the same excited tones, 
 — "Yes, William, William Wharton.” 
 
 Still the same breathless silence, but an unsa¬ 
 vory crowd pressing closer and closer toward our 
 corner. 
 
 "And do you know who / am ?” Mrs. Munson 
 cried ; and, as they stood opposite, she fell upon his 
 bosom, and the stalwart form of my' unknown” 
 came into the shifting light, his white beard min¬ 
 gled with her black laces, and his strong arms held 
 her fast. 
 
 For a moment the whole car was in confusion. 
 
REUNION. 
 
 53 
 
 Nothing could be heard. Mrs. Munson lay ex¬ 
 hausted and half fainting. I heard dimly the 
 words " my sister,” and then Mrs. Burton’s voice. 
 
 " Who are you ? Who are you ? ” every word 
 accompanied by a rapid and violent attempt to 
 shake the strong arms loose. 
 
 "You are insulting my friend, sir. Let her go. 
 She has no brother.” 
 
 But she mifrht as well have assaulted the strong 
 shaft on Bunker Hill. The closely folded arms did 
 not relax, the deaf ear did not hear till the storm 
 of emotion had passed, and the two old people sank 
 into their seats. 
 
 Only dimly did anybody understand. 
 
 "She has found somebody ,” said a man in the 
 crowd, and raised a stunning "three times three;” 
 but the parties themselves neither cared nor heard. 
 Memory had gone backward to the days when the 
 little girl sipped her milk from the boy’s porringer, 
 toasted apples before the dripping brands, held 
 the shagbarks to the Christmas blaze, or shyly 
 mended the well-worn socks which the tired feet 
 threw oft' after a hot summer tramp to the old 
 farm. 
 
 Now both stood alone at the end of life. Mrs. 
 Munson had found " somebody ,” but whom ? I had 
 found my unknown, whence came he ? That 
 night I answered neither question. 
 
54 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 "Well,” said Mrs. Burton at breakfast the next 
 morning, "wasn’t that a surprise last night ?” 
 
 "Avery great surprise,” I answered, laughing; 
 "but I have not the least idea what happened; and, 
 whatever it was, it took the life out of me, and I 
 had not strength enough to ask a question.” 
 
 "I don’t half understand it myself,” said the little 
 lady. "I went home with them, but they were so 
 excited they could not talk. Mrs. Munson has 
 found a foster-brother, and he has believed her 
 dead ever since the last year of the war. Some of 
 the professors found it out, and begged them to 
 make a jubilee of it and go to Salisbury to-day ; 
 but Mr. Wharton seemed to shrink from it. I don’t 
 believe they’ll go.” 
 
 But when, half an hour later, I went to the depot, 
 they had evidently thought better of it. They could 
 not escape if they would. The story had found 
 wings ; and if they had chosen to stay at home, we 
 should have stayed with them. My unknown hero 
 stood waiting for the cars, his face flushed and his 
 eyes tearful. Mrs. Munson still clung to his arm, 
 looking bewildered, but exquisitely happy. 
 
 It would have been touching' to see two young 
 lovers reunited after years of separation ; but it was 
 far more moving to look at these two people, sole 
 survivors of the happy morning of life, brought 
 together, without warning, after the common term 
 of existence was ended. 
 
REUNION. 
 
 55 
 
 "I am glad to see you,” I said, putting out my 
 hand. "They told me you had declined to be a 
 spectacle ! ” 
 
 "Well, as to that” said the old man humorously, 
 " I didn’t so much care; but, it was a -pair of spec¬ 
 tacles ! ” and he looked down at the happy figure 
 on his arm. 
 
 Happy indeed; far happier than he; for little 
 would she have cared had there been three "pairs 
 of spectacles.” 
 
 We got into the car, the old friends keeping close 
 together, touching each other’s hair, and looking 
 through each other’s glasses, like a couple of chil¬ 
 dren. 
 
 There was scarce a dry eye in the company ; 
 and by and by the whole party came to them in 
 pairs, took their hands, and congratulated them 
 upon their fete. Seated behind them, I listened 
 and watched in pleased curiosity for a while ; then, 
 sure of getting at the whole story by and by, I went 
 with Professor Brewer to the rear of the car, that 
 I might see the "twin lakes,” the "summit,” and the 
 lofty passes. 
 
 This over, I came back through the dining 
 saloon, and took my luncheon there, sitting with 
 Professor Gray by the open side of the car. 
 
 I had also to provide a lunch for a sweet little 
 woman with snowy hair, who would rather starve 
 than be swirled over the platform of a car moving 
 at the rate of fifty miles an hour. 
 
REUNION. 
 
 5 6 
 
 So it happened that I went back without my 
 gloves, burdened with peaches and sandwiches, 
 sitting down unconsciously directly in front of Mrs. 
 Munson and her brother, and looking back into 
 their happy faces. Mr. Wharton’s hand lay over 
 the back of my seat as he talked to me. It seemed 
 to be half covered by a heavy seal-ring, cut in 
 bloodstone. I could not help looking at it. Indeed 
 " its beauty was its own excuse for ” seeing. It 
 carried the heads of Socrates and Plato ; and was 
 one of those rare antiques we sometimes see, where 
 every retreating line, polished like a mirror, utters 
 swift defiance to all modern art. 
 
 " You are looking at my ring? ” he said, and held 
 it out proudly. The car clattered on. The ring 
 shook in company. I put out my hand to steady it. 
 The moment my flesh touched his, a sort of quiver 
 ran through all my nerves; and, without looking at 
 the ring, without knowing what I said, without 
 intending it indeed, the words came, — 
 
 "Do you know any thing of Eliza Wharton? ” 
 
 It was the first time I had thought of her since 
 I came to Hartford. 
 
 My companion’s face flushed ; his eyes seemed 
 to leap out of his head. He was too much startled 
 to keep his secret if he had desired to do so. He 
 leaned over the seat, and whispered slowly,— 
 
 " She was my own aunt! ” 
 
 I looked him full in the face, knowing well that 
 
REUNION. 
 
 57 
 
 he would see nothing in mine but tender sympathy. 
 "Then I have something of hers which ought to 
 belong to you,” I said, and turned to explain to 
 Mrs. Munson ; but her face was steadily turned away, 
 and the throat her position brought into view was 
 as white as if she were dead. 
 
 It was Harriet Hinsdale Munson who had found 
 her foster-brother! 
 
 Little wonder that they who had parted in the 
 flush and beauty of ripening years did not recognize 
 each other under snowy locks, and the plump out¬ 
 lines of declining years. Not another word did we 
 speak till the train ran into "Ore Mountain,” and 
 we found the platform covered with masses of jetty 
 stalagmite. 
 
 Then William Wharton scurried down upon me 
 like a kite, hurried me into a chair, sat down in 
 front of me, and kept watch and ward till I had told 
 him all I knew. 
 
 Forcibly enough he reminded me of the terrible 
 Paul Emanuel, who once whisked Lucy Snowe into 
 the dim darkness of the ghost-trodden attic; not 
 only at first, but again when the saucers of ice¬ 
 cream came about, and I was told that I might eat 
 one, two, three, if I liked, but I was to do it quickly 
 and turn back to my strange talk ! 
 
 " How should he know that I liked un fetit 
 ■pCttd a la crbne ? ” 
 
 So I sat there, and told much that these pages 
 6 
 
58 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 have revealed, and questioned eagerly of all I 
 needed to know. 
 
 Every thing confirmed the story as I tell it. All 
 that he knew was, that Eliza left home for a visit to 
 her Boston friends; that, instead of passing her 
 last night in Hartford quietly at home, she sat till 
 daybreak on the star-lighted gambrel roof of Wil¬ 
 liam Laurence’s old house near the State House 
 Square, and sat there utterly alone. 
 
 At the time no one could solve the mystery of her 
 fate. 
 
