Eighty years ago a tragedy was consummated by the river Hudson, which, in the character of its victim and the circumstances of his story, goes far to yield another example to the list of names immortalized by calamity. On the 2d of October, 1780, a young British officer of undistinguished birth and inconsiderable rank was hanged at Tappan. Amiable as his private life was, and respectable as were his professional abilities, it is improbable that the memory of John André, had he died upon the battle-field or in his bed, would have survived the generation of those who knew and who loved him. The future, indeed, was opening brilliantly before him; but it was still nothing more than the future. So far in his career he had hardly accomplished anything better than the attainment of the mountain-top that commanded a view of the Promised Land. It is solely and entirely to the occasion and the circumstances of his death that we are to ascribe the peculiar and universal interest in his character that has ever since continued to hold its seat in the bosom of friend and of foe. To this day, the most distinguished American and English historians are at issue respecting the justice of his doom; and to this day, the grave inquirer into the rise and fall of empires pauses by the way to glean some scanty memorial of his personal adventures. As often happens, the labors of the lesser author who pursues but a single object may encounter more success on that score than the writer whose view embraces a prodigious range; and many trifling details, too inconsiderable to find place in the pages of the annals of a state, reward the inquiry that confines itself to the elucidation of the conduct of an individual.
John André was born in England, probably at London,--possibly at Southampton,--in the year 1751. His father was an honest, industrious Switzer, who, following the example of his countrymen and his kindred, had abandoned the rugged land of his birth, and come over to England to see what could be made out of John Bull. The family-name appears to have originally been St. André; and this was the style of the famous dancing-master who gave to the courtiers of Charles II. their graceful motions.
"St. André's feet ne'er kept more equal time,"
wrote Dryden, in his "MacFlecknoe"; and the same writer again brings him forward in the third act of "Limberham." It must be remembered that in those days the teacher of fencing and dancing occupied a very respectable position; and St. André's career was sufficiently prosperous to tempt a young kinsman, who felt the elements of success strong within him, to cross the seas in his own turn, and find wealth and reputation in those pleasant pastures which England above all other countries then laid open to the skilful adventurer.
Nicholas St. André, who came to London about the close of the seventeenth century, and who was undoubtedly nearly related to the future Major André, seems to have passed through a career hardly paralleled by that of Gil Blas himself. From the humblest beginnings, his ready wit, his multifarious accomplishments, and his indomitable assurance speedily carried him to the topmost wave of social prosperity. A brief instruction in surgery gave him such a plausible appearance of proficiency in the art as to permit his public lectures to be favorably received, and to lead to his employment in the royal household. George I. made him Anatomist to the Court, and, as a token of especial grace, on one occasion, went so far as to bestow upon the young Swiss his own sword. His attainments in all the amusements of a gentleman probably had more to do with these advancements, however, than any professional skill. He was a capital linguist; at fencing, leaping, running, and other manly exercises, he found few rivals; and his dabblings in architecture and botany were at least as notable as his mastership of chess and his skill as a musician. But when it came to a scientific test of his surgical and anatomical pretensions, his failure was lamentable indeed. The unquenchable thirst for notoriety--which he may have mistaken for fame--was perpetually leading him into questionable positions, and finally covered his name with ridicule and confusion.
An impudent woman, known as Mary Tofts, declared to the world, that, instead of a human child, she had given birth to a litter of rabbits. How such a ridiculous tale ever found believers, it is impossible to conceive; but such was the case. All England, with the very small exception of those who united the possession of learning with common sense, was imbued with the frenzy. The price of warrens was abated to a mere song, and for a season a Londoner would as readily have eaten a baked child as a roasted rabbit. The children of men were believed to populate the burrows, and authorities of the highest reputation lent an unhesitating support to the delusion. The learned Whiston published in the circumstance a fulfilment of a prophecy of Esdras, and St. André loudly urged the authenticity of the entire fable and of the theories that were founded upon it. But the satiric pen of Swift, the burin of Hogarth, and the graver investigations of Cheselden at last turned the popular tide, and covered St. André in particular with such a load of contemptuous obloquy as to drive him forever from the high circles he had moved in. So great was his spleen, that, from that time forth, he would never suffer a dish upon his table or a syllable in his conversation that could in any way bring to mind the absurd occasion of his disgrace.
