Charles Willson Peale g732d9064

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CHARLES WILLSON PEALE

Books by Charles Coleman Sellers

Lorenzo Dow: The Bearer of the Word Benedict Arnold: ‘The Proud Warrior Theophilus the Battle-Axe Charles Willson Peale

Portraits and Miniatures by Charles Willson Peale

Benjamin Franklin in Portraiture

Editor:

Waldron Phoenix Belknap: American Colonial Painting

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: at -— RACHEL, AND THE WONDERFUL LETTER MarGaretT Triccs PEALE would live by her needle now. With the right introductions, she would have good employment as a seamstress. The capital of Maryland was a little town of only about a hundred and fifty houses, but it was the richest for its size in America and was to maintain that distinction for many years to come. The town was perched upon a hill, a small harbor on one side, a mile-long race track on the other. Great mansions clustered together, separated by trees and gardens, wide and cool. This was “the Bath of America,” with its theatre, the coffeehouse in Chancery Lane, the shops along Cornhill and Duke of Gloucester streets holding aloft a parade of carved and gilded signs, with the well-dressed people, the carriages, the luxury of the sedan chair. It was a lawyers’ town, politics and litigation always pursued with a sporting zest along with the races and the plays. In season, great folk in great numbers came to town, but never so many that their names and fames

could not be known to all. To a boy of ten it was a new world of whirl and excitement, gold lace, armorial bearings, flags, and fanfare. On a sunny day one could take the children through the market to the Half Moon Battery where the cannon thrust their muzzles seaward in warning to the Spaniards and the pirates who never came, letting them sit astride the warm gun barrels, looking out at the brightlypainted little slant-mast sloops and schooners, red, blue, green, or yellow, the dark squareriggers of the ocean trade, and far across the Bay the gray line of Kent Island.

At first, as befitted the son of a gentleman and the heir to those mysterious estates, Charles Willson Peale went on with the schooling begun by his father. He was an earnest, inquiring child. Having suffered agonies from gatherings in the ears—doubtless brought on by infected adenoids or tonsils, or both together—he was already interested in the causes, cure, and prevention of disease, a subject that would fascinate him all his life. At about the age of fourteen, he halted Dr. Alexander Hamilton in the street, that learned and witty Scots physician, author of the now-classic Jtinerartum Die Mercurit Trigesimo Mensis Maiti Inchoatum Anno MDCCXLIV, and startled him with the question, “What is the best drink for health?” ‘“Toddy, mun,” said the old gentleman, staring down upon him. “The spirit must hae

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Charles Willson Peale something to act on, and therefore acts on the sugar and does nae injury to the stomach.”! With such a turn of mind, he was proof against the temptations of the town and continued so. “The jeers of my companions,” he recalled in later years, ““could not force me to follow some practices, the forerunners of vice and misery.”* A boyhood memory that stayed with him always was the clear voice of a ship captain, newly landed from across the ocean, reading a foreign newspaper to a crowd of people. “The manly expressive sweetness of his voice seems still to vibrate in my ears, even at this distant period—and I have enjoyed the remembrance of it a thousand times.”’ Nor, conversely, was he ever to forget the shock with which he beheld the man who lived next door driving his wife about the yard, lashing her with a pair of bridle reins. This man had always addressed his mate as “‘honey,” and Charles Willson Peale could never afterward hear that endearment spoken without wincing at the recollection.4 He helped his mother by drawing patterns for her needlework. He amused the family, too, by copying prints in pen and ink or in colors on glass. The earliest original design that he could remember having made was such a schoolboy painting, a picture of Adam and Eve, inspired by the stately, solemn music of Paradise Lost, which he had read and reread with deep delight. He remembered also how his grandmother, a very aged woman, had pled with him to make her a picture from the corpse of her son, Charles’s uncle, as he lay in his cofin awaiting burial. Terrified at the thought, he protested that he was not able, she vainly persisting that he could if he would but try.° As to recollections of his father at Annapolis, he did overhear an opinion that Charles

Peale had not been a fit person to instruct the young, and later caught some gossip of amorous adventures.® But among family and friends his father was invariably spoken of with

the same profound respect which Beale Bordley felt for him and one can sense, between the two views, the germ of later family legends about Charles Peale. One portrayed him as a Huguenot refugee, a tutor in the household of the Earl of Bristol. He had eloped to America with his pupil, the beautiful Helen Digby. Hard after them across the sea had come the Earl, to carry his erring daughter home and leave the unhappy lover to forget his sorrows as best he might. Another legend of later generations seems to reflect both Charles Peale’s courting of the Calverts and his pride in being brother-in-law to the Reverend Joseph Digby of Tinwell. According to this tale, Charles Peale had come to Maryland as secretary to one of the Calverts, bringing with him his wife, Helen, daughter of the Earl of Digby, whose grave had been found at Chestertown, carved with the Digby crest. All agreed as to a handsome inheritance, which Charles Peale, due to his scholarly preoccupations and his early death, never went back to claim.’ The traditions go back also to the family’s sense of rank and breeding and to others’ acceptance of their doubtful status. At Annapolis wealth and poverty dwelt side by side but with a neighborly acceptance of one another, merchants and plantation princes, redemptioners and slaves, proud Scottish warriors of the °45, French Acadian exiles. It was a

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Rachel, and the Wonderful Letter money-spending rather than a money-making town. Philadelphia had far surpassed it as a commercial center, and Norfolk to the south, with a deeper harbor, had more shipping and

more trade. It was easier here for a seamstress to find patronage than for a boy to get started in business or put in the way of a profession. The Peale heir must learn a trade and be grateful for the chance. Just before his thirteenth birthday Charles was apprenticed to a saddler, so to serve until he reached the age of twenty-one. Here we may glimpse again the hand of John Beale Bordley. Nathan Waters, who had brought his saddlery business from Philadelphia to Annapolis three years before, was moving it from the upper part of Church Street to a larger shop in the same respectable neighborhood. The new location was a house which Bordley had used for the storage of merchandise in his bachelor days, and which was now owned by Edward Dorsey, whose wife was Mrs. Bordley’s sister. In addition to the saddlery, which embraced all manner of harness and traveling equipment, Mr. Waters bought and sold merchandise whenever he could sense a reasonably sure speculation, and bought and sold land as well. He was, in short, a tradesman on the way to becoming a planter and a gentleman. We find him, later, a member of the Forensic Club, an Annapolis debating society consisting mostly of young lawyers but including also William Rind, one of the publishers of the Gazette, and Charles Wallace, a staymaker and merchant who was in time to serve the central figure of this history in a friendly way. It might be expected, therefore, that Waters’ affairs would outgrow the saddlery and that his apprentice, doing well, might hope eventually to take over the business and follow a similar course.®

The boy learned to cut and carve the beechwood, to work the leather upon it, to handle the metalwork in iron and brass and silver. Though slender and delicate in appearance, he adapted well to the long hours of daily drudgery. Against the servitude, as year followed year, his spirit would rebel, but the constant labor set a pattern happily maintained through all his life. He was acutely sensitive to praise or blame. He loved to capture admiration by surprise as he met a need or solved a difficulty. This also was to remain, this delight in doing what others were unable to do. By the same token, a poignant fear of ridicule or failure encouraged modesty. That he might inherit an English fortune, that he was better read than other ’prentices or journeymen and could quote a bit of Latin if forced to it, never dampened his eagerness to become a successful saddler. Benjamin Franklin had been like this—the armigerous tradesman, equally proud of his family and his craft, a no-nonsense estimate of worth with a strong American flavor. At the saddler’s shop Charles could earn occasionally a little extra money on his own, and so was able to realize in time two of the ambitions of every boy of that day, to become the owner of a watch and a horse.?

