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- Herausgeber: Booksell-Verlag
- Kategorie: Gesellschafts- und Liebesromane
- Sprache: Englisch
In Sarah Orne Jewett's historical romance, "The Tory Lover," readers are transported to the tumultuous era of the American Revolution. Through a rich tapestry of vivid characterizations and intricate dialogue, Jewett intertwines themes of loyalty and betrayal with an exploration of cultural and regional divides. The narrative unfolds primarily through the eyes of the spirited protagonist, revealing the complexities of love set against a backdrop of political upheaval. Jewett's quintessentially American voice is steeped in local color, reflecting her deep connection to New England's landscape and history, thus situating her work firmly within the realm of late 19th-century American literature. Jewett, an influential author in the regionalist movement, drew from her own experiences growing up in coastal Maine. Her fascination with the social fabric of her time, combined with her strong feminist sensibilities, informed much of her writing. "The Tory Lover" reflects her commitment to addressing the often-overlooked perspectives of women and marginalized groups during significant historic moments, showcasing her ability to blend romance with insightful commentary on societal issues. This captivating novel is essential for anyone interested in American literary history, historical romance, or the intricacies of personal relationships during a pivotal time in the nation's past. Jewett's eloquent prose and nuanced character development will resonate with readers drawn to narratives that challenge the boundaries of love and loyalty. In this enriched edition, we have carefully created added value for your reading experience: - A succinct Introduction situates the work's timeless appeal and themes. - The Synopsis outlines the central plot, highlighting key developments without spoiling critical twists. - A detailed Historical Context immerses you in the era's events and influences that shaped the writing. - A thorough Analysis dissects symbols, motifs, and character arcs to unearth underlying meanings. - Reflection questions prompt you to engage personally with the work's messages, connecting them to modern life. - Hand‐picked Memorable Quotes shine a spotlight on moments of literary brilliance. - Interactive footnotes clarify unusual references, historical allusions, and archaic phrases for an effortless, more informed read.
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Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2021
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The Tory Lover
Table of Contents
Introduction
In The Tory Lover, Sarah Orne Jewett probes the unsettling moment when a community divided by the American Revolution forces individuals to weigh affection against allegiance, asking how love, duty, and the memory of place can endure amid suspicion, shifting loyalties, and the quiet yet relentless pressures of everyday life that continue even as the larger world convulses, so that private choices radiate outward into public consequence while the tides, fields, and streets of a coastal town bear witness to intimacies kept, promises tested, and identities forged in the contested space between belonging and belief.
A historical novel by the celebrated New England regionalist, The Tory Lover was published in 1901, near the end of Sarah Orne Jewett’s career. Set during the Revolutionary era, it unfolds along the northern New England seacoast, in villages and river towns where maritime trade, farms, and family ties bind neighbors who suddenly find themselves on opposing sides. While Jewett is best known for portrayals of contemporary Maine life, here she turns to the past, keeping her characteristic attentiveness to landscape and community while placing it within the heightened stakes of wartime and the uncertainties of a nation coming into being.
The premise centers on a young woman whose world is destabilized when the local fabric—church pews, kitchen tables, and waterfronts—becomes a map of partisan lines, and a suitor with Loyalist sympathies complicates the expectations of friends and kin. Jewett traces the consequences of chosen allegiances without rushing toward melodrama, letting tensions emerge through visits, letters, errands, and gatherings where conversation carries as much risk as comfort. The reader moves through parlors and along riverbanks, sensing how the ordinary rhythms of work, weather, and hospitality absorb and reflect political strain, creating a narrative that is intimate, steady, and quietly suspenseful.
Stylistically, the novel offers Jewett’s measured omniscient voice, patient with detail and finely tuned to the nuances of domestic ritual and neighborly exchange. Descriptions of shore and season establish a grounded, tactile world in which the natural environment is inseparable from human feeling. Dialogue reveals character through cadence and restraint, and the narration favors implication over declaration, trusting readers to register the moral weight of gestures and silences. The mood is contemplative rather than martial, its conflicts seeded in households and on footpaths, so that history is felt as a pressure on everyday conduct rather than a parade of battles or proclamations.
At the heart of the book are questions of loyalty—what it means to be faithful to family, to principles, to a place—and how those commitments can clash when political allegiance becomes a public test. Jewett examines the cost of choosing sides, but also the cost of refusing to choose, for neutrality has its own perils in a small town where memory is long. The novel attends to women’s vantage on war: provisioning, nursing, mediating disputes, and safeguarding kinship networks even as those networks fray. It is a story about moral courage that rarely announces itself, and about compassion at odds with the times.
As historical fiction, The Tory Lover extends Jewett’s regional art by showing how a community’s past underwrites its present, inviting readers to consider how landscapes store conflict and care alike. The book’s relevance today rests in its exploration of polarization and the ethics of belonging: how to live with neighbors whose convictions unsettle one’s own, and how to sustain civility without muting conscience. Rather than celebrating heroics or assigning simple blame, Jewett seeks complexity, dramatizing the slow work of understanding in an atmosphere that rewards haste and certainty, and suggesting that place-based attachments can both complicate and deepen moral judgment.
Readers can expect a reflective, character-driven experience in which the stakes feel close to home and the pleasures are those of texture, clarity, and humane insight. Without revealing outcomes, it is enough to say the narrative turns on choices that illuminate the entanglement of affection and principle, and on the lasting imprint such choices leave on a community. As a late-career work, the novel offers a bridge between Jewett’s celebrated local portraits and a broader historical canvas, making it a compelling entry point for those interested in regional literature, the Revolutionary period, or fiction that honors quiet lives while taking their dilemmas seriously.
