USA > Connecticut > New Haven County > New Haven > New Haven, a book recording the varied activities of the author in his efforts over many years to promote the welfare of the city of his adoption since 1883, together with some researches into its storied past and many illustrations > Part 39
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Just when or why Bostwick wrote the narrative upon his precious "continental commission" (signed by John Hancock) must remain a matter of conjecture! His narrative is undated but as he refers in it to being in his seventy-eighth year in 1826, we may infer that he wrote it in that year or soon after. The Hon. Winfield Scott, the present Commissioner of Pensions, wrote me under date of February 18th of this year (1928) as follows :
I advise you relative to the Revolutionary War pension claim, Survivor File No. 10376, that Elisha Bostwick's application for pension was executed July 30, 1832. His commission was forwarded with his application as evi- dence in support of the same, and is an integral part of the pension claim, and is the record evidence of service upon which his pension claimn was allowed.
My own conclusion is that he wrote it in 1826 or soon there- after to satisfy his own natural feeling about leaving to his children some record of his services to his Country, and later filed it with his pension application in support of the same, rather than undertake the labor of preparing a new statement of his record. The document seems to have been written piecemeal and my judgment is that if it had been written in the first instance for filing in Washington, as a statement of his military record, it would have had a much less personal and intimate character. Whatever the true explanation, we may be grateful that he filed it with his pension application, since that course has resulted in its preservation and has given us such a graphic picture of Hale.
All this does not explain why Bostwick should have con-
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cluded his story with a touching tribute to Hale, who does not enter the field of his narrative. By 1826 half a century had elapsed since Hale had "resign'd his life a sacrifice to his Country's liberty," and he was all but forgotten. Thus Bost- wick says, "Why is it that the delicious [used in the sense of delightful, probably] Capt Hale should be left & lost in an unknown grave & forgotten!" Hale's story was soon to be told in a St. Louis paper (February, 1827) by his devoted friend, Stephen Hempstead, of New London, but apparently Bostwick had no knowledge of Hempstead's tribute when he wrote his own, though it is possible that as late as 1832, assum- ing that he did not complete his narrative until shortly before he filed his pension application in that year, he had seen in Eastern papers a reprint of Hempstead's narrative. If he had not seen Hempstead's narrative all the more honor to him. I prefer to think that, now an old man, his mind traveled back "to those Scenes of fear & anguish" and his manly and yet sensitive nature evoked the compelling picture of Hale "bright and generous" as Hale was characterized by his friend and correspondent, the first President Dwight of Yale. It is gratifying to add that Bostwick's description of Hale, if less idealized than that of Stuart, is confirmed by other sources of information, including the profile portrait referred to in this article. Bostwick, as he appears before us in his narrative and as we read his long and honorable record in the com- munity in which he lived, becomes the ranking witness in our little gallery of friends of Hale. No one of them speaks with such direct feeling-with such quality of living truth !
POSTSCRIPTUM
Bostwick's narrative embodied in the foregoing article was, as explained therein, presumably written in 1826, when he was in his seventy-eighth year. In his eighty-fourth year, as he expressly states,-that is, in 1834,-he wrote a similar but considerably more detailed account of his experiences as a Revolutionary soldier, perhaps (and as I feel satisfied) to
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HALE'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE
hand on to his children as a family heirloom, in place of the document which he had, in 1832, sent on to Washington with his application for a pension and submitted as proof of his services. This later narrative, now in the possession of Mrs. Emma Russell Hirschmann of 773 Jefferson Avenue, Brooklyn, N. Y., I have been privileged to see and examine since the foregoing article was written. It fills nine and about one-quarter pages of foolscap and is a marvelous exhibition of penmanship for a man of eighty-four years. In it he says :
I will once more turn & look back, being now in the eighty-fourth year of my age . For more particulars I refer to the back of my old continental commission, but neither there nor here, have I noticed or written but a small part of what I might do if I thought it worth while, for I see by overlooking what I have written, that much of it is so trifling.
At the time of writing the extract above quoted, Bost- wick's "continental commission" to which he refers was on file in the Pension Bureau, Washington and hence the two documents were not before him for comparison. Had they been, he would have seen that his later narrative was more detailed than the earlier one, but the incidents detailed are, in the main, the same in both. In the body of the later document,-that of 1834,-he refers briefly to "the unfor- tunate Nathan Hale of Coventry" who does not again appear in the document in its present mutilated form, since tragi- cally (not too strong a word) all but the first nine lines of the last page is missing-neatly cut away. Presumably the later document, like the earlier, concluded with a personal description of Hale. I think this a fair assumption, since the two narratives are, in subject matter and in sequence, so much alike. When or why the last page was cut off no one knows and peradventure never will! In all probability the missing three-quarters of the last page were devoted to an account of Hale, long ago cut off and mislaid or lost. As the later document stands, however, it is valuable not only for the incidents it relates of an eye-witness of Revolutionary scenes, but as heightening the evidential value of the first document as a whole, and so heightening the value of Bostwick's account
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of the personal appearance and characteristics of Hale in the earlier document.