The watch did not turn out to be the most dependable of instruments. When he had spent all of five shillings for repairs and found it still irregular, he determined to do the work himself. Exploratory operations wrought no improvement but launched him on an interest and a hobby he never ceased to enjoy. The horse was a more liberating, more suc-

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Charles Willson Peale cessful investment. It opened the wide countryside to him and, as it turned out, carried him forth upon the road to romance. This was in 1758, a year of high excitement. In March there had been the earthquake, a rumbling that shook the whole Bay country. In April, as his seventeenth birthday came around, there had been the call to arms against the French, the Cherokee war dance outside the town, the soldiers mustering for the westward campaign, and privateers and warships

with their guns a-glitter in the harbor. Seventeen, proudly mounted on his horse, the *prentice rode out from the city to find the home of John Brewer, a boy who lived somewhere beyond South River with his widowed mother, three brothers, and six sisters. Asking the way as he jogged along, he did not reach the house till near dinnertime. He stepped up to the door and rapped with his riding crop, ready to inquire in his best manner if he had found at last the home of Mrs. John Brewer. His knock was answered by a girl’s shrill voice, “Go ‘round, you impudent baggage!’ This he did and found himself in a kitchen confronting two abashed and blushing Brewer sisters. ‘The younger, Rachel, a child of fourteen, had been having a spat with a Negro girl, and it was she who had shouted through the door. They were lavish in apology and civilities, and Rachel, perhaps because he had caught her at this disadvantage, was the more humbled and eager to make amends. She became his favorite. She was a lively, comely girl, her hair a dark brown, her skin very white. Her manners as he afterward described them were, in contrast to their first meeting, “‘soft, modest,

gentle and innocent, with a becoming affability, her mind formed to piety by the example of an excellent mother.”!° In time, having decided that no young man could wish for more than to become the husband of so fine a girl, Charles properly confided this opinion to Mrs. Brewer, asking permission to attend her daughter at such times as he could leave his master’s business and readily receiving it. After many visits, when Miss Rachel was in her fifteenth year, he felt sure that he had won her heart and determined to declare himself forthwith. He confessed, in retrospect, that it had been an error to make his proposal at a time when one of the elder Miss Brewers was present. He put the question clearly, in his forthright way, with the full expectation of an affirmative answer. But no. Miss Rachel, taken by

surprise, was suddenly bereft of speech. He tried persuasion, then insistence. He then demanded, in terms suggestive of the novels of the time, instant relief from painful doubt, declared his situation to be intolerable. This line of argument increased the panic of the tongue-tied maiden. Her silence seemed to him only a feeble sort of negative, and the belief that she had allowed him to be misled so long added anger to the pangs of wounded selfesteem. He turned again upon her with all the severity that his seventeen years could mus-

ter and announced that he would allot to her the space of one hour in which to decide the issue, yes or no, delving into his pocket as he uttered this pronouncement to fetch out the watch. I give you this part of the story in its hero’s own words, those of an old man looking back with fondness through the years.

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Rachel, and the Wonderful Letter Autobiography

. .. And when the time was nearly spent, he became more uneasy, and he beged, he entreated, that in 5 minutes he should be made the happiest or the most miserable of beings. The Lady’s resentment prevented any reply. The time expired. He went immediately to the House and thanked her Mother for the kind entertainment he had received, and said he hoped that Miss Rachel would get a better Husband than he could make. That he must now take his leave of the family for ever, but the sunday following he called at Mrs. Brewers to get his Whip which in his hurry of taking leave he had forgot. He then only made his obedience to the family, and afterward rode to West River to see a Lady with whom he had some acquaintance in several Visits she had made in his Masters family. And finding the Lady at home, he asked to speak in private to her, and began to declare his Intentions of seeking a Lady that might make him a Wife. He asked of her, Jf she had any engagements on her hands. ‘The Lady was

confused, and seemed to be at a loss to know how to answer such a question, but she faintly intimated that she had. He replied that he was sorry for it, but he would give her no further trouble, and very politely took his leave of her. This Courtship did not take more than one hour from the beginning to the end of it, and it has been said that this Lady was afterwards unhappily married. He now applied again closly to his work, having lost all his spare time in a fruitless courtship. One Summers Evening, walking out for recreation, by chance he spied Miss Rachel Brewer before her Aunts House at Annapolis. After the usual salutations a conversation took place, in which he lamented the cause of his absence from her Mother’s House. Miss informed him that he was precipitate, and the manner of his treatment of her did not deserve an answer, and she thought that she acted properly by remaining silent, that if he chose to take it as a denial, she was not blameable. He then beged pardon, and asked her if she would forgive him, and he would again visit her family, which the Lady assented to. He then beged her to make him a decisive answer on the next sunday, and he would then wait on her. Miss replied that she believed she would, and said that her Mama would be glad to see him. Accordingly on the following sunday he waited on her, and on that day, she finally agreed to accept him for her intended Husband. He was not more than 18 Yrs. old at this time & he ever after spent all the time he could be spared from his masters service in his attendance on the Lady. Let it hail, rain or blow, no weather detered him from crossing south river & a Creek every week to visit Miss Rachel Brewer.

Miss Rachel and all the Brewers must have come to town at the end of October for the celebration of the news of Wolfe’s great victory at Quebec—soldiers on parade and the guns of the Point and Half Moon batteries in an ecstasy of triumphant thunder, and at night candles in every window lighting the hill like a jewel. Let it hail, rain, or blow through that winter of 1759-1760, Charles was out courting Rachel while his favorite sister, Jenny,

was receiving at home a circle of admirers. Margaret Jane, with her auburn hair, her dimpled chin and large blue eyes, had surpassed her mother in the art of embroidery, and a taste for reading had made her mature beyond her years. Some of her suitors, as her brother recalled, “afterwards became men of great note in the revolution.” Her choice,

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Charles Willson Peale however, fell upon one James M’Mordie, a jovial, handsome young merchant of the city, with a fine singing voice—a charm to which, it might appear from their subsequent history, the Peales easily succumbed.!! They were married in 1760, or perhaps early the following year. Unhappily, good looks and good fellowship were M’Mordie’s only outstanding quali-

ties, and the fellowship was often of the sort in which a lady could not join. As for Charles meanwhile, a new theatre had been built that winter; if he was able to muster ten shillings, which is within the range of possibility, he may have sat in the gallery with Rachel, enjoying The Provok’d Husband or some other of its offerings.

For Charles, marriage would be out of the question until he could earn his own bread, and his indenture bound him to Waters for two more years. Waters, though not an uncommonly hard master and sometimes a kindly one, seemed to have grown discontented with the business. In the summer of 1760 he had talked of making a voyage to Bermuda for his health and offered Charles, in return for managing the whole in his absence, a reduction in his term of service by four months. The young enthusiast accepted with delight. To show how well he could do, he enlarged his duties at once, cutting and laying out all the work, taking over almost everything. As long as it brought nearer the day of release and the happy prospect of a saddlery of his own, all this extra labor added zest to the dull round in which he had been living for the last six years, serving another every day but the Sabbath from sunrise to sunset and, for half the year, from candle lighting until nine at night.