 Jeremiah Wadsworth, her cousin, long married, 
 was often seen to leave her at a late hour. He 
 had been in France, and the foreign gold she had 
 offered at the bank was supposed to have come to 
 her from him. Whatever the truth was, it is 
 probable that he knew it. 
 
 Year after year, William Wharton’s father and 
 his aunt Abigail took the mysterious journey con¬ 
 cerning which my Danvers friend had questioned 
 me; till at last the old horse died, the old chaise 
 fell to pieces where it stood, and the two travellers 
 were forced to give up the pilgrimage. 
 
 The old parsonage burned down; its treasures, 
 bound and unbound, crumbled into ashes. So, 
 alas! did the beautiful portrait which hung over 
 the mantel. As a child, William had loved it and 
 prattled over it, but not a word came in answer to 
 his questions about it; and, save in the brief utter- 
 
REUNION. 
 
 59 
 
 ance which told him whom it represented, he never 
 heard Elizabeth’s name. But at college the story 
 found him out. One man, whose licentious charac¬ 
 ter made him a fit object of suspicion, was named in 
 possible connection with it, in spite of kinship, mar¬ 
 riage, and a residence forty miles away,— a suspi¬ 
 cion so improbable that, in order to justify it, the 
 author of the novel founded upon Eliza’s story was 
 obliged to represent him as living in Hartford. 
 
 His whole heart fired by her beautiful memory, 
 William swore that if ever he met another who bore 
 that man’s name, he would shoot him on the spot; 
 but he did meet such an one when years had passed 
 and blood was cooler. 
 
 They met in summer at the sea, hunted and 
 fished together, and William never made his secret 
 known. 
 
 The Stanley plate had never been found: it had 
 passed from hand to hand, and he was still in quest 
 of it. The miniature of Eliza and the Buckminster 
 ring had gone with him to his distant home; but 
 not a paper that her hand had touched had his 
 ever held. 
 
 These things were not told in a moment. Less 
 docile than Lucy Snowe, I darted from beneath 
 his guarding hands, to see that my companion was 
 guided to the shaft I was forbidden to see, and to 
 beg the kind Professor Gray to break away some 
 of the pillared crystals for my benefit. 
 
6o 
 
 REUNION. 
 
 Near by, I found Mrs. Munson, whom in his ex¬ 
 citement and haste William Wharton had left by 
 the way. Still trembling, she exclaimed, — 
 
 "Oh, how could you? — never did I — in all 
 those years — I thought I must sink into the grave 
 when I heard her name ; but tell me, what shall I 
 do? He won’t be satisfied till he knows when I 
 heard he was dead. It was in that book; would 
 you tell him? ” 
 
 "And why not? ” I said. " The story is a hundred 
 years old. We are not children.” 
 
 Before I could say any more, my ancient Pericles 
 had become impatient, and came with out-stretched 
 arm to bear me away. Harriet caught him. 
 
 "It was in New Orleans,” she said; "in the very 
 book that told Eliza’s story. It took my breath 
 away.” 
 
 " Harriet,” he answered, so solemnly that, though 
 he only bent, I seemed to see him lift his hat, 
 " Harriet, I read my own death there ! ” 
 
 Were the words symbolical? Might not his life 
 have been something very different, if that tale had 
 never been told? At all events, Eliza’s race will die 
 with him. 
 
 As we turned back and resumed our seats, to 
 talk the story out, I found that William Wharton, 
 who was somewhat sensitive still over the broken 
 fortunes of his family, felt, nevertheless, a strange 
 pride in rehearsing his descent from that Stanley 
 
REUNION. 
 
 61 
 
 who had been Shakspere’s friend; that he had at 
 his tongue’s end all the legends, traditions, and 
 anecdotes connected with that old friendship, and 
 that he liked still to think of the old plate that Thomas 
 Stanley, " of more consequence than most,” had 
 brought over with him. I know not how widely 
 these traditions have been spread, but I thought it 
 pleasant to preserve them. As to the plate, there 
 is little doubt that it would have been easily found, 
 had not the proud man shrunk from recurring to 
 the trials and perplexities which brought about its 
 loss. 
 
 When we parted, it was to meet once more to 
 read over Eliza’s letters. We were all tremulous 
 with a strange delight when we remembered that 
 she who had waked up yester-morn friendless and 
 poor, shorn of all the natural results of a most use¬ 
 ful life, could now lie down in peace, sure that a 
 friendly hand would compose her to her rest. 
 
 When, the next morning, the excited members of 
 the Association crowded round me, and begged me 
 to write out the story, Professor Lyman, of Yale 
 College, said, — 
 
 "Make it as short as you can.” 
 
 Short! 
 
 “The mills of God grind slowly, yet they grind exceeding small; 
 
 Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds 
 He all.” 
 

 
 
 
 
PART III 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
‘ But he that writes of you, if he can tell 
 That you are you, so dignifies his story.” 
 
 84 th Sonnet. Shakspere. 
 
 ‘Your love and pity doth the impression fill 
 Which vulgar scandal stamped upon my brow.” 
 
 i\2th Sonnet. 
 
EFORE offering to the reader the real letters 
 
 of Eliza Wharton, I wish to say a few words 
 concerning the story which bears her name. 
 
 "Eliza Wharton ; or, The Coquette,” a story writ¬ 
 ten by Mrs. Hannah Foster, wife of the minister 
 at Brighton, Mass., whose husband was also a 
 cousin of Eliza, was issued soon after the tragedy 
 it was supposed to rehearse. Mr. Boyer and Major 
 Sanford were immediately identified by the public 
 with Joseph Buckminster and Pierrepont Edwards; 
 and, to avoid confusion, I shall use the latter names 
 in criticising it. 
 
 Eliza is represented as a provincial belle, weary 
 of the restraints of poverty and a parsonage, and 
 ambitious of a sphere she cannot fitly fill. 
 
 After Mr. Howe’s death, which is made to follow 
 her father’s, although it really preceded it, she is 
 sent to New Haven in search of gayety and diver¬ 
 
 sion. 
 
66 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 Here she is thrown into military society, and 
 made to meet Edwards as if for the first time. In 
 reality, she passed her time when at New Haven 
 in the family of the president of Yale College, and 
 Edwards was her cousin, whom she had known as 
 a married man ever since he was nineteen, — some 
 eighteen years. 
 
 Her inquiries into his habits and character 
 pique Edwards, who, in formal imitation of Love¬ 
 lace, is made to assert that the woman who un¬ 
 dertakes to reform him deserves whatever fate 
 impends; and because she is a prude, shall be 
 doomed. But the real Eliza was no prude : she 
 was more than once reproached for not indicating 
 by her manner the real distinction between vice and 
 virtue. 
 
 In the midst of his courtship, Edwards marries 
 for money, and, when married, removes into Eliza’s 
 neighborhood, for the express purpose of insulting 
 with his attentions the woman whom Howe and 
 Buckminster had loved. The simple fact is, that, 
 married at nineteen, before he ever courted any 
 other than his wife, at no time did he ever live 
 nearer to Hartford than New Haven, when a weekly 
 post, carried by a man on horseback, connected the 
 two places. 
 
 Eliza is once made to say, in the pages of the 
 novel, that, in literary conversation, Edwards could 
 not bear a distinguished part; but it is certainly time 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 67 
 
 of Edwards, as well as Aaron Burr, that when in 
 the society of women, the highest culture, the most 
 exquisite wit, and a perfect savoir fairc, as well as 
 a sure instinct of spiritual things, were added to 
 that foreign grace which fitly distinguished the 
 Irish blood derived from the Dukes of Kings¬ 
 ton. 
 
 The final surrender of his love by Buckminster, 
 just as she was about to fix her wedding-day, is 
 made to turn upon the fact that he surprised her 
 in a private interview with Edwards in the arbor 
 of the old garden. Citizens of Hartford will show 
 you to-day the paved street that crosses the spot 
 where that arbor stood, but will tell you at the 
 same time that it was not Edwards whom she met 
 there. 
 