As the later document does not contain any account of Hale and as it is largely a repetition of the earlier document I refrain from printing it in extenso. It is too much to expect that the missing portion of the last page of the document will ever turn up-but the antiquarian never despairs of treasure-trove.
In the earlier document, Bostwick refers to being with the Continental Army during the Siege of Boston, where, as I suppose, he first became acquainted with Hale. With that Army the two young men went to New York in April, 1776.
In the later document, Bostwick says:
-In a Short time was on our march for New York & again passd through Norwich where I once more saw my Brother Jared (now alas Sleeping in his tomb in Norwich Grave yard) thence to New london where we went on board for New york by water & on the way by the bye was most pernicious Sea sick-but arrived safely in New york-went into a Spacious house at the bouling green call'd Canada house, thence a Short time on long island & finally being accomadated with Tents pitch'd them at the Bowrey where we remaind until our Army evacuated N. York.
So many changes have been wrought by the years that it is hard to visualize that little encampment of continental soldiery in the Bowery of the straggling city of New York of that early day. But we can safely imagine that in the necessarily intimate life there in camp in those tents with which they were so happily "accomadated," Hale and Bostwick were thrown much together, and became better acquainted than they had been when encamped at Winter Hill during the Siege of Boston the year before.
It is clear that Bostwick became much attached to Hale and so much impressed by his personality that when he sat down to commit his reminiscences to his "continental commission" Hale reappeared before the "inward eye," one of the brightest figures on the tablets of his memory and that he was then moved to pay the tribute to him with which his narrative closes.
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HALE'S PERSONAL APPEARANCE
As already stated, there is no other such account of Hale's personal appearance as Bostwick has given us, and it is pleas- ing to have his confirmation of the tradition of Hale's athletic prowess, where he says:
His bodily agility was remarkable. I have seen him follow a football and kick it over the tops of the trees in the Bowery at New York (an exercise which he was fond of).
Admirers of Hale would not willingly spare that picture of him !
THE "WEEPING HOUSE"* OF NORWICH.
The following are the doggerel verses appended by Elihu Marvin to his letter dated "Norwich Feb. 26, 1776" to Nathan Hale, who was at this time with the Continental Army before Boston. Marvin was a Yale class- mate and correspondent of Hale and one of his most intimate friends. For the full text of Marvin's lettert see Johnston's "Hale," pp. 204-5.
Flouted by Polly (Mary Hubbard, aged 20) and teased in consequence by "Cretia" (Lucretia Hubbard, aged 14) and Tom (Thomas Hubbard, aged 18), who enjoy his discomfiture, Elihu "beats it" out of the house "on the hill" and flies for sympathy to "the weeping house" nearby, where he finds and consoles "Nathan's other self," whose distress is extrava- gantly portrayed for the edification of Nathan, who, it may be assumed, had been "rushing" her during his visits in Norwich the previous month, when on his last furlough home from the Army. In the verses, Marvin is the "poor Corpl" and Hale the "Capt. cruel."
What scheme shall now poor Corpl lay Since Polly's gone, an still doth stay ; If there I knock they bid me walk in But Polly's not in hall or kitchen. Then out he goes and does not tarry Whilst Cretia cries "pray what's your hurry"; By that time this is fairly done Lo! Tom. replies the Corpl's gone,
He's gone 'tis true replete with cheer But hardly knows which way to stear. When musing thus within himself "Near by lives Nathan's other self, "Poor girl she's left almost alone, "Since neighbour Hale's been gone from home "By Nature's laws we are directed "To visit such as are afflicted."
Then onward strait directs his course To seek and find the weeping house,
When there : the Lady drown'd in tears With sad complaints doth fill his ears. "Behold (she cries) the Capt cruel
"Hath left me neither food nor fuel ; "Oh more than frozen, guilty heart, "That could with so much ease depart "And leave me here, as yet untried "A poor, forsaken helpless bride." Her heart to ease, her mind to calm, He then pours in the friendly balm Of honor gaind, of service done A treasure which he'll sure bring home The side is full the rhyme is bad So I'll leave off and go to bed Of this if you are quite observant You'll find I'm still your humbl Servt
E. MARVIN
P. S. forwarded directly to N. London by Mr Richards.
* See pages 426-427.