When, in conversation sometime afterward, Mr. Waters let it be understood that he was not going away after all, nor would the early release be granted, the disappointment was more than Charles could bear. He hotly replied that he would not serve those four months. He appealed for support to Charles Wallace, then owner of the house in which they worked. Wallace had a friendly feeling for both his tenant and the apprentice. Charles backed his demand also by pointing out that his indenture had not been legally executed, for he had not been bound in open court as the law required. He would continue to serve, but not those four months. Waters accepted the proposal, which would keep his ’prentice in the shop till the close of 1761.'” From Nathan Waters’ viewpoint, that date would mark a crisis in his affairs. Even in good times there was not room in Annapolis for two saddlers. ‘Times were hard, particularly so in a town dependent on luxury trade. The American tolerance of long-term credits could be, as Waters himself explained in a Gazette advertisement, “extremely hurtful, and obstructing to Business.’!* He was charging a 25 per cent markup where credit was asked. I suspect, from what was to occur, that he had hopes of some agreement by which Charles might, with the help of friends, buy out this part of his business altogether. The proposed Bermuda trip may have been only a ruse to turn the young man’s mind in that direction. If so, it made no impression whatever, the young man having no doubt of being able to make his own way, his heart and confidence rising as the great day approached.

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Rachel, and the Wonderful Letter When the happy release was but a short time ahead, James Tilghman, a brother of Charles’s godfather, offered him a loan of twenty pounds with which to set himself up in business.‘* Charles, passing on this good news to his master, spoke of going to Philadelphia to buy the goods he would require. The other at once offered to supply them himself at as cheap a rate as could be had anywhere. When Charles returned from Queen Annes County

with the money, he found spread out in the shop a very large but not very judiciously selected assortment of materials for the saddler’s trade. This the artful Mr. Waters proclaimed to be exactly what he needed, offering the whole, with almost paternal magnanimity,

for the bargain price of £150. In the byplay that followed the aroused Waters met every objection, boldly insisting upon selling all or none. He would ask only twenty pounds in cash and wait for the gradual repayment of the whole. Thus persuaded and thus, in effect, saddled, Charles handed over the money, gave his note for the rest of the debt, and moved the goods to where his own new shop would be, just a few doors away. It never for one moment occurred to him that he was now almost as much a vassal to Waters as he had been before.

To Charles Willson Peale, this was the end of servitude, the first sweet, long breath of freedom—“‘like water to the thirsty, like food to the hungry, or like rest to the wearyed traveller, who has made a long and lonesome journey through a desert, fearfull wilderness.’’!° No other moment in his life remained so clear and dear in recollection as this one. Through

those preceding months the prospect of it had been growing brighter like a fire, gathering an almost explosive force. ‘The release was not to be from toil, for in his seven years of labor

that had become his way of life, but from the driving of a master. He had freedom now, and with it the bulwark of true independence; he had the skill and the materials with which to maintain himself. If one thing failed, he would find a better. Add to this proud joy the delights of young love satisfied. ‘They were married on the twelfth of January, 1762, a groom of twenty and a bride of seventeen. The ceremony, performed by the Reverend Mr. Barkley, was followed by several days of high festivity at the Brewers’.!© Jenny and her rousing, loud-voiced husband would have come across the Bay from ‘Tuckahoe Bridge in Queen Annes, where M’Mordie had bought a plantation. Brewers,

Maccubbins, Ridgelys, and other Brewer kin were there, making the rites and pleasures, as it were, an initiation into new loyalties among this clannish people. Friends are a form of wealth, doubly dear when one is poor. Now he would be, with them, root and branch, a part of Maryland, his native land. Add to these, and let this wonder top it all, the letter. Just two days after he had brought his bride back to his mother’s house where, for the time being, they would live, the letter was laid in his hand. He broke the seal and read. ‘Then with what dizzy haste and what a wildly beating heart he must have run to pour out its amazing contents into the ears of Rachel, of his mother, of all the family crowding together there, Jenny, Betsy, Saint, Jemmy, and wide-eyed Peggy Durgan—to reread and conjecture, to listen again with

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Rachel, and the Wonderful Letter breathless eagerness and awe to his mother’s and Peggy’s recital of all that Charles Peale had ever told them of his birthright and his expectations. The fortunate missive was dated August 17, 1761, from Minehead, Somersetshire, on the shore of the Bristol Channel, and it bore the signature of Captain James Digby of the British army. The Captain, about to sail with his regiment for the West Indian campaign, had only time enough briefly to suggest to his American cousin that it would be well for him to claim that estate in Oxfordshire to which he was the rightful heir—worth two thousand pounds— advising strongly that he cross the ocean without delay to take possession of it.

3. CG. W. PEALE: Mrs. John Brewer. c. 1770

The artist’s mother-in-law, Eleanor Maccubbin Brewer of

South River, in the somber dress of widowhood, silver spectacles in hand.

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CHAPTER 4

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POET AND PAINTER SincE THis 1s Hisrory not drama, I must reveal at once what remained unknown to others for four more years: there was no Captain James Digby at all. ‘The famous letter was only a cruel trick by which someone—and the finger points to Nathan Waters’ clerk—followed that impulse of badgering a newlywed. ‘The sender of the letter may also have hoped to forestall competition in trade by sending the town’s new saddler out of the country in pursuit of the fortune of which he had so often spoken. As such, the trick might have succeeded had Charles had any money in hand for the voyage. His friend Robert Swan, who seems to have been also his landlord at the new shop, prudently suggested that he write first to a lawyer in London. He must in any case begin by gathering documentary proof of his own identity in the line of inheritance, send a copy of this to Swan’s Mr. Tweedie, counselorat-law, Lincoln’s Inn, and await the result.! The letter had been received two days after the couple’s return to town. They must have been at least a week at the Brewer plantation. ‘Two days beyond would make it January 21, or a little later. The Maryland Gazette of January 21 carries news from Barbados of the expected arrival there of Admiral Rodney’s fleet and forces, and a following dispatch from St. Christopher “that the Troops from England, for the siege of Martinico, were arrived at Barbadoes.” ‘This, then, must have suggested the prank, while the coming of the ships with the news supported it, since its victim would suppose that one of them had brought his letter. ‘To date it from Minehead was surely part of the joke, though a plausible addition, for that village lies not far from the great port of Bristol. One would expect the secret to have become known to others rather quickly. Apparently it did not, for no doubt or suspicion ever reached the Peales, supporting the theory that the trickster was serious in his hope of removing a competitor. The competitor, however, was now as a result all the more eager to mine the veins of gold he had at home, where the Gazette of January 21 carried also his first advertisement as an independent businessman: CHARLES WILSON PEALE, SADDLER, At his Shop in GHURCH-STREET, over against the Blacksmith’s Shop, near Mr. Gassaways,

HEREBY gives Notice, That he has now set up in his Business of Saddle-making, Harness-making, Postering

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Poet and Painter and Repairing Carriages, &c., having proper Materials for carrying it on: And will perform any and every Part thereof, in the best, neatest, and cheapest Manner. And as he is a young Man, just setting out in Business, he

hopes to have the Employ of his Friends, who may depend upon being well and faithfully served by Their humble Servant, CHARLES WILSON PEALeE.?

