Miss Henrietta Howard Holdich.
It is a curious fact that although New Jersey was the theatre of some of the most stirring scenes of the Revolution, only two stories seem to have been written, founded on the events of those times, if we except the "Water Witch", by J. Fenimore Cooper, in which we find the location of Alderman Van Beverout's house, the villa of the "Lust in Rust" to be on the Atlantic Highlands, between the Shrewsbury river and the sea. This spot is pointed out to-day and was associated with the smugglers of that period. The other two stories are "Thankful Blossom", by Bret Harte, and "Hannah Arnett's Faith", a Centennial Story, by Miss Holdich, which latter, as a singular history attaches to it, we shall give at length.
Miss Holdich was born at Middletown, Conn., but left there too young to remember much about it and she lived in New York until 1878 when she came to Morristown. When she was not quite two years of age her mother discovered she could read and since she was seventeen, she has written for various well-known papers and periodicals, more children's stories than anything else, she tells us, but also a good many stories for Harpers' Magazine and Bazar,—also poems, by one of which she is represented in our group of poets.
"Hannah Arnett's Faith" is a true story of the author's great grandmother, familiar to all the family from infancy; In 1876 Miss Holdich published it, as a Centennial story, in The New York Observer. In 1890, a lady of Washington published it as her own in The Washington Post, (she asserts that she did not intend it as a plagiarism but used it merely as a historical incident). The story was recognized and letters written to, and published in, The Post, giving Miss Holdich's name, as the true author. However, this publication of the story led to a curious result, and gave the story a wide celebrity. In a published statement, Miss Mary Desha (one of the Vice Presidents of the D. A. R.) announces that "the Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution sprang from this story".
"On July 21st", Miss Desha says, after the publication of the story in The Washington Post, accompanied by an appeal for a woman's organization to commemorate events of the Revolution in which women had bravely borne their part,—"a letter from William O. McDowell of New Jersey, was published, in which he said that he was the great-grandson of Hannah Arnett and called on the women of America to form a society of their own, since they had been excluded from the Society of the Sons of the American Revolution at a meeting held in Louisville, Kentucky, April 30th, 1890".
Miss Holdich soon after this was urgently requested to become Regent of the Morristown Chapter of the Daughters of the American Revolution, which position she accepted and holds to-day.
HANNAH ARNETT'S FAITH.
A Centennial Story.
1776-1876.
The days were at their darkest and the hearts of our grandfathers were weighed down with doubt and despondency. Defeat had followed defeat for the American troops, until the army had become demoralized and discouragement had well-nigh become despair. Lord Cornwallis, after his victory at Fort Lee, had marched his army to Elizabethtown (Dec. 1776) where they were now encamped. On the 30th of November the brothers Howe had issued their celebrated proclamation, which offered protection to all who within sixty days should declare themselves peaceable British subjects and bind themselves neither to take up arms against their Sovereign, nor to encourage others to do so. It was to discuss the advisability of accepting this offered protection that a group of men had met in one of the large old houses of which Elizabethtown was, at that time, full.
We are apt to think of those old times as days of unmitigated loyalty and courage; of our ancestors as unfaltering heroes, swerving never in the darkest hours from the narrow and thorny path which conscience bade them tread. Yet human nature is human nature in all ages, and if at times the "old fashioned fire" burned low even in manly hearts, and profound discouragement palsied for a time the most ardent courage, what are we that we should wonder at or condemn them? Of this period Dr. Ashbel Green wrote:
"I heard a man of some shrewdness once say that when the British troops over-ran the State of New Jersey, in the closing part of the year 1776, the whole population could have been bought for eighteen-pence a head."
The debate was long and grave. Some were for accepting the offered terms at once; others hung back a little, but all had at length agreed that it was the only thing to be done. Hope, courage, loyalty, faith, honor—all seemed swept away upon the great flood of panic which had overspread the land. There was one listener, however, of whom the eager disputants were ignorant, one to whose heart their wise reasoning was very far from carrying conviction. Mrs. Arnett, the wife of the host, was in the next room, and the sound of the debate had reached her where she sat. She had listened in silence, until, carried away by her feelings, she could bear no more, and springing to her feet she pushed open the parlor door and confronted the assembled group.
Can you fancy the scene? A large low room, with the dark, heavily carved furniture of the period, dimly lighted by the tall wax candles and the wood fires which blazed in the huge fire place. Around the table, the group of men—pallid, gloomy, dejected, disheartened. In the doorway the figure of the woman, in the antique costume with which, in those latter days, we have become so familiar. Can you not fancy the proud poise of her head, the indignant light of her blue eyes, the crisp, clear tones of her voice, the majesty and defiance and scorn which clothed her as a garment?
The men all started up at her entrance; the sight of a ghost could hardly have caused more perturbation than did that of this little woman. Her husband advanced hastily. She had no business here; a woman should know her place and keep it. Questions of politics and political expediency were not for them; but he would shield her as far as possible, and point out the impropriety of her conduct afterwards, when they should be alone. So he went quickly up to her with a warning whisper:
"Hannah! Hannah! this is no place for you. We do not want you here just now;" and would have taken her hand to lead her from the room.
She was a docile little woman and obeyed his wishes in general without a word: but now it seemed as if she scarcely saw him, as with one hand she pushed him gently back and turned to the startled group.
"Have you made your decision, gentlemen?" she asked. "Have you chosen the part of men or of traitors?"