Original in the possession of the Rev. Dr. Anson Phelps Stokes of Washington, D. C.
LI.
THE HALE HOMESTEAD: BUILT BY DEACON RICHARD HALE (1717-1802), FATHER OF THE PATRIOT.
The Hale homestead in South Coventry, on the farm known as Hale's birthplace, was built by his father, Deacon Richard Hale (1717-1802), in 1776, and stands within a few feet of the site of Hale's actual birth-house, which stood close to the mansion on the east and which was torn down as soon as the new house was finished. The cellar walls of the original house still exist under the sod. Some of the woodwork of the earlier house was incorporated in the new house. It may be, also, that the inner part of the long ell of the present house formed a part of the actual birth-house. The house is of the two-chimney type, with a central hallway. The main body of the house measures about thirty-two by forty-two feet. The original ell was about twenty-six feet long, but as extended from time to time, its present total length, including wood- sheds, is one hundred and six feet. The chimneys are sup- ported on two massive stone piers corbelled or spread at their upper ends to support the hearthstones of the four fireplaces on the ground floor, there being three fireplaces upstairs. These piers, and the impressive masonry of the cellar walls, testify to the solid qualities of the builder, Deacon Hale, who was himself one of the outstanding figures of the town. Six of his sons took part in the Revolutionary War. The fire- place ends of the four downstairs rooms of the house are hand- somely panelled, while the dining-room and "Judgment Hall," so called, are also wainscoted. All of the woodwork is of native white pine. The inside shutters in the parlor are origi- nal. A simple but tasteful staircase leads from the front end of the central hall upstairs, where there are four large and two small chambers.
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The house is at present furnished almost entirely with pre- Revolutionary New England furniture, with few exceptions from Connecticut. A few of the pieces once belonged to the Hales, including a fine tall "cherry-tree" Burnap clock once used by Hale's sister, Joanna; a "desk on stand" of Deacon Hale's; two beds, etc. The chief treasure of the house is Nathan's trunk. Scratched in the pine panels of the door of the northwest bed-chamber, known as "Hale's room," was a shadow-portrait (a profile) of Hale. This door has been removed for safe-keeping and replaced by a facsimile door. The profile portrait was discovered by the present owner of the house, who was led to it by a long-forgotten letter, written by Hale's niece, Rebeckah (Hale) Abbot. It is surmised that the profile was scratched in the door when Hale was at home on some brief unrecorded furlough, or that the door containing the profile was one removed, with other interior woodwork, from the earlier house in which Hale was born.
The present house is beautifully located opposite "Holy Grove," set out in 1812, on Prospect Hill, and commands a fine view to the westward, of the Bolton Hills. Beyond lies Hartford, twenty miles away. The farm, on which Hale doubtless worked as a farmer's son, now comprises three hundred acres, of which two hundred and fifty originally be- longed to Deacon Hale, of whom it was said, on his death, "No man ever worked so hard for both worlds as Richard Hale." About two miles from the mansion, in the Nathan Hale burying-ground, is a headstone erected by Deacon Hale, probably in 1794, to the memory of two sons who died and were buried far from home,-Richard, who died in the island of St. Eustatia, in the West Indies, where he had gone for his health, and Nathan, whose dust sleeps somewhere on Man- hattan Island. The inscription reads in part,
"Durable stone preserve the monumental record. Nathan Hale, Esq., a Capt. in the army of the United States, who was born June 6th, 1755, and received the first honors of Yale College, Sept., 1773, resigned his life a sacrifice to his Country's liberty at New York, Sept. 22d, 1776. Etatis 22d."
LII.
PRESIDENT ROOSEVELT ON HALE AND ANDRE : A FAULTY COMPARISON.
"History is a sacred kind of writing, because truth is essential to it." -Cervantes.
In reviewing some of the figures on the immortal stage of the American Revolution in a series of letters written from the White House to Sir George Otto Trevelyan, then engaged upon his history of that war, Mr. Roosevelt said :
"Now, poor Andre! His tragedy was like that of Nathan Hale; and the tragedy was the same in the case of the brilliant young patrician, brilliant, fearless, devoted, and the plain, straightforward yeoman who just as bravely gave up his life in performing the same kind of duty. It was not a pleasant kind of duty; and the penalty was rightly the same in each case; and the countrymen of each man are also right to hold him in honor and to commemorate his memory by a monument. Among our monstrosities in the statue line in New York we have one really by a master; it is Nathan Hale."-("Theodore Roosevelt and His Time," by Joseph Bucklin Bishop, Vol. II, pp. 169-170.)