This was run again on February 4, March 4, and March 11. In the issue of February 4 there appeared another item that I am inclined to believe may also have come from the pen of the “young Man, just setting out in Business.” It was introduced by the publisher in similar terms: The following Performance of a young Bard, we give to our Readers, and submit it to them, to applaud, censure or condemn it, as they shall think fit.

VERSES Occasion’d by the MARRIAGE and CORONATION of

GEORGE III. WHILE loftier Bards in sweeter Numbers, raise Their tuneful Notes, to sing their Monarch’s Praise I too, though artless, wou’d my Joys rehearse, And pay, the Tribute of my youthful Verse.

and on for a total of seventy-two lines, in which we learn that the author is not only ‘“vouthful” but “the Off-spring of this untam’d Soil.” Britannia is hailed as the “Seat of Liberty,” and the royal couple as By Nature, both, and Education taught, T’abhor the Woes, which Tyranny has wrought.

The Maryland Gazette of December 10, 1761, had printed a detailed account of the corona-

tion of the young King and Queen, accompanied by “An Ode” of six verses in which Britannia is hailed, though in more sophisticated style—no doubt by one of the “loftier Bards in sweeter Numbers.’”’ On December 17 the Gazette had given an objective account of all previous reigns, exhibiting the woes which tyranny had wrought and enhancing the attractiveness of the new monarch, young and virtuous, promising a future of good will and understanding for his people everywhere. That Charles and Rachel were emotionally involved in this great event cannot be doubted, their own happiness crowned by the wonderful letter and everywhere around them the warm responses that young lovers meet. The couplets have the artless quality to which they confess, sharing this with Charles’s known

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Charles Willson Peale production of later in the year. They reflect his love of peace, liberty, gentle persuasion toward the noble goals, and yet also in their concluding lines echo that martial spirit which upon occasion could be his and which, while awaiting further word of Captain Digby, must have often stirred his heart: Nor Arts of Peace alone, Great Prince, are thine, For with the Olives, martial Laurels twine.

Then came news from Martinique at last in the Gazette of April 8, a day-by-day account from the landing on January 5 to the surrender of Fort Royal a month later. It was carrying out the concept which the youthful bard had taken as the closing flourish of his lay: Congenial Prowess fires each British Soul, To stretch thy glorious Reign from Pole to Pole,

From East to West thy Thunders shall be hurl’d, And the Third GEORGE shall rule the subject World.

The news added a fine touch of patriotic glamour to the resurgence of Peale prestige. A week more and the heir to Wotton would reach his majority. He was already an established businessman. James, at thirteen, had come into the shop with him to learn the saddler’s trade, at just the age at which Charles himself had begun. St. George, who would soon be seventeen, was already well settled as head clerk of the Maryland Land Office, a living which he may have owed in part to Beale Bordley, but certainly also to the fine quality of his penmanship, an interesting reflection from the past. The important birthday came, marred only by the punctual attendance of Nathan Waters demanding Charles’s signature to a bond on interest for the debt of £130 which he had first granted on such easy terms. Grasping and penurious as this might seem, the new saddlery was doing extremely well and, we may expect, the old one in proportion badly. Charles was now enjoying, in his own words, “‘a great share of the business.’ He expanded into harness making and upholstering in partnership with a chaise maker. Richer than his rival in ingenuity, he launched out into areas where Waters could not follow. He set his hand to metalwork, first within his own province, then branching out into the silversmith’s business in its simpler forms, making such things as bridles, shoe buckles, and finger rings.* He once cast a pair of stirrups in brass. In all this he had to make his own tools and learn the use of them by practice, expending more time and money in his efforts than he could well afford. He was not spurred on by need alone. It was in his very nature. He must be active. Idleness was intolerable, exploration more exciting than routine. It was ambition, an ecstasy of hope for the future, a sort of inspired diligence, and there was that in it too which one of his sons observed and noted many years later: “He had a propensity always to be doing what nobody about him could do; with this he painted and made glasses and shagreen cases for his miniatures; with this he made himself a guitar, and learned to

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Poet and Painter play on it, when it was a rare thing to see a guitar, and partly constructed a chamber organ...” and much more.°® One larger aspect should be noted, too. ‘The Chesapeake country had been at the height of its early prosperity in the years of Charles Peale’s residence there. After 1750 there came a gradual decline. The lowlands were changing from tobacco to grain, the Pennsylvania staple. Much plantation wealth and magnificence remained, but the great families were being drawn toward Philadelphia; the tradesman class of the Bay had been left in a backwater. One eager for work would be drawn more and more into special tasks to accommodate the rich patron. Charles Willson Peale, certainly, was moving toward production of the luxuries requiring higher skills and, in this course, was drawn back again to painting and a revival of his childhood delight in color and design. Autobiography

Being now in want of leather, he takes a trip to norfolk in Virginia, with a view to purchasing that necessary article of his Saddlery business. In that Town he found a brother of Mr. Joshua Fraizers, who had some fondness for painting, and had painted several Landscapes and one Portrait, with which he had decorated his rooms. They were miserably done. Had they been better, perhaps they would not have lead Peale to the Idea of attempting any thing in that way, but rather have smothered this faint spark of Genius.

‘The idea of making Pictures,” he goes on to relate, had “now taken possession of his mind.” Back at Annapolis, he also tried his hand at a landscape. It was vastly praised by the circle of companions among whom he shone. Next, working in secret for fear of the shame of failure in so personal an effort, he began a portrait of himself. Watch and clock repair had become a favorite hobby, and he posed himself with pieces of clockwork spread out before him. This picture, though it turned up late in his life off the stretcher and used as packing for some paints, was at the time a resounding success. Rachel posed. Then his brothers and sisters. ‘hen his best friend, Isaac Harris. People were coming in to see and praise, and then Captain Maybury offered ten pounds for paintings of his wife and himself, and, after a little persuasion, the thing was attempted—and with success. It was this, as the narrative quoted above concludes, that “gave the first idea to Peale that he possibly might do better by painting than with his other Trades, and he accordingly began the sign painting business.” Such a free-for-all accumulation of trades might be taken as an indication of unsettled purpose, but it should be borne in mind that in this small community no one trade was good for a livelihood. Waters followed diverse interests. William Faris and John Inch, Annapolis silversmiths, were tavernkeepers and had other irons in the fire as well. An important additional preoccupation of the summer and fall of 1762 was the gathering of the sworn depositions confirming his right and title to the Manor of Wotton. A certified copy of the St. Paul’s baptismal record had been acquired as of July 15. His father’s marriage proved not so easy to document, but this was taken care of finally on September 11,

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Charles Willson Peale when Elizabeth Bennett, the only surviving witness of the wedding, was persuaded to appear

before Justice of the Peace John Brice, tell the story in detail, and swear to it on the Holy Evangels of Almighty God. On September 26 another old woman, Priscilla Saunders, midwife, of Queen Annes County, testified to the birth of the heir. St. George Peale prudently copied all three statements into the Land Office records where they have been preserved to the present day.®° Copies were engrossed for Charles and for Mr. Tweedie of

London, with the certification and signature of Governor Horatio Sharpe and the great seal of the province, under the date of October 11, 1762." The conquest of Martinique had been completed. It may have been at this time that Charles provided himself with a blank book, such as that in which his father had drafted each letter before making a fair copy for the post, and set about composing a suitable reply

to Captain Digby. The only surviving draft is dated a year later, leaving a doubt as to whether it was written because an earlier had brought no reply or whether the courtesy had been overlooked in the press of other excitements. Of other excitements there were and would be plenty. For one thing, the painting business, that new enterprise brought back from Norfolk, had achieved such success that it must now be pursued to Philadelphia. Philadelphia dealers in special commodities, the booksellers Rivington and Brown, for instance, advertised regularly in the Annapolis paper.

