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"Then we were very well entertained with a supper"
In closing these several digressions, my mind reverts to that gay celebration of Linonia's anniversary celebration on April 15, 1772, when, after a prologue spoken by Roger Alden (we are fortunate in having a fine portrait of him by St. Memin), the "Beaux Stratagem" was given with Hillhouse in the cast, as well as Ebenezer Williams, Enoch Hale, William Robinson, and Thomas Mead, all close friends and correspondents of Hale. This was followed by a valedictory oration by Billings, of the graduating class, and an answering valedictory by Nathan, of the next year's class. Nathan was chosen secretary of the fraternity at this meeting. The "Exercises were all very agreably performed," we are assured by David Tullar (1748- 1839, Yale Coll. 1774), the scribe, and he does not fail to add, in concluding the minutes, "Then we were very well enter- tained with a supper." Of that entertainment I once wrote : "The candles of that little supper were extinguished an hundred and fifty-odd years ago and yet a faint light streams through the door left half open for us by the youthful scribe, and we get just a glimpse of the gay young performers and among them Hale and Hillhouse. Both were young men of high ideals and enthusiasm. Hale was soon to make the supreme sacrifice of his life for his country, while Hillhouse was to con- secrate a life of unparalleled activity and devotion to the public good !"
New Haven, Conn.
August, 1929.
LXV.
HALE AS A VERSIFIER: A HERETOFORE UN- PRINTED BIT OF DOGGEREL ADDRESSED BY HIM ON LEAVING EAST HADDAM IN THE FORE PART OF 1774 TO A NAMELESS INAMORATA.
Incurably, perhaps I would better say incorrigibly, romantic, the young male of the genus homo has written doggerel or near-doggerel verse, as I have no doubt, since writing came to bless and plague mankind. Why this is so must be left to the psychologist, whose deduction, peradven- ture, may be that the young male is both shy and mischievous, and so hides himself behind verse, however inadequate and halting. So far as I know, no student of the mores has ever examined the penchant of the adolescent male for writing doggerel. At any rate, the young men of Hale's time were very much addicted to that vice. Even the gilded youth of to-day is, I daresay, sometimes guilty but that rarely. In Hale's time it was as fashionable to be literary as it is now fashionable to wear spats. Not that to write verses, particularly doggerel verses, is to be literary, but verses of any sort may be viewed as a poor pendant to literary art- they simulate it. Hale and his friends garnished their letters with verse and even wrote them in verse, in common with other young fellows of their age and time, as everyone knows who has browsed among the books and surviving manuscript material of that early day. In "The Weeping House of Norwich" (p. 433), an appendix to Chapter L of this belated book, I have reprinted a bit of doggerel verse compounding shyness, mischief and raillery, struck off by Hale's close friend and Yale classmate, Elihu Marvin, and appended to the latter's
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letter to Hale of February 26, 1774. In the text I wrote to accompany that bit of cryptic doggerel verse, I even attempted an interpretation of it, dangerous as it was to venture to look behind the façade, so to speak, of a rhymed narrative com- bining raillery and fact, recording the flirtations of two young fellows who were in their heyday one hundred and fifty years ago. The fun was innocent. In Johnston's "Hale" (1914) may be seen (pp. 186-190) two specimens of Hale's doggerel verses and pretty poor "bits" of doggerel verses they are. One is addressed to "Friend Tallmadge" and the other, which Hale left unfinished, was written during the Siege of Boston to a nameless (New London?) correspondent and describes scenes in and about Cambridge. This latter piece of descrip- tive doggerel, so to speak, is a labored performance and the wonder is not that Hale left it unfinished but that he did not destroy it. He failed, as it would appear, to keep his mind wholly fixed on it, for on the inner margin of the sheet on which it is written he scribbled five more lines as follows :
Let not the Ladies wish a spark* To cheer their spirits in the dark. The school which once unequal'd shone Appears deserted & undone, Her genuine sons all being gone.
The last three lines refer plainly enough to Harvard College, but what about the first two lines, from which we may be certain that the verses were addressed to a male corre- spondent. These lines, perhaps reminiscent, carry with them the painful suggestion that "petting," with its modern con- notations, was also a pastime of our Epic Age and not the product of a progressive age like ours. Students of our early folkways know that bundling was a colonial pastime and the
* "Spark = A lover; a gallant; a beau." (Noah Webster, 1748-1843, Yale Coll. 1778.) "The boys that do a good deal of sparking and the girls that have a lot of beaux don't always get married first."