 After this issue, the novel plunges Eliza into de¬ 
 jection and despair; but my letters are about to 
 show her, at that very moment, cheerful, industri¬ 
 ous, and useful. 
 
 When her fatal departure draws near, the novel 
 represents her as confessing her guilt, confiding in 
 her friend, and writing to her mother; but no con¬ 
 fession passed her lips, no confidence was ever 
 given, no letter was ever written by her, for the 
 simple reason that all the circumstances of her 
 departure were open and natural. 
 
 The novel represents her as carried away at 
 night by her seducer, unknown to those who loved 
 
68 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 her. In simple fact, she went away in the regular 
 stage-coach, at high noon, with everybody’s warm 
 approval. 
 
 The novel describes its hero as aware of her 
 retreat, and allows him to represent her as lectur¬ 
 ing him with the innocent air of a Clarissa. For 
 her sake, his injured wife quits her husband’s 
 roof. 
 
 But these are the fables of a warm imagination, 
 intent on holding out Mrs. Yorke’s "blood-red light” 
 to the unwary, and heated by the reading of Rich¬ 
 ardson’s novel. 
 
 The general tone of the letters which constitute 
 the novel is wholly unlike that of the real letters. 
 They indicate a style of living and manners wholly 
 different from the actual facts. They contain con¬ 
 fessions of volatility which Eliza never had occasion 
 to make, and allusions to her own charms and the 
 perplexities in which they involved her, unlike the 
 humble and modest girl she really showed herself. 
 In reading the novel, one is compelled to think that 
 for the heroine the pivot of the world’s history is her 
 own possible marriage. 
 
 If the real Eliza had been in the least like the 
 heroine of the book, we should not now be seeking 
 in vain to solve the mystery of her fate. 
 
 I have long thought that there is no form of 
 human injustice so bitter and so enduring as that 
 perpetrated by the author of an historical novel, yet 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 69 
 
 I do not know that we are entitled to criticise the 
 use made of these materials. 
 
 Charles Kingsley, in the most brilliant novel of 
 this century, has wiped out every trace of the his¬ 
 torical Hypatia. No one has blamed him ; yet, I 
 confess that to deal in the same way with families 
 in our own midst seems to me a more reprehensi¬ 
 ble thing. To have done Eliza any justice, the 
 novel should have stated that the lovers who made 
 her misery, and those whose names were quoted to 
 her disgrace, were all in nearly the same degree 
 her kindred. Aaron Burr and Pierrepont Edwards 
 were as near to her father, through the Stoddards, 
 as Jeremiah Wadsworth or Buckminster himself. 
 
 This simple fact alters the whole face of the story ; 
 for it shows that the only persons touched by the 
 tongue of malice or curiosity were relatives with 
 whom she had been intimate from her childhood. 
 At the time of her death, Pierrepont Edwards was 
 not thirty-nine, nor was Aaron Burr thirty-three. 
 At a time when newspapers hardly existed, — when 
 it took a week for the stage-coach to bring the news 
 from New York to Hartford, and when a town so 
 small had few points of contact with metropolitan 
 life, — at a* time, in short, when these two extraordi¬ 
 nary men were still young, there was no reason 
 why Eliza Wharton should have avoided their so¬ 
 ciety, or have suspected what might hereafter be 
 charged upon the tenor of their lives. 
 
70 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 Buckminster was never the person to delight in 
 sentimental talk, as the novel would have him ; and 
 the intrigues by which he initiates his courtship 
 would have been impossible to his spirited char¬ 
 acter. 
 
 No reader of the book can fail to see that there 
 is more life and power in the letters of Edwards 
 than in those of the heroine. I was puzzled to 
 account for this, until it suddenly flashed upon me 
 that they were modelled upon those of Lovelace. 
 I think, too, that the influence of Richardson’s story 
 may be seen wherever the author departs from the 
 facts. Whoever Eliza’s lover may have been, he 
 had no part in her departure from home, did not 
 accompany her flight; for parts of letters addressed 
 to him from every point between Hartford and Dan¬ 
 vers were found among her papers. That she ex¬ 
 pected to meet him soon after arriving at her 
 destination is as certain as that she was cruelly 
 disappointed. If her marriage, which must have 
 taken place in or near Hartford, was a legal one, 
 it is not yet too late for the name of her husband 
 to transpire. That it was so, I infer from the indi¬ 
 cations that Jeremiah Wadsworth was privy to the 
 facts. 
 
 Now, Eliza Wharton was not only a gifted but 
 a clear-headed and practical woman. She had 
 known Edwards ever since she was sixteen, and 
 Wadsworth ever since she was twenty-one, as mar-" 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 71 
 
 ried men. She had kept herself above reproach 
 during the impulsive years; and at thirty-six it 
 would have been impossible for her to delude her¬ 
 self into the belief that she was legally married to 
 any man who had a wife living. 
 
 " Must I die alone ? ” she wrote (probably from 
 Watertown) to the man who had tortured if he did 
 not deceive her. "Shall I never see you more? 
 I know that you will come, but you will come too 
 late. This is, I fear, my last ability. Tears fall 
 so fast I know not how to write. Why did you 
 leave me in such distress? but I will not reproach 
 you. All that was dear I forsook for you, but do 
 not regret it. May God forgive in both what was 
 amiss. When I go from here, I will leave you 
 some way to find me. If I die, will you come and 
 drop a tear over my grave ? ” 
 
 These words, written when she was near her end, 
 yet while she expected to change her habitation 
 before the birth of her child, show no sharp remorse 
 for crime: only such gentle compunction as any 
 womanly soul might feel. Nor does she blame her 
 husband: some duty might have kept him from 
 her. Was he near? what led her to stop at Water- 
 town on her way ? Some verses written at the same 
 time conclude, — 
 
 “ Oli thou for whose dear sake I bear 
 A doom so dreadful, so severe, 
 
 May happy Fates thy footsteps guide, 
 
 And o’er thy peaceful home preside.” 
 
72 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 She was far too intelligent a woman to have 
 prayed thus for any of the men upon whom sus¬ 
 picion fell. 
 
 A better poem — copied, I fancy, from some Con¬ 
 necticut newspaper, and therefore not bearing upon 
 the last facts of her life —was published in the Pref¬ 
 ace to the edition of "The Coquette,” published in 
 1855. She speaks in it of her lover’s death, and 
 her father’s, of her entire want of friendly guidance 
 through the following years, and goes on, — 
 
 “Again the admiring youths around me bowed, 
 And one I singled from the sighing crowd. 
 Well-skilled he was in every winning art, 
 
 To warm the fancy or to touch the heart. 
 
 Why must my pen the noble praise deny 
 Which virtue, truth, and honor should supply? 
 How did my heart embrace the dear deceit, 
 And fondly cherish the deluding cheat, 
 Delusive hopes, and wishes sadly vain, 
 
 Unless to sharpen disappointment’s pain!” 
 
 As this begins, — 
 
 “Thy presents to some happier lover send, 
 Content thyself to be Lucinda’s friend,” 
 
 I think it must refer to a time when she was still 
 sought in marriage, and bewildered by many lovers. 
 To the opinions held of her in her own home, the 
 stone set up at Danvers furnishes the only clue. 
 As the inscription is now illegible, it should be 
 preserved. 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 73 
 
 THIS HUMBLE STONE, 
 
 IN MEMORY OF 
 
 ELIZA WHARTON, 
 
 IS INSCRIBED BY HER WEEPING FRIENDS, TO WHOM SHE 
 ENDEARED HERSELF 
 
 BY UNCOMMON TENDERNESS AND AFFECTION. 
 ENDOWED WITH SUPERIOR ACQUIREMENTS, SHE WAS STILL MORE 
 DISTINGUISHED 
 
 BY HUMILITY AND BENEVOLENCE. 
 