Synopsis
Set in coastal Maine during the early years of the American Revolution, The Tory Lover follows neighboring households whose long-settled routines are unsettled by war. At the river bend stands the Hamilton house, where young Mary Hamilton manages duties and friendships with a steadiness admired in the town. Across the water, the Wallingfords uphold older loyalties to the Crown, embodied by Roger Wallingford, thoughtful and reserved. Their paths have intertwined since childhood, and mutual regard persists despite the season’s new watchwords of patriot and tory. Sarah Orne Jewett opens the narrative with landscapes, kin networks, and customs that frame how private choices begin to meet public change.
As committees, militias, and town meetings gain authority, neighbors weigh allegiance with care. The Hamilton household leans toward the patriot cause through trade interests and local duty, while the Wallingfords value stability and inherited ties to Britain. Mary’s days blend hospitality, errands by river, and visits to older women who remember earlier wars, grounding her in community. Roger avoids noisy declarations, preferring courtesy and restraint, but his position places him under notice. Jewett traces these tensions through small encounters, from church aisles to ferry landings, where gestures carry meaning. The story’s early chapters establish character, place, and the strain that distant decisions impose on a border village.
Change accelerates with the arrival of Captain John Paul Jones, preparing a Continental warship at a nearby port. His energy and resolve contrast with local caution, and his appearances in the countryside draw curiosity and debate. Jones seeks dependable men, charts rivers and tides, and reminds villagers that the conflict reaches far beyond their fields. His conversations touch both houses, sharpening choices already forming. Roger admires skill wherever it appears but hesitates to abandon what he has promised his elders. Mary listens, asks practical questions, and measures what help she might give without harming those in her care. Public excitement grows as the ship nears readiness.
Reports of raids, seizures, and imprisonments along the coast make the war immediate. In marketplaces, rumors chase fact, and names are read aloud by watchful committees. The Wallingford estate is visited, inventories are taken, and assurances are demanded. Roger’s courtesy meets the letter of the law, even as he protects dependents and tenants from the worst shocks of wartime scarcity. Mary’s errands take her to homes where absence at sea or in camp has left quiet burdens; she keeps confidences and tempers sudden words that could harden into charges. Jewett uses these scenes to show how policy translates into household trials, with winter approaching and tempers quickening.
A turning offer comes through Jones, who recognizes in Roger a steady judgment useful at sea. The captain’s mission promises both danger and a wider stage, including a voyage to Europe where American fortunes will be weighed. For Roger, service might clear suspicion without requiring noisy renunciation; for Mary, it means distance and uncertainty. Preparations move quickly: lists are closed, sails bent, and farewells made at dusk. The narrative broadens to the deck and cabin, where seamanship, discipline, and the captain’s exacting standards shape daily life. Letters, delayed by weather and war, thread between ship and shore, carrying fragments of reassurance and news.
At home, seasons turn with their own demands. The Hamilton fields must be planted, stores protected, and visitors received with tact. Confiscations and auctions test compassion, while the rumor of British landings keeps militia horses saddled. Madam Wallingford’s composure, cultivated over decades, steadies her household even as she cannot command events. Mary’s quiet authority grows, trusted by young and old to relay messages and arrange small acts of assistance. Village life proceeds in altered form—weddings curtailed, harvests smaller, sermons longer—yet old songs and river paths remain. News from sea reaches hearths in bursts: prizes taken, flags saluted, and names from home noted on muster rolls.
Engagements at sea intensify the story’s stakes. Under Jones, the American vessel tests itself against superior forces, and reputation becomes as valuable as cargo. Reports return that elevate some households and deepen suspicion toward others. Roger, measured by conduct rather than declarations, must decide what he can publicly risk to protect private loyalties. Mary weighs proposals that would secure her future but narrow her sympathies, and she waits for clarity that war seldom grants. Jewett marks this phase with decisive conversations on porches and quarterdecks, where restraint or an unguarded word may tip a fate. The community forms judgments as surely as any court.
As the conflict moves toward broader campaigns, the village reckons with change that will outlast the war. Some prepare to depart under protection; others petition for forgiveness. Property, names, and inheritances are debated with the same care as national principles. The Hamilton house, enduring by the river, becomes a place where information is exchanged and new customs tried. Returning sailors and scattered letters carry partial answers about what was achieved abroad, while silence also speaks. Without settling every question, the narrative gathers its strands to show how wounds may close slowly: by steady work, tempered authority, and the willingness to live beside those one does not wholly persuade.
The Tory Lover finally presents a community testing the meanings of loyalty, honor, and belonging under revolutionary stress. Rather than dividing characters into simple camps, Jewett observes how family duty, local memory, and personal affection create mixed allegiances. The presence of John Paul Jones places the small river town within an international theater, yet the book’s heart remains with those who keep houses, fields, and promises. Its message emphasizes integrity expressed in everyday acts and the possibility of reconciliation grounded in place. The closing movement leaves readers with the sense that endurance, not victory alone, secures a future that neighbors can share after the guns fall silent.
Historical Context
Sarah Orne Jewett sets The Tory Lover on the northern New England seacoast during the American Revolutionary era, centering on the villages along the Piscataqua River—South Berwick and Kittery in the District of Maine (then part of Massachusetts) and Portsmouth in the Province of New Hampshire—circa 1774–1779. This maritime borderland, linked by tidal rivers and shipyards, was economically tied to Atlantic trade and strategically exposed to the Royal Navy. Class structures ranged from merchant gentry in grand riverside houses to fishermen and farmers in outlying settlements. Jewett drew on the landscape and traditions around South Berwick’s Salmon Falls River, adapting local memory to portray a community divided by loyalty and war.
Prewar coastal unrest shapes the novel’s world, notably the raid on Fort William and Mary at New Castle, New Hampshire, on 14–15 December 1774. Local Patriots led by John Langdon and John Sullivan seized about 100 barrels of gunpowder and later cannon and small arms, defying royal authority and arming seacoast militias months before Lexington and Concord (April 1775). The action electrified Portsmouth and the Piscataqua towns, hardened divisions between Patriots and Loyalists, and triggered tighter royal scrutiny. Jewett’s portrayal of committees of safety, clandestine networks, and tense parlors mirrors the atmosphere created by this raid, where neighbors chose sides within sight of the tide.