It was putting the question too broadly,—so like a woman, seeing only the bare, ugly facts, and quite forgetting the delicate drapery which was intended to veil them. It was an awkward position to put them in, and they stammered and bungled over their answer, as men in a false position will. The reply came at last, mingled with explanations and excuses and apologies.
"Quite hopeless; absurd for a starving, half-clothed, undisciplined army like ours to attempt to compete with a country like England's unlimited resources. Repulsed everywhere—ruined; throwing away life and fortune for a shadow;"—you know the old arguments with which men try to prop a staggering conscience.
Mrs. Arnett listened in silence until the last abject word was spoken. Then she inquired simply: "But what if we should live, after all?"
The men looked at each other, but no one spoke.
"Hannah! Hannah!" urged her husband. "Do you not see that these are no questions for you? We are discussing what is best for us, for you, for all. Women have no share in these topics. Go to your spinning-wheel and leave us to settle affairs. My good little wife, you are making yourself ridiculous. Do not expose yourself in this way before our friends."
His words passed her ear like the idle wind; not even the quiver of an eyelash showed that she heard them.
"Can you not tell me?" she said in the same strangely quiet voice. "If, after all, God does not let the right perish,—if America should win in the conflict, after you have thrown yourself upon British clemency, where will you be then?"
"Then?" spoke one hesitating voice. "Why, then, if it ever could be, we should be ruined. We must leave the country forever. But it is absurd to think of such a thing. The struggle is an utterly hopeless one. We have no men, no money, no arms, no food and England has everything."
"No," said Mrs. Arnett; "you have forgotten one thing which England has not and which we have—one thing which outweighs all England's treasures, and that is the Right. God is on our side, and every volley from our muskets is an echo of His voice. We are poor and weak and few; but God is fighting for us. We entered into this struggle with pure hearts and prayerful lips. We had counted the cost and were willing to pay the price, were it our heart's blood. And now—now, because for a time the day is going against us, you would give up all and sneak back, like cravens, to kiss the feet that have trampled upon us! And you call yourselves men—the sons of those who gave up home and fortune and fatherland to make for themselves and for dear liberty a resting-place in the wilderness? Oh, shame upon you, cowards!"
Her words had rushed out in a fiery flood, which her husband had vainly striven to check. I do not know how Mrs. Arnett looked, but I fancy her a little fair woman, with kindly blue eyes and delicate features,—a tender and loving little soul, whose scornful, blazing words must have seemed to her amazed hearers like the inspired fury of a pythoness. Are we not all prophets at times—prophets of good or evil, according to our bent, and with more power than we ourselves suspect to work out the fulfillment of our own prophecies? Who shall say how far this fragile woman aided to stay the wave of desolation which was spreading over the land?
"Gentlemen," said good Mr. Arnett uneasily, "I beg you to excuse this most unseemly interruption to our council. My wife is beside herself I think. You all know her and know that it is not her wont to meddle with politics, or to brawl and bluster. To-morrow she will see her folly, but now I pray your patience."
Already her words had begun to stir the slumbering manhood in the bosoms of those who heard her. Enthusiasm makes its own fitting times. No one replied; each felt too keenly his own pettiness, in the light cast upon them by this woman's brave words.
"Take your protection, if you will," she went on, after waiting in vain for a reply. "Proclaim yourselves traitors and cowards, false to your country and your God, but horrible will be the judgment you will bring upon your heads and the heads of those that love you. I tell you that England will never conquer. I know it and feel it in every fibre of my heart. Has God led us so far to desert us now? Will He, who led our fathers across the stormy winter sea, forsake their children who have put their trust in Him? For me, I stay with my country, and my hand shall never touch the hand, nor my heart cleave to the heart of him who shames her."
She flashed upon her husband a gaze which dazzled him like sudden lightning.
"Isaac, we have lived together for twenty years, and for all of them I have been a true and loving wife to you. But I am the child of God and of my country, and if you do this shameful thing, I will never again own you for my husband."
"My dear wife!" cried the husband aghast, "you do not know what you are saying. Leave me, for such a thing as this?"
"For such a thing as this?" she cried scornfully. "What greater cause could there be? I married a good man and true, a faithful friend and a loyal Christian gentleman, and it needs no divorce to sever me from a traitor and a coward. If you take your protection you lose your wife, and I—I lose my husband and my home!"
With the last words the thrilling voice broke suddenly with a pathetic fall and a film crept over the proud blue eyes. Perhaps this little touch of womanly weakness moved her hearers as deeply as her brave, scornful words. They were not all cowards at heart, only touched by the dread finger of panic, which, now and then, will paralyze the bravest. Some had struggled long against it and only half yielded at last. And some there were to whom old traditions had never quite lost their power, whose superstitious consciences had never become quite reconciled to the stigma of Rebel, though reason and judgment both told them that, borne for the cause for which they bore it, it was a title of nobility. The words of the little woman had gone straight to each heart, be its main-spring what it might. Gradually the drooping heads were raised and the eyes grew bright with manliness and resolution. Before they left the house that night, they had sworn a solemn oath to stand by the cause they had adopted and the land of their birth, through good or evil, and to spurn the offers of their tyrants and foes as the deadliest insults.
Some of the names of those who met in that secret council were known afterwards among those who fought their country's battles most nobly, who died upon the field of honor, or rejoiced with pure hearts when the day of triumph came at last. The name of the little woman figured on no heroic roll, but was she the less a heroine?
This story is a true one, and, in this Centennial year, when every crumb of information in regard to those old days of struggle and heroism is eagerly gathered up, it may not be without interest.