 LET CANDOR THROW A VEIL OVER HER FRAILTIES, FOR GREAT 
 WAS HER CHARITY TO OTHERS. 
 
 SHE SUSTAINED THE LAST PAINFUL SCENE 
 FAR FROM EVERY FRIEND, 
 
 AND EXHIBITED AN EXAMPLE OF CALM RESIGNATION. 
 
 HER DEPARTURE WAS ON THE 25TH OF JULY, 17S8, IN THE 37TH 
 YEAR OF HER AGE. 
 
 THE TEARS OF STRANGERS WATERED HER GRAVE. 
 
 Mrs. Locke’s preface to the edition of 1855 is 
 more misleading than the novel to which it is pre¬ 
 fixed. The facts are wrongly adjusted. Eliza’s 
 father had been dead twelve years at the time of 
 her death; and it was more than thirty years after 
 her mother’s death that the old house at Hartford 
 was burned, with its treasures. 
 
 This preface assumes the marriage of Eliza, 
 distinctly states that the Hon. Pierrepont Edwards 
 was the father of her child, and does not admit the 
 fact of his marriage to another previous to Eliza’s 
 death. 
 
 7 
 
74 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 But this is all wrong. Pierrepont Edwards was 
 married to Miss Ogden, of Princeton, N. J., in 1769, 
 when he was a boy of nineteen. He was never 
 separated from her, and she lived until 1795, seven 
 years after Eliza Wharton’s death. 
 
 When, relying on Eliza’s cousinly correspondence 
 with him, the unhappy mother wrote to ask if he 
 knew where her daughter was, he replied curtly, 
 with an oath, that he "wished to God he did,”— a 
 wish that any friend of hers might have shared ; and 
 if the appearance of "foreign gold” in her hands 
 had any significance, it surely did not point towards 
 him. 
 
 Every feeling heart must be glad to acquit this 
 strange man of a crime the basest could hardly 
 have resolved upon under the same circumstances, 
 and which he certainly never confessed. 
 
 But if Edwards steadily denied this story, why 
 
 was it never authoritativelv confuted in the life- 
 
 •/ 
 
 time of her mother ? Simply because Edwards’s own 
 peculiarities, clearly recognized in later years, made 
 his denial valueless, until the true actor in these 
 scenes claimed his rightful place; simply because 
 the broken-hearted family could not do for her as 
 she would certainly have done for them. After her 
 death, no one of her family showed the courage 
 such a step would require. I have not been able to 
 ascertain the date of the first edition of " Eliza Whar¬ 
 ton ; ” but I cannot think it was published during her 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 75 
 
 mother’s life. The thought of Pierrepont Edwards 
 carries us back to the Stanley and Pierrepont 
 graves in "Thong Church,” and recalls a passage 
 in his father’s diary without which our story would 
 be incomplete. The " mad blood ” of the Dukes of 
 Kingston, which had surged through the eccentric 
 veins of Lady Mary Wortley Montagu, which had 
 impelled her unhappy son to a worse than gypsy 
 life, yet was always associated with a powerful 
 intellect and unnumbered charms, seemed to leap 
 aside from Sarah Pierrepont, of whom her husband 
 wrote, while he was still a boy, words that have 
 a curious fascination when associated in our minds 
 with the metaphysics of his desponding brain. 
 
 " They say that there is a young lady, only fourteen 
 years old, in New Haven, who is beloved of that 
 great Being who made and rules the world ; and 
 that there are certain seasons in which this Great 
 Being, in some way or other invisible, comes to her 
 aid, fills her mind with exceeding sweet delight, 
 and that she hardly cares for any thing except to 
 meditate on Him ; that she expects after a while 
 to be received up where He is, being assured that 
 He loves her too well to let her remain at a distance 
 from Him always. She has a strange sweetness in 
 her mind, and a singular purity in her affections, and 
 you could not persuade her to do any thing wrong, 
 though you should give her all the world. 
 
 " She will go from place to place, singing sweetly, 
 
7 6 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 and seems to be full of joy, and no one knows for 
 what.” 
 
 " And no one knows for what ”! What a story 
 this tells of the Christian cheer of that generation ! 
 This divine creature Jonathan Edwards made 
 first the mother of his reckless and gifted son 
 Pierrepont; and, second, through a most lovely 
 daughter, the grandmother of Aaron Burr, — two 
 men as abnormal and as little to be judged in our 
 narrow knowledge as George Gordon Byron him¬ 
 self. 
 
 How could the unhappy man help believing in 
 predestination and original sin? 
 
 Yet of this same stock came John Pierpont of 
 Hollis Street, hero and bard ! 
 
 It is perhaps necessary, in closing this review, to 
 allude to a jcu d'es^prit, published at the time of the 
 destruction of the Bell Tavern, some years ago, by 
 Fitch Poole, late keeper of the Peabody Institute 
 in Peabody, and recently deceased at an advanced 
 age. It purported to describe letters and articles 
 secreted in the house. Pleasantly intended as it 
 was, on the first day of April, it seemed to my 
 mind only a cruel and revolting hoax. 
 
 In printing the following passages from the only 
 original papers of Eliza Wharton known to exist, 
 
 I have extracted from the personal detail of pages, 
 never intended to be printed, such passages as 
 indicate her characteristics, her companions, and her 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 77 
 
 employments. They were written between her 
 twenty-ninth and thirty-second year, under circum¬ 
 stances a little peculiar. 
 
 Eliza Wharton had met Joel Barlow and Ruth 
 Baldwin, to whom he was even then engaged to be 
 married, at a Christmas party in New Haven in 
 1778. At a game of forfeits, Joel and Eliza were 
 ordered to conduct towards each other as man and 
 wife for the whole evening. They appear to have 
 carried out the game with great spirit, adopting the 
 nine Muses as their children. Melpomene, the 
 reputed favorite of Barlow, well known already as 
 a poet, is frequently caricatured in this correspond¬ 
 ence as £hiammcny. 
 
 Of Barlow himself—of his high character, his 
 great services, and noble projects — it is to be hoped 
 the country will }’et hear adequately through a 
 biographer who has already been at work for 
 twenty-five years. His wife, constantly called his 
 "second wife” in this correspondence, was Ruth 
 Baldwin, daughter of the Hon. Michael Baldwin, of 
 New Haven, by his first marriage. She was one 
 of the loveliest and best of women, to whose influence 
 her husband always attributed his worldly success. 
 His sense of her worth can be best estimated by 
 reading a letter written to her by him at Algiers, in 
 1796, and published in the "New Englander” for July, 
 1873. The Barlows never had any children ; but 
 Mrs. Barlow ultimately adopted her step-sister, 
 
78 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 twenty years younger than herself, — an exquisite 
 creature, who, after refusing an offer of marriage 
 from General Lafayette, married later in life Colonel 
 Bomford, of the city of Washington. Mrs. Bomford 
 was for more than forty years the idolized corre¬ 
 spondent of George William Erving, at one time 
 our minister to Spain. It is probable that Joel 
 Barlow’s marriage was opposed by the lady’s fam¬ 
 ily on the ground of poverty. He was married 
 when his bride was away upon a visit, and it was 
 long before the offence was forgiven. One of her 
 brothers — the Hon. Abraham Baldwin — was a 
 tutor at Yale when these letters were written, was 
 afterwards President of the University of Georgia, 
 a member of the convention that framed the Ameri¬ 
 can Constitution, and an United States senator until 
 his death. 
 
 Henry, of Pittsburg, Pa., was one of the Judges 
 of the Supreme Court of the United States. 
 
 The "Mr. Dwight” so affectionately described by 
 Eliza was the honored President of Yale, busy 
 about this time in altering Watts’s Hymns, with Joel 
 Barlow. Distinguished afterward for more things 
 than this article has space to mention, he had 
 already served in the field, and was keeping school 
 at Wethersfield, where we find Eliza on a visit to 
 his family. 
 
