Planter Paul Jones is also among the guests. Since he is in town, his coming to the ball becomes the thing most natural. Already he is regarded as the Admirable Crichton, of tide-water Virginia, and the function wanting his presence would go down to history as incomplete.
Paul Jones, planter for two years, has made himself a foremost figure in Virginia. Twenty-eight, cultured, travelled, gallant, brilliant, and a bachelor, he is welcome in every drawing-room. Besides, is there not the Jones plantation, with its mile of river front, its noble mansion house, its tobacco teeming acres, its well-trained slaves, and all turning in those yearly one thousand yellow guineas under the heedful managing thumb of canny Duncan Macbean? Planter Paul Jones is a prince for hospitality, too; and the high colonial dames, taking pity on his wifeless state, preside at his table, or chaperone the water parties which he gives on his great sloop. Also—still considering his wifelessness—they seek to marry him to one of their colonial daughters.
In this latter dulcet intrigue, the high colonial dames fail wholly. The young planter-sailor is not a marrying man. There is in truth a blushing story which lasts throughout a fortnight in which he is quoted as about to yield. Rumor gives it confidently forth that the Jones mansion will have a mistress, and its master carry altar-ward Betty Parke, the pretty niece of Madam Martha Washington. But pretty Betty Parke, in the very face of this roseate rumor, becomes Mrs. Tyler, and it will be one of her descendants who, seventy-five years later, is chosen President—a poor President, but still a President. Planter Paul Jones rides to the wedding of pretty Betty Parke, and gives it his serene and satisfied countenance. From which sign it is supposed that Dame Rumor mounts by the wrong stirrup when she goes linking the name of pretty Betty Parke with that of Planter Paul Jones; and no love-letter scrap, nor private journal note, will ever rise from the grave to disparage the assumption.
That Planter Paul Jones has thus lived for two years, and moved and had his social being among the most beautiful of women, and escaped hand free and heart free to tell the tale, is strange to the brink of marvellous. It is the more strange since no one could be more than he the knight of dames. And he can charm, too—as witness a letter which two years farther on the unimpressionable Doctor Franklin will write to Madam d’Haudetot:
“No matter, my dear madam,” the cool philosopher will say, “what the faults of Paul Jones may be, I must warn your ladyship that when face to face with him neither man nor, so far as I learn, woman, can for a moment resist the strange magnetism of his presence, the indescribable charm of his manner; a commingling of the most compliant deference with the most perfect self-esteem that I have ever seen in a man; and above all the sweetness of his voice and the purity of his language.”
Paul Jones is not alone the darling of colonial drawing-rooms, he is also the admiration of the men. This is his description as given by one who knew him afloat and ashore:
“Though of slender build, his neck, arms and shoulders were those of a heavy, powerful man. The strength of his arms and shoulders could hardly be believed. And he had equal use of both hands, even to writing with the left as well as with the right. He was a past master of the art of boxing. To this he added a quickness of motion that cannot be described. When roused he could strike more blows and cause more havoc in a second than any other could strike or cause in a minute. Even when calm and unruffled his gait and all his bodily motions were those of the panther—noiseless, sleek, the perfection of grace.”
The above, by way of portrait: When one adds to it that Planter Paul Jones rides like a Prince Rupert, fences like a Crillon, gives blows with his fist that would stagger Jack Slack, and is death itself with either gun or pistol, it will be seen how he owns every quality that should pedestal him as a paragon in the best circles of his day.
It is towards the hour of midnight when Planter Paul Jones, attired like a Brummel, stands in quiet converse with his friend Mr. Hurst. Their talk runs on the state of sentiment in the colonies, and the chance of trouble with the motherland.
“Hostilities are certain, my dear Hurst,” says Planter Paul Jones. “I hear it from Colonel Washington, Mr. Jefferson and Mr. Henry. They make no secret of it in Williamsburg about the House of Burgesses.”