THE HON. MRS. NAPIER.
"Let me embrace thee, good old chronicle,
That hast so long walked hand in hand with time."
You ask me for a single reminiscence of the olden time, which may challenge your sympathy for female suffering, and is as yet unhacknied. You shall have one.
The recent perusal of a file of old Newspapers has brought it freshly to memory, and if your sympathy can be excited by the recital of an event of a private nature, which gave occasion in its time to deep and heartfelt regret, and occurred towards the close of the revolutionary war; I will detain you for a few moments by reverting to the year 1780, and by taking you with me within the British lines at New York.
It is only an incident, I confess, but it is of a character to furnish a scene for the "mind's eye," an incident which, though it could never occupy a very prominent place upon the canvass, might prove itself a fine auxiliary, spreading a sweet and tender effect over the more distant parts of the picture. There are many similar events which seem fated to be lost in the rapid changes of feeling and the constant revolutions of business; many too that would give interest to the tale, and pathos to the ballad. It is not generally known that some of the élite of the English nobility served in this country during the revolution, but the fact may be ascertained by referring to the biographical notices which from time to time appear in foreign publications.
Many gallant young men, who were the only hope of their families, and made their first essay in arms against their transatlantic brethren, were doomed to fall at the onset of their career.
Some of the choicest blood of English chivalry bedewed the plains of Brandywine, and valour, birth and merit were alike an unavailing sacrifice in the struggle at Saratoga.
There was one distinguished family in England, which lost its head at this memorable battle, and in which the voice of weeping was heard upon the advent of its melancholy tidings. I allude to that of Sir Francis Carr Clerke, the aid de camp of general Burgoyne, who, although he possessed hereditary honours, and a fair estate in Lancashire, was at the age of twenty nine mortally wounded in the wilds of America, and now sleeps in an obscure grave near that of the unfortunate Frazer.
Several of our prints have lately copied an obituary of the Earl of Balcarras, who was also at Saratoga and had two remarkable rencontres with general Arnold, the one, when at the head of the British Light Infantry, he defended himself against his desperate valour, and the other when he subsequently refused to recognise him as an acquaintance at the court of St. James, even upon the introduction of the King himself.
He was one of the most important witnesses examined in relation to the military conduct of his commander, and his testimony is the most interesting part of the celebrated narrative of the Expedition. He is said to have been to the last, frank, communicate and hospitable, and to have abounded in anecdotes of his American campaign.
Perhaps he had not forgotten, and if he had, certain old matrons of Williamstown in Massachusetts have not, a scene which took place at the village inn, upon his march to Cambridge as a prisoner of war, and when for the gratification of female curiosity, Lord Napier, or himself, mounted a chair, and was exhibited by his comrades, notwithstanding his muddy and threadbare habiliments, as a specimen of a "real lord."
Be this as it may, we all know there is, or very lately was in existence a house in Wall street at New York, which, was long pointed out to the curious as the head quarters of the Duke of Clarence,[2] when he was a stripling officer under the command of Admiral Digby, and it would not be difficult to seat ones-self in the very same window seat in Brooklyn whence the veritable Earl of Caithness was wont with "half an eye" to watch the Union flying at the flag staff in the Fort, or "vertere in se," turn his glance upon his own regiment quartered on his own side of the river.
The late Earl of Harrington was also in America, a captain in the 29th foot, and a supernumerary aid of general Burgoyne. He was very soon exchanged, and in two years after, we heard of his surrender at discretion to the fair heiress of Brompton park. He has recently been most distinguished as the father of that eminent fop, Lord Petersham, the envy of Bond street and the pride of the pave. This sort of notoriety, though not exactly for the same reason was that which immortalized "Philip Thicknesse, father of Lord Audley." The celebrated Lady Harriet Ackland, although we never could forgive her second marriage with Mr. Brudenell, (chaplain to the artillery) upon the major's being killed in a duel in England, has rendered herself for ever famous. The exhibition of her devotion to him amid the horrors of battle, and the tedious hours of sickness, has been celebrated by the classic pen of Burgoyne, as a "picture of the spirit, the enterprize, and the distress of romance realized, and regulated, upon the chaste and sober principles of rational love and connubial duty."
The baroness of Reidesel will also be long remembered, from the display of similar qualities; but there were many, very many others, some of them of equal rank, whose misfortunes in America had no such happy termination, who were exposed to similar privations, and encountered similar hardships, yet were fated to return no more to their native land.
