When the events of our Revolutionary war destroyed commerce with the mother country, it followed in nature, if obscurely, that Joseph Hynson, a young Maryland sea-captain, employed in the London carrying trade, should find his occupation gone. Beating about in search of a new one suited to his taste, Hynson shortly betook himself to France, there to solicit from the American Commissioners some maritime employment in the service of Congress. Several well-known Marylanders in Paris at the time vouched for the newcomer as an able seaman and an honest man. The Commissioners, glad to find a trusty hand, enrolled him among their elect, and Hynson soon received from them orders to cross over to Dover, there secretly to purchase a good cutter-sloop. This vessel, he was told, he should presently command on a voyage across the Atlantic, bearing despatches to Congress.
Once arrived on English soil, it is far from strange that the lively mariner should have longed for a glimpse of old haunts. The circumspect gentlemen in Paris would hardly have smiled, however, upon their emissary’s sally into the heart of London; and his visit to his friends the Jumps, at their house in Stepney Causeway, spoke little for his sense of responsibility.
Mrs. Jump, Hynson’s friend, received him with tender rejoicing. Robert, her son, echoed the welcome, and pretty little Miss Cleghorn, neighbor and intimate of the household, promptly surrendered her heart to the handsome sailor. Hynson, “a lusty and a black-looking fellow,” with a salt-water gallantry very potent in the feminine eye, warmed under influences so generous. Discretion melted within him, and before his departure for Dover he had acquainted his hostess with the secret in his charge. Anxiety as great as her affection now filled the good woman’s mind. Sympathizing in private with the American cause, she yet dreaded so dangerous a service for one she loved. And when, in the newness of her trouble, Mr. Vardill, an American clergyman supposedly “disaffected,” chanced to call upon her, her distracted wits could not conceal from his astuteness quite all that loyalty to Hynson demanded.
As Fate would have it, this Vardill, good rebel though he seemed to be, lived, as a matter of fact, “chiefly on his Majesty’s bounty.” Windfalls such as Mrs. Jump had provided might be turned to excellent use in his own and his master’s interest. Lord North, to whose ante-chamber he accordingly ran with his news, pronounced “the farther prosecution of the business a matter of the utmost importance.” And from that instant Joseph Hynson’s every act came under the surveillance of spies, agents assailed him with every artifice of corruption, his most careless note was scrutinized in its passage through the mails; and, finally, poor Isabella’s innocent, schoolgirl love letters seldom came inviolate to the eyes for which alone they were intended.
“My Lord, I take the liberty of sending to you the enclosed Letter from Captain Hynson to his Mistress.... The writing on one side of the Letter is part of a rough draft of a Letter which his Mistress wrote to him,”
says Vardill to North, February 10, 1777. Hynson’s letter is a mere impersonal account of his safe arrival in Dover, but Isabella’s “rough draft,” scrawled on the back of her lover’s page, seems yet warm with the pressure of the hand that wrote by the flicker of Mrs. Jump’s firelight:
“——for my Part I have not slept one hour since your (departure).” [Vardill, in his hasty theft, tore away the sheet so closely as to sacrifice the end of each line.] “I come over (to the Jumps’) as often as I can, but not with such (frequency) as I us’d, for I detest the kitchen and the Arm chair (now). We all do. You will make (us) very happy if you will (come) and fill it up again, for Gods Sake Come home for I am (like) one out of their sences about you.... For Gods sake write to me, ... for I am wreatched all (ways). Did you think that Id spare a Groat for Postage. No, not even if I been distressed for it. Mrs. Jump (would) lend it me, so don’t let that be your Excuse, as I (think) you Cant have forgot me in a week. Write——, and send to Mrs. Jump, and Come home——”
A second sad little letter, dated February 13, met another fate. Intercepted and copied in the General Post-Office, it was then restored scatheless to the mail and allowed to go its way. The copy alone is found in the Auckland MSS.
“To Captain Hynson, Ship Tavern, Dover:
“I rec’d your kind Letter which affords me great pleasure, as it allways does to hear from them that I so dearly love. I should have wrote to you before but Mrs. Jump said I must wait a Day or two, but with great Anxiety I waited.... I have been in great distress about you. Night and Day you are Never out of my Thoughts, my dear Hynson. I must leave off, for I was not certain whether I should write or no.... My dear Hynson, write to me as often as you can, for that’s all the happiness I have, to hear from you——”