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 43
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"You are undoubtedly correct in your assumption that the silver never belonged to Washington. * * * Both Buck and Halsey place them [the spoons] as 1810. The bowl is undoubtedly the same date."
In the meantime, however, the silver remained on exhibition at the "Old South"-the spoons as Washington's, the bowl as his and two generations earlier. Considerable corre- spondence ensued. I even wrote to the owner of the silver but obtained no satisfaction. It was at about this point in the train of events that I rehearsed to a local authority of the highest reputation, my thankless efforts to help truth rise. He smiled sympathetically, and said, in effect, "You seem to be up against 'Cold Roast Boston'." And he was right as usual. It was clear by this time that Boston had no intention of accept- ing correction from a Connecticut Yankee, but the views expressed in my letter to the Transcript had been confirmed by the highest authorities, and I had no intention of seeing them flouted.
Consequently, for the third or fourth time, I wrote to the owner of the silver, stating as before that I wished to see the matter settled, and intimating this time that I could no longer promise to keep silent-no longer suppress the evidence.
The bowl was now promptly sent to New York and there submitted to Mr. Buck, Mr. E. Alfred Jones and Mr. R. T. H. Halsey, a trio of the greatest experts on the subject of early American silver. One of them placed the date of the bowl (which is unmarked) as late as 1820; another agreed with the Boston expert who was commissioned by the owner to take the bowl to New York, that it was not made before 1800. The bowl which had so long been ticketed in the "Old South"
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SOME ALLEGED WASHINGTON SILVER EXHIBITS
as "Used in the christening of George Washington and the two preceding generations of his family" was never replaced in its case in the historic old meeting-house.
Why the Old South Committee should have suffered "this particular Washington silver" to remain on exhibition in the Old South Meeting House with its original attributions which I questioned, after the silver had been rejected by the experts who passed on the silver gathered for the exhibition then on view in the Boston Museum of Fine Arts, is a question the Old South Committee has left unanswered.
I cannot more appropriately conclude than by quoting from William Cullen Bryant's poem "The Battle-Field":
Truth, crushed to earth, shall rise again : Th' eternal years of God are hers ; But error, wounded, writhes with pain, And dies among his worshippers.
LXII.
FINE FAÇADES- WEAK SIDES AND ENDS.
I wonder how many admirers and observers of our Colonial architecture have noted the weakness of the sides and ends of the buildings, as compared with their façades. The latter almost unfailingly exhibit composition, scale, and knowledge of the principles of design, while the former do not. I have never seen any reason for this stated, but I am satisfied that it is to be found in the early "Builders' Guides" and "Builders' Assistants"-like the books of Asher Benjamin. These books do not pretend to teach the principles of design, but only to furnish, in a sense, ready-made designs and rules for execut- ing them. An examination of the plates in such books shows that a large percentage of them present façades, and façades alone. In other words, the carpenter and builder was pro- vided with a façade to copy, but he was obliged to originate the designs for the sides and ends of his buildings, and, being untrained in the art of designing, he generally failed as signally with his sides and ends as he succeeded with his façade.
LXIII.
THE SNUFF-BOX OF ST. ELI: A LITTLE-KNOWN PORTRAIT OF YALE'S GREAT EARLY BENE- FACTOR AND PATRON SAINT-AN ANTIQUARIAN ADVENTURE.
"Fatally one fell into the sink of history-antiquarianism" "The Education of Henry Adams," p. 221.
One day last summer, having occasion to consult material in the University Library in connection with an article on Hale and Andre, I happened, as I had often done, to re-examine the case containing miscellaneous Yale memorabilia, but then for the first time my eye fell upon a small snuff-box, which I was told was the snuff-box of Elihu Yale. Given per- mission to examine it, I found it an oval silver box, substan- tially 31/4" long, 23/8" wide and 1/2" deep, with a dull, brownish cover mounted in a molded silver rim or bezel. When held to the light, the cover proved to be tortoise shell, somewhat splintered and clumsily reinforced by two thin silver plates, but what was of transcendent interest, it bore a profile portrait in low relief of Elihu Yale, carved upon the inside of the shell, while the outside was similarly carved with his arms (I had not known that the Yales were armigerous). The back of the box proper is embellished with some rude, pseudo-heraldic ornamentation and the date "1755," while its edge bears two inscriptions, in open Roman letters, reading respectively :
Gub. Elihu Yale Effig. & Armor. Coll. Yal. Ex. Dono. Praes. Stiles.