British retaliation and coastal warfare defined the region. On 18 October 1775 Captain Henry Mowat’s squadron burned Falmouth (now Portland, Maine) after an 11-hour bombardment that destroyed most of the town. The assault sent refugees along the coast, spurred the Continental Congress—already moving on 13 October 1775—to formalize a naval force, and validated seacoast fears of bombardment and blockade. In York County and Portsmouth, merchants hid cargoes, and towns fortified river mouths. The novel’s anxious harbors, watchful batteries, and talk of convoys reflect the real consequences of Mowat’s attack: disrupted trade, sudden migration, and a sharper policing of loyalty in waterfront neighborhoods and drawing rooms alike.
Naval hero John Paul Jones connects the book to Portsmouth’s shipyards. In 1777 the sloop-of-war Ranger was built on the Piscataqua under merchant John Langdon and shipwright James Hackett; Jones took command on 14 November 1777. Ranger received a formal salute from a French fleet at Quiberon Bay on 14 February 1778, then raided Whitehaven and St. Mary’s Isle and captured HMS Drake off Carrickfergus on 24 April 1778. Jones later fought HMS Serapis on 23 September 1779. Jewett includes Jones as a charismatic presence moving through the same parlors and wharves, using his visits to embody the seacoast’s fusion of private life, revolutionary zeal, and Atlantic warfare.
Loyalist exile and confiscation were defining social realities. The Massachusetts Banishment Act of 1778 and related confiscation statutes targeted named Tories; in nearby Kittery the estates of William Pepperrell Jr. (heir of the famed Louisbourg commander) were proscribed and seized. New Hampshire’s last royal governor, John Wentworth, fled Portsmouth in 1775, part of a Loyalist diaspora of some 60,000 people who resettled in Nova Scotia, New Brunswick (created 1784), Quebec, and Britain. Families were split by allegiance, property was redistributed, and former neighbors became enemies. The Tory Lover centers on precisely these fractures, dramatizing the moral and material costs borne by Loyalist households amid Patriot ascendancy.
Privateering and wartime commerce remade the Piscataqua economy. New England states issued hundreds of letters of marque, and Portsmouth merchants such as John Langdon outfitted swift vessels to prey on British shipping while supplying Continental forces. Captured prizes sustained local artisans, shipwrights, and sailors; failures ruined investors overnight. Coastal villages saw fluctuating prices, shortages of imported goods, and a new class of fortune-seekers tied to the sea. Jewett’s depictions of countinghouses, outfitting yards, and households dependent on maritime risk reflect this environment. The novel uses these economic currents to explain shifting social status, the temptations of loyalty to crown or Congress, and the thin line between patriotic service and profit.
The Penobscot Expedition (July–August 1779) cast a long shadow over Maine. Massachusetts sent militia under Brigadier General Solomon Lovell and a naval force under Commodore Dudley Saltonstall to expel a British garrison building Fort George at Bagaduce (now Castine) under General Francis McLean, part of a British “New Ireland” project. After weeks of delay, a relief squadron under Sir George Collier scattered the Americans; nearly the entire American fleet was burned or scuttled upriver by 13 August. Lieutenant Colonel Paul Revere, the artillery commander, later faced court-martial disputes; Saltonstall was dismissed. The disaster devastated coastal communities and merchants. Jewett’s somber references to shattered prospects and wary Patriots echo this regional trauma.
As social and political critique, the book interrogates triumphalist Revolutionary memory. By giving sympathetic attention to Loyalist households facing banishment, property seizure, and social shunning, it exposes how wartime committees and popular justice blurred into coercion and class reordering. The genteel seacoast mansions—modeled on places like South Berwick’s later Hamilton House—become stages where women negotiate absent men’s decisions, revealing constrained female agency amid public zeal. Jewett, writing in 1901 amid Colonial Revival nostalgia, counters mythmaking by emphasizing divided towns, opportunistic privateering, and the burden of displacement. The narrative thus critiques the period’s inequities while acknowledging genuine patriot risk, restoring moral complexity to a region often remembered only for heroism.
The Tory Lover
I
THE SEA WOLF
"By all you love most, war and this sweet lady.[1q]"
The last day of October in 1777, Colonel Jonathan Hamilton came out of his high house on the river bank with a handsome, impatient company of guests, all Berwick gentlemen. They stood on the flagstones, watching a coming boat that was just within sight under the shadow of the pines of the farther shore, and eagerly passed from hand to hand a spyglass covered with worn red morocco leather. The sun had just gone down; the quick-gathering dusk of the short day was already veiling the sky before they could see the steady lift and dip of long oars, and make sure of the boat's company. While it was still a long distance away, the gentlemen turned westward and went slowly down through the terraced garden, to wait again with much formality by the gate at the garden foot.
Beside the master of the house was Judge Chadbourne, an old man of singular dignity and kindliness of look, and near them stood General Goodwin, owner of the next estate, and Major Tilly Haggens of the Indian wars, a tall, heavily made person, clumsily built, but not without a certain elegance like an old bottle of Burgundy. There was a small group behind these foremost men,—a red cloak here and a touch of dark velvet on a shoulder beyond, with plenty of well-plaited ruffles to grace the wearers. Hamilton's young associate, John Lord, merchant and gentleman, stood alone, trim-wigged and serious, with a look of discretion almost too great for his natural boyish grace. Quite the most impressive figure among them was the minister, a man of high ecclesiastical lineage, very well dressed in a three-cornered beaver hat, a large single-breasted coat sweeping down with ample curves over a long waistcoat with huge pockets and lappets, and a great white stock that held his chin high in air. This was fastened behind with a silver buckle to match the buckles on his tight knee breeches, and other buckles large and flat on his square-toed shoes; somehow he looked as like a serious book with clasps as a man could look, with an outward completeness that mated with his inner equipment of fixed Arminian opinions.
