The benevolence of Mrs. Bleecker's heart overflowed on all with whom she associated. "To the aged and infirm," says her daughter, "she was a physician and a friend; to the orphan a mother, and a soother of the widow's woes." She is said to have possessed a considerable share of beauty, her figure being tall and graceful; and her easy, unaffected deportment and engaging manners prepossessed strangers in her favor. Her letters describing the scenes around her, show her ardent and poetical temperament. An intense love of nature appears in her poems, and a warmth of heart, with a delicacy and taste, that cannot fail to please; though they lack the high finish a greater severity of critical judgment would have bestowed.
Mrs. Bleecker's daughter, Margaretta Faugeres, was also a poet, and has sung in sweet strains "the hoar genius of old Hudsons stream," including a description of the scenery of Fort Edward and West Point. In the latter portion is introduced a highly poetical "Vision of Arnold," where Treason is personified, plotting her dark schemes while bending over the bright waters, and stealing softly to the traitor's couch. Margaretta became distinguished after the war, in New York fashionable society, as a gifted and accomplished woman, although her married life was rendered unhappy by a profligate husband. After his death in 1798, she assisted in a female academy in New Brunswick; but her sufferings had broken her heart. She died, a hopeful Christian, at the early age of twenty-nine.
ALICE IZARD
The correspondence of Ralph Izard was published a few years since by his daughter, Anne Izard Deas, at the desire of her mother, whose anxiety to do justice to the memory of her husband proves her worthy of sharing in his fame. Moving in her youth in the gayest circles of New York society, her amiable qualities, and the discretion and modesty joined to her singular personal attractions, won the admiration and regard of all her acquaintances, and gave promise of those virtues which shone amid the trials of after life.
She was the daughter of Peter De Lancey, of Westchester, and niece to James De Lancey, Lieutenant Governor of the province of New York. It is remarkable how many women of this distinguished family have married eminent men. Susan, the daughter of Colonel Stephen De Lancey, whose first husband was Lieutenant Colonel William Johnson, became the wife of Lieutenant General Sir Hudson Lowe, and was the beautiful Lady Lowe praised by Bonaparte. Charlotte De Lancey, who married Sir David Dundas, did not escape her share of trials during the war. When their house at Bloomingdale was burned, her mother hid herself in a kennel, and not being able on account of her deafness to discover when the enemy departed, narrowly escaped death. On a visit afterwards from a party of soldiers, the young girl was put into a bin for concealment by the servants, and covered with oats, into which the soldiers, who were in search of a prisoner they might hold as a hostage, plunged their bayonets repeatedly, but luckily did not touch her. A Miss De Lancey was the wife of Sir William Draper. In later years one of this family married a distinguished American, whose genius is the pride of his country. *
* J. Fenimore Cooper.
Alice was married in 1767, to Ralph Izard; and after some years accompanied him to Europe. After the breaking out of the war, her anxious desire was to return with him to this country; but not being able to do so, she remained in France during his absence, devoting herself to the care and improvement of her children.