Here, then, is a fourth portrait of St. Eli in the possession of the University, not, of course, unknown, but never repro- duced and, in a sense, lost sight of. The others are, first, the familiar portrait in the Yale Dining Hall, painted by Zeeman in 1717, and presented to the College in 1789 by Dudley Long
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NEW HAVEN :
North, M.P., great-grandson and last surviving descendant of Governor Yale; second, the portrait of Governor Yale with his black servant, in the Corporation Room in Woodbridge Hall, bought in 1910 from Eden Dickson, Esq., of Eden Lodge, Woodbridge, Suffolk, England, and presented to the University by Mrs. Anson Phelps Stokes, Sr .; and third, the portrait of Governor Yale with a dressy young man, also from the Eden Collection, presented in 1913 by Alexander S. Cochran (Yale 1896) to the Elizabethan Club, in whose house it now hangs. The Eden family had scant traditions regard- ing the history of the two canvases purchased from the Eden Collection, and neither of them is signed. Both pictures appear, however, to have been painted by the same hand, and Professor Woolsey is inclined to date them about 1700-1701. The snuff-box portrait differs from the others in showing the profile, which, if neither classical nor distinguished, is eminently characteristic of its period.
President Stiles' diary answers the question of how Yale College came into possession of the snuff-box. Under date of May I, 1788, is the following entry :
May
I. Began Examina of the Classes. This day I bought of Caleb Cook, Esq. of Wallingford an antique silver Snuff Box of the East India Governor Yale. The Turtle shell was neatly & elegantly charged with the Governors Head in alto Relievo, and his Coat of Arms. I gave fourty shillgs for it; and do now deposit it in the archives of Yale as a Memorial of its principal Benefactor. Gov. Elihu Yale was born in New Haven Apr. 5, 1648. At aet 10, he went to Engld-aet. 30 to the E. Indies, where lived 20 y. & was made Gov. of Ft St George-& after his Return to London became Gov. of the Lond. E. Ind. Compy. He died July 8, 1721, aet. 73, and is buried on the family Estate at Wrexham or Plas yn Yale in Wales .* In 1755 Major Elihu Hall of Wallgfd bro't from Engld this Snuff Box presented by some of the Governors family to Mr. Yale of Wallingfd.
* These details regarding Governor Yale are somewhat inaccurate. He was born in or near Boston, several years after the family had left New Haven. He was taken to England in 1652, and went to India in 1672, returning in 1699. He held no public office afterwards. He is buried in the parish churchyard in Wrexham.
(The Literary Diary of Ezra Stiles, ed. by F. B. Dexter, New York, Charles Scribner's Sons, 1901. Vol. III, 315-316, and footnote.)
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THE SNUFF-BOX OF ST. ELI
Commenting upon this entry, Mr. Dexter says :
It would appear from President Stiles' entry in his diary that Major Hall, of Wallingford, on a visit to England in 1755, made a point of seeing members of Governor Yale's family there. Other members of the family were then living in Wallingford, and the box was apparently given to Mr. Hall to present to a member of the Wallingford family on his return home. The date "1755" on the bottom of the box doubtless refers in some way to the date of Mr. Elihu Hall's visit to England.
Just how the box passed into the possession of Caleb Cook, Esq., also of Wallingford, from whom President Stiles bought it, is not known, but Cook was a leading citizen of the town, for many years a magistrate, and we may be confident that any representations made by him to President Stiles regarding the relic were dependable. President Stiles was a "good sport" to pay so large a sum as "fourty shillings" for it,-a consider- able sum in 1789. The box contains neither maker's marks nor hall marks, and as a specimen of the art of the silversmith is decidedly crude, but to my way of thinking, it is one of the most interesting of all the souvenirs of Governor Yale in the possession of the University. Hence this notice of it. Mr. Keogh courteously detailed a member of the Library staff to escort the snuff-box to expert photographers (Messrs. Simonds & Meyer), who made several negatives of it, one of which is reproduced at the back of this book. How this portrait of Elihu Yale ever escaped the eagle eye of Dr. (now Canon) Stokes, I cannot imagine. But for him, it is not likely that Yale University would to-day possess either of the portraits of Governor Yale which now hang in Woodbridge Hall and in the Elizabethan Club.