Now Mr. Roosevelt was anything but a pedant, and it is inconceivable that in characterizing Andre as "the brilliant young patrician" and Hale as "the plain, straightforward yeo- man," he was using the two terms in their strict and technical English sense, rather than in the more general sense in which they have come to be used in our common American speech. With us, it is true, they are less and less used, but their mean- ings are definite enough. "Patrician" connotes, with us, a family background of several generations of people of birth and breeding, while "yeoman" has lost, for us, its old English and early American connotation and signifies simply a sturdy character. I think, on the whole that "yeoman" is more allied to our word "rustic" than to any other word in common use. The analogy is not close, but it comes nearer than anything
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else that I can think of. So, when Roosevelt characterized Hale as "the plain, straightforward yeoman," he had in mind something of a rustic. His words evoke no other picture, and to my mind such was his clear intention.
In any case, his description was incorrect and must have given Trevelyan an impression directly contrary to the facts. For what are the facts-facts available to any historian ?
Hale's father, Deacon Richard Hale, was a substantial farmer, a large landowner. He was also a magistrate, a member of the General Assembly, and a Deacon of the Church. He gave quarters to a circulating library in his own house; he was active as a Committeeman throughout the Revolutionary War; and was one of the leading men of the town in which he lived. According to the family historian, the late Edward Everett Hale, the family was derived from the Hales of Kent and was of gentle blood. But even leaving that aside as unproved, the Hale connection is still starred with the names of substantial men, college trustees, college graduates, judges, soldiers, magistrates, members of the General Assembly, sea captains, farmers,-in short, the stock that made New Eng- land. Hale's mother, Elizabeth Strong, belonged to a family connection equally, if not more, distinguished for public service and power of mind and character.
Furthermore, Hale himself was far from being a "plain, straightforward yeoman," in the sense of being a rustic. He was a graduate of Yale (1773) with high rank as a student, a classical scholar, a great reader of good books; he was an active member of the Linonia Society, a constant debater at its meetings and the ritual founder of its library, still in existence. He had, by all accounts, a handsome person and rarely engag- ing manners, and was on terms of intimacy with young men of the highest social position in the State, such, for instance, as his Yale classmates, Palsgrave Wyllys and Benjamin Tall- madge. His college friend, Timothy Dwight (Yale's first President Dwight), was his warm admirer and correspondent, and Gilbert Saltonstall, of New London, a grandson of Gover- nor Gurdon Saltonstall of Connecticut, a Harvard graduate
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and a young man of the highest social rank, was one of his warmest friends and another correspondent. If Hale's man- ners had not the Gallic polish of Andre's-and I have no idea that such was the case-they were at least sufficient to give him the entree into the best social circles wherever he went. All this is not important, save as showing that Hale had social graces as well as Andre, though doubtless they were those proceeding from "that inner humanity, which lies at the core of good manners," rather than those acquired by contact with the fashionable world. Hale was a student-soldier, rather than a courtier.
Plain in the best sense I hope Hale was, as well as straight- forward, but nothing in the abundant surviving documentary evidence bearing on his history warrants Mr. Roosevelt's characterization of him as the "plain, straightforward yeo- man." Such words evoke a picture of Hale, not discreditable to be sure, but certainly misleading.
Mr. Roosevelt characterizes Andre as "the brilliant young patrician," whereas Andre was twenty-nine when hanged, and had already been six years in the British Army, while Hale was barely twenty-one and had been only some fourteen months in the Continental Army. Sargent's "Life of Major Andre," the authoritative work, shows beyond cavil that Andre did not have a drop of British blood in his veins. His father was a Genevese; his mother was a Frenchwoman; he was educated in Geneva; his family was in trade; in all of his personal characteristics and tastes he was Gallic, rather than English. Incontestably, the word "patrician" cannot, with any propriety, be used to describe him. It is wholly mislead- ing in the premises.
Again Mr. Roosevelt speaks of Hale and Andre as perform- ing the "same kind of duty," failing utterly to distinguish between the kinds of service they respectively performed. Hale responded to a sudden call to special duty, and at the be- hest of Washington entered the British lines as a spy. Nothing more. Andre, on the contrary, carried on an intrigue with Arnold over a period of eighteen months and was not only
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a spy, but a briber to boot, being fearfully denounced as such by Mr. Roosevelt's great friend, Henry Cabot Lodge, who, for one, had no patience with the outpouring of sentiment over Andre.
