Still, still, to-day and here, thou hast a part,
Illustrious Lady,
In every honest Anglo-Saxon heart,
Albeit untrained to notes of loyalty:
As lovers of our old ancestral race,—
In reverence for the goodness and the grace
Which lends thy fifty years of Royalty
A monumental glory on the Historic page,
Emblazoning them forever as the Victorian Age;
For all the virtue, faith and fortitude,
The piety and truth
Which mark thy noble womanhood,
As erst thy golden youth,—
We also would do honor to thy name,
Joining our distant voices to the loud acclaim
Which rings o'er earth and sea,
In attestation of the just renown
Thy reign has added to the British Crown!
Meanwhile no swelling sounds of exultation
Can banish from our memory,
On this auspicious Jubilee,
A saintly figure standing at thy side,
The cherished consort of thy power and pride,
Through weary years the subject of thy tears,
And mourned in every nation,—
Whose latest words a wrong to us withstood,
The friend of peace,—Albert, the Wise and Good!
Robert C. Winthrop.
Boston, June, 1887.
At Geneseo, in the beautiful Genesee Valley, and a few miles from Canandaigua, in one of the most fertile portions of the State of New York, resided a contemporary and friend of Mrs. Robert C. Winthrop, Miss Elizabeth Wadsworth, a daughter of James Wadsworth, a well-known philanthropist and one of the wealthiest landed proprietors in the state. He was also the father of Major General James S. Wadsworth, a defeated candidate for Governor of New York, who was killed in 1864 at the battle of the Wilderness. Miss Wadsworth was celebrated for her grace of manner. I had the pleasure of knowing her quite well in New York, where she generally passed her winters. Quite early in life and before the period when the fair daughters of America had discovered, to any great extent, the advantages of matrimonial alliances with foreign partis, she married the Honorable Charles Augustus Murray, a member of the English Parliament and of a Scotch family, the head of which was the Earl of Dunmore. She lived but a few years, and died in Egypt, where her husband was Consul General, leaving a young son. Her husband's ancestor, John Murray, Lord Dunmore, was the last Colonial Governor of Virginia. It has been asserted that but few, if any, Colonial Governors, not even the sportive Lord Cornbury of New York who, upon state occasions, dressed himself up in female attire in compliment to his royal cousin, Queen Anne, had quite as eventful a career. Lord Dunmore originally came to America as Governor of the Province of New York, but was subsequently transferred to Virginia. While in New York he was made President of the St. Andrew's Society, a Scotch organization which had been in existence about twenty years and whose first President was Philip Livingston, the Signer. In an old New York directory of 1798 I find the following names of officers of this society for the preceding year: Walter Ruturfurde (sic), President; Peter M'Dougall and George Turnbull, Vice Presidents; George Douglass, Treasurer; George Johnson, Secretary; John Munro, Assistant Secretary; the Rev. John M. Mason and the Rev. John Bisset, Chaplains; Dr. James Tillary, Physician; and William Renwick, James Stuart, John Knox, Alexander Thomson, Andrew D. Barclay, and John M'Gregor, Managers.
It was not at all flattering to the pride of Virginia that Lord Dunmore lingered so long in New York after his order of transfer to the Old Dominion. He also greatly incurred the displeasure of the Virginians by occasionally dissolving their Assembly, and they found him generally inimical to their interests. Finally matters were brought to an issue, and Dunmore, in defense of his conduct, issued a proclamation against "a certain Patrick Henry and his deluded followers." His final act was the burning of Norfolk in 1776, which at that time was the most flourishing city in Virginia. During Lord Dunmore's life in Colonial Virginia, a daughter was born to him and at the request of the Assembly was named "Virginia." It is said that subsequently a provision was made by the Provincial Legislature, by virtue of which she was to receive a very large sum of money when she became of age. Meanwhile, the War of the Revolution severed the yoke of Great Britain, and Lord Dunmore returned to England with his family. Time passed and the little girl born in the Virginia colony grew into womanhood. Her father had died and as her circumstances became contracted she addressed a letter to Thomas Jefferson, then President of the United States, under the impression that he was Governor of Virginia. Jefferson sent the letter to James Monroe, who was then Governor of Virginia, and he in turn referred it to the Legislature of that State. This letter is now in my possession and is as follows:
Sir:
I am at a loss how to begin a letter in which I am desirous of stating claims that many long years have been forgotten, but which I think no time can really annihilate until fulfilment has followed the promise. I imagine that you must have heard that during my father Dunmore's residence in America I was born and that the Assembly, then sitting at Williamsburg, requested that I might be their God-daughter and christened by the name of Virginia; which request being complied with, they purposed providing for me in a manner suitable to the honor they conferred upon me and to the responsibility they had taken on themselves. I was accordingly christened as the God-daughter of that Assembly and named after the State. Events have since occurred which in some measure may have altered the intentions then expressed in my favor. These were (so I have understood) that a sum of money should be settled upon me which, accumulating during my minority, would make up the sum of one hundred thousand pounds when I became of age. It is true many changes may have taken place in America, but that fact still remains the same. I am still the God-daughter of the Virginians. By being that, may I not flatter myself I have some claims upon their benevolence if not upon their justice? May I not ask that State, especially you, sir, their Governor, to fulfil in some respects the engagements entered into by their predecessors? Your fathers promised mine that I should become their charge. I am totally unprovided for; for my father died without making a will. My brothers are married, having families of their own; and not being bound to do anything for me, they regard with indifference my unprotected and neglected situation. Perhaps I ought not to mention this circumstance as a proper inducement for you to act upon; nor would I, were it not my excuse for wishing to remind you of the claims I now advance. I hope you will feel my right to your favor and protection to be founded on the promises made by your own fathers, and in the situation in which I stand with regard to the State of Virginia. You will ask, sir, why my appeal to your generosity and justice has been so tardy. While my father lived, I lived under his protection and guidance. He had incurred the displeasure of the Virginians and he feared an application from me would have seemed like one from him. At his decease I became a free agent. I had taken no part which could displease my God-fathers, and myself remained what the Assembly had made me—their God-daughter, consequently their charge. I wish particularly to enforce my dependence upon your bounty; for I feel hopes revive, which owe their birth to your honor and generosity, and to that of the State whose representative I now address. Now that my father is no more, I am certain they and you will remember what merited your esteem in his character and conduct and forget that which estranged your hearts from so honorable a man. But should you not, you are too just to visit what you deem the sins of the father upon his luckless daughter.
I am, sir, your obt. etc.