An Unrecorded Philadelphia Romance the Franklin Family helped into Flower
IT was at a musical party given by the great Franklin a few months after he returned from London to Philadelphia, in 1762, that Betsey Shewell first met Benjamin West and entered with him through the ever-swaying gates of Romance. At the time she was known as a belle of the Quaker City, and he is best described by that keen observer of mankind, Doctor Jonathan Morris, as "a young painter of fine parts enjoying his native haunts after the glamour of European capitals."
The modest Franklin house in the heart of the city was at that time a Mecca for the choice spirits of the colonists. Statesmen, scholars, and men of wealth trod the pebbly street to the philosopher's through all hours of the day until long after candle-lighting time. Benjamin Franklin meant many things to many people. It is small wonder that poor Mrs. Franklin often lamented that her "Pappy," as she called her husband, was unhappily affected with a too tender and benevolent disposition, and that all the world claimed the privilege of troubling him with their calamities and distress. But still the lady loved her kind, especially those with good ears, tradition says, and the night that "Pappy" gave this frolic for his buxom daughter Sarah she smiled at the company with broad good-humor. And, knowing this (for otherwise there would have been no party at Franklin's), we can raise the curtain on the scene with impunity, and listen to the ghostly wails of violins, the tinkles of tired spinets, and the long-lost voices of the company.
The night-shutters before the windows of the Franklin parlor are open, for it is the summer time. About the wide, plain room with its few embellishments the guests are grouped in a circle. The host seems to be in a merry mood, and is strumming away on the famous guitar, a knowledge of which he was always ready to impart to his intimate female acquaintances. The ever-laughing Sarah, who seldom sighed for more than the days brought to her, is in her element. She is having a party, and she knows that there is a spicy Madeira punch in the Staffordshire bowl her father purchased as a gift for her mother in England, and a high pyramid of sweet cakes their faithful Abigail made that morn adorns the sideboard. As she flits out into the entry she nudges a girl who is seated by the door, one of a group composed of Mr. and Mrs. Abram Bickley and good Doctor Jonathan Morris. The girl answers her invitation to join her with a wan and unresponsive smile. Her rather piquant face is suffused with sadness, and she pays no heed to the remarks of her companions. It is easy to see that Mrs. Bickley is annoyed by her behavior. Many eyes are focussed on her fine full gown of soft lustring, but she seems unaware of their attention, for the lady is Miss Betsey Shewell, who is indulging herself in a fit of the vapors.
Betsey Shewell had been crossed in love. Like a foolish maid, she had given her heart where it was not wanted, and the object of her affections, Isaac Hunt, a young gentleman from the West Indies, was then paying desperate court to her niece, Mary Shewell, a girl of her own age.
Isaac Hunt, the spoiled heir of an aristocratic Tory family settled at Bridgetown in the Barbadoes, must have been something of an Adonis. His son, the gifted gossiper Leigh Hunt, whom Charles Lamb referred to as "The Indicator" in the famous couplet he addressed to him, wrote of his father, "He was fair and handsome, with delicate features, a small aquiline nose, and blue eyes. To a graceful address he joined a remarkably fine voice, which he modulated with great effect." It was in reading with this voice the poets and other classics that he made conquest of the two girls' hearts.
The image of this fascinating gentleman was constantly haunting Betsey Shewell's mind as she sat moping by the door of Benjamin Franklin's parlor at the close of a summer's day one hundred and forty-one years ago. That very evening she knew he was to ride over from the Red Lion to visit Mary Shewell, then staying with Betsey Bickley at Penn Rhyn, the Bickley country house, five miles below Bristol on the Delaware. He was with his "shy, dark-haired Mary" now, no doubt. Try as she would, it seemed impossible for her to forget him. Her sister Bickley, observing her sad face, began to fidget. She looked at her with disgust and was about to speak, when the sound of the knocker suddenly reverberated through the house, and Sarah, hastening to open the front door, welcomed in a party of belated guests.
"Betsey Shewell! Betsey Shewell!" resounded the voice of the indefatigable Sarah over the babble of feminine tongues in the hall. "Betsey, I want to present to thee Mr. Benjamin West."
The melancholy maid turned round on her clavichord stool, and as she rose to courtesy, the color left her cheeks, for before her stood a youth strangely like her longed-for lover, but of a finer presence. His eyes, hair, and nose were the same, and when he spoke, the tones of his voice—low and tender, like Isaac's—were as balm to her lacerated heart.
It was Jonathan Morris who later in the evening fanned the flame of Miss Shewell's curiosity in regard to the handsome Mr. West. He knew almost every step in the round of the young painter's life. There were many things he told her in regard to his early years passed at Springfield, Delaware County, where he did his first drawings with colors given to him by the Indians. How his rude paintings were the pride of a simple Quaker community and the delight of a mother who believed her son to be predestined for some exalted place in the world.