As for Colonel Hamilton, the host, a strong-looking, bright-colored man in the middle thirties, the softness of a suit of brown, and his own hair well dressed and powdered, did not lessen a certain hardness in his face, a grave determination, and maturity of appearance far beyond the due of his years. Hamilton had easily enough won the place of chief shipping merchant and prince of money-makers in that respectable group, and until these dark days of war almost every venture by land or sea had added to his fortunes. The noble house that he had built was still new enough to be the chief show and glory of a rich provincial neighborhood. With all his power of money-making,—and there were those who counted him a second Sir William Pepperrell,—Hamilton was no easy friend-maker like that great citizen of the District of Maine, nor even like his own beautiful younger sister, the house's mistress. Some strain of good blood, which they had inherited, seemed to have been saved through generations to nourish this one lovely existence, and make her seem like the single flower upon their family tree. They had come from but a meagre childhood to live here in state and luxury beside the river.
The broad green fields of Hamilton's estate climbed a long hill behind the house, hedged in by stately rows of elms and tufted by young orchards; at the western side a strong mountain stream came down its deep channel over noisy falls and rapids to meet the salt tide in the bay below. This broad sea inlet and inland harborage was too well filled in an anxious year with freightless vessels both small and great: heavy seagoing craft and lateen-sailed gundalows for the river traffic; idle enough now, and careened on the mud at half tide in picturesque confusion.
The opposite shore was high, with farmhouses above the fields. There were many persons to be seen coming down toward the water, and when Colonel Hamilton and his guests appeared on the garden terraces, a loud cry went alongshore, and instantly the noise of mallets ceased in the shipyard beyond, where some carpenters were late at work. There was an eager, buzzing crowd growing fast about the boat landing and the wharf and warehouses which the gentlemen at the high-urned gateway looked down upon. The boat was coming up steadily, but in the middle distance it seemed to lag; the long stretch of water was greater than could be measured by the eye. Two West Indian fellows in the crowd fell to scuffling, having trodden upon each other's rights, and the on-lookers, quickly diverted from their first interest, cheered them on, and wedged themselves closer together to see the fun. Old Cæsar, the majestic negro who had attended Hamilton at respectful distance, made it his welcome duty to approach the quarrel with loud rebukes; usually the authority of this great person in matters pertaining to the estate was only second to his master's, but in such a moment of high festival and gladiatorial combat all commands fell upon deaf ears. Major Tilly Haggens burst into a hearty laugh, glad of a chance to break the tiresome formalities of his associates, and being a great admirer of a skillful fight. On any serious occasion the major always seemed a little uneasy, as if restless with unspoken jokes.
In the meantime the boat had taken its shoreward curve, and was now so near that even through the dusk the figures of the oarsmen, and of an officer, sitting alone at the stern in full uniform, could be plainly seen. The next moment the wrestling Tobago men sprang to their feet, forgetting their affront, and ran to the landing-place with the rest.
The new flag of the Congress with its unfamiliar stripes was trailing at the boat's stern; the officer bore himself with dignity, and made his salutations with much politeness. All the gentlemen on the terrace came down together to the water's edge, without haste, but with exact deference and timeliness; the officer rose quickly in the boat, and stepped ashore with ready foot and no undignified loss of balance. He wore the pleased look of a willing guest, and was gayly dressed in a bright new uniform of blue coat and breeches, with red lapels and a red waistcoat trimmed with lace. There was a noisy cheering, and the spectators fell back on either hand and made way for this very elegant company to turn again and go their ways up the river shore.
Captain Paul Jones[1] of the Ranger[2] bowed as a well-practiced sovereign might as he walked along, a little stiffly at first, being often vexed by boat-cramp, as he now explained cheerfully to his host. There was an eager restless look in his clear-cut sailor's face, with quick eyes that seemed not to observe things that were near by, but to look often and hopefully toward the horizon. He was a small man, but already bent in the shoulders from living between decks; his sword was long for his height and touched the ground as he walked, dragging along a gathered handful of fallen poplar leaves with its scabbard tip.
It was growing dark as they went up the long garden; a thin white mist was gathering on the river, and blurred the fields where there were marshy spots or springs. The two brigs at the moorings had strung up their dull oil lanterns to the rigging, where they twinkled like setting stars, and made faint reflections below in the rippling current. The huge elms that stood along the river shore were full of shadows, while above, the large house was growing bright with candlelight, and taking on a cheerful air of invitation. As the master and his friends went up to the wide south door, there stepped out to meet them the lovely figure of a girl, tall and charming, and ready with a gay welcome to chide the captain for his delay. She spoke affectionately to each of the others, though she avoided young Mr. Lord's beseeching eyes. The elder men had hardly time for a second look to reassure themselves of her bright beauty, before she had vanished along the lighted hall. By the time their cocked hats and plainer head gear were safely deposited, old Cæsar with a great flourish of invitation had thrown open the door of the dining parlor.
II
THE PARTING FEAST
"A little nation, but made great by liberty."
The faces gathered about the table were serious and full of character. They wore the look of men who would lay down their lives for the young country whose sons they were, and though provincial enough for the most part, so looked most of the men who sat in Parliament at Westminster, and there was no more patrician head than the old judge's to be seen upon the English bench. They were for no self-furtherance in public matters, but conscious in their hearts of some national ideas that a Greek might have cherished in his clear brain, or any citizen of the great days of Rome. They were men of a single-hearted faith in Liberty that shone bright and unassailable; there were men as good as they in a hundred other towns. It was a simple senate of New England, ready and able to serve her cause in small things and great.