Since Elihu Hall has been mentioned in connection with the snuff-box portrait, it is only fair to recall that the Zeeman portrait was secured for Yale "By the kind offices and address of Samuel Broome, Esq., Mcht. of this City," as noted by President Stiles in his diary. Broome was then living in the Water Street mansion, built in 1771 by Ralph Isaacs (Yale 1761), the Tory, a Christianized Jew, who, about 1778, retired to his farm on Cherry Hill, Branford, now the property of
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NEW HAVEN :
Louis Sagal, who has rechristened it "Sagalou,"-a racial conjunction of ownership, after the lapse of a century. Cap- tain Broome (I wish I knew more about him) should be listed as a Yale benefactor, since he secured for Yale the portrait now so well known as to be almost synonymous with the name. The "Yale Lit" would not be the same without that stocky, bewigged figure on its cover.
But this is a far cry from the snuff-box of Elihu Yale which inspired this bit of antiquarianism. It may be seen any day in the Yale University Library by all who are curious about this souvenir of a snuff-taking age or disposed to dip (the simile is apt) into that "sink of history-antiquarianism."
LXIV.
A LETTER DATED NEW HAVEN, JULY 11, 1774, FROM JAMES HILLHOUSE TO HIS YALE CLASS- MATE, NATHAN HALE, NOW FOR THE FIRST TIME PRINTED, TOGETHER WITH AN AC- COUNT OF THE FIRST PLAYS PRODUCED BY YALE UNDERGRADUATES, AND MANY DIGRESSIONS.
On the day before Easter Sunday (April 8, 1928), the postman left an envelope at my door containing what I had long sought-a copy of a letter written July II, 1774, by James Hillhouse (1754-1832, Yale Coll. 1773), then reading law in New Haven, to his friend and classmate, Nathan Hale, then teaching school in New London. These young men, both destined to have their names written on the scroll of history, were at this time nineteen years old. The "embattled farmers" were not to fire at Lexington "the shot heard round the world" until the next year, but Hillhouse, ending in a high strain of patriotism, declares to Hale that "Liberty is our reigning topic" -this in New Haven in July, 1774! The letter accompanying the copy gave me free permission to use it in this book, in which it appears in print for the first time. What an Easter present to an antiquary compiling a book on New Haven and a life-long student of Hale's story !
I can picture Hale, the ruddy, athletic young school-teacher, smiling and again frowning as he reads and re-reads the letter at his rude high schoolmaster's desk in his little schoolhouse (still piously preserved) over there in New London; now he folds it carefully, and having done so, turns it over and, with a meditative air, endorses it in his clear, flowing but thrifty hand. What he wrote upon it then, viz., James Hillhouse,
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N. H. July IIth, is what gives it its chief value to-day, so rare and so sought for is anything bearing so much as a stroke of his quill pen-that pen which he was so adept in fashioning, as his friend, Lieutenant Elisha Bostwick (1748-1834), of New Milford, has told us in the wonderful picture he drew of our hero in his reminiscences of his own soldiering in the War of Independence (pp. 423-424).
The history of the letter, from the time Hale received it at New London one hundred and fifty-odd years ago up to the time it passed into the hands of the present owner, would be fascinating to all collectors of autograph material, if I could here trace it through the hands of its successive owners, that is to say, members of his father's household, collectors, dealers, and so on, down to the present day, but that undertaking must be left to another time, when, peradventure, I may attempt to trace so much of Hale's correspondence as I am able in a long-projected "Documentary Life of Hale," which, alas, I may not now be "spared" to compile !
It is enough for the moment to say that this particular letter from Hillhouse to Hale was once in the collection of Dr. Thomas Addis Emmet (1828-1919), a member of that famous family of Irish patriots which gave Robert Emmet (hanged 1803) to the belated cause of freedom in Ireland. One can- not doubt that Dr. Emmet, ruminating over his treasure after the manner of all true collectors, associated the similar tragical ending by hanging of the two men-was conscious of the dreadful parallel. From whom or when Dr. Emmet secured the letter I do not know, but of course it originally came from the hands of Hale's family in Coventry. Dr. Emmet used it in extra-illustrating a book which was sold at auction in New York some few years ago by the American Art Associa- tion. At this sale, the book was bought by the dealer who sold it to the present owner, who has courteously given me permission, as above stated, to use it in this book on New Haven, our beautiful and historic city, which owes so much to Hillhouse and which must always have been associated by Hale with the happiest years of the brief span of his life.