If all reports are to be believed, St. André's career had led him into many singular adventures. He had saved Voltaire's life, by violently detaining Lord Peterborough, when the latter stood prepared to punish with peremptory death some peccadillo of the Frenchman's. Voltaire fled from the scene, while his adversary struggled to be released. His services to Pope, when the poet was overturned in Lord Bolingbroke's coach, did not protect him from a damaging allusion in the Epilogue to the Satires, where the source of the wealth that he got by his marriage with Lady Betty Molyneux is more plainly than politely pointed out. Leaving forever, therefore, the sphere in which he had encountered so much favor and so much severity, he retired to Southampton to end his days in the society of his kindred; and it is more than probable that an indisposition to proclaim too loudly their identity of race with the unlucky surgeon was the cause of their modification of name by the immediate family from which John André sprung.
The father of our hero was a thrifty London trader, whose business as a Turkey merchant had been prosperous enough to persuade him that no other career could possibly be so well adapted for his son. The lad was of another opinion; but those were not the days when a parent's will might be safely contravened. Sent to Geneva to complete the education that had been commenced at London, he returned to a seat in the counting-room with intellectual qualifications that seemed to justify his aspirations for a very different scene of action. He was a fluent linguist, a ready and graceful master of the pencil and brush, and very well versed in the schools of military design. Add to these a proficiency in poetry and music, a person of unusual symmetry and grace, a face of almost feminine softness, yet not descending from the dignity of manhood, and we have an idea of the youth who was already meditating the means of throwing off the chains that bound him to the inkhorn and ledger, and embracing a more brilliant and glorious career. With him, the love of fame was an instinctive passion. The annals of his own fireside taught him how easily the path to distinction might be trod by men of parts and address; and he knew in his heart that opportunity was the one and the only thing needful to insure the accomplishment of his desires. Of very moderate fortunes and utterly destitute of influential connections, he knew that his education better qualified him for the useful fulfilment of military duties than perhaps any man of his years in the service of the king. Once embarked in the profession of arms, he had nothing to rely upon but his own address to secure patronage and promotion,--nothing but his own merits to justify the countenance that his ingenuity should win. Without undue vanity, it is tolerably safe to say now that he was authorized by the existing state of things to confidently predicate his own success on these estimates.
It is not easy to underrate the professional standard of the English officer a hundred years ago. That some were good cannot be denied; that most were bad is very certain. As there was no school of military instruction in the realm, so no proof of mental or even of physical capacity was required to enable a person to receive and to hold a commission. A friend at the Horse Guards, or the baptismal gift of a godfather, might nominate a baby three days old to a pair of colors. Court influence or the ready cash having thus enrolled a puny suckling among the armed defenders of the state, he might in regular process of seniority come out a full-fledged captain or major against the season for his being soundly birched at Eton; and an ignorant school-boy would thus be qualified to govern the lives and fortunes of five hundred stalwart men, and to represent the honor and the interests of the empire in that last emergency when all might be depending on his courage and capacity. Even women were thus saddled upon the pay-lists; and the time is within the memory of living men, when a gentle lady, whose knowledge of arms may be presumed to have never extended beyond the internecine disputes of the nursery, habitually received the salary of a captaincy of dragoons. In ranks thus officered, it was easy to foresee the speedy and sure triumph of competent ability, when once backed by patronage.
So long, however, as his dependence upon his father endured, it was useless for André to anticipate the day when he might don the king's livery. The repugnance with which his first motion in the matter was greeted, and the affectionate opposition of his mother and sisters, seem to have at least silenced, if they did not extinguish his desires. And when the death of his father, in 1769, left him free to select his own pathway through the world, a new conjuncture of affairs again caused him to smother his cherished aspirations.