I happened, I think it was in January, 1780, about the middle of the month, to be at Flushing, Long Island; of course I was too young to be a combatant, so I wandered about among my friends as circumstances directed; sometimes among the whigs and sometimes among the tories, having by the aid of friends in both armies a passport to the one or the other side. At this particular time, I observed a funeral procession of rather an extraordinary character. In its appearance it was partly civil and partly military. A carriage dressed in sable plumes was followed by a number of military men with the usual badges of mourning. They belonged to the 22nd, 38th, and 80th regiments; the latter Grenadiers. It proceeded in silence along the street, having started from a public house kept by a man of the name of Vanderbilt. I could not perceive any persons attending as principal mourners, although great grief was discoverable in the countenances of those present. Upon further inquiry I found that it was the funeral of the honourable Mrs. Napier, and that the corpse was now to be carried to the vault of lieutenant governor Colden at Springfield, whence, at a convenient opportunity, it was to be removed to England. She was only twenty three years of age when she died. Young and beautiful, she was the idol of her family, which she had not hesitated to forsake, that she might follow the fortunes of her husband. He commanded a company of Grenadiers in the 80th regiment, and was the son of lord Napier, a Scottish nobleman.
If I mistake not, he had seen service with the army of Canada, and after its surrender to general Gates, was enabled by an early exchange, to retire with his wife to Long Island, for the benefit of her health. They had two daughters, one of the age of three years, and the other of two, who were the dear solace of their retirement. If it be true that
"All thoughts, all passions, all delights,
Whatever stirs this mortal frame,
All are but ministers of love,
And feed his sacred flame."
the reunion of these young people must have been blissful.
An expedition to the southward was soon the unwelcome cause of their separation. They parted; and it was during his absence that this hapless woman became alarmingly ill. From this illness she never recovered. She was from the first sensible of her danger, and she felt a strong presentiment that she would see her husband no more: and for those to whom her heart instinctively clung with the affection of a daughter, she could only address her secret prayers, divided as she was from them, by the wide waters of the Atlantic.
Her two little girls were about to be thrown upon the charity of strangers, and as no one could foresee the issue of the expedition, in which their beloved father was engaged, she could not but fancy them orphans in a foreign land, far from every relative, and exposed to the thousand mischances that lie in wait for unprotected infancy. These distressing reflections would also seem to have been heightened by the consideration that it was very uncertain whether the king's troops would be able to maintain their position at New York. Anticipating the confusion of a retreat, and the hurry of an embarkation increased by the approach of danger, must she not have shuddered at the fate of these two little innocents destitute of every claim to protection but that of helplessness.
And then too, she was about to die in a foreign land! to mingle her ashes with a soil neither kindred to her heart, nor consoling in its associations. No gentle hand smoothed her dying pillow; no well known voice responded to her last sighs. What a moment for such a young and interesting woman. What agonies may we not imagine to have been her's? Her career of life, of rank, of honour, closing with circumstances so little befitting their proud claims. What horrors would we not naturally attribute to that hour of accumulating anguish, to that child, to that mother, to that wife? What wretchedness to that fatal moment which was about to sever their purest, freshest, sweetest ties? Quite otherwise. This admirable young woman, died with serenity and resignation. Religion shed its light upon her heart, and faith "that daughter of the skies," renewed her sinking spirit with life and hope. She fearlessly committed her infants to their father in heaven, and in the full assurance of a triumph over death and the grave, she gently yielded up her spirit to him who gave it.
Colonel Archibald Hamilton, who then resided at Flushing, and appears to have been a distinguished personage, connected with the Lothian family, immediately carried the children to his own home, where they remained until the return of their father, tenderly taken care of and cherished.
The feelings of that father upon his return are not for me to describe. Those agonies which affection may feel, but which are too sacred thoughtlessly to be portrayed, were on this occasion deep and withering. That cheek which toil and exposure had not yet blanched, was now pale with care and furrowed by grief.
I never learned what became of the children; whether they returned to their "ain countrie," to grow up to womanhood within the halls of Thirlstane, "the glass of fashion and the mould of form," or early slept on the hill side of Selkirk, covered by the heath and shaded by the broom. Perhaps at this moment they live in a green old age, the chronicles of that fated period, when the mother country by her ill-starred policy threw away one of her brightest jewels. Individual suffering increased and rendered poignant beyond the usual lot of humanity, marked a contest which was founded upon unprovoked aggression.
And here was one of its victims, a sweet and modest flower, that was transported from its native bed, to sink under the stormy climate, and the rude winds to which her fate exposed her. Under other circumstance she might have lived to grace society and throw around her the influence of virtue, taste and education. But she was doomed to fall like the blossom from the tree.
(From the Scrap Table, a volume of pleasant sketches, published at Boston, North America.)