In Philadelphia he knew that he could get both paints and books about painting. At this point he was wholly innocent of technical knowledge. He had never seen a palette or easel, supplying these needs by contrivances of his own, knew nothing of the rules of colors or the right procedures for grinding paint, mixing with oil, applying to canvas. In December he set out upon the journey. It may have been his first visit to the great metropolis. He began by calling on his benefactor, James Tilghman, who was wintering in a comfortable house on High Street, to ask advice. Mr. Tilghman told him that there was then but one painter in Philadelphia, a Mr.

Stael, or Steele, a native of the Eastern Shore who had studied in Italy and was said to be a man of genius, though with rather an eccentric turn of mind.® “I know nothing of him but by report,’ Mr. Tilghman added cautiously. ““However, you will do well to see him.” Charles accordingly sought out Mr. Stael’s lodgings and introduced himself as a young

artist who had not had the advantage of receiving instruction. He was made welcome in a very kindly fashion and ushered into a painting room. The floor was strewn in every direction with drawings, prints, gobs of paint, and shreds of painted canvas. The most striking picture in the room was a self-portrait, the face directly to the front, the figure seated with the right leg thrown across the left knee, making it almost full length. The drawing was good, the likeness vivid and expressive with a look of “penetrating earnestness” in the face. Yet it had been colored in a manner that quite shocked Charles’s own taste for exactitude: “a purple red and the middle tints of a blueish tinge.” Learning of another artist in town, James Claypoole, Charles called also at his house.

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Poet and Painter He found him away from home but was given the pleasure of seeing his pictures. They may have been shown to him by the young man’s father, James Claypoole, house painter

and glazier, of an old Philadelphia family. Among them was a painting by one of the Wrench sisters, both from the Eastern Shore and both artists. Then for paints. Stepping into Christopher Marshall’s color shop on Chestnut Street and unwilling to confess himself ignorant even of the names of what he needed, he archly

requested a list of all that were to be had, with the price of each, so that, he said, he might be able to proportion his purchase to his purse. With this, he then went to Rivington and Brown’s at the corner of Front and Market to see if he could find a book for guidance. Who has not experienced the delight of discovering all of one’s new passion of the moment held between the covers of a book? A thick volume was laid at once in his hands, its title engaging and felicitous, Handmaid to the Arts.? This was the only work of the sort they had in stock. When one considers how the secrets of a trade or skill were jealously guarded at this time by most practitioners, the thrill of acquiring so much so readily can be appreciated. After four days with “this very useful work,” he made his purchase of paints and set out again for Maryland, “earnest,” as he says, “‘in pursuing his new profession.” Behind him, in the Pennsylvania Gazette of December 30, 1762, he left the only verses of which he ever acknowledged authorship—though with initials only. I quote the whole, a test of my readers’ indulgence. It is not so smooth a performance as the verses of February. Struggling, imitative, a blended echo of Milton and Pope, it had its origin nonetheless in deep feeling. In the measure of its inspiration, it is a revelation of its author. A new organ had been installed at Philadelphia’s St. Paul’s Church, and he had gone to hear the Christmas music. The great joy of music is his theme and characteristically he raises his particular

paean of praise not to the composer, or to the player, but to Philip Fyring, the maker of the instrument. On hearing the ORGAN, at St. PauL’s Cuurcu, on CurisTMAs Day, 1762.

HAIL Heav’n born Science! whose enliv’ning Touch, Thro’ Nature felt, makes all her Pow’rs rejoice, And fills the Soul with Harmony, and Bliss Extatic.——When Joy tumultuous revels In the swelling Breast, then thou, sweet Music, Majestically smooth, and soft as Zephyrs, Thy voice assuasive to the Heart apply’st:——— If jarring Passions, like disgorging ETNA, Wage War intestine, and with Rage destroy

Their Mother Nature, instant at thy Call They lose their Fury, and subside in Peace: —— A sov’reign Balm thou pour’st into the Wounds Of bleeding Love, and sooth’st the Heart-felt Pain.

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Charles Willson Peale And thou, majestic OrGAN! taught by thee We raise our Thoughts on Fancy’s Wing, Soaring beyond the darksome Veil of Time Up to the empyreal Heav’n, where GODHEAD habits, High thron’d above all Height, encircled round By SERAPHIMS, whose well-instructed Choirs

To pleasing Numbers tune their Harps of Gold——

— Surely, if ought of Heav’n on Earth we taste, "Tis when we join in holy Acclamation With deep-ton’d OrGan, to rehearse the Praise Of GOD Omnipotent, who rules the Heav’ns;—— When ev’ry swelling Note bears us enraptur’d

To the blest Abode of Saints imparadis’d.— When GOD his six days Work, a World had finish’d,

Attended by a Band of heav’nly Music, The Harp symphonious, and the solemn Pipe, The Dulcimer, all Organs of sweet stop, Along the starry Pavement up he rode; While infant Nature heard the Song harmonious, And list’ning Planets ceas’d to fill their Orbs.—— —— Whilst Harmony divine knows to controul The boist’rous Passions of the human Soul;—— Whilst Organ’s dulcet notes the Breast inspire With true Devotion, and a sacred Fire;—— Thy Name, O FYRING,* thy deserving Name Shall shine conspicuous in the Roll of Fame;—— Ages to come, and Men in future Days Shall grateful pay their Tribute to thy Praise. Cc. W. P.?°

* Mr. Fyrinc is a German by Birth, but has, for some Years past, practiced the making of Musical Instruments (particularly Spinnets and Harpsichords) in this City, with great Repute.

Before leaving Philadelphia, the poet had met Stael again at the bookshop, where he was a regular habitué, and had paid a parting call at the painting room. This visit was terminated rather suddenly by his host’s arrest for a debt owed his washerwoman. The incident should have sounded a warning that the life of an artist, or even a saddler, may be fraught with uncertainty and danger. Charles returned to Annapolis, however, prepared to do business as a painter of signs and portraits. The new trade was by no means malapropos to the old, at least in the chaisemaking branch, since carriages required decorative work, often with a crest or armorial

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Poet and Painter device upon each door. It had the advantage also of little competition, and this was true as well in its higher form of portraiture. Good portraits were few. Charles had seen some of the large fairy-tale pieces by Justus Engelhart Kuhn, who had died in 1717. John Wollaston had been in Maryland and Virginia from 1753 to 1757, leaving behind many works. Gustavus Hesselius had also long been absent from the scene, but his son, John Hesselius, was living at ‘“Bellefield,” his plantation just across the Severn from Annapolis, presenting a comfortable example of the success to which a portrait painter might aspire.