 The "Webster” of the letters was famous in the 
 spelling-books of past generations, and closed a life, 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 79 
 
 in 1843, chiefly memorable for political pamphlets 
 and the " great dictionary.” 
 
 Dr. Buckminster was the famous clergyman of 
 Portsmouth, N.H., and the Burrs were an uncle and 
 aunt of Aaron Burr, who lived at Fairfield, Conn. 
 
 Dr. Ezra Stiles, the grandfather of Dr. Chan- 
 ning’s beloved successor, was one of Eliza’s most 
 valued friends. He had been called to the pulpit 
 in Portsmouth, before Buckminster; but he was 
 also called to Yale College, and the ministry 
 unanimously demanded his acceptance of the last 
 call. He was distinguished not only by his learn¬ 
 ing, but by an earnest sincerity, and a genial, 
 tender charity to all, which his distinguished grand¬ 
 son seemed to have inherited. If people are to be 
 judged by the company they keep, the friends and 
 correspondents of this woman entitle the mysteries 
 of her life to more than common consideration. 
 
 Dr. Stiles had married Elizabeth Hubbard, in 
 1757 ; and the Betsy Stiles of these letters was his 
 oldest daughter, younger than Eliza, but one of her 
 dearest friends until the hour when she left her 
 home. It was to such friendships as these that her 
 visits to New Haven owed their charm. At the 
 date of these letters, Dr. Stiles seems to have been 
 living in the family of his predecessor at Yale. 
 
 Most of the persons mentioned were afterwards 
 members of the famous " Club of Hartford Wits,” 
 whose influence was felt throughout the country. 
 
8 o 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 An irregular paper, called " The Anarchiad,” was 
 issued from it, to which the persons I have named 
 largely contributed; and its keen satire greatly 
 abridged the reign of misrule which followed the 
 Revolutionary war. It may be thought that I pre¬ 
 serve some very trivial paragraphs. I do it in 
 justice to a character much misrepresented, and to 
 show how delicate was the author’s playfulness 
 under circumstances which would certainly have 
 betrayed coarseness had it existed. Let it be re¬ 
 membered that these letters represent the era of 
 Clarissa Harlowe and Dorcasina Shelton. 
 
 Unless otherwise indicated, the following letters 
 were all written by Eliza Wharton at Hartford, to 
 Joel Barlow at New Haven. She is returning from 
 her visit, and writes first from 
 
 “Hartford, Feb. 19, 1779. 
 
 "You will easily believe me when I tell you that 
 your letter was the most welcome thing imaginable. 
 
 " I feared I should have no letters this week when 
 somebody was so good as to call and leave me five. 
 Which do you think I read first? You are cer¬ 
 tainly the paragon of husbands. Were all married 
 men like you, what a happy world for our sex ! 
 
 "I have been walking half a mile in the mud this 
 evening. I believe you will think that the mud 
 is my element, and that I have a particular delight 
 in it to immerse myself again so soon, when that 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 8 l 
 
 contracted on my journey is scarce brushed off. 
 I did not get home till Friday, nor would I have 
 come then, for the roads were intolerable; but I 
 grew impatient for letters. I knew I could not 
 have them where I was, nor could I bear to think 
 of their waiting for me at Hartford. I stayed three 
 or four days at Southington, to rest after my trouble¬ 
 some adventures. There could not be a better 
 place, for to eat and drink is all we have to do ! 
 It was a change from New Haven, and all for the 
 worse. Yet the peaceful, unruffled life one leads 
 in such a place has its charms. To rise in the 
 morning and lay your plan for the day, knowing 
 almost to a certainty that nothing will happen to 
 interrupt it; to read and work alternately ; then, seek 
 for diversion, some country sport among your family 
 and neighbors ; to find yourself quite out of Am¬ 
 bition’s way, and in the very bosom of content, —this 
 certainly is agreeable, and never more so than when 
 one has met with trouble in a busier place. I felt 
 myself no longer afraid when a certain subject was 
 started. I neither trembled nor turned pale, but 
 sat at my ease and felt as if nobody would hurt me. 
 I know you will laugh at me for a pusillanimous 
 creature for being ever so afraid as you have seen 
 me ; but I cannot help it. 
 
 " If Mr. B. is with you, give my kindest love to 
 him. You won’t be jealous : that is my foible ! 
 
 " Thank you for writing at that late hour when you 
 
82 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 must have been fatigued with dissimulation. Was 
 the question you mention agitated at your meeting? 
 I don’t believe there was a clergyman there, or he 
 would have got it determined in a different manner. 
 I wish the ladies would get up a disputing club ! 
 
 "You are my constant boast among my married 
 acquaintance. Tell my little rogue of a brother that 
 I think he takes too much upon himself in laughing 
 at our connection. 
 
 "As to Mr. Baldwin, if he were at the door, I 
 would not run into the cupboard to avoid him. He 
 may mean well, in writing all to Buckminster and 
 nothing to me ; but I do not think it. 
 
 "You mention in one of your letters, your having 
 been at Mr. Burr’s. Why did you not tell me how 
 you liked those good folks, and whether you could 
 divine how they liked you? Make my compliments 
 to all the President’s family, not forgetting Dr. 
 Ezra Stiles, to whom I esteem myself under the 
 greatest obligation. Tell Mr. Baldwin that Captain 
 Wooster was told here of my having had the small¬ 
 pox, which he would desire him not to mention, if it is 
 not too late. I hope it will not get much about, for 
 I shall want to go to New Haven again some time. 
 Did you have an agreeable ball last evening? I 
 was there in imagination : did }’ou see any thing 
 of me? I had an invitation, but it was rather too 
 muddy to come in any other way.” 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 83 
 
 “February 22, 1779. 
 
 "You may remember we talked of a correspondence 
 of that unreserved kind which you are so happy as 
 to enjoy with Mr. Swift, in which all disguises are 
 thrown oft', and you mention every good and ill 
 quality to each other, in the same terms that you 
 consider them in your own souls. I was struck 
 with the advantages which must result if such a 
 correspondence could be maintained without de¬ 
 stroying friendship ; and I am willing to believe that, 
 in hearts so well regulated as yours, this is possible. 
 Besides, in you the virtues so far prevail that you 
 cannot have much which is disagreeable to hear; 
 but, with the generality of the world, you are sensible 
 this would not do. 
 
 " Few, very few, can bear to be told of their faults ; 
 and few, very few, will tell them to one’s own ear. 
 I confess to you, though perhaps you will think it 
 a foolish diffidence, that I am always loath to riske 
 this trial of the friend I love. It would look too much 
 like arrogance in me to pick flaws in my friends, 
 who, as you say, are the worthiest and most amiable 
 people in the world, and too much my superiors to 
 come under my observation. This is written to 
 excuse me from a condition you would have me 
 agree to. Yet I would have you perform your part. 
 Lay aside all partiality for the 'wife of your talk,’ 
 and tell her what is wrong in her character and 
 conduct. It may happen to you as it did to Mirabel 
 
84 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 in the play* who studied the faults of his mistress 
 until they grew so familiar that he could think of 
 them without the least uneasiness, and liked her 
 none the less. 
 
 " Pray how does our family of Muses do? I hope 
 you do not keep them in idleness. I know you have 
 other cares, still I wish you to superintend them a 
 little by way of relaxation, and above all things I 
 want you to send me a sample of the work they do, 
 whether great or small. 
 
 "Your friend Jacob’s poetry has some flat lines in 
 it, which I dare say you observed and could wish 
 you had altered. „ 
 
 "I have just been reading 'The Prospect of Peace,’ 
 which you gave me, but to make it complete it 
 wants the commendatory verses you promised. Pray 
 send them. Have you heard from your 'second 
 wife’? I love her because you do, and wish to 
 hear all about her.” 
 
 “March 17, 1779. 
 