The next moment after the minister had said a proper grace, the old judge had a question to ask.
"Where is Miss Mary Hamilton?" said he. "Shall we not have the pleasure of her company?"
"My sister looks for some young friends later," explained the host, but with a touch of coldness in his voice. "She begs us to join her then in her drawing-room, knowing that we are now likely to have business together and much discussion of public affairs. I bid you all welcome to my table, gentlemen; may we be here to greet Captain Paul Jones on his glorious return, as we speed him now on so high an errand!"
"You have made your house very pleasant to a homeless man, Colonel Hamilton," returned the captain, with great feeling. "And Miss Hamilton is as good a patriot as her generous brother. May Massachusetts and the Province of Maine never lack such sons and daughters! There are many of my men taking their farewell supper on either shore of your river this night. I have received my dispatches, and it is settled that we sail for France to-morrow morning at the turn of tide."
"To-morrow morning!" they exclaimed in chorus. The captain's manner gave the best of news; there was an instant shout of approval and congratulation. His own satisfaction at being finally ordered to sea after many trying delays was understood by every one, since for many months, while the Ranger was on the stocks at Portsmouth, Paul Jones had bitterly lamented the indecisions of a young government, and regretted the slipping away of great opportunities abroad and at home. To say that he had made himself as vexing as a wasp were to say the truth, but he had already proved himself a born leader with a heart on fire with patriotism and deep desire for glory, and there were those present who eagerly recognized his power and were ready to further his best endeavors. Young men had flocked to his side, sailors born and bred on the river shores, and in Portsmouth town, who could serve their country well. Berwick was in the thick of the fight from the very beginning; her company of soldiers had been among the first at Bunker's Hill, and the alarm at Lexington had shaken her very hills at home. Twin sister of Portsmouth in age, and sharer of her worldly conditions, the old ease and wealth of the town were sadly troubled now; there was many a new black gown in the parson's great parish, and many a mother's son lay dead, or suffered in an English prison. Yet the sea still beckoned with white hands, and Paul Jones might have shipped his crew on the river many times over. The ease of teaching England to let the colonies alone was not spoken of with such bold certainty as at first, and some late offenses were believed to be best revenged by such a voyage as the Ranger was about to make.
Captain Paul Jones knew his work; he was full of righteous wrath toward England, and professed a large readiness to accept the offered friendliness of France.
Colonel Jonathan Hamilton could entertain like a prince. The feast was fit for the room in which it was served, and the huge cellar beneath was well stored with casks of wine that had come from France and Spain, or from England while her ports were still home ports for the colonies. Being a Scotsman, the guest of honor was not unmindful of excellent claret, and now set down his fluted silver tumbler after a first deep draught, and paid his host a handsome compliment.
"You live like a Virginia gentleman, sir, here in your Northern home. They little know in Great Britain what stately living is among us. The noble Countess of Selkirk thought that I was come to live among the savages, instead of gratifying my wishes for that calm contemplation and poetic ease which, alas, I have ever been denied."
"They affect to wonder at the existence of American gentlemen," returned the judge. "When my father went to Court in '22, and they hinted the like, he reminded them that since they had sent over some of the best of their own gentlefolk to found the colonies, it would be strange if none but boors and clowns came back."
"In Virginia they consider that they breed the only gentlemen; that is the great pity," said Parson Tompson. "Some of my classmates at Cambridge arrived at college with far too proud a spirit. They were pleased to be amused, at first, because so many of us at the North were destined for the ministry."
"You will remember that Don Quixote speaks of the Church, the Sea, and the Court for his Spanish gentlemen," said Major Tilly Haggens, casting a glance across at the old judge. "We have had the two first to choose from in New England, if we lacked the third." The world was much with the major, and he was nothing if not eager spoken. "People forget to look at the antecedents of our various colonists; 't is the only way to understand them. In these Piscataqua neighborhoods we do not differ so much from those of Virginia; 'tis not the same pious stock as made Connecticut and the settlements of Massachusetts Bay. We are children of the Norman blood in New England and Virginia, at any rate. 'T is the Saxons who try to rule England now; there is the cause of all our troubles. Norman and Saxon have never yet learned to agree."
"You give me a new thought," said the captain.
"For me," explained the major, "I am of fighting and praying Huguenot blood, and here comes in another strain to our nation's making. I might have been a parson myself if there had not been a stray French gallant to my grandfather, who ran away with a saintly Huguenot maiden; his ghost still walks by night and puts the devil into me so that I forget my decent hymns. My family name is Huyghens; 't was a noble house of the Low Countries. Christian Huyghens, author of the Cosmotheoros, was my father's kinsman, and I was christened for the famous General Tilly of stern faith, but the gay Frenchman will ever rule me. 'Tis all settled by our antecedents," and he turned to Captain Paul Jones. "I'm for the flower-de-luce, sir; if I were a younger man I'd sail with you to-morrow! 'T is very hard for us aging men with boys' hearts in us to stay decently at home. I should have been born in France!"
"France is your country's friend, sir," said Paul Jones, bowing across the table. "Let us drink to France, gentlemen!" and the company drank the toast. Old Cæsar bowed with the rest as he stood behind his master's chair, and smacked his lips with pathetic relish of the wine which he had tasted only in imagination. The captain's quick eyes caught sight of him.
"By your leave, Colonel Hamilton!" he exclaimed heartily. "This is a toast that every American should share the pleasure of drinking. I observe that my old friend Cæsar has joined us in spirit," and he turned with a courtly bow and gave a glass to the serving man.
"You have as much at stake as we in this great enterprise," he said gently, in a tone that moved the hearts of all the supper company. "May I drink with you to France, our country's ally?"
