THE TOWNSEND GARDEN
Although the British officers made New York a theatre of amusement in which the candles never flickered or died out for a space of many months, the dashing André could not have found it as agreeable a spot as Philadelphia. In that city he planned the famous Meschianza in honor of jovial Sir William Howe, and was acclaimed the hero of the hour. Fame to him seems to have been an instinctive passion, and although of a family humbler than most of those of his scarlet-coated compatriots, he rose like a meteor above the shackles of environment and became the favorite of his regiment. It is small wonder that a youth who could correspond with the learned Anna Seward, as he did at the age of eighteen, should have hated his work in the mercantile shop of old Warnford Court. Looking back over the years to-day, he appears to us a paragon. That the "Cher Jean" of that humble home circle at Litchfield should be described by all his faithful biographers in most glowing colors is singular proof that he could not have fallen far short of their eulogiums. Of unusual personal beauty, a poet, artist, linguist, and musician, he lives for us again the handsome limner the belle of Long Island waved to on an early summer's day.
The love-affairs of Major André have always created as much discussion as the justice of his lamented fate. Whether he was true to that paragon of virtues, Honora Sneyd, as has often been written, or forgot her for Peggy Chew, Rebecca Redman, or any of the host of colonial beauties whose names have been linked with his, can never be answered. This we know, that after she was married to another, "the endless Mr. Edgeworth," André still wore her miniature, and he himself tells us that he secreted it in his mouth when taken a prisoner at Quebec. His affection for her was pure and lofty, and in his sprightly and characteristic letters to Anna Seward, her foster-sister, who corresponded with him under the pseudonym of "Julia," we obtain glimpses of a hopeless passion; of a lover who truly loved and longed, but was never an accepted suitor. In the fall-time of 1769 he writes to "Julia" from the midst of the implements of "quill-driving" in the London establishment:
MAJOR JOHN ANDRÉ.
"Instead of figuring a merchant as a middle-aged man, with a bob wig, a rough beard, in snuff-colored clothes, grasping a guinea in his red hand, I conceive a comely young man, with a tolerable pigtail, wielding a pen with all the noble fierceness of the Duke of Marlborough brandishing a truncheon upon a sign-post, surrounded with types and emblems, and canopied with cornucopias that disembogue their stores upon his head; Mercuries reclin'd upon bales of goods; Genii playing with pens, ink, and paper, while in perspective his gorgeous vessels launched on the bosom of the silver Thames, are wafting to distant lands the produce of this commercial nation. Thus all the mercantile glories crowd on my fancy, emblazoned in the most effulgent coloring of an ardent imagination. Borne on her soaring pinions, I wing my flight to the time when Heaven shall have crowned my labors with success and opulence. I see sumptuous palaces rising to receive me; I see orphans, and widows, and painters, and fiddlers, and poets, and builders protected and encouraged; and when the fabrick is pretty nearly finished by my shattered pericranium, I cast my eyes around and find John André by a small coal fire in a gloomy compting house in Warnford Court, nothing so little as what he has been making himself, and in all probability never to be much more than he is at present. But, oh! my dear Honora! it is for thy sake only I wish wealth."
Later in the day he pictures his Honora and a few of her friends forming a snug circle about her dressing-room fireplace, and gives vent to the wish that he were with them. Then comes the closing hour of the "compting house," and he writes, "I am about to jog to Clapton on my own stumps; musing as I homeward plod my way—Ah! need I name the subject of my contemplation?"
Although Honora Sneyd was the grand passion of André's life, he had a gay and volatile temperament, and many a pretty face caught his fancy after donning the king's livery; and so we find him in the days that followed his meeting with the belle of Long Island journeying to her home in Oyster Bay.
The house where Sally Townsend resided still stands on the main street. The old building was erected by Samuel Townsend in 1740, and is little changed since the day Sally's gallant British admirers used to hurry over from wind-swept Fort Hill in search of her. The Townsends were among the first Long Island settlers, having purchased land in this village in 1661. One of the early daughters of the family, by the name of Freelove, married the famous pirate, Tom Jones, as dreaded by Long Islanders as Captain Kidd was farther south. Their house at Massapequa, known as "the pirate's house," remained standing until well into the last century. An interesting tradition is often told of it. When the pirate lay on his death-bed a great black bird hovered over the roof, circling about the chimney. As his breath was ceasing it flew through the western wall, and no one ever succeeded in closing the hole that its strong wings made, the bricks and mortar always tumbling out as fast as put in place.