At the end of the quotation which provides a text for this chapter, Mr. Roosevelt refers to the Hale statue (by Frederick MacMonnies) in New York. He may sometime have looked at it closely, but he certainly had no accurate picture of it in his mind when he wrote the paragraph quoted, since the statue represents anything but a "plain, straightforward yeoman." Quite the contrary, it represents a patrician of supreme elegance of figure and dress, a person of defiant, if indeed not super- cilious, mien. It portrays, moreover, a man of an experience and of an age much greater than Hale's when he was hanged. The sculptor has dressed his figure handsomely in a fine coat with falls of rich ruffles at the throat and wrists. Hale, disguised as a Dutch schoolmaster, in plain clothes, could not have presented any such appearance, let alone the fact that he had been roustabouting in the enemy's lines for a fortnight when he was captured. It is the great and serious fault of MacMonnies' "Hale" that it so wholly fails to characterize the Hale of history. Mr. Roosevelt's observation of the statue in question thus appears to have been as superficial as his historical knowledge of Hale and Andre. "History," said Cervantes, "is a sacred kind of writing, because truth is essential to it."
As time rolls on, Hale is seen to be a far finer character than Andre, and to have been actuated in his sacrifice by a far higher motive. Andre aimed at fame, the approval of his King, a title and military preferment. Hale looked for no reward and had no aim but to serve his country, "when he resign'd his life a sacrifice to his Country's liberty at New York, Sept. 22nd, 1776. Etatis 22nd."
The Birth-Place, 1924.
LIII.
ANDRE'S LETTER TO WASHINGTON AND HIS SELF-PORTRAIT, WRITTEN AND SKETCHED ON THE MORNING OF THE DAY FIRST SET FOR HIS EXECUTION, OCTOBER 1, 1780.
One day in the late spring of 1922, Mr. Charles Moore, of the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress, showed me the original letter written to Washington by Andre, asking that he might "not die on a gibbet." It was written on the morning of the day (October 1, 1780) first set for his execu- tion. Even when printed, the letter carries its burden of pathos, but to see and handle the original document creates an impression that is incommunicable. It forces an expression of admiration for the nerve of a man who, expecting to die before sunset, could not only write with a perfectly steady hand, but even in doing so, could execute an amazingly bold and beautiful piece of ornate penmanship. Aiming at fame, as, by his own admission, he was, and with an eye almost always to effect on posterity, Andre here wrote a letter which, when all is said in praise or blame of him, remains a remark- able exhibition of nerve.
On returning home from Washington, I visited the Univer- sity Library, and with the letter fresh in mind, I re-examined the little pen-and-ink sketch which Andre made of himself, "without the aid of a glass," the same morning that he wrote the letter. The letter, as I view it, compels more respect than the sketch, which shows social grace rather than manly or military character. Still, I cannot help thinking that the sketch brings anyone who studies it attentively closer to the real Andre than all that has been written or said about him.
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ANDRE'S LETTER TO WASHINGTON
It portrays a small-boned, slender, elegant, rather effeminate young man, wearing his clothes perfectly (he was punctilious about dress), sitting easily by a small candlestand, on which one tapering hand rests, while the other hangs gracefully from the back of his chair. The delicate oval face is given a pensive expression by heavy eyebrows, and neither a Cupid's bow mouth and a dimpled chin, nor the full value of beautiful hair, brushed high above the forehead, has been forgotten. One has the feeling that Andre tried to make the sketch repre- sent him as he wished to be remembered, rather than as he actually looked. He appears younger, less worn, more appeal- ing, more Gallic, than in other sketches made by him earlier in his career, but the correctness of the sketch as to his size finds strong corroboration. The British Consul, James Buchanan, under whose direction Andre's remains were exhumed in 1822, stated, in "a very circumstantial narrative of the exhumation of Major Andre's remains," that "With great care the broken [coffin] lid was removed and there to our view lay the bones of the brave Andre in perfect order. . . . I, among others, for the first time discovered that he had been a small man; this observation I made from the skeleton, which was confirmed by some others present" (The New England Magazine, May, 1834, pp. 357-8). Another corro- boration comes from Dr. Hall of East Hartford, Connecticut, who saw the execution and said: "Andre was a small man, and seemed hardly to stretch the rope, and his legs dangled so much, that the hangman was ordered to take hold of them to keep them straight." I regret the evocation of so distress- ing a picture, but I do want to make clear that the self-portrait has high evidential value. It has been repeatedly reproduced, but its self-revealing character has not, I think, been fully appreciated. It is, to be sure, a swiftly-executed sketch, but it shows a practiced hand, and is, in fact, only the last of a long series of sketches of all sorts which Andre made during his sojourn in America.
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