A lesser soul might have babbled thanks, but Cæsar, who had been born a Guinea prince, drank in silence, stepped back to his place behind his master, and stood there like a king. His underlings went and came serving the supper; he ruled them like a great commander on the field of battle, and hardly demeaned himself to move again until the board was cleared.
"I seldom see a black face without remembering the worst of my boyish days when I sailed in the Two Friends, slaver," said the captain gravely, but with easy power of continuance. "Our neighbor town of Dumfries was in the tobacco trade, and all their cargoes were unloaded in Carsethorn Bay, close by my father's house. I was easily enough tempted to follow the sea; I was trading in the Betsey at seventeen, and felt myself a man of experience. I have observed too many idle young lads hanging about your Portsmouth wharves who ought to be put to sea under a smart captain. They are ready to cheer or to jeer at strangers, and take no pains to be manly. I began to follow the sea when I was but a child, yet I was always ambitious of command, and ever thinking how I might best study the art of navigation."
"There were few idlers along this river once," said General Goodwin regretfully. "The times grow worse and worse."
"You referred to the slaver, Two Friends," interrupted the minister, who had seen a shadow of disapproval on the faces of two of his parishioners (one being Colonel Hamilton's) at the captain's tone. "May I observe that there has seemed to be some manifestation of a kind Providence in bringing so many heathen souls to the influence of a Christian country?"
The fierce temper of the captain flamed to his face; he looked up at old Cæsar who well remembered the passage from his native land, and saw that black countenance set like an iron mask.
"I must beg your reverence's kind pardon if I contradict you," said Paul Jones, with scornful bitterness.
There was a murmur of protest about the table; the captain's reply was not counted to be in the best of taste. Society resents being disturbed at its pleasures, and the man who had offended was now made conscious of his rudeness. He looked up, however, and saw Miss Hamilton standing near the open doorway that led into the hall. She was gazing at him with no relic of that indifference which had lately distressed his heart, and smiled at him as she colored deeply, and disappeared.
The captain took on a more spirited manner than before, and began to speak of politics, of the late news from Long Island, where a son of old Berwick, General John Sullivan, had taken the place of Lee, and was now next in command to Washington himself. This night Paul Jones seemed to be in no danger of those fierce outbursts of temper with which he was apt to startle his more amiable and prosaic companions. There was some discussion of immediate affairs, and one of the company, Mr. Wentworth, fell upon the inevitable subject of the Tories[3]; a topic sure to rouse much bitterness of feeling. Whatever his own principles, every man present had some tie of friendship or bond of kindred with those who were Loyalists for conscience' sake, and could easily be made ill at ease.
The moment seemed peculiarly unfortunate for such trespass, and when there came an angry lull in the storm of talk, Mr. Lord somewhat anxiously called attention to a pair of great silver candlesticks which graced the feast, and by way of compliment begged to be told their history. It was not unknown that they had been brought from England a few summers before in one of Hamilton's own ships, and that he was not without his fancy for such things as gave his house a look of rich ancestry; a stranger might well have thought himself in a good country house of Queen Anne's time near London. But this placid interlude did not rouse any genuine interest, and old Judge Chadbourne broke another awkward pause and harked back to safer ground in the conversation.
"I shall hereafter make some discrimination against men of color. I have suffered a great trial of the spirit this day," he began seriously. "I ask the kind sympathy of each friend present. I had promised my friend, President Hancock, some of our Berwick elms to plant near his house on Boston Common; he has much admired the fine natural growth of that tree in our good town here, and the beauty it lends to our high ridges of land. I gave directions to my man Ajax, known to some of you as a competent but lazy soul, and as I was leaving home he ran after me, shouting to inquire where he should find the trees. 'Oh, get them anywhere!' said I, impatient at the detention, and full of some difficult matters which were coming up at our term in York. And this morning on my return from court, I missed a well-started row of young elms, which I had selected myself and planted along the outer border of my gardens. Ajax had taken the most accessible, and they had all gone down river by the packet. I shall have a good laugh with Hancock by and by. I remember that he once praised these very trees and professed to covet them."
"'T was the evil eye," suggested Mr. Hill, laughing; but the minister slowly shook his head, contemptuous of such superstitious.
"I saw that one of our neighbor Madam Wallingford's favorite oaks was sadly broken by the recent gale," said Mr. Wentworth unguardedly, and this was sufficient to make a new name fairly leap into the conversation,—that of Mr. Roger Wallingford, the son of a widowed lady of great fortune, whose house stood not far distant, on the other side of the river in Somersworth.
General Goodwin at once dropped his voice regretfully. "I am afraid that we can have no doubt now of the young man's sympathy with our oppressors," said he. "I hear that he has been seen within a week coming out of the Earl of Halifax tavern in Portsmouth, late at night, as if from a secret conference. A friend of mine heard him say openly on the Parade that Mr. Benjamin Thompson of old Rumford had been unfairly driven to seek Royalist protection, and to flee his country, leaving wife and infant child behind him; that 't was all from the base suspicions and hounding of his neighbors, whose worst taunt had ever been that he loved and sought the company of gentlemen. 'I pity him from my heart,' says Wallingford in a loud voice; as if pity could ever belong to so vile a traitor!"
"But I fear that this was true," said Judge Chadbourne, the soundest of patriots, gravely interrupting. "They drove young Thompson away in hot haste when his country was in sorest need of all such naturally chivalrous and able men. He meant no disloyalty until his crisis came, and proved his rash young spirit too weak to meet it. He will be a great man some day, if I read men aright; we shall be proud of him in spite of everything. He had his foolish follies, and the wrong road never leads to the right place, but the taunts of the narrow-minded would have made many an older man fling himself out of reach. 'T is a sad mischance of war. Young Wallingford is a proud fellow, and has his follies too: his kindred in Boston thought themselves bound to the King; they are his elders and have been his guardians, and youth may forbid his seeing the fallacy of their arguments. Our country is above our King in such a time as this, yet I myself was of those who could not lightly throw off the allegiance of a lifetime."
