Historical sketches of New Haven, Part 6

Author: Bartlett, Ellen Strong
Publication date: 1897
Publisher: New Haven, Printed by Tuttle, Morehouse & Taylor
Number of Pages: 116


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Not only to public functions was the little girl admitted, but she was privi- leged to have a " private view " of the "first gentleman and lady " of the land ;


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Hillhouse Avenue.


for Mary and her father were invited to tea at Mrs. Washington's. "I went with them on Thursday evening. We met a polite reception, and the President took Mary by the hand, and spoke to her in a very kind and affectionate mall- ner, with which she seemed not a little pleased. They were not thronged with company, which gave us an opportunity of spending the evening very agreeably. Mrs. W. presided at the tea urn, and sent the cups around to the guests ; but she and Lafayette's son, the only children there, sat by her at the table and chatted together."


What a pretty picture of the children of the republics of the old world and the new, making acquaintance with the happy rapidity of childhood, under the approving glances of their elders, who did "sometimes counsel take, and some- times tea !"


It is hard to believe that Washington was so stiff as some would represent him, when we see him yield thus readily to the sweet influences of children.


Little Miss Mary's eyes were open to all the sights of the "republican court," and her pen was dipped in spicy ink.


She wrote, December 12, 1796: "I went on Wednesday last to hear the President's last speech to Congress ; the house was very much crowded, but I got a very good place, for the ladies crowded me quite into the room ; but papa, who sat about a yard off, took me before him, and I saw everything. The Presi- dent is the handsomest man that ever I saw, but Mrs. W. is not near so handsome. I saw all the foreign ambassadors except the French. The English, Mr. L., was dressed in a black coat, lined with white satin, and a very fine white satin waist- coat embroidered with gold and silver and colored silks, and a fine sword with ornaments, and a monstrous bag wig ; he is about seventy years old and a very ugly man as ever I saw. He had very fine lace ruffles on. The Portuguese ambassador was dressed in the same manner as the English, only much finer, with a blue coat and a large silver star in the same manner as the king of Eng- land's picture. But the Spanish ambassador I liked much the best. He ap- peared to be about eighteen years of age ; he is quite pretty, and was dressed in a silk coat, with his hair dressed all around and his hat lined with white fur, and a star with a bunch of blue ribbons on it. The President was dressed in a black velvet coat, and wholly in black, and clean cambric ruffles, which I liked much better than the yellow lace of the fine ambassadors, who, notwithstanding all their finery, were far surpassed by the plain neatness of the President."


Mr. Hillhouse wrote of a visit to Mt. Vernon, soon after Washington's death : "Mrs. W. was very particular in asking after Mary, whom she fully and per- fectly remembered, and expressed a strong desire to see her-wished she had been with me, and said I must bring her the next time I came to Congress. Mrs. Lewis, who was Miss Custis when Mary was in Philadelphia, was also particular in her inquiries after her, and said they were building a house about four miles from that place, and expected next spring to go to housekeeping, and should be very happy to have M. spend some time with her. I must own I was not a little gratified to find the family so partial to M., the only one of our flock they had an opportunity of knowing."


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Hillhouse Avenue.


Miss Mary Hillhouse was born in New Haven, in 1783, and died there in 1871. Senator Hillhouse was often called the "Sachem " in Congress, on account of his strong Indian complexion and features, and a frequent joke was that lie kept a hatchet under his papers on his desk. His favorite toast was, "Let us bury the hatchet." The name which clung to him has been perpetuated in Sachem's lane, now Sachem street, which crosses the avenue at the foot of his place, and in the name of the estate itself, "Sachem's Wood," although it was at first "Highwood."


The avenue would be like the arch without the keystone if it should lose the stately Hillhouse place to which it leads. Nature has showered her treas- ures on the spot. In full view from the hilltop, West Rock and East Rock lift their ruddy, columned fronts, and city and country are pleasingly mingled. The park-like grounds are diversified by the undulations of hill and valley, and the original forest trees cast their flickering shadows on the turf. The flower garden is a mass of color to inspire a Persian poet, and the wild flowers pass in long procession under the sheltering trees.


