Kate Aylesford: A Story of the Refugees

by Charles J. Peterson

“You shall see all,” said Kate, “only come; and there’ll be no one more welcome.”

“Well, you may depend on me, as I said before; that is if I’m alive. The Lord bless you, my child,” he concluded, with great seriousness, “and make you as happy as you are good and beautiful.”

“Farewell,” said Kate, the tears coming into her eyes; and the carriage drove on.

The veteran remained standing, with his hat off, and his thin gray hairs stirring in the autumn breeze, until the coach had disappeared; when he turned to seek his dwelling, feeling as if he had parted with one of his own flesh and blood; and that night, when he led the family devotions, he prayed as fervently for Kate as for any member of his own household.

The Aylesford mansion, in Philadelphia, was an imposing, aristocratic looking edifice, standing back from the street, amid venerable trees, and surrounded by a spacious garden. Thirty years ago, more than one such stately relic of the ante-revolutionary times was still to be seen in our midst; but they have all been long since demolished, or have been so shorn of their surroundings, as to have lost most of their ancient dignity. The town-house of the Aylesfords was among the proudest of these old colonial mansions. It had been, in the preceding generation, the head-quarters of fashion in the city. In the grand, wainscotted room, every person of distinction, who had visited the metropolis, during a period of nearly twenty years, had been entertained. There beauty had rustled its silks, dazzled with its diamonds, conquered by the graceful use of the fan, and awed by the haughty carriage of its plumed and scornful head. There Washington, then a young man, had visited, on that memorable tour in which he lost his heart to the beautiful tory of New York. There royal governors and titled nobles, courted heiresses and worshiped belles, officers and statesmen, the proud Virginia planters and the wealthy Boston merchants, the chivalrous Carolinian and the princely manorial lords of the Hudson, had assembled to drink the rare wines of the host, dance the minuet, or exchange the stately courtesies of the time.

But for many years the mansion had been shut up. A solitary servant had been its sole tenant during all this time. The boys had been allowed, unchecked, to club down the English walnuts from the trees in the yard, and the towns-people had come to consider its desolate look as one of the characteristics of the street where it stood.

Consequently, when the shutters were seen thrown open, one fine November day, and the servant was observed to be carefully scrubbing the gray stone steps in front, everybody was agog with curiosity. The arrival of a travelling carriage, towards evening, collected quite a crowd, and when a tall and graceful girl alighted, followed by a child, and subsequently by a stately, dowager-like lady, the spectators spread the intelligence that the Aylesfords had actually come to town as if to stay, a fact which set half the teatables in the place speculating as to whether the family could be as great tories as rumor had said, or whether it was really true, as had begun to be whispered by those who ought to know, that the heiress was going to marry a patriot officer, high in the esteem of General Washington.

When Kate, the morning after her arrival, walked through the desolate-looking garden, she almost despaired of ever being able to restore it to order. The once clipped boxwood had grown into all sorts of fantastic shapes; the gravel walks were covered with grass; rank weeds had overrun the flower beds; and the grotto at the foot, which, in her childish days, she was accustomed to regard as the greatest wonder of the world, was damp with water, stripped of its shells, and covered with green, slimy moss.

Mrs. Warren, who, to do her justice, was as notable a housekeeper as she was a martinet in dress, walked through the mansion, meantime, absolutely beside herself with dismay. Panes of glass were cracked; spider-webs were everywhere; the wood work was almost black from damp and want of light; the roof leaked; and the whole place, she declared, smelt musty. The good dame exaggerated not a little; nevertheless, the house was in sad, almost dismal disarray, and as the instructions to have it renovated had been disregarded, maids were set to work immediately. For nearly a fortnight buckets and scrubbing brushes had it all their own way. Mrs. Warren, with the true spirit of an old-fashioned Philadelphia housekeeper, was so happy amid this turmoil, that she forgot to reflect on Kate for having ridden alone. Indeed, the excellent dame was never better pleased than when house-cleaning, unless, perhaps, when talking of her cousin, Lord Alvanley, or appearing in a new damask gown.

At last, however, the dowager pronounced “things fit to be seen;” and, ceasing to scold the maids, reassumed the great lady. To use her own phrase, she could now go about the house without “getting the fidgets.” We may amuse ourselves in this harmless way, with smiling at the excellent creature’s nervous abhorrence of illy-performed housework; but, perhaps, the dames of the present age would be none the worse if they imitated the habits of their great-grandmothers in personally supervising such labor more frequently than they do. The highest in the land, in the good old times, were not above ordering their households; and did not either delegate the duty to upper servants, or leave things to chance.