"I have always said that we must have patience with such lads and not try to drive them," said Major Haggens, the least patient of all the gentlemen. Captain Paul Jones drummed on the table with one hand and rattled the links of his sword hilt with the other. The minister looked dark and unconvinced, but the old judge stood first among his parishioners; he did not answer, but threw an imploring glance toward Hamilton at the head of the table.
"We are beginning to lose the very last of our patience now with those who cry that our country is too young and poor to go alone, and urge that we should bear our wrongs and be tied to the skirts of England for fifty years more. What about our poor sailors dying like sheep in the English jails?" said Hamilton harshly. "He that is not for us is against us, and so the people feel."
"The true patriot is the man who risks all for love of country," said the minister, following fast behind.
"They have little to risk, some of the loudest of them," insisted Major Haggens scornfully. "They would not brook the thought of conciliation, but fire and sword and other men's money are their only sinews of war. I mean that some of those dare-devils in Boston have often made matters worse than there was any need," he added, in a calmer tone.
Paul Jones cast a look of contempt upon such a complaining old soldier.
"You must remember that many discomforts accompany a great struggle," he answered. "The lower classes, as some are pleased to call certain citizens of our Republic, must serve Liberty in their own fashion. They are used to homespun shirt-sleeves and not to lace ruffles, but they make good fighters, and their hearts are true. Sometimes their instinct gives them to see farther ahead than we can. I fear indeed that there is trouble brewing for some of your valued neighbors who are not willing to be outspoken. A certain young gentleman has of late shown some humble desires to put himself into an honorable position for safety's sake."
"You mistake us, sir," said the old judge, hastening to speak. "But we are not served in our struggle by such lawlessness of behavior; we are only hindered by it. General George Washington is our proper model, and not those men whose manners and language are not worthy of civilization."
The guest of the evening looked frankly bored, and Major Tilly Haggens came to the rescue. The captain's dark hint had set them all staring at one another.
"Some of our leaders in this struggle make me think of an old Scottish story I got from McIntire in York," said he. "There was an old farmer went to the elders to get his tokens for the Sacrament, and they propounded him his questions. 'What's your view of Adam?' says they: 'what kind of a mon?' 'Well,' says the farmer, 'I think Adam was like Jack Simpson the horse trader. Varra few got anything by him, an' a mony lost.'"
The captain laughed gayly as if with a sense of proprietorship in the joke. "T is old Scotland all over," he acknowledged, and then his face grew stern again.
"Your loud talkers are the gadflies that hurry the slowest oxen," he warned the little audience. "And we have to remember that if those who would rob America of her liberties should still prevail, we all sit here with halters round our necks!" Which caused the spirits of the company to sink so low that again the cheerful major tried to succor it.
"Shall we drink to The Ladies?" he suggested, with fine though unexpected courtesy; and they drank as if it were the first toast of the evening.
"We are in the middle of a great war now, and must do the best we can," said Hamilton, as if he wished to make peace about his table. "Last summer when things were at the darkest, Sam Adams came riding down to Exeter to plead with Mr. Gilman for money and troops on the part of their Rockingham towns. The Treasurer was away, and his wife saw Adams's great anxiety and the tears rolling down his cheeks, and heard him groan aloud as he paced to and fro in the room. 'O my God!' says he, 'and must we give it all up!' When the good lady told me there were tears in her own eyes, and I vow that I was fired as I had never been before,—I have loved the man ever since; I called him a stirrer up of frenzies once, but it fell upon my heart that, after all, it is men like Sam Adams who hold us to our duty."
"I cannot envy Sam Curwen his travels in rural England, or Gray that he moves in the best London society, but Mr. Hancock writes me 'tis thought all our best men have left us," said Judge Chadbourne.
"'T is a very genteel company now at Bristol," said John Lord.
"I hear that the East India Company is in terrible difficulties, and her warehouses in London are crammed to bursting with the tea that we have refused to drink. If they only had sense enough to lift the tax and give us liberty for our own trade, we should soon drink all their troubles dry," said Colonel Hamilton.
"'T is not because we hate England, but because we love her that we are hurt so deep," said Mr. Hill. "When a man's mother is jealous because he prospers, and turns against him, it is worst of all."
"Send your young men to sea!" cried Captain Paul Jones, who had no patience with the resettling of questions already left far behind. "Send me thoroughbred lads like your dainty young Wallingford! You must all understand how little can be done with this poor basket of a Ranger against a well-furnished British man-of-war. My reverend friend here has his heart in the matter. I myself have flung away friends and fortune for my adopted country, and she has been but a stingy young stepmother to me. I go to fight her cause on the shores that gave me birth; I trample some dear recollections under foot, and she haggles with me all summer over a paltry vessel none too smart for a fisherman, and sends me to sea in her with my gallant crew. You all know that the Ranger is crank built, and her timbers not first class,—her thin sails are but coarse hessings, with neither a spare sheet, nor stuff to make it, and there 's not even room aboard for all her guns. I sent four six-pounders ashore out of her this very day so that we can train the rest. 'T is some of your pretty Tories that have picked our knots as fast as we tied them, and some jealous hand chose poor planking for our decks and rotten red-oak knees for the frame. But, thank God, she 's a vessel at last! I would sail for France in a gundalow, so help me Heaven! and once in France I shall have a proper man-of-war."
There was a chorus of approval and applause; the listeners were deeply touched and roused; they all wished to hear something of the captain's plans, but he returned to the silver tumbler of claret, and sat for a moment as if considering; his head was held high, and his eyes flashed with excitement as he looked up at the high cornice of the room. He had borne the name of the Sea Wolf; in that moment of excitement he looked ready to spring upon any foe, but to the disappointment of every one he said no more.
