It was in 1747 that our hero was summoned to London, to enter Parliament and from that time on was a bright particular star in English society. Known as "the richest man in England," he was a truly magnificent figure in a magnificent day. Lady Warren, who was still a beauty and a wit, was a great favourite at Court, and writers of the day declared her to be the cleverest woman in all England. Think of what golden fortunes fell to the three Warren girls, who were now of marriageable age!
They made our old friend Peter Admiral of the Red Squadron as well as an M.P., and Lady Warren so splendidly brought out her daughters that Charlotte married Willoughby, Earl of Abingdon, and Ann wed Charles Fitzroy, Baron Southampton. The youngest girl, Susanna, chose a colonel named Skinner,—and New York, still affectionately inclined toward the Admiral's daughters, named streets after the husbands of all three! Our present Christopher Street used to be Skinner Road; Fitzroy Road ran northward, near our Eighth Avenue from Fourteenth Street far uptown; Abingdon Road, which was known colloquially and prettily as "Love Lane," was far, far out in the country until much later, somewhere near Twenty-first Street. Abingdon Square alone preserves one of the old family names, and in Abingdon Square I am certain some of those dear ghosts come to walk.
And still I find that I have not told the half of Sir Peter's story! I have not told of his adventures in the Mohawk country, where he travelled from sheer love of adventure and danger in the first place, and afterward established a fine settlement and plantation; of his placing there his sister's young son, William Johnson, later to be a great authority on matters pertaining to the Indians, and how he sent him out vast consignments of "rum and axes," to open negotiations with the Mohawks; how in his letter to his nephew he sounded a note of true Irish blarney, in cautioning him not to find fault with the horses supplied by a certain man, "since he is a relation of my wife's!" I have not told of his narrow escape from the Indians on one dramatic occasion; nor of his trip to the West Indies as an envoy of peace; nor of his services in Barbadoes which caused the people thereof to present him with a gorgeous silver monteith, or punch-bowl; nor of the mighty dinner party he gave at which the Rev. Mr. Moody said the historic grace: "Good Lord, we have so much to be thankful for that time would be infinitely too short to do it in. We must, therefore, leave it for eternity. Amen." I have said nothing of Sir Peter's attack of small-pox, which left his good-looking face badly marked, if we can believe the likeness modelled by Roubilliac; nor—but it would take volumes to tell the full and eventful story of this brave and gallant-hearted man, who died when he was only forty-eight, in the year 1752. It seems incredible that so much could have been crowded into so short a life. In death he was honoured quite as he deserved, for his tomb in the Abbey is a gorgeous and impressive one, and such men as the great French sculptor, and Dr. Johnson himself, had a hand in making it memorable in proportion to his greatness.
In looking over our hero's career we are struck by the absence of shadows. One would say that so unrelieved a record of success, of honour, glory, love and wealth, so much pure sunshine, so complete a lack of all trouble or defeat, must make a picture flat and characterless, insipid in its light, bright colours, insignificant in its deeper values. But it is not so. Peter Warren, the spoiled child of fortune, was something more than a child of fortune, since he won his good things of life always at the risk of that life which he enriched; and surely, no obstinately fortuitous twist of circumstances could ever really spoil him.
His honestly heroic qualities are his passport. He cannot seem smug, nor colourless, nor over-prosperous: he is too vivid and too vigorous. His childish vanity is nobly discounted by his childlike simplicity in facing big issues. The blue and gold which he wore so magnificently can never to us be the mere trappings of rank: they carry on them the shadows of battle smoke, and the rust of enviable wounds. Let us take his memory then gladly, and with true homage, rejoicing that its record of happiness appears as stainless as its history of honour, and well satisfied to find one picture in which something of the sunshine of high gallantry seems caught, and for all time.
Dr. Johnson wrote thirty lines of eulogy of him, with the nicety and distinction of phrase which one would expect. Perhaps the simple ending of it is most impressive of all; so let us make it our own for the occasion:
"... But the ALMIGHTY,
Whom alone he feared, and whose gracious protection
He had often experienced,
Was pleased to remove him from a place of Honour,
To an eternity of happiness,
On the 29th day of July, 1752,
In the 49th year of his age."