Best of all, the gate stands open to all who wish to enter and enjoy the sylvan retreat. In spring the children seek there the early wild flowers, and in winter their snowballs fly with merry shouts among the trees. Strangers drive there without rebuff, and the contemplative may sit on the grassy slope and muse away an hour, while the grey squirrels skip about with all the fearlessness that comes from ignorance of harm. It is hard to estimate the amount of pleasure that has come to the inhabitants of New Haven through this generous conduct of the owners of Sachem's Wood. The public owes a debt of gratitude that for generations the charms of nature have been free to all who chose to go to enjoy them. It is well that that public has shown itself worthy of the confidence reposed in it, that marauding lands are not laid on tree or shrub, and that the traces of vandal fingers are seldom seen.


"Amid those venerable trees, the air Seems hallowed by the breath of other times, Companions of my Fathers ! ye have marked Their generations pass. Your giant arıns Shadowed their youth, and proudly canopied Their silver hairs, when, ripe in years and glory, These walks they trod to meditate on Heaven."


Percy's Masque, Act. II., Sc. I.


JOHN TRUMBULL, THE PATRIOT PAINTER.


PAINTING is now an established profession in America ; but not so was it a century and a quarter ago, when John Trumbull was growing up in Lebanon, Connecticut, a village idyllic in its natural repose, yet during his youth thrilling with the activity of martial business. For John's father was no less than Jonathan Trumbull-the man who was governor for fourteen trying years ; who was proudly called " the only Colonial governor who held office during the Revolution "; and to whom Washington fondly referred as "Brother Jonathan," thus originating the name for the pure Ameri- can. It was fine old stock, of Scotch-English origin, puri- fied and intensified by New England colonial life, and enriched by the best education the land conld afford. The gov- ernor himself, and his sons, had gone to Harvard with divinity in view; but some impulse seemed to urge them PORTRAIT OF TRUMBULL. By Waldo and Jewett. In the l'ale Art School. away from the pulpit toward the bar, the counting-room, and the magisterial chair.


John's mother, Faith Robinson, was a descendant of the famous Priscilla and John Alden. To this mother we undoubtedly owe the preservation of the intellectual powers which gave us a history on canvas. For during the early months of the future painter's life, he was subject to convulsions. A wise physician examined the baby's head, and said that no medicine could help, for the trouble arose from compression of the brain, caused by the overlapping of the bones of the skull. Death or idiocy must come unless the mother would patiently and persistently press apart the displaced edges. Faith Trumbull was


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John Trumbull, the Patriot Painter.


patient and persistent,-and hence the painter of our Revolution, with a mind clear until death in his eighty-eighth year .*


Lebanon possessed a school famous as perhaps the best in New England, kept by Nathan Tisdale, a Harvard graduate. It drew pupils from the South, and even from the West Indies. What the boys of to-day would say of a school without vacations, like the "congregations" that "ne'er break up," is not hard to guess. The result in this case was that at six the little John won in a contest in reading a portion of the Gospel of St. John in the original Greek. He says that his knowledge was that of a parrot ; but we certainly do not see many such parrots now !


Governor Trumbull believed in the education of women as well as of men, and his two daughters were sent to school in Boston. There they learned to embroider (those wonderful tombstone samplers, probably) and to paint in oil. The trophies, " two heads and a landscape," were hung in the parlor, and little John gazed on them. He was a born artist, and he tried to imitate. He used the sand on the floor for a drawing-board. We do not learn that kitty's fur suffered, as in the case of West ; but it was still genius triumphing over obstacles. On the inside of his closet door, the boy painted, with success remarkable for untutored fingers, a spirited figure of Brutus. The celebrated Professor Silli- man, the elder, of Yale, who married Harriet Trumbull, the daughter of the younger Gov. Trumbull, removed this panel, and it is now in the Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford, a curious and treasured specimen of the boy's first attempts to paint. Around the figure, with its flying drapery, are scattered the dabs of paint made in trying the brush.


The childish fondness for picture making did not depart ; and when, at fifteen and a half, the boy was ready to enter Harvard in the second half of the junior year, he pleaded with his father to be allowed to study painting instead. At that time Copley was in Boston, with a great reputation ; and young Trum- bull thought that he might gain a profession while studying with him, for the same money that would take him through college. Economy was to be con- sidered, for his father's fortune had been swept away by the storms of the sea. The war governor must have been generations in advance of his time ; for he did not ridicule or reproach his son for having peculiar aspirations, but mildly overruled him and sent him to college.