Though Charles was encouraged, as he had said, by the badness of paintings he had heard praised, he was now eager to emulate the better. Of these one in particular held his heart in thrall. It hung in the State House near an ancient, matronly image of good Queen Anne. He could go there to enjoy and study it any day. It was a likeness of the fifth Lord Baltimore, full length, painted by Herman Van der Myn in about 1730.!! The slender figure, exalted and benign, holds a baton extended as if about to utter a command. Flags and

weapons are at his feet, and an attentive Indian, bow in hand, behind. Five years later, Charles Willson Peale would paint his first formal portrait of this size, with an attentive Indian in it also, and, as his gift, it would hang not far from this one in the capitol of Maryland (Fig. 15). I can believe that he had been charmed as much by the youth and bearing of the Lord Proprietor, that air of freeborn nobility, as by the artist’s virtuosity. Here was just such a figure as he would be dreaming himself to be, having a manner of ease and elegance that he could and would assume. He now made bold to ask John Hesselius for a lesson in painting. He offered “one of his best saddles with its complete furniture, for permission to see him paint a picture.” This was accepted, and at Bellefield plantation he watched as Hesselius painted half of a face, and then under the other’s guidance finished it himself. He was twice invited also to witness the whole process as Hesselius painted a portrait, opportunities which, as he recalled, “infinitely lightened the difficulties of the new art.”’!? Portrait painters did not advertise their services like tradesmen, but sign painting was another matter. On April 7, 1763, appeared the first dated record of Charles Willson Peale as a painter, an advertisement in the Maryland Gazette: CHARLES WILSON PEALE

LATELY removed into Church-street, where Mr. Swan

formerly kept his Store, hereby gives Notice, That he carries on his SADDLER’S BUSINESS as usual, where

all Persons may be supplied with Saddles, Bridles or Harness, of any Sort, at the most reasonable Rates.

N.B. He would give good Encouragement to a SADDLE-TREE MAKER. Painting of Signs, is likewise performed at the same Place.

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. is Py ihe *

, n+? ae +e ems; 7 ysis

; ra We ee 7 ; } aaTe aY a

Po 4 Sy ra ‘

| a ‘a

a ~ es wad) ‘\

+ aay” a ee“tig! r a .-7.are | oe © ; 4. Attributed to HERMAN VaN DER Myn: Charles Calvert, fifth Lord Baltimore. c. 1730

The young Lord Proprietor of Maryland, whose pose of romantic grandeur, profoundly admired, was to be reflected in the Peale oeuvre. (The Peale Museum, Baltimore. Given in memory of Henry A. Rosenberg by The Louis and Henrietta Blaustein Foundation.)

Poet and Painter It was in this spring that Rachel’s first child was born. Margaret Jane (for the favorite sister) lived only long enough to be christened, dying after a short life of just twelve days. Hard upon this, the troubles in business began. The chaise-maker partner, already owing a considerable sum, gathered in all the firm’s available cash and decamped. In the autumn Nathan Waters, publicly announcing his intention of collecting all his debts and leaving the province, became very pressing for the payment of his bond. Charles, thus harassed, had first tried to extricate himself by selling his goods at very low prices. This only diminished his stock without increasing his profits. When the chaise maker vanished, he would have added his own chaise-making branch to the spreading tree of his business ventures had not the friendly Charles Wallace relieved him of the materials the defaulter had left behind. In these rather desperate straits, with no word yet from the London lawyer and no fresh advice from Captain Digby, a letter to the Captain was composed. He must surely be at home once more, resting upon his victorious arms, and might oblige with further information. The surviving draft of this unusual missive, scrupulously indited with many a handsome flourish, is surely in the hand of St. George, who is described in its pages as a “Compleat Penman.” Its content and amendments make it clear, however, that it had been put together in consultation with others.'% Annapolis, Maryland, September 25th, 1763.

Dear & Hon’d Cousen / I have had the Honour to Receive Yours from Mine Head of the 17th August 1761 wherein you was Pleased to Inform me you was Just Departing for Martineco with a Captains Commission of a Company in the Glorious tho’ very Hazardous Reduction of that Place: of which all my relatives with me rejoice, that any of our Relatives more Especially you Sir, should have so large a share in that Grand Acquisition to his Majesties Obedience; which we hope Long since you began to, and still continue to Enjoy in Quiet the fruits of your Labour. I Doubt not Sir but you have heard about what Time my Honoured Father Departed this Life which was in November 1750 at a Place called Chester-Town on Chester River in Maryland where in his Life time he kept the Free School, by the Stipends and Perquisites whereof, we Lived in a Genteel and Creditable manner and with a Just esteem by all who knew or was acquainted with him. But as his spirit was such, he left but small matters for my Honoured Mother with five Children of us to be Supported; Namely myself the Eldest, Two Boys more and Two Garles. My Birth is Registred in the Vestry Records of St. Pauls Parish in Queen Ann’s County where I was born, in this manner, (ie) Charles Wilson Son of Charles Peale by Margrett his Wife Born April 15th 1741 which said Charles as he says is the Eldest Son of the Reverend Charles Peale Rector of Edith Weston in the County of Rutland, and Heir in Tail to the Manor of Wotten in Oxfordshire, the Estate of Charles Wilson Doctor of Phisic who Dyed in Stamford in Lincolnshire in March 1724, and the next Eldest is Margret Jane who has been married upwards of Two Years very well to a Man who follows Merchandizing and Lives a very happy Life. The next is St. George, being born 23d April, was distinguished by that name after the English Patron, a Genteel hopefull Youth, a Compleat Penman and Principal Clerk in the Land office of this Province of Maryland and only continues therein until a Change of Better time & things. The next to him is Elisabeth Digbie who lives with and in Conjunction

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Charles Willson Peale with my Brother St. George Cherishes our Dear and Honoured Mother. The last of us is James

a Youth Living with me and Learning my Trade of a Saddler by which altho’ I am but a Young beginner and not long since Married to a Discreet and loving Wife as also of an honest and good Family hope to get my Bread in an honest way, Altho’ I would not by any means lose Sight of my Just Claim of Inheritance to the Manor of Wotton aforesaid, neither are my Necessities so great as to Part with my Birth Right for a Mess of Pottage, and do Assure you Honoured Cousen am well prepared with all Essentialls necessary to make my Self appear to be the Son (and eldest) of my Deceased and Honoured Father Charles Peale aforesaid, and if necessitated can be well Supported with Instructions here and Guidance of my affairs (and if

need should so require) and Support to carry on a Suit for the recovery thereof at hence if any should be so hardy as to Contend with me hereafter. Dr Cousen as you was so kind in Yours to Caution me from the Disposal of my Just Inheritance for a Trifle I hereby request you’! be pleased if it may any ways suit without a great

Inconveniency you’d be at the Trouble if the following may become to the knowledge of, for a Trifling matter, (ie) First the Quantity of Acres Contained in said Manor, with the Butts and Bounds thereof; ‘The Number of Tenants, and the Annual Amount thereof, with a Description of the Mannor House & Repair with the several out houses and Offices thereunto belonging Exclusive of the several Tenements afd. Who is in Possession and the Present Claimants, and by what right they so Claim, if by Term of Years or Lives, if Expired, or what Time to come or what Time Past ye Expiration, all which I request you’l Please to give me as Succinct an Acct of as the nature of the affair will permit of, and also what Stepps are Essentially necessary,

