Perhaps, however, the writer owed a shopkeeper who sued him; or he had been fined for offering violence to some other importunate creditor; and as to the costs of litigation, it is likely, that in this year of grace some luckless litigant, in the modern Pensacola, can be found who would heave a sympathetic sigh on reading the complaint which comes to us from a suitor in its early days.
Besides, the reference to the treatment received by three governors, in a letter written in 1770, is rather puzzling, for though three governors had been appointed for West Florida up to that time, but two, Johnstone and Brown, administered its government. Johnstone resigned and, therefore, Brown must have been the man, if any, who was horsewhipped and led by the nose. As “led by the nose,” however, is a metaphor, “horsewhipped” may, perhaps, be regarded as a figure of speech likewise.
Strange though it be, yet so it is, in the mass of Pensacola correspondence, from 1763 to 1770, we find mention made of military officers of every grade, governors, secretaries, surveyors, judges, male Indians, ships, boats, bricks, lumber, shingles, wine, swords, muskets, cheese, cannon and fiddles, but of a woman or any of her belongings, never, with only two exceptions.
One comes to us like an attractive mirage on the far-off horizon of this Sahara of masculinity and soulless things in the person of Mrs. Hugh Wallace of Philadelphia, a friend of General Haldimand, in respect to whom, in a letter to her husband, he says: “I beg my best respects may be acceptable to Mrs. Wallace.” The other is a nameless moral wreck, of whom the writer of a letter exclaims: “I wish I could make the mother of my children my wife!” forcing upon the imagination the shadow of a wronged wife, with one’s heart touched by the probable sorrows of a blighted life.
But, though excluded from men’s letters, we do not need their correspondence to inform us that wives, mothers, sisters and nurses formed no inconsiderable part of the population of Pensacola in those early days, for we know it as certainly, fully, and confidently as we know the town must have been blessed with air, light, food, and all the other vivifying conditions of human existence.
It has been intimated that fiddles were the subject of correspondence, and thuswise. It appears that General Haldimand was the owner of two fiddles. Whether fiddling was one of his accomplishments does not appear. But as ownership of one fiddle ordinarily creates the presumption that the owner is a performer in some one of the three degrees of good, bad or indifferent, the ownership of two would seem to be conclusive of the fact.
However that may be, it seems that Governor Thomas Penn of Pennsylvania had knowledge of the instruments, and, presumably, knowing their merits, coveted them to such a degree that the general induced him to pay $360 for them. As the bargain was made by letter, after the general and the fiddles had been in Pensacola for several years, we may infer that their dulcet tones must have made a deep and ineffaceable impression upon the governor, which no other fiddles could remove. By a vessel sailing from Pensacola to Philadelphia, the general sent a box containing the two fiddles to Mr. Joseph Shipping of that place, agent of Governor Penn, and also a letter to Hugh Ross, his own agent, whom he tells (evidently with the chuckle of a trader who has made a good bargain) of the $360 he is to collect from Shipping, closing the letter with the exclamation, “I wish I had more fiddles to sell!”
Correspondence in 1767 shows courtesies exchanged between Pensacola and Philadelphia. A Pensacolian sends a sea turtle, and the Philadelphian returns a cheese.
The town was accused of being hot and inhospitable. But the letter of complaint tells what a specific wine is for the prevention of all climatic diseases and the other ills of life. One gentleman, to be sure of a supply of the panacea, orders a pipe of old Madeira.
On November 14, 1768, we are walking down the east side of George street from the gardens to the Bay. After passing two blocks we find ourselves on the Public Square and in front of a large building. Going in and out of that building are many people, the most of them soldiers and Indians, and somewhere in or about it we find a Mr. Arthur Neil. Upon inquiry we are informed the building is the king’s store-house, and Mr. Neil its keeper. Leaving the store, a short walk brings us to the shore and afterwards to the king’s wharf, which we see covered with troops, some of them getting into boats, whilst others, already embarked, are going to a ship lying at anchor. That ship is the Pensacola bound for Charleston, South Carolina. The troops are the Thirty-first regiment, lately stationed at Mobile, whence they have just arrived, after an overland march, for the purpose of embarking in the Pensacola. Whether they shall remain at Charleston in winter quarters will, according to a letter of General Haldimand to Colonel Chisolm, “depend upon the conduct of the Bostonians.”[[11]]