Autobiography of Seventy Years, Vol. 1-2

by George Frisbie Hoar

Just behind my chair hung a full-length portrait of Admiral Boscawen, a famous naval officer connected with our early history. For him was named the town of Boscawen in New Hampshire, where Daniel Webster practised law. The house where we were had been his. I think he was in some way akin to the host.

I sailed for home on Wednesday. The Friday night before, I dined with Moreton Frewen, Esq., an accomplished English gentleman, well known on this side of the Atlantic. Mr. Frewen had been very kind and hospitable to me, as he had been to many Americans. He deserves the gratitude of both nations for what he has done to promote good feeling between the two countries by his courtesy to Americans of all parties and ways of thinking. He has helped make the leading men of both countries know each other. From that knowledge has commonly followed a hearty liking for each other.

I mention this dinner, as I did the visit to Mr. Grenfell, because of its connection with a very interesting transaction. The guests at the dinner were Sir Julian Pauncefote, afterward Lord Pauncefote, the British Ambassador to the United States, who was then at home on a brief visit; Sir Seymour Blaine, an old military officer who had won, as I was told, great distinction in the East, and two Spanish noblemen.

The soldier told several very interesting stories of his military life, and of what happened to him in his early days.

Of these I remember two. He said that when he was a young officer, scarcely more than a boy, he was invited by the Duke of Wellington, with other officers, to a great ball at Apsley House. Late in the evening, after the guests had left the supper room, and it was pretty well deserted, he felt a desire for another glass of wine. There was nobody in the supper room. He was just pouring out a glass of champagne for himself, when he heard a voice behind him. "Youngster, what are you doing?" He turned round. It was the Duke. He said, "I am getting a glass of wine." To this the Duke replied, "You ought to be up-stairs dancing. There are but two things, Sir, for a boy like you to be doing. One is fighting; the other dancing with the girls. As for me I'm going to bed." Thereupon the Duke passed round the table; touched a spring which opened a secret door, in what was apparently a set of book-shelves, and disappeared.

Sir Seymour Blaine told another story which, I dare say, is well known. But I have never seen it in print. He said that just before the Battle of Talavera when the Duke, then Sir Arthur Wellesley, was in command in Spain, the English and French armies had been marching for many days on parallel lines, neither quite liking to attack the other, and neither having got the advantage in position which they were seeking. At last, one day, when everybody was pretty weary with the fatigues of the march, the Duke summoned some of his leading officers together and said to them: "You see that clump of trees (pointing to one a good distance away, but in sight from where they stood)—when the head of the French column reaches that clump of trees, attack. As for me I'm going to sleep under this bush." Thereupon the great soldier lay down, all his arrangements being made, and everything being in readiness, and took his nap while the great battle of Talavera— on which the fate of Spain and perhaps the fate of Europe depended—was begun. This adds another instance to the list of the occasions to which Mr. Everett refers when he speaks of Webster's sleeping soundly the night before his great reply to Hayne.

"So the great Conde' slept on the eve of the battle of Rocroi; so Alexander slept on the eve of the battle of Arbela; and so they awoke to deeds of immortal fame!"

But this dinner of Mr. Frewen's had a very interesting consequence. As I took leave of him at his door about eleven o'clock, he asked me if there were anything more he could do for me. I said, "No, unless you happen to know the Lord Bishop of London. I have a great longing to see the Bradford Manuscript before I go home. It is in the Bishop's Library. I went to Fulham the other day, but found the Bishop was gone. I had supposed the Library was a half-public one. I asked the servant who came to the door for the librarian. He told me there was no such officer, and that it was treated in all respects as a private library. But I should be very glad if I could get an opportunity to see it." Mr. Frewen answered, "I do not myself know the Bishop. But Mr. Grenfell, at whose house you spent Sunday, a little while ago, is his nephew by marriage. He is in Scotland. But if I can reach him, I will procure for you a letter to his uncle." That was Friday. Sunday morning there came a note from Mr. Grenfell to the Bishop. I enclosed it to his Lordship in one from myself, in which I said that if it were agreeable to him, I would call at Fulham the next Tuesday, at an hour which I fixed. I got a courteous reply from the Bishop, in which he said that he would be glad to show me the "log of the Mayflower," as he called it. I kept the appointment, and found the Bishop with the book in his hand. He received me very courteously, and showed me a little of the palace. He said that there had been a Bishop's palace on that spot for more than a thousand years.

I took the precious manuscript in my hands, and examined it with an almost religious reverence. I had delivered the address at Plymouth, the twenty-first of December, 1895, on the occasion of the two hundred and seventy-fifth anniversary of the landing of the Pilgrims upon the rock. In preparing for that duty I read carefully, with renewed enthusiasm and delight, the noble and touching story as told by Governor Bradford. I declared then that this precious history ought to be in no other custody than that of their children.

There have been several attempts to procure the return of the manuscript to this country. Mr. Winthrop, in 1860, through the venerable John Sinclair, Archdeacon, urged the Bishop of London to give it up, and proposed that the Prince of Wales, then just coming to this country, should take it across the Atlantic and present it to the people of Massachusetts. The Attorney-General, Sir Fitzroy Kelley, approved the plan, and said it would be an exceptional act of grace, a most interesting action, and that he heartily wished the success of the application. But the Bishop refused. Again, in 1869, John Lothrop Motley, the Minister to England, who had a great and deserved influence there, repeated the proposition, at the suggestion of that most accomplished scholar, Justin Winsor. But his appeal had the same fate. The Bishop gave no encouragement, and said, as had been said nine years before, that the property could not be alienated without an Act of Parliament. Mr. Winsor planned to repeat the attempt on his visit to England in 1887. When he was at Fulham the Bishop was absent, and he was obliged to go home without seeing him in person.