A LADY OF OLD AMBOY
About some of the streets of the city named in honor of the "passionately proud" Earl of Perth there lingers an air of decayed opulence. Although old Amboy of the scarlet coats died long ago, a few of her echoes live on undrowned by the din of new voices. In Mrs. Kearny's day many a stately garden crept down to the water-front. The great houses overlooking the smooth Raritan still sheltered a few of the noble Scotch and Irish families who had unwillingly relinquished their king and remained in the New World. In the letters of Sophia Brown, who lodged with the mother of William Dunlap, the art historian, there are glimpses of this society. The frail and aristocratic Misses Parker with their tea-drinkings, the gallant Captain Love, and other charming figures, look out at us from pages filled with the trivialities of every-day life. A child dreaming beside a broad pane overlooking the quiet street, where trees stood in line as if awaiting the call of Orpheus, saw many things. Now a youthful pair sauntered by in the spring-time of love, now an ancient crone in worn satin shoes that had once touched ever so lightly a king's feet in a long-forgotten dance, and now a tired veteran of the Revolution murmuring to himself of battles still unwon. Suddenly would come the rush of many footsteps. Off in the distance the bell of St. Peter's tolls. People of condition are to be married. Ladies in faded silk or humble erminetta mince past gentlemen in desay suits. Then the music creeps out of the chancel,—the faint, sweet air of an old English wedding-march. Even the sombre fronts of the houses seem to be ravished with it. The voices of the gentle choir may not be as pure as they were in the days of George III., but to the girl who listened then they were like strains from Paradise.
The city which had received its charter one day after New York was at that period beginning to lose its importance in the eyes of the Western world. No longer chariots drawn by white horses carried a supercilious nobility to the resort of the Knickerbockers. No longer big-wigs talked over the commercial supremacy of Perth Amboy in the Sweeting's Alley Coffee House. No longer were there stately minuets and revels at the Governor's palace. The old days were gone forever; but although the leading actors and the lights had fled, the stage remained unchanged. That sad-faced baggage Poverty loitered behind and came often to once proud dwelling-places. Pinderina heard the sighs of her friends, and decided to enliven the situation. In the Kearny Cottage, whose rooms seem to widen mysteriously as one enters, she held her gatherings of sympathetic souls. These affairs differed somewhat from the parties given at an earlier date by Mrs. Hugh Ferguson and Mrs. Richard Stockton, two other literary lights of the time, for the hostess suffered from a slender purse. Her guests came only for the pleasure of conversation, without the "stomach compensation" Mrs. Montagu and her American imitators thought so necessary.
One of the most distinguished frequenters of Mrs. Kearny's Blue-Stocking Club was Philip Freneau, whose mother had made a second matrimonial venture and wedded Captain James Kearny, of Kearny Port, a relative of the Perth Amboy family. "Small but well formed, his blue eyes sparkling with poetic fire," it is easy to imagine him the lion of Mrs. Kearny's evenings. Whenever the old sloop "King William"—changed to "Liberty"—sailed into Amboy, bringing Mr. Freneau to pass the night with his friends before journeying to Monmouth, there was always great excitement in the town. Mrs. Kearny's black Rebecca was sent forth in haste to inform the chosen few of the neighborhood that their leader bade them to her drawing-room. The seven romping Kearny boys were hurried up to the attic to bed, the furniture rearranged, and Madam Scribblerus, as her world called her, slipped on her brocade gown to be in readiness for the battle of wits sure to ensue. A happy woman was this quaint personage when footfalls began to sound on the gallery steps. The rap-tap of the knocker made her spirits buoyant, and each greeting took her farther away from the cares of a commonplace existence. Although she was a lover of nature, she too could have said with Mr. Robinson, the father of Mrs. Montagu, that living in the country was like sleeping with one's eyes open. Each breath of the world beyond Amboy brought new life to her.
We can picture to ourselves the evening. About the oddly-shaped room, on hard-seated, fiddle-backed chairs, sits Pinderina's little court. By the wide fireplace on the settle old Judge Nevill, the editor of the first American magazine, is blinking at the embers. Mr. Freneau has finished telling some of his recent adventures in New York City. Now Mrs. Kearny begins the story of Captain Kidd's black cat, which lived on long after her master had been condemned to death in Old Bailey, and for these two hundred years has haunted the spot where the bold adventurer is said to have buried some of his chests of rupees. Sleepy eyes grow wider as she advances in her narrative. Timid ladies feel for each other's hands in the flickering light. The hostess is in her element.
Taking a penetrating look at the company over the years, they are not as we would at first imagine them. There are holes in Mr. Freneau's wrist ruffles, and the worn brocade gown of the hostess no longer gives forth even faint protesting rustle as she walks. In this respect the circle is true-blue,—for Oliver Goldsmith went to Mrs. Montagu's in darned stockings and a laced coat, and the immortal Johnson and many of his confrères were naturally careless in their attire, or were helped to the state by the lack of pence.
The one great ambition of Elizabeth Kearny's life was to write like her "admired Mr. Freneau," and her many mild plagiarisms of his poems, if they failed in their object, were no doubt regarded by him as flattering homage to his genius. Theirs was an unusual friendship of which the world knows very little, but mute testimonials remain of it to-day in her letters and her autographs fading under those of Philip Freneau's in many of his favorite volumes. She could have written of him as Mrs. Montagu once wrote, thinking no doubt of her faithful Dr. Beattie:
"Many guests my heart has not admitted; such as there are do it honor, and a long and intimate acquaintance has preceded their admittance; they were invited in it by its best virtues; they passed through the examination of severity, nay, even answered some questions of suspicion that inquired of their constancy and sincerity; but now they are delivered over to the keeping of constant faith and love; for doubt never visits the friends entirely, but only examines such as would come in, lest the way should be too common."
When Philip Freneau lived for a short period over a little shop in the Fly-Market, New York City, and edited The Time Piece, Mrs. Kearny became one of its constant contributors. Among that sentimental group of female poets, numbering a Saraperina, Edena, Cynthea, Clara, Carolina, and a Petronella, her effusions—generally under the nome de guerre of "Scribelra"—stand forth in bold type. Turning the musty pages of a bound volume of the paper, we find