The school without vacations, and the diligent reading of all the history and of all the Greek and Latin authors at command in Lebanon not only placed him in the junior class, but made it an easy matter for him to keep in advance of most of his classmates. So he filled his leisure hours by studying French with a French family of Acadian exiles, slyly paying for it out of his pocket money, and thereby afterwards giving a pleasant surprise to the father in Lebanon. He had a great treat in going to see the paintings of Copley, then living by the Common. Copley was going out to dinner, and quite dazzled the boy by his maroon suit and gold buttons. In his researches in the college library he had found a few books on art and some fine engravings, besides Pira- nesi's prints of Roman ruins and a picture of the eruption of Vesuvius. A copy


* From his Autobiography.


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John Trumbull, the Patriot Painter.


which he made in oil of an engraving of a painting by Noel Coypel, represent- ing Rebecca at the Well, was approved by Copley, and is now in Hartford. He was, of course, dependent on his taste for supplying the colors.


Graduated in 1773, he took up the task of teaching in behalf of his old master, Mr. Tisdale, who was ill for several months. Here was a boy of seven- teen instructing a school of seventy or eighty, decidedly mixed, as the subjects for study varied from A B C to Latin and Greek.


But the sound of war was in the air. John's father was the only patriot gov- ernor in the Colonies, and his house was a centre for discussions of the burning questions of the day. John caught and fanned the enthusiasm, drilled a company, and after the magic call of Lexington hastened to Boston, as a kind of aid to General Spencer. There he witnessed, from Bunker Hill, the fight which he has made it possible for us all to see again on his canvas. He was in no small danger himself on that day ; and his beautiful sister, the wife of Colonel Huntington, who had gone with a party of young friends to Boston to en- joy the novel scenes of a camp, beheld all too soon the hor- rors of real war, and, shocked by the apparently impending fate of her husband and brother, lost her reason, and died in the next November.


It is not strange that the " Death of Warren at Bunker's Hill" surpasses all of Trum- bull's paintings in the whirl and rush of the combat, the fervor of patriotism, the con- trast of opposing passions, the pathos of death. We all know Bunker Hill. How easy Maiselle Grenier de Breda sur Le Rhin Sept. 1786 - . F. now to place on it, as Trum- bull shows us, the form of Warren, sinking in deatlı, but glowing with enthusiasm ! Pitcairn, mortally wounded, is falling into the arms of his son, and the artistic grouping brings the patriot and the red-coat into striking opposition. The British General Abercrombie has just fallen at Warren's feet, and a grenadier aims his revenging bayonet at Warren, while the benevolent Colonel Small, his former friend, inter-


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THE BATTLE OF BUNKER HILL. In the Vale Art School.


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John Trumbull, the Patriot Painter.


poses with uplifted hand to save the dying man. Howe and Clinton, and Put- namn, the last loatlı to retreat, are seen be- a young American, volunteer, of elegant turns away in horror, vant rolls his eyes in mingled curiosity and background are. seen ing lines of troops ; and the lurid clouds of burning Charles- artist was inspired by glowing recollections combat, where we we "kept the hill." varied expression, traits, the composi- figures are neither GOVERNOR JONATHAN TRUMBULL, JR. In the l'ale Art School. cally posed, and tell the thrilling moment. hind. At one side, evidently a hasty figure and dress, while his negro ser- a backward gaze of fright. Dimly in the fighting and retreat- while the ships below of smoke tell the tale town. Surely the liis theme and his of tliat memorable lost the battle, but The faces with their are nearly all por- tion is fine, the crowded nor theatri- their own story of This, and the " Death of Montgomery," a piece somewhat similar in spirit, with the light streaming on the central figures, are justly called the finest examples of American historical painting ..


To return to 1775. After Washington's arrival, a plan of the enemy's fortifications, stealthily made by Trum- bull, attracted the notice of the com- inander-in-chief, and procured him an appointment as second aid, Mifflin being first. After a time, Trumbull became major of brigade, and in the spring went to New York under Gates, who, on receiving his own appointment to the charge of the northern depart- ment, made Trumbull his deputy adju- tant-general. Then came the varied scenes of army life, during the campaign around Crown Point and Ticonderoga. Trumbull speaks of a voyage by sloops up the North River as occupying seven or eight days.