"The country is drained now of ready money," said young Lord despondently; "this war goes on, as it must go on, at great sacrifice. The reserves must come out,—those who make excuse and the only sons, and even men like me, turned off at first for lack of health. We meet the strain sadly in this little town; we have done the best we could on the river, sir, in fitting out your frigate, but you must reflect upon our situation."
The captain could not resist a comprehensive glance at the richly furnished table and stately dining-room of his host, and there was not a man who saw it who did not flush with resentment.
"We are poorly off for stores," he said bitterly, "and nothing takes down the courage of a seaman like poor fare. I found to-day that we had only thirty gallons of spirits for the whole crew." At which melancholy information Major Haggens's kind heart could not forbear a groan.
General Goodwin waved his hand and took his turn to speak with much dignity.
"This is the first time that we have all been guests at this hospitable board in many long weeks," he announced gravely. "There is no doubt about the propriety of republican simplicity, or our readiness to submit to it, though our ancient Berwick traditions have taught us otherwise. But I see reason to agree with our friend and former townsman, Judge Sullivan, who lately answered John Adams for his upbraiding of President Hancock's generous way of doing things. He insists that such open hospitality is to be praised when consistent with the means of the host, and that when the people are anxious and depressed it is important to the public cheerfulness."
"'T is true. James Sullivan is right," said Major Haggens; "we are not at Poverty's back door either. You will still find a glass of decent wine in every gentleman's house in old Barvick and a mug of honest cider by every farmer's fireside. We may lack foreign luxuries, but we can well sustain ourselves. This summer has found many women active in the fields, where our men have dropped the hoe to take their old swords again that were busy in the earlier ways."
"We have quelled the savage, but the wars of civilization are not less to be dreaded," said the good minister.
"War is but war," said Colonel Hamilton. "Let us drink to Peace, gentlemen!" and they all drank heartily; but Paul Jones looked startled; as if the war might really end without having served his own ambitions.
"Nature has made a hero of him," said the judge to his neighbor, as they saw and read the emotion of the captain's look. "Circumstances have now given him the command of men and a great opportunity. We shall see the result."
"Yet 't is a contemptible force of ship and men, to think of striking terror along the strong coasts of England," observed Mr. Hill to the parson, who answered him with sympathy; and the talk broke up and was only between man and man, while the chief thought of every one was upon the venison,—a fine saddle that had come down the week before from the north country about the Saco intervales.
III
A CHARACTER OF HONOR
"Sad was I, even to pain deprest, Importunate and heavy load! The comforter hath found me here Upon this lonely road!"
"Your friend General Sullivan[4] has had his defamers but he goes to prove himself one of our ablest men," said Paul Jones to Hamilton. "I grieve to see that his old father, that lofty spirit and fine wit, is not with us to-night. Sullivan is a soldier born."
"There is something in descent," said Hamilton eagerly. "They come of a line of fighting men famous in the Irish struggles. John Sullivan's grandfather was with Patrick Sarsfield[5], the great Earl of Lucan, at Limerick, and the master himself, if all tales are true, was much involved in the early plots of the old Pretender. No, sir, he was not out in the '15; he was a student at that time in France, but I dare say ready to lend himself to anything that brought revenge upon England."
"Commend me to your ancient sage the master," said the captain. "I wish we might have had him here to-night. When we last dined here together he talked not only of our unfortunate King James, but of the great Prince of Conti and Louis Quatorze as if he had seen them yesterday. He was close to many great events in France."
"You speak of our old Master Sullivan," said Major Haggens eagerly, edging his chair a little nearer. "Yes, he knew all those great Frenchmen as he knows his Virgil and Tally; we are all his pupils here, old men and young; he is master of a little school on Pine Hill; there is no better scholar and gentleman in New England."
"Or Old England either," added Judge Chadbourne.
"They say that he had four countesses to his grandmothers, and that his grandfathers were lords of Beare and Bantry, and princes of Ireland," said the major. "His father was banished to France by the Stuarts, and died from a duel there, and the master was brought up in one of their great colleges in Paris where his house held a scholarship. He was reared among the best Frenchmen of his time. As for his coming here, there are many old stories; some say 't was being found in some treasonable plot, and some that 't was for the sake of a lady whom his mother would not let him stoop to marry. He vowed that she should never see his face again; all his fortunes depended on his mother, so he fled the country.
"With the lady?" asked the captain, with interest, and pushing along the decanter of Madeira.
"No," said the major, stopping to fill his own glass as if it were a pledge of remembrance. "No, he came to old York a bachelor, to the farm of the McIntires, Royalist exiles in the old Cromwell times, and worked there with his hands until some one asked him if he could write a letter, and he wrote it in seven languages. Then the minister, old Mr. Moody, planted him in our grammar school. There had been great lack of classical teaching in all this region for those who would be college bred, and since that early year he has kept his school for lads and now and then for a bright girl or two like Miss Mary Hamilton, and her mother before her."
"One such man who knows the world and holds that rarest jewel, the teacher's gift, can uplift a whole community," said the captain, with enthusiasm. "I see now the cause of such difference between your own and other early planted towns. Master Sullivan has proved himself a nobler prince and leader than any of his ancestry. But what of the lady? I heard many tales of him before I possessed the pleasure of his acquaintance, and so heard them with indifference."
"He had to wife a pretty child of the ship's company, an orphan whom he befriended, and later married. She was sprightly and of great beauty in her youth, and was dowered with all the energy in practical things that he had been denied," said the judge. "She came of plain peasant stock, but the poor soul has a noble heart. She flouts his idleness at one moment, and bewails their poverty, and then falls on her knees to worship him the next, and is as proud as if she had married the lord of the manor at home. The master lacked any true companionship until he bred it for himself. It has been a solitary life and hermitage for either an Irish adventurer or a French scholar and courtier."
