"On you alone my happiness depends, and will you doom me to languish in despair? Shall I expect no return to the most sincere, ardent, and disinterested passion? Do you feel no pity in your gentle bosom for the man who would die to make you happy?...
"Consider before you doom me to misery, which I have not deserved but by loving you too extravgantly. Consult your own happiness, and if incompatible, forget there is so unhappy a wretch; for may I perish if I would give you one moment's inquietude to purchase the greatest possible felicity to myself. Whatever my fate is, my most ardent wish is for your happiness, and my latest breath will be to implore the blessing of heaven on the idol and only wish of my soul...."
And Alexander Hamilton wrote this of his "Betty": "I suspect ... that if others knew the charm of my sweetheart as I do, I would have a great number of competitors. I wish I could give you an idea of her. You have no conception of how sweet a girl she is. It is only in my heart that her image is truly drawn. She has a lovely form, and still more lovely mind. She is all Goodness, the gentlest, the dearest, the tenderest of her sex—Ah, Betsey, How I love her...."[276]
And let those who doubt that there was romance in the wooing of the old days read the story of Agnes Surrage, the humble kitchen maid, who, while scrubbing the tavern floor, attracted the attention of handsome Harry Frankland, custom officer of Boston, scion of a noble English family. With a suspiciously sudden interest in her, he obtained permission from her parents to have her educated, and for a number of years she was given the best training and culture that money could purchase. Then, when she was twenty-four, Frankland wished to marry her; but his proud family would not consent, and even threatened to disinherit him. The couple, in despair, defied all conventionalities, and Frankland took her to live with him at his Boston residence. Conservative Boston was properly scandalized—so much so that the lovers retired to a beautiful country home near the city, where for some time they lived in what the New Englanders considered ungodly happiness. Then the couple visited England, hoping that the elder Franklands would forgive, but the family snubbed the beautiful American, and made life so unpleasant for her that young Frankland took her to Madrid. Finally at Lisbon the crisis came; for in the terrors of the famous earthquake he was injured and separated from her, and in his misery he vowed that when he found her, he would marry her in spite of all. This he did, and upon their return to Boston they were received as kindly as before they had been scornfully rejected.
Mrs. Frankland became a prominent member of society, was even presented at Court, and for some years was looked upon as one of the most lovable women residing in London. When in 1768 her husband died, she returned to America, and made her home at Boston, where in Revolutionary days she suffered so greatly through her Tory inclinations that she fled once more to England. What more pleasing romance could one want? It has all the essentials of the old-fashioned novel of love and adventure.
XI. Feminine Independence
Certainly in the above instance we have once more an independence on the part of colonial woman certainly not emphasized in the books on early American history. As Humphreys says in Catherine Schuyler: "The independence of the modern girl seems pale and ineffectual beside that of the daughters of the Revolution." There is, for instance, the saucy woman told of in Garden's Anecdotes of the Revolutionary War: "Mrs. Daniel Hall, having obtained permission to pay a visit to her mother on John's Island, was on the point of embarking, when an officer, stepping forward, in the most authoritative manner, demanded the key of her trunk. 'What do you expect to find there?' said the lady. 'I seek for treason,' was the reply. 'You may save yourself the trouble of searching, then,' said Mrs. Hall; 'for you can find a plenty of it at my tongue's end.'"
The daughters of General Schuyler certainly showed independence; for of the four, only one, Elisabeth, wife of Hamilton, was married with the father's consent, and in his home. Shortly after the battle of Saratoga the old warrior announced the marriage of his eldest daughter away from home, and showed his chagrin in the following expression: "Carter and my eldest daughter ran off and were married on the 23rd of July. Unacquainted with his family connections and situation in life, the matter was exceedingly disagreeable, and I signified it to them." Six years later, the charming Peggy eloped, when there was no reason for it, with Steven Rensselaer, a man who afterwards became a powerful leader in New York commercial and political movements. The third escapade, that of Cornelia, was still more romantic; for, having attended the wedding of Eliza Morton in New Jersey, she met the bride's brother and promptly fell in love with him. Her father as promptly refused to sanction the match, and demanded that the girl have nothing to do with the young man. One evening not long afterwards, as Humphreys describes it, two muffled figures appeared under Miss Cornelia's window. At a low whistle, the window softly opened, and a rope was thrown up. Attached to the rope was a rope ladder, which, making fast, like a veritable heroine of romance the bride descended. They were driven to the river, where a boat was waiting to take them across. On the other side was the coach-and-pair. They were then driven thirty miles across country to Stockbridge, where an old friend of the Morton family lived. The affair had gone too far. The Judge sent for a neighboring minister, and the runaways were duly married. So flagrant a breach of the paternal authority was not to be hastily forgiven.... As in the case of the other runaways, the youthful Mortons disappointed expectation, by becoming important householders and taking a prominent place in the social life of New York, where Washington Morton achieved some distinction at the bar.[277]
It is evident that in affairs of love, if not in numerous other phases of life, colonial women had much liberty and if the liberty were denied them, took affairs into their own hands, and generally attained their heart's desire.