The young adjutant was busy in preparing and submitting plans for the defence of strategic points ; and it seems now as if much time and blood might have been saved had his ideas been


GENERAL, DAVID HUMPHREYS. In the Vale Art School.


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John Trumbull, the Patriot Painter.


accepted by Congress. He perceived and proved that Mt. Defiance commanded Mt. Independence, and urged that it be occupied instead of the latter. John Fiske says that he then showed himself superior in military sagacity to all the older officers who were around himn.


Sad duties there were, too ; for small-pox and a kind of yellow fever broke out among the troops, and Trumbull had to make careful examinations and returns. He says :-


"I found them dispersed, some few in tents, some in sheds, and more under the shelter of miserable bush huts, so totally disorganized by the death or sickness of officers that the distinction of regiments and corps was in a great degree lost, so that I was driven to the necessity of great personal examination ; and I can truly say that I did not look into tent or lint in which I did not find either a dead or dying man."


After the defeat of General Waterbury, Trumbull met the prisoners returned by Sir Guy Carleton, and with unusual acuteness for so young a man he per- ceived the policy of the British commander's too propitiatory kindness. He hastened with his forebodings to Gates, who ordered that the returned mell should be forwarded to their destination without communicating with their former comrades and thereby reviving any latent affection for the mother country.


Trumbull had been serving for months as deputy adjutant-general under the appointment of General Gates, who was instructed by Congress to make such selection for the office as he saw fit ; but that whimsical assembly delayed send- ing the commission, and when the delay had become almost inexcusable, sent the commission dated three months late. This affront was too much for Trum- bull's sensitive spirit ; he declined the commission. Conscious of having served with disinterested zeal, and of having gained the approval of his general, he perceived the tokens of jealousies among those in high places. While Trumbull, for instance, was aid to Washington in 1775, Hancock had remarked that "that family was well provided for,"-two brothers of John being in high position ; to which John dryly rejoined : "We are secure of four halters, if we do not suc- ceed." There was a long correspondence about the commission ; but Trumbull was firm in his refusal, and, full of disappointed patriotism, returned to Lebanon in the spring of 1777.


His first love, art, claimed him then, and he went to Boston to study. There Smybert, most wooden of painters, but deserving lasting remembrance as tlie first man who made pictures in America, and as one who stimulated Copley and Trumbull, had left a studio. Trumbull hired it, and found there several of Smybert's copies of celebrated paintings. Among these, Vandyck's head of Cardinal Bentivoglio, and Raphael's Madonna della Sedia aroused his ad- miration.


Nevertheless, he says, " the sound of a drum frequently called an involun- tary tear to my eye." Naturally, when General Sullivan and Count d'Estaing combined to rescue Rhode Island from the enemy, Trumbull volunteered to give his services as aid to Sullivan. The offer was accepted, and he took an active part in the short and stirring campaign, which failed in its principal object because the French fleet departed.


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John Trumbull, the Patriot Painter.


Then it was that Trumbull, arrayed in a nankeen suit and mounted on a powerful bay horse, rode about in full view during the long summer day, with a white handkerchief tied around his head, because the wind had taken off his hat in the morning and, as he says, "it was no time to dismount for a hat !" He was sent by General Sullivan to the top of Butts's Hill, with an order to Colonel Wigglesworth. He had to climb a continuous ascent of a mile in full view of the enemy, and for the last half mile amid a hailstorm of bullets. He met one friend with an arm shot off, another shot through the back, a third borne away to have his leg amputated. On went the volunteer aid, to receive from Colonel Wigglesworth the chiarac- teristic greeting : "Don't say a word, Trumbull ! I know your errand, but don't speak,-we will beat them in a moment." Oh ! what stuff was in those


GENERAL, HUGH MERCER. From a Pencil Sketch. From Irving's " Washington," by permission of G. P. Putnam's Sons.


Madame Dayan- Sehr 1786 _ JJ.


impromptu soldiers !" Sullivan, who had watched him on his dangerous mission, regarded his safe return as a miracle.