 "I am unspeakably obliged by your last charming 
 packet. I know not how to thank you as I ought; 
 but, could you be sensible of the delight it gave me, 
 you would feel yourself in some measure repaid, for 
 I know that benevolent heart of yours loves to give 
 pleasure. I longed to write you by the post, but 
 was forced to write letters to Boston. Our acquaint¬ 
 ance has a claim upon our time. Gratitude and 
 nature forbid us to neglect those with whom we 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 85 
 
 have spent social hours. Before I go any further 
 I must tell you how sorry I am that you should 
 have been so ill received at Mr. B.’s through a 
 mistake and on my account. I will have that 
 mistake rectified, so say nothing against it. I 
 cannot bear that you should suffer so much for my 
 sake. I cannot conceive where Mrs. B. got her 
 intelligence, or who gaxeyoti yours. Some meddling 
 or malicious as well as misinformed person gave 
 the first, no doubt. I wish I could repay you and 
 one other friend for the kind part you have taken 
 in it. 
 
 " I am exceedingly sorry for Mr. Baldwin’s illness. 
 Tell him so: I wish I were near enough to pay 
 back a little of his tender care. 
 
 "Do you know, I think my brother improves 
 greatly under your auspices ? Let me bespeak your 
 kind attention to him. Form his taste, if you can, 
 to those things you yourself admire, to books and 
 study. Beside the improving, these afford rational 
 amusement to the mind. These are safe pleasures ; 
 but oh, what deceitful ones lurk in the world to 
 catch the unwary ! My poor boy will be particularly 
 disposed to be led astray by these, unless his friends 
 protect him. He is uncommonly influenced by the 
 company he keeps. 
 
 "I want to gratify you, and have searched a great 
 deal for the lines I wrote on P. E.’s death. I gave 
 them to Mr. Dwight, and never took a copy. I 
 
86 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 will get them if I can; but you must not expect to 
 find one of the thousand beauties I admire in yours. 
 
 I shall be more fond of Shenstone than ever, since 
 he has raised a spirit of emulation in you. Did I 
 ever tell you that I thought your genius and char¬ 
 acter a little resembled his? — though the first, I 
 believe, has more elevation. May your life be 
 longer and happier than that of the poet of the 
 Leasowes ! If these are your first attempts at elegy, 
 you have succeeded to admiration; yet I have been 
 trying to find some fault, and perhaps I could, for 
 I read with all the malice of a friend! I hate to 
 send you this rumpled sheet, but Matt threatened 
 to see it, and I almost destroyed it in defending it 
 from him ; and I would not care if I had quite, had 
 I time to write another. Late as it is, I must write 
 to my brother.” 
 
 “March 29, 1779. 
 
 " All that ever I have heard or read of the pleas¬ 
 ures and advantages of a married life is nothing to 
 what I have experienced since my conhection with 
 you. ’Tis now about three months since we entered 
 that happy state; and I do not see but it gives 
 me as much joy as at the first moment, and your 
 letters seem to express the same sentiment. 
 
 " Indeed, I believe we are peculiarly fortunate. 
 Some of my friends this way will have it, ’tis only 
 because we are separated that we agree so well, 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 8 7 
 
 and say so many soft things to each other; but I 
 am not obliged to believe them, and am sure could 
 they see us together they would alter their opinion. 
 Nay, Rochefoucauld himself would own that our 
 marriage was rather delightful than convenient; but 
 I must leave this charming subject, to make room 
 for the next most agreeable, — poetry. The liberty 
 which you allow me of criticising yours is more 
 flattering than your compliments; and, knowing all 
 apology unnecessary, I shall make use of it. 
 
 "There are so many beauties in your elegies, that 
 it looks like envy or ill-nature to pass them and 
 dwell upon the few faults; but you know that I do 
 not leave them unnoticed or unadmired. If you 
 will have me find fault, I can do it in a few in¬ 
 stances with the expression. The sentiments are 
 everywhere beautiful, just, and above all criticism. 
 I do not like the word which introduces the first 
 elegy ; yet I do not very well know what I would 
 have substituted, or why I dislike it. Perhaps you 
 can tell. From thence to the fourth verse I like 
 entirely; and the last couplet of that is certainly 
 extremely beautiful. In the first the thought is 
 beautiful, but I do not think it happily expressed. 
 The other elegy is my favorite, because of the sub¬ 
 ject, which you have touched so tenderly that while 
 it melts me into tears it charms. I have made one 
 or two slight alterations in it, too trifling to men¬ 
 tion,— only of single words. I must tell you, I have 
 
88 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 ventured so far as to give a copy to the mother of 
 the sweet little child, but without your name, and 
 she seemed disposed to give your ' wife ’ the credit 
 of writing it. I wish she were capable of it. Why 
 are you gloomy? You must not be. Expect every 
 thing, hope every thing, and do every thing to make 
 your circumstances agreeable. Tell Mr. B. I am 
 half uneasy that I do not hear from him, and some¬ 
 times fear he is offended with me. If it is only 
 because he is taken up with writing Buckminster, 
 I forgive him. Give my kind love to Ruth, and let 
 me know when she returns. What you say of my 
 brother pleases me; but is it possible for him to be 
 steady in any thing that is good? He is a flighty 
 little fellow.” 
 
 The triviality of the following letter I copy, on 
 account of the allusion to Buckminster: — 
 
 “April 15, 1779. 
 
 "Your last letter was one of the most agreeable. 
 I began to fear that absence had cooled your affec¬ 
 tion ; that your 'second wife’ was returned, or that 
 you had found another; in short, my head was full 
 of a thousand disagreeables: but now I have no 
 room for complaint, and am resolved no idle jeal¬ 
 ousies shall disturb the uncommon felicity of my 
 lot in you, who are certainly the faithfulest and best 
 of husbands. If you must know who I think you 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 89 
 
 resemble, or, rather, who you sometimes, by some¬ 
 thing in your manner, put me in mind of, it is 
 Buckminster. 
 
 " I am glad you have at last been sincere with 
 your'wife.’ What you observe is extremely just, 
 — that I do not make a proper difference in my 
 conduct between the worthless and the worthy, — 
 but, trust me, in my heart I make the due distinc¬ 
 tion. Your 'plan’ pleases me extremely. Whether 
 it is romantic or not, I am not as yet able to judge ; 
 but I have done nothing but fancy fine things for 
 you ever since I saw it. 
 
 " If I were to give the soberest opinion I can 
 frame, I should say the foundation was laid in rea¬ 
 son ; but your romantic imagination had a little share 
 in the finishing. I long to know what story you 
 will fix upon for a poem of some eminence. It will 
 not do for you much longer only to coquet with 
 the Muses. Pray, why do neither Ruth nor her 
 brother write one word for so long? Tell Betsy 
 Stiles that within a few days she will see some one 
 that I love dearly, and she does not hate. You may 
 expect a little volume of satire upon your life, con¬ 
 versation, and manners, as soon as I can get time 
 and spirits to write it.” 
 
 “ April 29, 1779. 
 
 "I have very little time, for I am obliged to steal 
 it from the most agreeable company in the world : I 
 mean my Wethersfield friends, with whom I am 
 
 8 
 
9 ° 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 so happy as to be upon a visit for the first time since 
 my return. 
 
 "O Joel, to see Samuel bending his course to¬ 
 wards New Haven is enough to make me wish to 
 leave even this agreeable place ! I want to hear 
 from you extremely, especially from our dear Muses. 
 Pray send me word how they do, or rather let them 
 speak for themselves on paper. I intended to send 
 you with this a piece which, if you have not read it, 
 will please you. It is called 'The Shipwreck,’ not 
 very correct, and written by an unlearned author, 
 but full of native beauties. I have heard one piece 
 of news from New Haven that surprises me; this 
 is, that our French master, Mons. Beautonaux, is 
 married. If this is so, we may, I presume, take the 
 merit to ourselves; for nothing but the sight of our 
 uncommon felicity could have wrought such a mira¬ 
 cle on the old man ! Pray send me word whom he 
 married, and whether Dr. Stiles married them.” 
 