E. Eggleston, "The Graysons," XXXIII.
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mundane mind may find in the couplet a veiled reference to that particular form of petting. Honi soit qui mal y pense. Hale bore a high moral character, but even such are addicted, particularly when young, to fooling, and it is now agreed that everyone is entitled to be judged by the mores of his time and provenance.
I pass on to the particular specimen of doggerel verse around which this chapter is written. The original manu- script, now in the collection of the Chicago Historical Society, was given by one of Hale's nephews (probably his grand- nephew Chauncey Howard, Esq.) to that famous collector of autograph material, the Rev. Dr. William B. Sprague (1795- 1876, Yale Coll. 1815), a native of Hale's native Coventry. Dr. Sprague stated this fact in his letter of July 16, 1845, to another once well-known autograph collector and writer, Henry Cruger Van Shaack (1802-1887). The verses are undated and unsigned but the handwriting, though careless, is unmistakably Hale's. What we have here is clearly but a draft and that rather carelessly penned, as would be natural in a draft. Undoubtedly a fair copy was made by the young man and sent to the young woman-forever nameless, as she should be. Her copy may have been dated and signed, but I doubt it. Both shyness and caution prompt most lovers to avoid such dangerous and useless commitments as signatures and dates. It is against nature to believe that the young woman did not herself treasure the verses, though given permission by Nathan to burn them "with all freedom." However, the fair copy has never turned up and probably never will and it is only by chance that the draft has survived a matter of a century and a half to illuminate, but faintly, a forgotten romance.
It is clear from the verses themselves that they were written just as Nathan was leaving East Haddam "for good" and equally clear that this early Hale romance was marked by brevity. For the rest, each reader must interpret it for him-
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self. The verses which might be entitled, The Tryst of Haddam Landing, follow :
A Line or two can give no great offence, 'Tho' void of everything that looks like sense; For if you're not inclined, you need not read them, But have my leave to burn them, with all Freedom. You thought, no doubt, I took my leave last Night, But 'tis not so; you ha'n't come off so bright. It's true I said good by ; But Notwithstanding, I only took my leave of Haddam Landing. Goodby is not enough; it needs more words than two When Friends do bid a long, a last Adieu. I trust our Friendship, though begun of late Hath been no less sincere, than intimate. Of this I'm sure; I've not as yet regretted, That to your Company I've been admitted.
We may not doubt that the young woman was pleased- even thrilled-on receiving these lines from the handsome young collegian, and deplored that she had not made his acquaintance until just as he was leaving East Haddam for New London, probably about the middle of March, 1774.
These verses, seemingly struck off the very morning after the tryst of Haddam Landing, show beyond cavil that Hale had some affair of the heart previous to that plainly charged upon him by his friend Elihu Marvin in the cryptic doggerel verses already described as appended by Marvin to his letter to Hale of February 26, 1776, which letter, be it noted, was written soon after Hale's visits to Norwich a few weeks before, while enjoying his last furlough when, according to one version of the story, his engagement to his widowed step- sister, Mrs. Alice (Adams) Ripley, took place.
Stuart, whose "Life of Hale" was published in 1856, never saw Hale's East Haddam verses, now for the first time pub- lished, nor the verses of Marvin just above referred to. It is inconceivable that Stuart, particularly in view of his romantic temperament, would not have incorporated, or made some use of, these verses by Hale and by Marvin somewhere in his "Life of Hale" if he had seen them. The fact is that a large
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body of material bearing directly on Hale's story has come to light since Stuart made his investigations and wrote his entertaining but meagrely documented "Life of Hale" about the middle of the last century. Had Stuart seen both of these bits of telltale verse, or even one of them, he could not, it seems to me, have so freely accepted the representations made to him in Hartford that Hale had formed a single attachment even before he went to college for his step-sister, Alice Adams, who married Elijah Ripley in Hale's lifetime and had a son by him; and after Hale's death, William Lawrence, of Hart- ford, by whom she had a number of children. It was her granddaughter, Miss Alicia Sheldon, who represented to Stuart that her grandmother Lawrence was Hale's only attach- ment and that they were betrothed during his last furlough. No proof of that attachment has ever been forthcoming. Such proof may yet be discovered, but I question it. The evidence at hand points the other way.