491
A LETTER FROM HILLHOUSE TO HALE
Hillhouse One of Hale's "Principle Correspondents"
The Hillhouse letter, around which this article is being written, is the only surviving letter, so far as known to the writer, of the correspondence between Hale and Hillhouse. Barring a few strictly family letters, the private papers of Hillhouse have long since disappeared, and with them Hale's letters to him, if perchance Hillhouse preserved them, which is unlikely. Few of Hale's correspondents kept his letters to them, not dreaming that fame awaited him. Hale, on the other hand, was bred (a family passion) to be orderly and to that gift or training or whatever, we owe the preservation of so many letters addressed to him. But many of his papers (what proportion of them I cannot say) thus carefully folded and "backed" by him, were destined to be so widely scattered and cherished in private and public collections, that to sever- ally trace them has now become a great, if, indeed, not an impossible task.
As many pieces of the whole body of Hale's papers which fell into the hands of his family after his death as were haply kept together, now form the so-called Hale Papers in the archives of the Connecticut Historical Society in Hartford. That collection numbers forty-three items, of which thirty are letters to Hale but not one by him-in his handwriting. The remaining thirteen pieces are of later date and bear in one way or another on Hale's story. Among those thirty letters to Hale, not one was written by Hillhouse, though it would appear that several letters from Hillhouse to Hale were among his papers at the time of his death. The letter in hand from Hillhouse to Hale is doubtless one of them. Other letters from Hillhouse to Hale may also have survived the "wreck of time" and may yet turn up. I hope so, since Hillhouse is one of the outstanding figures in the history of our State and it is a pleasure to record his friendship with Hale. It is true that Hillhouse is not mentioned by Hale in his diary which, however, only covers (with several breaks) the dates between and including September 23, 1775, and
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NEW HAVEN :
August 23, 1776, the last entry having been made three weeks before he voluntarily entered the enemy's lines as a spy at the behest of General Washington.
Nathan and Enoch Hale (1753-1837) and James Hilllhouse were Yale classmates, fellow members of Linonia, the ranking college fraternity of the time, and intimate friends. Enoch stopped with Hillhouse when he visited New Haven after their graduation in 1773, and it is likely that when Nathan came back he also was Hillhouse's guest.
My belief that Hale had preserved a number of letters written to him by Hillhouse is founded upon a passage in a letter written 9 January, 1836, by Deacon Jasper Gilbert (1785-1856), of Coventry, to Cyrus Parker Bradley (1818- 1838, Dartmouth College 1837), a rarely gifted and enthusi- astic young undergraduate student at Dartmouth College, who was at the time engaged in collecting material for a life of Hale.
Here I digress to state that back in 1835-6 Deacon Jasper Gilbert, then the postmaster (1826-1837) of Hale's native Coventry, one of the first citizens of the town and a member of Hale's family circle (he had on 21 April, 1825, married Hale's grandniece, Elizabeth Hale Rose), on the solicitation of Bradley carefully collected from Hale's surviving relatives, friends, and neighbors the facts of his story as they knew them, and embodied them in a series of three letters, respec- tively dated at Coventry, November 7, 1835; January 9, 1836; and May 7, 1836, to Bradley. These three letters constitute, in effect, Hale's first biography. They represent Hale as his own family circle knew him and are, therefore, of correspond- ing evidential value and import. So much impressed am I by them that I plan to print and annotate them at another time, together with Bradley's letter of 24 April, 1837, to Chauncey Howard (1812-1891, Amherst College 1835), Hale's grand- nephew, a grandson of his sister Joanna (1764-1838), who married Dr. Nathan Howard (1764-1838, Hon. M.D. Yale 1818), of Coventry and spent her long life in Coventry, living
493
A LETTER FROM HILLHOUSE TO HALE
after her marriage in a house still standing on South Street not far from the Hale homestead where she was born.
Let me say in passing that Deacon Gilbert, who came nearer to original sources of information bearing on Hale's story than anyone who ever wrote about him, reported to Bradley in his letter of January 6, 1836, that he could discover nothing "respecting his [Hale's] calculations on matrimony." Hale's sister Joanna was then living and consulted, and if her brother Nathan had become engaged to his stepsister, Mrs. Alice (Adams) Ripley, when she [Joanna] and the young widow were both members of her father's household, it is hard to believe that Joanna would not have known about such an engagement. It was some years later that the story of such an alleged engagement was given to Stuart by Alice's grand- daughter by her second husband.
