As it turned out he was not disappointed. Martha Reay, when she went to live at Hinchinbrook at the age of eighteen, showed herself to be a most accomplished young lady, as she certainly was a very charming one. She was found to possess a lovely voice, and was quite fitted to take her place, not merely in his lordship's music-room, but also in his drawing-room to which he advanced her. To say that she was treated as one of his lordship's family would be to convey a wrong impression, considering how he treated the principal member of his family, but certainly he introduced her to his guests, and she took her place at his table at dinner parties. He even put her next to the wife of a bishop upon one occasion, feeling sure that she would captivate that lady, and as it turned out, his anticipations were fully realised; only the bishop's lady, on making inquiries later on, protested that she was scandalised by being placed in such a position as permitted of her yielding to the fascinations of a young person occupying a somewhat equivocal position in the household.
It was when she was at Hinchinbrook, in October, 1775, that Miss Reay met the man who was to play so important a part in her life—and death. Cradock, the “country gentleman,” tells in his Memoirs the story of the first meeting of the two. Lord Sandwich was anxious that a friend of his own should be elected to a professorship at Cambridge, and Cradock, having a vote, was invited to use it on behalf of his lordship's candidate, and to stay for a night at Hinchinbrook on his way back to London. He travelled in Lord Sandwich's coach, and when in the act of driving through the gateway at Hinchinbrook, it overtook a certain Major Reynolds and another officer who was stationed on recruiting duty in the neighbourhood. Lord Sandwich, being acquainted with Reynolds, dismounted and invited him and his friend to a family dinner at his lordship's place that evening. Major Reynolds expressed his appreciation of this act of courtesy, and introduced his friend as Captain Hackman. The party was a simple affair.
It consisted of Lord Sandwich, Miss Reay, another lady, the two officers, and Mr. Cradock. After coffee had been served two rubbers of whist were played, and the party broke up.
This was the first meeting of Hackman and Miss Reay. They seem to have fallen in love immediately, each with the other, for the first letter in the correspondence, written in December, 1775, contains a good deal that suggests the adolescence of a passion. Hackman was a man of education and some culture, and he showed few signs of developing into that maudlin sentimentalist who corresponded with the lady a year or two later. He was but twenty-three years of age, the son of a retired officer in the navy, who had sent him to St. John's College, Cambridge, and afterwards bought him a commission in the 68th Foot. He was probably only an ensign when he was stationed at Huntingdon, but being in charge of the recruiting party, enjoyed the temporary rank of captain.
He must have had a pretty fair conceit of his own ability as a correspondent, for he kept a copy of his love letters. Of course, there is no means of ascertaining if he kept copies of all that he ever wrote; he may have sent off some in the hot passion of the moment, but those which passed into the hands of his brother-in-law and were afterwards published, were copies which he had retained. Miss Reay was doubtless discreet enough to destroy the originals before they had a chance of falling into the hands of Lord Sandwich. It is difficult for us who live in this age of scrawls and “correspondence cards” to imagine the existence of that enormous army of letter-writers who flourished their quills in the eighteenth century, for the entertainment of their descendants in the nineteenth and twentieth; but still more difficult is it to understand how, before the invention of any mechanical means of reproducing manuscript, these voluminous correspondents first made a rough draft of every letter, then corrected and afterwards copied it, before sending it—securing a frank from a friendly Member of Parliament—to its destination.
Superlatively difficult is it to imagine an ardent lover sitting down to transcribe into the pages of a notebook the outpourings of his passion. But this is what Ensign Hackman did, although so far as the consequences of his love-making were concerned, he is deserving of a far higher place among great lovers than Charlotte's Werther, or Mr. Swinburne's Dolores. Charlotte we know “went on cutting bread and butter” after the death of her honourable lover; but poor little Miss Reay was the victim of the passion which she undoubtedly fanned into a flame of madness. Ensign Hackman made copies of his love-letters, and we are grateful to him, for by their aid we can perceive the progress of his disease. They are like the successive pictures in a biograph series lately exhibited at a conversazione of the Royal Society, showing the development of a blossom into a perfect flower. We see by the aid of these letters how he gave way under the attack of what we should now call the bacillus of that maudlin sentimentality which was in the air in his day.
He began his love-letters like a gallant officer, but ended them in the strain of the distracted curate who had been jilted just when he has laid down the cork lino in the new study and got rid of the plumbers. He wrote merrily of his “Corporal Trim,” who was the bearer of a “billet” from her. “He will be as good a soldier to Cupid as to Mars, I dare say. And Mars and Cupid are not now to begin their acquaintance, you know.” Then he goes on to talk in a fine soldierly strain of the drum “beating for volunteers to Bacchus. In plain English, the drum tells me dinner is ready, for a drum gives us bloody-minded heroes an appetite for eating as well as for fighting.... Adieu—whatever hard service I may have after dinner, no quantity of wine shall make me let drop or forget my appointment with you tomorrow. We certainly were not seen yesterday, for reasons I will give you.”
This letter was written on December 7th, and it was followed by another the next day, and a still longer one the day following. In fact, Corporal Trim must have been kept as busy as his original in the service of Uncle Toby, during the month of December, his duty being to receive the lady's letters, as well as to deliver the gentleman's, and he seems to have been equally a pattern of fidelity.
Hackman's letters at this time were models of good taste, with only the smallest amount of swagger in them. His intentions were strictly honourable, and they were not concealed within any cocoon of sentimental phraseology. One gathers from his first letters that he was a simple and straightforward gentleman, who, having fallen pretty deeply in love with a young woman, seeks to make her his wife at the earliest possible moment. Unfortunately however, the lady had fallen under the influence of the prevailing affectation, and her scheme of life did not include a commonplace marriage with a subaltern in a marching regiment. One might be disposed to say that she knew when she was well off. The aspiration to be made “a respectable woman” by marriage in a church was not sufficiently strong in her to compel her to sacrifice the many good things with which she was surrounded, in order to realise it. But, of course, she was ready to pose as a miserable woman, linked to a man whom she did not love, but too honourable to leave him, and far too thoughtful for the career of the man whom she did love with all her soul ever to become a burden to him. She had read the ballad of “Auld Robin Gray”—she quoted it in full in one of her letters—and she was greatly interested to find how closely her case resembled that of the wife in the poem. She had brought herself to think of the man who had bought her just as he would buy a peach tree, or a new tulip, as her “benefactor.” Did she not owe to him the blessing of a good education, and the culture of her voice, her knowledge of painting—nay, her “keep” for several years, and her introduction to the people of quality who visited at Hinchinbrook and at the Admiralty? She seemed to think it impossible for any one to doubt that Lord Sandwich had acted toward her with extraordinary generosity, and that she would be showing the most contemptible ingratitude were she to forsake so noble a benefactor. But all the same she found Hinchinbrook intolerably dull at times, and she was so pleased at the prospect of having a lover, that she came to fancy that she loved the first one who turned up.
She was undoubtedly greatly impressed by the ballad of “Auld Robin Gray,” and she at once accepted the rôle of the unhappy wife, only she found it convenient to modify one rather important line—