Johnston made use of Marvin's doggerel verses in the second edition of his "Life of Hale," published in 1914, but had never seen the doggerel written by Hale after the tryst of Haddam Landing. Anxious, as he told the writer, to retain the story of Hale's engagement to Alice Adams for its "heart interest," Johnston made the mistake of using Marvin's verses as corroborating Alicia Sheldon's story without attempting to examine their Norwich background as brought out by the writer in "The Weeping House of Norwich," already referred to. Johnston also unhesitatingly attributed to Hale a serious poem written by some swain to "Alicia" but unsigned, undated and unauthenticated as to handwriting, and now pronounced by experts not to be in the handwriting of Hale. The poem to "Alicia," though seemingly traceable in its source to Miss Alicia Sheldon, appears not to have been shown to Stuart, since otherwise he would certainly have made use of it had it then been ascribed to Hale, and Johnston did not see it until he was preparing the second edition of his "Life of Hale," published in 1914. Had Johnston taken the
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pains to ascertain the identity of the characters appearing in Marvin's doggerel and had he seen the verses which I have entitled, "The Tryst of Haddam Landing," it is hard to see how he could have accepted Miss Sheldon's idyl of Hale's engagement to his widowed step-sister, Mrs. Elijah Ripley. While Johnston was engaged in the preparation of his second edition, the writer suggested to him that anything like proof of the alleged romance between Hale and his step-sister was wanting, but, as already noted, Johnston wished to retain the "heart-interest," as he expressed it at the time to the writer. When his book appeared it was found to contain a long version of the idyl written as though dealing with facts, rather than the tale of a granddaughter. He completely misapplied Marvin's doggerel verses and despite the fact that it is undated, unaddressed and unsigned, and in a handwriting not shown to be Hale's, boldly headed the serious poem to "Alicia" with the caption, "Hale to 'Alicia'-Love Poem"-(Johnston, pp. 190-191). It is, moreover, yet to be shown that Alice Adams was ever called "Alicia" or even called herself "Alicia" until some time after Hale met his fate September 22, 1776. I must not be misunderstood in this matter. I do not question Johnston's sincerity in treating of this subject but it is clear to me that his desire to retain the "heart interest" of the love story as told by Stuart led him into a very vulnerable state- ment of it (Johnston, pp. 55-60). He seems not to have been willing to admit that there were other Hale romances though others had been suggested in books available to any student. Hale seems to have been constantly courted by the goddess that presides over such affairs.
But Hale's verses in question find their greatest interest and importance in providing a means of testing by intrinsic evi- dence the authenticity of the unsigned and undated love-poem "Alicia." In other words, Hale's doggerel East Haddam verses, now for the first time printed, as well as the two doggerel poems by Hale printed in Johnston's "Hale" (pp. 186-190), provide the trained litterateur-the stylistic and
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linguistic expert and analyst-with means for comparing what Hale is positively known to have written in verse with a speci- men of verse attributed to him but unsigned, undated and unauthenticated as to handwriting. The intrinsic-evidence test may be stated as follows :
Is there anything, any use of words, any rhymes, any accents, any turns of thought, in the verses known to have been written by Hale that intrinsically, and apart from the handwriting, support the claim that Hale wrote the so-called poem to "Alicia," which as a piece of verse is far better than any verse Hale is known to have written?
So acute a critic as the late Professor Henry A. Beers, of Yale (1847-1926, Yale Coll. 1869), examined and compared the three specimens of doggerel verse written beyond question by Hale, and herein referred to, with the poem to "Alicia" in this light and could find nothing whatever in them that indicated that they were written by the same person. Pro- fessor Beers' conclusion is supported by the experts in hand- writing, who assert that the poem to "Alicia" is not in Hale's handwriting. Hale's widowed step-sister was by all accounts a beautiful woman and the poem may well have been addressed to her by a lover-perhaps by William Lawrence, her second husband, himself. The verdict of Professor Beers and the experts is further confirmed by Hale's first biographer, Deacon Jasper Gilbert (1785-1856), who, long before Stuart in his "Life of Hale" (1856) claimed on the "say so" of Alicia Sheldon that Hale was engaged to his widowed step- sister, Alice (Adams) Ripley, wrote on January 9, 1836, Cyrus P. Bradley, of Hanover, New Hampshire, that he could not discover from Hale's own family connections that Hale had any "calculations on matrimony." Despite this statement, Johnston accepted Miss Sheldon's statement that her grandmother was engaged to Hale, though his own family knew nothing of his "calculations on matrimony."