Previous to my going home and looking after, or sending, as the Case may require as Expeditious as the Case in its Present Circumstances will Permit. For which, besides taking it as a Most Singular favour done to me an Orphan, and now a Distant Kinsman besides your Favour in Complying with the Previous requisites herein shall be gratefully rewardd. and Ever Acknowledged as a most Singular Favour done to Hond. Cousen

P.S. My Hond. Mother with my Brothers & Sisters Your Most Obliged and most Sends their Affectionate respects to You and all our Affectionate Kinsman whilst

unknown Kinsfolk which I request you and they CHARLES WILSON PEALE will be Pleased to receive from their unknown Kinsman, & spouse &c Cs W: Peale

Note, if you please, the sturdy tone of his refusal “to Part with my Birth Right for a Mess of Pottage” and the readiness to deal with those who may be “so hardy as to Contend with me hereafter.” This bold assurance was now carrying him along at a time when he had little else, and with it he now boldly expanded in a new direction. He would make a business of that mechanical propensity first discovered when he had become the proud possessor of a watch. He had been working with watches and clocks ever since as a favor to friends. Now, at this difficult juncture, Thomas Johnson, a Scotsman he knew, had imported a quantity of inferior watches and had offered Charles a sum of money “to set them a-going.” What he set a-going was a whole new enterprise from which, in the short span

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Poet and Painter of its ascendancy, great things were expected. We read of it first in the Maryland Gazette of February 23, 1764: CHARLES WILSON PEALE At his Shop in Church-Street, ANNAPOLIS,

MAKES, Cleans and Repairs CLOCKS, and Cleans and Mends WATCHES, in the best, neatest and cheap-

est Manner, and with the greatest Expedition. Any Gentleman who shall be pleas’d to Employ him, may depend on being faithfully served, by Their humble Servant, CHARLES WILSON PEALE.

N.B. He likewise carries on the SADDLERS Business in all it’s Branches as heretofore.

This advertisement ran in each weekly issue until the twelfth of April, accompanied by an angry chorus over the signature of Mr. William Knapp, who pointedly declared himself “regularly bred to the WaATCHMAKING BusinEss, and has had Instruction from the most Eminent in Lonpon and DuBLin in that Way.” Mr. Knapp gave vent at last to an angry warning against “the unskillful and injudicious Pretenders.” By then the young pretender, hard pressed on every side, had abandoned the field. He loaded a cart with saddles and harness and took to the country roads with his whole battery of trades. It was a futile foray. He found that almost all of the rural people bought their goods on credit at the nearest store, paying back at harvest time, so that ready money was far scarcer in the country than in the town. Back to town he must go with all his hopes and troubles. This was a year of deepening business depression. Tobacco and all other staples had dropped in price and the stagnation would continue for a full year more. As so often occurs at such times, political excitement and upheaval were in the wind, and so it came about that Charles Willson Peale was swept, as usual happily and wholeheartedly, into the thick of the most uproarious, rancorous, glorious election campaign that Maryland had ever known.

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CHAPTER 95

SONS OF LIBERTY Ir Is WELL Known that in our country many public careers of note have begun with a failure in business. If I were to seek to justify this statement, I would begin by setting the political behavior of the successful in business against the political accomplishment of those

whose private affairs have come to grief, and I believe it might be shown that the unsuccessful are often more aware of the problems of the whole community and more likely to come forward with broad and bold solutions. I can present Charles Willson Peale, who was later to be a leader of a political party, as being at this point just such promising material for just such a career: he was young, attractive, cheerful, eager to dedicate himself with ardor to the popular cause and, if not yet a failure in business, so near to disaster that only a miracle from the Manor of Wotton could prevent it. A year had passed since the war had ended in glorious victory, yet hard times had grown harder. Then word had come from London that Parliament was debating an American tax. Patriotic fervor swung away from King and empire to American rights. Even the mild Beale Bordley talked of stern resistance by economic reprisal. Maryland’s Court Party faced

a Country Party. “Sons of Liberty,” who would stand as organized groups when the tax

came, now opposed the election of a “courtier” to the lower house of the provincial Assembly. The excitement of the tumultuous summer and fall of 1764 lay all in there being an open, popularly supported challenge to this candidate, and to the old governing class as a whole, and it became a wild, refreshing, bitter battle—the more bitter because that part of the population not qualified to vote joined freely in the persuasive effort. ‘The Court Party’s candidate was Dr. George Steuart, a University of Edinburgh man who had been in Maryland affairs for more than forty years, a member of the Lord Proprietor’s Council, Commissioner of the Land Office, Mayor of Annapolis, Lieutenant Colonel of the Horse Militia. Standing against this dignitary was Samuel Chase, backed by the Sons of Liberty. Chase, at twenty-three, was the same age almost to the day as his warm supporter, Peale, but very different in aspect, a vigorous, broad-shouldered fellow, more than six feet tall, wry-mouthed, hot-tempered. Peale, it is safe to assume, painted the bright banners with which the friends of Chase and freedom and of the rights of tradesmen paraded through the streets of Annapolis. The Court Party struck back in its way, and officeholders such as St. George Peale were threatened with dismissal if they did not stand for Steuart. Charles

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Sons of Liberty was told bluntly that prosecution for the payment of his debts would follow 1f he continued to meet and march with the insurgents, a warning which only stirred his spirit of defiance the more. Yet the danger was very real. Perhaps he took heart from the new factions’ strong phalanx of lawyers. Samuel Chase was one. Another was that Charles Carroll who, to distinguish him from others of the name, was always “Charles Carroll, Barrister.” The Barrister, as the Peale autobiography recalls, “being unconnected with office and possessing every manly Virtue, with highly accomplished manners, became the principal support of Mr. Chase.” It seems clear from this not entirely lucid statement that Carroll was the moving spirit in the contest and the first object as well of the saddler-poet-painter’s admiration. That admiration was to have its influence on Peale’s character and the Barrister’s friendly response an even more profound effect upon his fortunes. This Charles Carroll was one of the wealthiest and most powerful of the Maryland aristocracy, a shipbuilder, horse breeder, merchant prince, just turned forty-one years of age and growing portly “through,” by his own casual admission, “‘laziness.”” He had married

iGone aos 4, +48oe27

5. GC. W. PEALE: Samuel Chase. c. 1773 “4 \ i. a : he A portrait revealing Peale’s weakness 7 \ we ™ , fy ee

with an uncongenial subject. Devoted as j a f af i he had once been to the cause of “Chase oO oF a ‘ 7

politician. a

and Liberty,” the gentle artist had little ca iC. all z= = Ss Le

in common with the surly and aggressive aE visit EO it

| 39 |

Charles Willson Peale

| . io — i ; y - — | 6. C. W. Peace: Mrs. Samuel Chase and

| > ae as alls a , Her Daughters. 1772-75

| 4 : Se _ - Coe J os , A carefully studied composition, on

| P77 a t/a i a iwhich PealeBordley, had consulted his friend, John Beale with a sketch, in a

—ee letter of Feb. 15, 1772. .4es

Margaret Tilghman the year before, a happy event apparently responsible for a more chatty, cheerful tone in his business letters to his agent in London, letters, nevertheless, as always blandly cynical, amused even when making a complaint. His shoemaker had served him badly and the Barrister would send the fellow “a Tickler.” ‘““My compliments likewise in a Particular manner to the Good Knight Alderman and Grocer Sir Thomas Rawlinson and let him Know that imposing upon a man is by no means a Deed of Chivalry. If he does not mend his manners, tell him, and send me Better Tea, I shall think that the Touch of his Majesty’s Sword has no more Virtue than the imposition of Hands of a Bishop. It gives only a Little Pride and leaves the morals and Principles of a man just where it found them.”?!