Bradley's letters to Gilbert were not preserved, but it is clear from Gilbert's replies that they consisted in large part of questions propounded to Gilbert, who directed his inquiries in the Hale family circle and in the neighborhood so as to answer Bradley's questions responsively as far as he was able to do so. I hazard the guess that Bradley, at a venture, addressed his first letter simply to the "Postmaster at Coventry, Conn.," and thus by chance hit upon the one person in the community best able to collect information for him, since Gilbert, in addition to being the village postmaster and so knowing everyone and, almost perforce, much of everyone's affairs, was in fact a member by marriage of Hale's own family circle.
The passage in Gilbert's letter of January 9, 1836, to Bradley, containing the reference to James Hillhouse, is as follows :
It would seem that there might be found some of the letters which he [Hale] wrote after uniting with the Army among his numerous correspon- dents embracing as they did many of the first men of our State that would be extremely interesting. I give you the names and places of residence of his principle correspondents. Gilbert Saltingstall [Saltonstall], John Hal-
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NEW HAVEN :
lam, Edward Hallam, Timothy Green, Thomas Fosdick of New London, Ct., Ebenezer Williams of Wethersfield and James Hillhouse of New Haven.
There are many letters from those gentlemen [Italics mine] among the few papers of Capt. Hale which have escaped the wreck of time written mostly after he joined the army and they are generally in answer to letters written by him. From the contents of these letters I am led to conclude that his to which those were answers must have been exceedingly interest- ing. Whether any of them are now in existence or can be found is to me unknown. If they could be found I have no doubt but they would greatly add to the interest of your contemplated biography.
From the foregoing quotation we learn that there were many letters [to Hale] from those gentlemen, i.e., Hale's "principle correspondents," one of whom, says Gilbert, was James Hillhouse of New Haven. Gilbert's language warrants the inference, I think, that several letters from Hillhouse to Hale were among the letters preserved by Hale and found among his effects after his death, and that these were before Gilbert at least when he wrote his letters of November 7, 1835, and January 9, 1836, to Bradley. Hillhouse's letter to Hale in hand, i.e., of July II, 1774, is probably one of them, as I have already suggested.
Some years after Bradley began collecting data for a "Life of Hale," Isaac W. Stuart ( 1809-1861, Yale Coll. 1828), of Hartford, published (1856) his engaging but not always dependable "Life of Captain Nathan Hale, The Martyr Spy of the American Revolution," in which he states of Hale :
"He formed many college friendships, and they lasted till his death-with James Hillhouse, Benjamin Tallmadge, Roger Alden, John P[alsgrave] Wyllys, Thomas Mead, Elihu Marvin and others his classmates, with whom he kept up an intimate correspondence as long as he lived" (pp. 20-21).
It will be noted that James Hillhouse heads Stuart's list of Hale's correspondents, confirming Deacon Gilbert's statement that Hillhouse was one of Hale's "principle correspondents." Unfortunately, Stuart gives no authority for the statement quoted above-an over-statement, it seems to me, but Stuart was rhetorical before he was critical. Just when Stuart began to collect material for his "Life of Hale" I cannot say. It
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A LETTER FROM HILLHOUSE TO HALE
is known that in 1848 he failed in an effort to secure the data collected by Bradley.
The papers accumulated by Stuart in preparing to write his "Life of Hale" (see his comprehensive preface to it) have disappeared. His daughter, Miss Isabel Winthrop Stuart, who died just the other day, knew nothing whatever of them. All inquiries regarding them have proved fruitless. It is more than likely that Stuart destroyed all of his papers sometime after the publication of the first and second editions of his "Life of Hale." He died in 1861.
We cannot now determine, therefore, upon what evidence Stuart based the statement that Hillhouse was one of Hale's correspondents-whether upon an examination of Gilbert's letters to Bradley, upon letters to Hillhouse which he saw but which have now disappeared, or upon sources of information which perished with him.
If by some magic all of the existing letters by and to Hale could be assembled and persuaded to tell their life-histories, so to speak, of a century and a half, what a saga we should have, and could the shade of each writer be summoned to hold his or her letters in shadowy hands, what a company there would be, gentle and simple.
Hillhouse's Letter of July II, 1774, to Hale, then Teaching School in New London
After this digression I turn once more to Hillhouse's letter to Hale. The letter is just such a letter as a young man of to-day, but a year out of college, would write to a classmate with whom he had been intimate during four years at Yale. It necessarily reflects the spirit of the time in which Hale and Hillhouse lived, but otherwise there is nothing remarkable about it. Nevertheless, it is of particular interest to such of us as cherish the local tradition, since it concerns Hale and Hillhouse before the wings of fame had so much as brushed either of them.
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