Even if the poem to "Alicia" could be proved to have been addressed to her by Hale, that would not prove that they
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were betrothed, any more than thousands on thousands of love-poems written by young men to young women prove anything more than admiration. It seems to me more than likely and to fit in with all of the known facts that as a very old woman Mrs. Lawrence talked so much about Hale- his good looks and fine manners and her admiration for him- that her granddaughters, eagerly listening to all this rhapsody, gradually came to believe that at the time of his death there had been some understanding between them. Stuart, who says in his preface that he saw and talked with her (she died 4 Sept., 1845, aged 88), nowhere claims that she ever intimated to him, much less that she told him, that she had been betrothed to Hale, nor is there any recorded conversa- tion by her with anyone to the effect. The entire story emanated from her granddaughter, Miss Alicia Sheldon, who produced nothing like proof to support it. Stuart himself explicitly makes Miss Sheldon responsible for the story. Everything remains in the domain of inference so far as any understanding between her and Hale is concerned. The princi- pals are silent. Hale's interest in other young women, as evidenced by existing documents and traditions, some of which have achieved print, negatives the story as told by Stuart and elaborated by Johnston. The engagement, if any ever existed, never got into the gossip of the time-was never a matter of report in Hale's family or among his college or army friends, so far as anywhere appears. Hale's own family never heard of it, though the courtship, if any, was carried on in his father's house, then occupied by the parents of both Nathan and Alice and their brothers and sisters as well as by Mrs. Ripley herself. Even Alice never spoke of it, as the story goes, until she was a very old woman. The evidence at hand, with Hale amorously active in other fields, is all the other way!
It may be that some letter by Hale or to Hale yet to be discovered or already discovered and not accessible to the writer, may compel a different view and warrant the state-
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ments of Stuart and Johnston. For his own part, the writer would welcome a settlement of this disputed question, though strongly inclined to the belief held by Hale's own family (this includes his devoted sister Joanna and brother-in-law, Dr. Nathan Howard) that at the time of his death Hale had no "calculations on matrimony."
All this business about Hale's engagement to anybody, as I view it, is "much ado about nothing." I cannot see that it has the slightest bearing on Hale as a historical figure, whether in his brief life he had one romance or a dozen.
Hale was a man of spirit and of action and I fancy his shade is none too pleased to have those foolish lines of his (written the morning after his tryst with that nameless East Haddam girl) dragged out into the light of day after a hundred and fifty years of near-oblivion. The truth is, the writer himself feels apologetic for having been the first to commit them to print. He sees no reason for humanizing Hale, though it be the fashion so to treat the great and near- great of our past history. May not a young man of any age be a votary of Venus as well as of Mars, without affecting his place in the Heavens? The writer is in entire accord with Johnston when he says, "The power of Hale's story is in the simple record."
G. D. S. Pointe au Pic, Murray Bay, Canada, July 28, 1928.
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LXVI.
SCENARIO FOR THE HALE EPISODE OF THE YALE PAGEANT PERFORMED IN THE YALE BOWL ON 21 OCTOBER, 1916.
It seems appropriate that the several pieces of Haleana incorporated in this book should be brought to a conclusion with a reprinting of the scenario prepared for the Hale Episode in the Pageant designed to illustrate outstanding episodes in the long Yale tradition. The scene chosen was inevitably that of Hale's execution and necessarily had to be adapted to the exigencies of presentation. All that could be attempted was a representation of the cortege passing on its way to the gallows. The final scene could be no more than suggested and that by the tolling of a bell. The part of Hale was taken by Charles Phelps Taft, II, of the Yale Class of 1917, a son of former President and now Chief Justice Taft. Montresor was represented by young Taft's classmate, Cassius Marcellus Clay, III, of the Kentucky family of the name and Andrew P. Calhoun, another classmate, took the ungracious part of the British Provost Marshal Cunningham, Crary Brownell, of Moodus,* led drummers of the Moodus Drum Corps, which claims a tradition of drumming reaching back to the Revolution itself. As printed in the "Book of the Yale Pageant," the scenario was accompanied by a histori-
* "I was at the receipt of your letter in East Haddam (alias Modos), a place which I at first, for a long time, concluded inaccessible, either by friends, acquaintance or letters." (Hale to Mead, May 2, 1774, from New London.) Hale's school was at Haddam Landing on the river in East Haddam, then also known as Moodus, a contraction of the Indian name, Mackimoodus (place of the noises). It is a mistake to suppose that Hale taught in the village in the northern part of East Haddam, to which the name Moodus is now applied.
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SCENARIO FOR THE YALE PAGEANT
cal note here omitted, since the substance of it is in other articles on Hale in this book. The scenario as printed in the "Book of the Yale Pageant" is as follows :
SCENE III THE MARTYRDOM OF NATHAN HALE By GEORGE DUDLEY SEYMOUR
"That life is long which answers life's great end."-Young.