 “May io, 1779. 
 
 "I have spent the evening in company before 
 walking half a mile. It is now one o’clock. Judge, 
 then, if I can pretend to find fault with you at pres¬ 
 ent? No, really: I am too tired and too good hu¬ 
 mored ; but for your encouragement I will tell you 
 that I have a sheet full of hints and sketches in that 
 way which I have taken down when I felt most dis¬ 
 posed to be severe, and I intend to work them into a 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 91 
 
 sort of satire at the first opportunity. I heard last 
 night from Mr. Dwight that he will soon take a 
 journey to camp. He will certainly either go or re¬ 
 turn by way of New Haven, so you will be able to 
 consult him yourself. I fervently wish you may, 
 for I know of no person so capable of advising you. 
 I shall depend upon seeing you before you set out 
 on your tour.” 
 
 “June 8, 1779. 
 
 "Betsy Stiles is in town: you will easily believe 
 that it gives me a great deal of pleasure to see her; 
 but it makes me wish even more for you, and a few 
 more New Haven friends with whom we used to 
 spend our social evenings. You will see Mr. Dwight 
 before I shall. When I do see him I shall not forget 
 you. I am sorry Swift is 'mad with the world.’ 
 You must get his fit over as soon as you can. Come 
 and see him, and you will put us both in good humor. 
 Pray keep your promise and write oftener. I wish 
 there had been-a dozen Miss Salmonses, if you would 
 have given each of them a letter.” 
 
 “J ul y > 779 - 
 
 "I would not send such worthless letters, if I ever 
 knew of an opportunity half an hour beforehand. 
 We live here, especially in the summer time, a life 
 of pleasurable dissipation, and have so much com¬ 
 pany that it is almost impossible, how much soever 
 one may think of an absent friend, to steal a moment 
 
y2 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 for him. I am quite impatient for you to come and 
 see us. I only wait my sister Polly’s return to urge 
 it with all the ardor that suits our connection ! The 
 poor girl has spent a dull summer at Westbury. We 
 have had a world of good company in her absence, 
 and I am of a mind to reserve some for her at her 
 return. I begin to grow very impatient for some 
 account from Parnassus. You have seen Mr. Dwight, 
 I hope? It is as much as I can do to say I have, 
 he made so short a visit, and his friends were almost 
 ready to pull him to pieces. ’Tis almost a misfortune 
 to be so very good, and so much beloved. Let me 
 hear soon. You should not wait, for you have ten 
 times my leisure.” 
 
 “ October 17, 1779. 
 
 "I am extremely pleased with the dependence you 
 put upon my friendship, nor shall it ever disappoint 
 you. I will tell you all I know. Those gentlemen 
 to whom your friends have mentioned your plan 
 approve of it, and say that you shall be encouraged. 
 I wish God would give some of them a heart to do 
 all that you want, or rather I wish he would give 
 some of us who have hearts the means. I must own 
 to you, dear Joel, that I have no great expectation 
 that those to whom the affair has been mentioned 
 will do any thing effectual about it. I have had much 
 conversation with Webster, and he is still sanguine. 
 He will write you all his thoughts, and desire you 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 93 
 
 to stay in New Haven, until he can tell you with 
 certainty what to depend upon. In this I join him, 
 as in a short time he will probably be able to inform 
 you. Let me beg of you, dear friend, not to be dis¬ 
 couraged with regard to your design, though it 
 should not proceed at this time, and above all things 
 not to give yourself any uneasiness about what your 
 friends have attempted. If it should not succeed, it 
 cannot possibly be of any disadvantage to you that 
 I can think of. Your friends will be proud to avow 
 that it originated with them. It has at least made 
 you known to some worthy men, who will wish you 
 well, and probably do you service, if not in the way 
 and at the time I wish. 
 
 "Yet I feel for your delicacy, which is wounded 
 by the idea you entertain of the matter. Be assured 
 I have not mentioned it to any mortal, nor shall I; 
 and I believe Webster has mentioned it only to those 
 he thought might be of service. How far they may 
 mention it, it is impossible to say; but I beg you 
 would give } r ourself no trouble about it. 
 
 "And now, let me entreat you, once more, not to 
 be dejected on any account. ’Tis true you are in a 
 disagreeable situation, but it will be mended soon. 
 Fortune owes you much, and she will pay you. You 
 are placed at the bottom of the wheel, and every 
 change must be for the better. You have every thing 
 to hope and nothing to fear. I know that you de¬ 
 spise the favors of Fortune, except so far as they are 
 
94 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 necessary to the prosecution of your noble and benef¬ 
 icent designs. I know your soul is as superior to 
 the sordid love of wealth as your genius is to that 
 of the generality of men. All I wish for you is a 
 decent independence that will enable you to gratify 
 your favorite inclinations. If those who can help 
 you to this will not, you must help yourself; for you 
 will certainly meet with assistance. Keep up your 
 spirits, and be certain of the constant affection of 
 your friends. In me you will always find a true 
 one, as I will show you by more than words.” 
 
 The above letter speaks for itself. Barlow had 
 been shaping the " Columbiad ” all through the war. 
 It is probable that the poem owed its final name to 
 Dr. Dwight, who is said to have been the first to 
 call America "Columbia.” It seems that Eliza and 
 his friends Webster and Watson had made a move¬ 
 ment in Hartford toward a subscription in behalf of 
 its publication, which alarmed Barlow’s delicacy. 
 But there was every reason why Barlow’s plans 
 should be entitled to the sympathy of the whole 
 State. As chaplain and soldier, — especially at 
 White Plains, — his sermons and his songs had done 
 much to keep up the spirits of the soldiers. 
 
 Eliza’s strong practical sense shows to great ad¬ 
 vantage in this letter; so also does her womanly 
 sweetness. The subject is continued : — 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 95 
 
 “ November, 1779. 
 
 "What time I have, I steal from our dear 
 Northampton friends. Mr. and Mrs. Dwight, Sally, 
 and Mrs. Storrs speak of you with a great deal of 
 affection, and hoped to have met you here. 
 
 " I am sorry that I cannot now inform you with 
 respect to Colonel Broom. I will take the earliest 
 opportunity, but it might not be proper to mention 
 it just at present, as the family are overwhelmed 
 with affliction at the loss of a dear sister. The use 
 you make of that melancholy event is just and 
 rational. I always feel that the loss of one friend 
 binds the rest closer to my heart. I am sorry for 
 Ruthe’s misfortune. Tell her that I love her, and will 
 write by the first opportunity. I find at last your 
 long-sought letter from Mr. Baldwin. Mr. Dwight 
 found it at Northampton, and brought it here. I 
 hope it will make some amends for your disappoint¬ 
 ment in not seeing him. Providence will throw 
 something in your way before long. I have very 
 little expectation of your coming to Colonel Broom, 
 because his children are so young. I can hardly 
 think he wants an instructor. If he should, I 
 believe you would be acceptable to him, and have 
 no doubt the place would suit you.” 
 
 “ December 18, 1779. 
 
 " I thought you were not in quite good spirits 
 when you wrote last. It has not come to that yet, 
 
96 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 that the world has nothing for you to do. Besides, 
 your friends will always want you. One of those 
 on whom you had the least dependence has found 
 an employment for you that I think will be agree¬ 
 able. This is Mr. Dwight. His school is like to 
 proceed; and with him I think you must be happy, 
 and will have some advantages for study that you 
 can have nowhere else. Watson will write you 
 more about the matter. I am much pleased with 
 having you settled at Northampton, at least for a 
 time. What an excellent man is our friend ! I 
 never think of him, but with gratitude to heaven 
 for having made him so worthy and so amiable. 
 
