It is not known whether the place of John André's nativity was in London or elsewhere in England. His father was a Switzer, born in Geneva. He was a merchant in London, where he married a pretty French maiden named Girardot, a native of that city, who in the year 1751 became the mother of the famous British spy.
Of André's childhood and early youth very little is known, even of the scenes of his primary education. Later, we find him at the University in Geneva; and, when he was approaching young manhood, he was distinguished for many accomplishments and solid acquirements. He had mastered several European languages, and was an expert mathematician. He was versed in military science, and had a wide acquaintance with belles-lettres literature. He was an adept in music, dancing, and the arts of design, and was specially commended for his military drawings.
André had a taste and a desire for military life; but, before he was seventeen years of age, he was called home to take a place in his father's counting-room. At that time his family lived at the Manor House, Clapton, where his father died in the spring of 1769. The family then consisted of the widow, two sons, and three daughters. Of these John was the oldest and Anna was the youngest—the "tuneful Anna," as Miss Seward calls her in her "Monody," because of her poetic genius.
John, though so young, was now a chief manager of his father's business and the head of his mother's household. The summer of 1769 was spent by the family at little villages in the interior of England, in the picturesque region of Lichfield, a famous cathedral town, in which Dr. Johnson was born, and at its grammar-school he and Addison and Garrick received their earlier education.
In that delightful neighborhood young André formed an acquaintance with Miss Anna Seward, the bright and charming daughter of Rev. Thomas Seward, canon-resident of Lichfield Cathedral, who lived in the bishop's palace. His daughter, then twenty-two years of age, was already distinguished as a poet. Her home was the gathering-place of the local literary celebrities of that day—Dr. Erasmus Darwin, author of "The Botanic Garden," and grandfather of the champion of the doctrine of evolution in our day; Thomas Hayley, author of "The Triumphs of Temper"; Sir Brooke Boothby, who wrote "Fables and Satires"; Richard Lovell Edgeworth, a "gay Lothario," with some literary pretensions; Thomas Day, an eccentric philosopher, who wrote the story of "Sandford and Merton," once as popular as "Robinson Crusoe"; the blind and ill-humored Miss Anna Williams, the biographer of the Emperor Julian; and other residents or occasional sojourners.
Miss Seward was the central figure in this literary circle. Her personal beauty, vivacity, wit, and charming conversational powers, were very fascinating. Into that galaxy John André was introduced and gave it additional luster.
The young London merchant also became acquainted with another maiden near his own age. She is represented as exceedingly lovely in person and character. Her eyes were blue, her hair was of a golden color, and her complexion was brilliant, heightened in its charms, perhaps, by a hectic glow upon her cheek—the sad prophecy of the early fading of youthful beauty and of life. The maiden was Honora Sneyd, an inmate of the family of Canon Seward, and the loved companion of Anna.
Honora Sneyd.—(From a painting by Romney.)[12]