It is a Sabbath morning, and the place the encampment of the Royal Artillery overlooking the East River, and facing the Old Post Road from New York to Albany and Boston, not far from the spot where Hale's regiment had landed but a few months before. The parade ground of the camp is empty save for a small straggling group of old men, women and children, and a thin line of red-coated soldiers. To the South, a cloud of smoke rises from the burning city of New York, half obscuring the sky and casting its pall of gloom over the scene of the tragedy about to be enacted. In the distance, the grave and even agonizing sound of muffled drums is heard with smiting reverberations. Gradually these increase in intensity until two drummers appear, followed by a rude cart dragged along by half a dozen unkempt soldiers, hardly recognizable as such in their rough undress. Behind them the common hangman, a mulatto, bears the ladder, his neck, as was the grewsome custom, encircled by the fatal rope. Then a handful of soldiers in uniform, marching two by two, and beside them, the British Provost Marshal Cunningham, drunken, ferocious, and of an infamy so notorious that the by-standers shrink back from him. And then,-Hale-his hands bound behind him, walking alone, with measured tread-a Captain in the Continental Army, and yet so boyish, with flushed
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cheeks and fair hair. He is of medium height, but the quiet dignity of his bearing, the freedom of his carriage, and his high color, give him a certain brightness which lifts him above the rest of the company. Looking straight forward, he moves to his fate. Once he turns his handsome head to note the great pillar of smoke rising from the burning city and doubtless wonders at the portent of the conflagration. He hears with no outward sign of emotion the half stifled cries of the women and children who watch his forward march to the beat of those muffled drums. Simply and quietly he walks to his doom, thinking, perchance, of the broad landscape of his boyhood home beyond the Eastern hills in Coventry, of Connecticut Hall where he spent so many happy hours, of the loved home circle and his friends. We can imagine him unflinching without, but tremulous within-he was young, life was dear to him, the earth that he looked upon was fair, friendship had been sweet to him, he did not wish to die .- A few more soldiers in worn and faded uniforms follow with stolid faces and remonstrant hearts, and lastly, at one side, with bowed head and slow stride, the gallant and noble figure of Captain Montresor, who alone of that company had befriended Hale during the morning hours when the prepara- tions were being made for the final scene. The little cortège passes before us and makes us feel, as never before, the rhythm and meaning of that sad lyric :-
To drum-beat and heart-beat, A soldier marches by ; There is color in his cheek, There is courage in his eye, Yet to drum-beat and heart-beat, In a moment he must die .*
Slowly the procession disappears and leaves the parade ground empty except for the little group of stragglers who may not enter the orchard to witness the end. The drum-beats grow
* From the Poem by Francis Miles Finch, Yale 1849, read at the cen- tennial anniversary of the Linonia Society, July 27, 1853.
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SCENARIO FOR THE YALE PAGEANT
fainter and fainter, and die away into a terrifying silence. * The tolling of a bell announces that all is over- that the tragedy is complete. Hale has "resign'd his life a sacrifice to his country's liberty." We almost hear whispered above us, in the stillness of the vacant air, descending as a precious legacy upon us, the youthful patriot's now immortal last words,-"I only regret that I have but one life to lose for my country."
LXVII.
THE RESIDENCE AND LIBRARY OF ITHIEL TOWN (1784-1844)
("THE HOME OF THE GREEK REVIVALIST")
A few weeks ago a friend, engaged upon a Life of Mrs. Sigourney (1791-1865), the "American Hemans," called my attention to a description by the inveterate lady in question of "The Residence and Library of Ithiel Town, Esqr.," to be found in The Ladies' Companion, a Monthly Magazine, Ist Series, Vol. 10, pp. 123-6, Jan., 1839. My antiquarian soul was delighted with this "find," since I had long wished to add Mr. Town's "elegant residence" to my "gallery," so to speak, of famous New Haven houses. I had, in my own collection, a stately picture in color of the "Residence and Library of Ithiel Town, New Haven, Conn.," signed "A. J. Davis del," illustrating not only the residence but also what was really of more interest to me-the first and second floor plans of the mansion. I had already printed in this book (pp. 234-239) a brief account of Town (I had also written his life, still in manuscript and likely to remain so) and even had devoted a page (p. 252) to Alexander Jackson Davis (1803-1892), for many years Town's partner. But I had never had the luck to come upon any description of the house and library to go with my picture, with its dashing equestrian and equestrienne in front followed by their no less spirited attendant dogs.
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