But the brief campaign ended, and Trumbull, almost ill, returned to Bos- ton. The army seemed closed to him ; painting lured, and for a year he studied his art diligently in Boston, where he became acquainted with the consul-gen- eral of Great Britain, Mr. Temple, afterward Sir John Temple. Undoubt- edly the spectacle of a native of that country which had but barely emerged from pioneer life and was in the midst of a struggle for independent existence devoting himself to the art of painting,


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John Trumbull, the Patriot Painter.


without galleries, schools, or teachers, almost without an example for imitation, produced a deep impression on an envoy of a country which had been the home of Vandyck, and even then boasted of Sir Joshua. He advised the young soldier-painter to go to London, under the protection of his art, and to study with West. Through him, Lord George Germaine promised that Trumbull's rebellious family and his own participation in war should be overlooked, on condition that he would devote himself unreservedly to study. Besides that, his case came under the amnesty proclaimed by George III. in 1778.


Evidently there was a general impression that he partook of the Trumbull ability, for he was asked to take charge of a business venture which involved crossing the ocean ; so with two objects in view lie sailed, in May, 1780, from


CAPTURE OF THE HESSIANS AT TRENTON. In the Vale Art School.


New London for Nantes. After a quick passage of five weeks, he landed in France, only to find that British success at Charleston had so lowered American credit as to make his commercial scheme impracticable. In Paris he found two future presidents, Jolin Adams and John Quincy Adams, the latter then a boy at school, besides Franklin and his grandson, Temple Franklin. Franklin gave him a letter to West; and, happy in the expectation of at last enjoying pro- fessional instruction, he went over to London, where he was received by West with characteristic cordiality.


At that time, Trumbull had never had a teacher in painting, and had acquired what skill he had from copying such paintings and engravings as he could find. He had not even learned to help himself by laying off the work in


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John Trumbull, the Patriot Painter.


squares ; and West looked in astonishment as he proceeded with his first task, that of copying the Madonna della Sedia. When it was done, the generous master cried, " Nature intended you for a painter !" At this time Stuart was also a pupil of West.


Those must have been blissful months for the young devotee of art. We know that he loved the work, because he did not let anything, even the wonders of London, interfere with it. He kept his part of the contract with the British government, and the horizon seemed clear. But in November up came a cloud of the darkest hue. Arnold, whom he had known as a brilliant patriot, had plunged into infamy. André had suffered the penalty of a spy ; and the wrath of England gave the American tories in London a chance to carry out their spite watched son of Gov- Washington's trusted bull had ventured to a den of lions is but the purity of his rectitude of his con- him to expect the Judge of his conster- denly arrested for to the impetuous and proud of his place at into the impertinence ination with the ex- American ; my name son of him whom . governor of Connecti- in the rebel American the honor of being CAPTAIN THOMAS SEVMORE. In the Vale Art School. him whom you call


toward the jealously ernor Trumbull, friend. How Trum- place himself in such almost inconceivable; intentions and the duct probably led same in other people. nation on being sud- high treason ! Listen higli-spirited youth, home, when he bursts of the tedious exam- clamation : " I am an is Trumbull ; I am a you call the rebel cut ; I have served army ; I have had an aid-de-camp to the rebel General Washington !"


After this concise autobiography, he was treated with more respect ; but no representations of neutral conduct saved him from a night in Tothill-Fields Bridewell. He slept that night in the bed of a highwayman! Visions of the dignity of the governor's home in shaded Lebanon must have risen often that night, with the wondering thought of what father and mother would think of art now. By his own quickness and the intervention of Lord Germaine, he was saved from imprisonment in Clerkenwell, the only criminal prison then left in Lon- don, and was enabled to choose his cage. Rejecting the costly dignity of the Tower, he preferred to return to Tothill-Fields Bridewell, where, for a guinea a week, he had a good room in which to be locked up for eight months.


West, himself on rather insecure ground as a lover of his native land, obtained an audience with the King, who, after hearing the story, ejaculated : " I pity him from my soul ! But, West, go to Mr. Trumbull immediately, and


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John Trumbull, the Patriot Painter.


pledge to him my royal promise that, in the worst possible event of the law, his life shall be safe."


At last, through Burke's intercession, and with West and Copley as sureties, he was told that he might go, not to return until peace should be restored. With great store of meditation on the vicissitudes of life, and a copy of a Correggio made during his imprisonment, the Madonna and infant Saviour from the St. Jerome at Parma, now in the Yale Gallery, he sought Amsterdam, as the best port of embarkation. There he found letters from his father, empowering him to negotiate a loan for Connecticut. John Adams was there on the same errand for the United States, but for both bad news from America rendered the attempt vain.




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