In our house one same stern, unbending rule prevailed. I have been told by my aunt, Gainor Wynne, that when he was young my father was not always so steadfast in conduct as to satisfy Friends. When I was old enough to observe and think, he had surely become strict enough; but this severity of opinion and action increased with years, and showed in ways which made life difficult for those near to him. In fact, before I attained manhood the tinted arms and the picture of Wyncote were put away in the attic room. My mother’s innocent love of ornament also became to him a serious annoyance, and these peculiarities seemed at last to deepen whenever the political horizon darkened. At such times he became silent, and yet more keen than usual to detect and denounce anything in our home life which was not to his liking.
The affairs of a young fellow between the ages of childhood and younger manhood can have but meagre interest. Our school life went on, and while we worked or played, our elders saw the ever-increasing differences between king and colonies becoming year by year more difficult of adjustment. Except when some noisy crisis arose, they had for us lads but little interest.
Most people used the city landings, or lightered their goods from ships in the stream. We, however, had a great dock built out near to the mouth of Dock Creek, and a warehouse. Hither came sloops from my father’s plantation of tobacco, near Annapolis, and others from the “permitted islands,” the Cape de Verde and the Madeiras. Staves for barrels, tobacco, and salt fish were the exports, and in return came Eastern goods brought to these islands, and huge tuns of Madeira wine. Rum, too, arrived from New England, and salted mackerel. What else my father imported, of French goods or tea, reached us from England, for we were not allowed to trade with the continent of Europe nor directly with India.
Once my father took me with him to Lewes, near Cape Hinlopen, on one of his ships, and to my joy we were met there by Tom, our black slave, with horses, and rode back during two days by Newcastle and Chester. As I rode ill, of course, and was sore for a week, my father thought it well that I should learn to ride, and this exercise I took to easily. Just before I was sixteen my aunt gave me a horse, and after we had separated abruptly a few times, and no harm to any, I became the master, and soon an expert rider, as was needful in a land where most long journeys were made on horseback.
It seems to me now, as I look back, that the events of life were preparing me and my friend Jack for what was to follow. Our boating made every part of the two rivers familiar. Now that I had a horse, Jack’s father, who would always do for him readily what my Aunt Gainor did for me, yielded to his desire to ride; and so it was that we began, as leisure served, to extend our rides to Germantown, or even to Chestnut Hill. Thus all the outlying country became well known to both of us, and there was not a road, a brook, or a hill which we did not know.
Until this happy time I had been well pleased to follow my aunt on a pillion behind her servant, Caesar, but now I often went with her, perched on my big horse, and got from my aunt, an excellent horsewoman, some sharp lessons as to leaping, and certain refinements in riding that she had seen or known of in London.
A Captain Montresor—he who afterward, when a colonel, was Howe’s engineer—used to ride with her in the spring of ‘69. He was a tall, stout man of middle age, and much spoken of as likely to marry my Aunt Gainor, although she was older than he, for, as fat Oliver de Lancey said years after, “There is no age to a woman’s money, and guineas are always young.” My aunt, Gainor Wynne, was still a fine gentlewoman, and did not look her years. As concerned this question of age, she was like a man, and so in fact she was in some other ways. She would tell any one how old she was. She once informed Mr. de Lancey that she was so much more of a man than any British officer she knew that she did not see how she could decently marry any of them.
I think it was about this time that I saw a little scene which much impressed me, and which often recurs to my memory. We—that is, Mr. Montresor, and my Aunt Gainor and I—of a Saturday afternoon rode over by the lower ferry and up Gray’s Lane, and so to Mr. Hamilton’s country-seat. “The Woodlands,” as it was called, stood on a hill amid many beautiful trees and foreign shrubs and flowers. Below it ran the quiet Schuylkill, and beyond, above the governor’s woods, could be seen far away Dr. Kearsley’s fine spire of Christ Church. No better did Master Wren himself ever contrive, or more proportioned to the edifice beneath it.
On the porch were Mr. Hamilton and Mrs. Penn, with saucy gray eyes, and Mrs. Ferguson. A slim young girl, Rebecca Franks, was teasing a cat. She teased some one all her days, and did it merrily, and not unkindly. She was little and very pretty, with a dark skin. Did she dream she should marry a British soldier—a baronet and general—and end her days in London well on in the century yet to come?
Andrew Allen, whose father, the chief justice, took his wife, Margaret, from this house, sat on the steps near Miss Franks, and beside her little Peggy Shippen, who already gave promise of the beauty which won for her so pitiful a life. Nothing in this garden of gay women and flowers foretold the tragedy of West Point. I think of it now with sad wonder.