 " I have just been reading a pretty observation in 
 the ' Guardian,’ which I apply to him,— 
 
 It is a tribute which ought to be paid to Provi¬ 
 dence by men of distinguished faculties to praise 
 and adore the Author of their being with a spirit 
 suitable to those faculties, and so rouse slower men 
 to a participation in their transports.’ 
 
 "Thus does our admirable friend. It is almost 
 impossible for any one to be in his company, and 
 not grow wiser and better. Does not this storm 
 make you think of one we had last Christmas? 
 How do the Muses? I intend to send them some 
 work soon. I have a song of which the tune is 
 excellent and the words poor, the subject a parting 
 between two lovers. What could be better? I will 
 send you a coppy, and if you will let Quammeny 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 97 
 
 take it, and work it into a more eligible form, I 
 shall be much obliged. In all moods and tenses, 
 lam "Yours.” 
 
 Barlow here makes a visit to Hartford. 
 
 “December 28, 1779. 
 
 " I had no opportunity for conversation when you 
 were here. It was literally seeing you. So I know 
 nothing of the situation of your mind or your pros¬ 
 pects. I was happy to see you in better spirits. You 
 have much to hope, and I, who am never sanguine, 
 think you have at present good reason to hope almost 
 all you can wish. Enclosed is the song. I will get 
 the tune, which is a fine one, pricked, and send it. 
 Webster was here the afternoon you left, and sorry 
 he could not see you. Pray keep Quammeny in 
 employ. Watson is afraid she will freeze in spight 
 of all he has done for her. I intend to slip down 
 and see what she is about.” 
 
 From this allusion to Watson, it is probable that 
 some money was raised for Barlow in Hartford. 
 
 Between this letter of December 28, and the next 
 of February 25, Eliza seems to have gone to New 
 Haven. The spelling of these letters is perfectly 
 modern. One or two peculiarities or slips of the 
 pen — such as " coppy,” " riske,” " Ruthe,” " spight ” 
 — I have carefully preserved. 
 
9 8 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 “February 25, 1780. 
 
 "This is just to inform you that I am not in Boston. 
 I don’t choose that the report of my being there 
 should deprive me of letters. I wish to keep up a 
 constant correspondence, and shall write such stuff 
 as I have, and expect in return the 'wit of the 
 Muses.’ Is not this a modest bargain I make with 
 } T ou? But sometimes by luck or study I write better 
 than this. I hear little from you this winter, but will 
 not complain, for I presume you are employed in 
 taking care of the family. However, there was a 
 time when no cares would have made you so long 
 unmindful of your dearest , I mean one of your 
 dearest 'wifes;’ but we have been married more 
 than a year, and, if we are not quite so attentive to 
 each other as at first, few of our contemporaries will 
 be able to reproach us. If this letter is not quite 
 as good as it should be, I do not much care, for you 
 have got a fine long one from Mr. Lyman. So I 
 judge by the outside, which I assure you is all I 
 have seen. I wish I were with you, to help you 
 read it. I had a good mind to have made use of 
 the privileges of a wife and opened it, so great was 
 my desire to see the production of so fine a pen. 
 Pray what has Quammeny done with my song? 
 If she has not finished it, she is an idle hussy, and I 
 beg you will set her immediately about it. I am 
 sure that her sisters would rather she should do 
 their work over after them than be idle, for they 
 are all spinsters.” 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 99 
 
 “ May 12, 1781. 
 
 " I heard from you by Mr. Levengsworth, but why 
 did you let him come without a letter? Give my 
 love to Ruthe, and tell her that I do try to be as 
 generous as possible, and do not begrudge you to 
 her but a little. I will write the dear girl by the 
 very first opportunity. You enquire about Mr. 
 Dwight. He will be in New Haven next week.” 
 
 The letters close with the following to Mrs. 
 Barlow. The benevolence, cheerfulness, activity, 
 and practical sense they indicate, written just before 
 and after Buckminster’s marriage, are in strange con¬ 
 trast to the half-insane despair and moody regret 
 usually attributed to her at this period : — 
 
 “ Hartford, Nov. 25, 1782. 
 
 " My dear Ruthe, — I thank you a thousand 
 times for your letter and the agreeable news it 
 contains. Will we admit you, do you ask, into this 
 excellent town of Hartford? Yes, with as much 
 pleasure as a lawyer his client, or a lady her 
 lover; and rather than you should not have room, 
 I should be willing to turn out several that I know 
 of, notwithstanding that I always thought myself 
 very public-spirited, and know that the riches of a 
 community consists in the number of its inhabitants. 
 
 "But I hope that we need not impoverish ourselves 
 on your account, but that you will add to our strength 
 
IOO 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 and riches by coming amongst us ; for Goodrich has, 
 I suppose, — as perhaps he wrote you word, — by 
 this time secured you a very good place. I believe 
 it will be in Trumbull’s neighborhood, but when I 
 last saw Goodrich he was not quite certain. 
 
 " As to what you tell of your poverty, I am glad 
 of it with all my heart, for many reasons. I believe 
 I shall not mention more than three or four, and leave 
 the rest to some other opportunity. 
 
 " In the first place, then, I love you so well as to 
 be willing to share almost any fortune with you, and 
 we are poor, and always have been so, and are 
 contriving to become still more poor if we can. In 
 this we are no way singular. Most of the people 
 of merit that we have ever known or heard of, are 
 or were so before us. I do not mean to imply that 
 because we are poor we must absolutely be people 
 of merit, but I think, as the world goes, the sign is 
 very much in our favor. Then as for poets and 
 men of genius, with whom you have a right to class 
 your husband, they have always been poor from 
 time immemorial. I need not mention Homer, the 
 prince of them, who sung his epic poem about the 
 streets, nor a thousand others, whose history I dare 
 say you have at your tongue’s end. For my part, 
 I am apt to imagine poverty to be a peculiar mark 
 of the favor of Heaven, as the ancients used to 
 esteem it to be struck by lightning. I only wish, my 
 dear, that you were half as well convinced of its 
 
THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 IOI 
 
 blessings and advantages as I am. You would then 
 be perfectly contented if it should be your lot, — 
 which, however, you are by no means certain of, 
 unless you take great pains to deserve it. 
 
 "Polly is in a great hurry with some work, and 
 therefore the agreeable task of writing for both 
 devolves upon me. I do not doubt she will set her 
 hand to all I have said or can say about poverty. 
 I am heartily glad to hear, my dear friend, that you 
 are treated at home with kindness and attention ; 
 not that I by any means think that enough for so 
 deserving a child as you have ever been ; but I 
 could not bear, as I have sometimes told you, to 
 have you on other than friendly terms with your 
 own father. I can’t but hope he will yet do you 
 justice some time or other; and I think we ought to 
 suffer any thing but absolute slavery from so revered 
 a character, rather than show resentment. 
 
 "The walking has been so extremely bad that I 
 have been able to make but little inquiry about 
 crockery. There is, I believe, considerable queen’s- 
 ware in town. I am not certain about china. I 
 will look for this, and let you know as soon as pos¬ 
 sible. I believe such things are not less high here 
 than in New Haven ; but then you would save the 
 trouble of bringing them. Pray give my love to 
 Joel, if he is returned. Mr. Wadsworth sends his 
 to you, and thanks you for remembering him when 
 you were at Ridgefield. Mamma, Abby, every- 
 
102 
 
 THE STORY AND THE LETTER. 
 
 body, send love to you, and wish to see you. You 
 see, my dear, I have no less propensity to write 
 long letters than you have. Don’t you think it is 
 the sign of a fertile genius? But I must bid you 
 adieu, for the present. 
 
 “E. W.” 
 
 These letters are Eliza Wharton’s appeal to pos¬ 
 terity,— to a world which has misjudged her. 
 
 They were written by a light-hearted and fanci¬ 
 ful, as well as by a cultivated, woman, but neither 
 by a wanton nor a " coquette.” 
 
 Cambridge : Press of John Wilson and Son. 
 
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