He owned a large library whose titles reflect an interest in history, politics, and the new

liberal philosophy that had emerged from the tumults of the preceding century: Lord Shaftesbury’s works, Voltaire’s in translation, Montesquieu’s Spirit of the Laws with d’Alembert’s Analysis of it, memoirs of Pompadour and Cardinal de Retz, Lord Molesworth’s history of Denmark and Keating’s of Ireland, and Johnson’s Dictionary in folio, for

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Sons of Liberty a sampling.* His London agent was instructed to send current political tracts, but to eschew religious controversy, though it is to be noted that the Barrister owned ‘Thomas Gordon’s Independent Whig, with its attack on High Church pretensions. The circulating library which William Rind of the Maryland Gazette had set up in 1762 was characterized by a very similar selection, and the fact is that by now the literature and thought of the eighteenth-century Enlightenment had permeated the whole of the coherent Chesapeake culture.* Nowhere else in the Western world was it so firmly planted, this confident reliance upon reason and nature, Pope’s view of “Nature and of Nature’s God,” with the deity conceived simply as the mysterious force that had set the rest in motion. It was a revolutionary doctrine, overturning ancient theologies, superstitions, customs, and yet at the same time conservative in its concept of an orderly, stable society ruled by solid rational thinking. It appealed to the plantation aristocracy, legalistic, anticlerical, antimonarchical, fearlessly and humorously independent, qualities of which the Barrister stands as a notable exemplar. It appealed no less to Charles Willson Peale, and his involvement with the Barrister in this election campaign may well have had a determining part in setting the pattern of his future thought and action. That the pattern was already taking form can be seen in those 1762 verses on the music of Philip Fyring’s organ, with their repeated allusion to Nature and their assumption that God Omnipotent, having completed his six-day work, had then retired along the starry pavement to dwell forever undisturbed among his well-instructed choirs—undisturbed and undisturbing, while mankind followed the light of Reason and virtue or vice created its own reward or punishment.* It was a philosophy of the new, of hope and reassurance, immensely attractive to this young man as to others as the Dark Ages were shattered and a new order emerged. Doubt and laughter would be followed next by action. The new generation would be of a mind to guide events, to make its own new world.

Peale had graduated from Milton to Pope. Shaftesbury must have influenced him, for he felt the same dislike of fanaticism in any degree, opposed it more by ridicule than by rancor, held the same critical view of revealed religion and the same belief in innate qualities of human nature by which goodness and beauty are perceived. Reason he valued, but also, with Rousseau, the tender emotions. When he set out to compose the autobiography so often quoted here, Rousseau’s Confessions was his model. Henceforth he would stand more with Pope than Milton: Know then thyself, presume not God to scan; The proper study of mankind 1s man.

Early in the summer, after Charles had appealed to the Barrister for help in his manorial expectations, Mr. Carroll had written to his attorney in London, Twinihoe, enclosing a copy of the depositions. The papers had lost their seals and been otherwise abused in their currency among Charles’s friends, but Charles, as Mr. Carroll observed, “will shew what he can Prove and if from any Information you can gain there be any Incouragement to Prosecute the affair Fresh may be made out and sent over and the Proper Steps may be taken.

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Charles Willson Peale The young fellows circumstances are but low. He sends over three Guineas which he hopes may be sufficient to Defray the Expences of and satisfy for any Trouble that may be taken

in making the Inquiry and getting Information of the Circumstances of the Estate.” He expressed a doubt, perhaps well founded, that any dependence could be placed on the Captain Digby letter, but urged a discreet investigation among family and friends. This was on July 11, 1764, and a reply could hardly be expected before the ensuing spring. November came. Chase was elected and at once four writs were served upon Peale by his creditors. His friend Isaac Harris became his security, which necessitated an accounting of his affairs, apparently the first that had been done. By his initial obligation to Nathan Waters and his subsequent diversity of business, he had accumulated debts of nearly nine hundred pounds, against which he had only about three hundred pounds owing from various sources. His stock and tools could not, of course, make up the difference, and no one, save perhaps the loyal Isaac Harris, would think of the Manor of Wotton in terms of security. His friends advised him to put all his affairs in Harris’ hands and quietly absent himself

until he could either earn a substantial sum or else reach a working agreement with his creditors.°

Painting would be the thing. That prospect now shone golden, for as luck would have it Captain Cole, who lived near his sister Jenny’s home at Tuckahoe Bridge, had applied for two portraits. Sometime in the winter or early spring of 1765, he took ship for the Eastern

Shore with Rachel at his side. Rachel was big with child. Jenny and her loud-singing husband welcomed them warmly. Sometime in the spring or summer, at this refuge in Queen Annes County, the child would be born—a boy, first-born, the heir—and given the name James Willson, honoring simultaneously brother, brother-in-law, and the manorial expectation.°®

They had come to a friendly refuge but hardly to a hiding place. James M’Mordie had opened a store, then an inn. The county magistracy held court at the inn on certain appointed days, while regularly by night it was a scene of raucous revelry, often ending in physical violence, damage to body and temper, and lawsuits. Charles was much amused by the fact that the tavern thus witnessed both the origin and the settlement of most of the litigation in that part of Queen Annes. In M’Mordie, whose plantation, store, and hostelry ventures had been accompanied by difficulties similar to his own, he had a sympathetic friend. Sometime, perhaps during this visit, perhaps later, he agreed to stand surety for certain of M’Mordie’s debts and, as it inevitably turned out, had them added in time to his own. News of the fugitive’s presence in this conspicuous haven soon reached Mr. James Tilgh-

man, now back on his Maryland lands not far away. Since that time more than three years before when Charles had crossed the Bay to receive this kindly gentleman’s loan of twenty pounds, he had given the matter no further thought whatever, had paid no interest, nor, in his recent difficulties, offered any explanation or apology. Mr. Tilghman was a conservative in law, in politics, in business. He heartily disapproved of the manner in which Samuel Chase had upset the even tenor of affairs at Annapolis. In addition, he had reason to join

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Sons of Liberty the action of the Annapolis creditors. He issued a writ for Charles Willson Peale’s arrest. For the first time Charles felt remorse. It swept over his spirit like a wave and would never cease to trouble him. In his reflective autobiography of sixty years later he tried to explain his failure to meet an obligation which every tye of honor, Gratitude, and justice demanded him to discharge, with not only Interest but with that heart-felt conviction of the extent of the obligation he lay under for an unasked, and unmerited Loan. . . . All that can be said in mitigation of his indiscression is that he engaged in so many labours of Body and mind with his several mecanical undertakings, that he allowed himself no time for reflections of any kind. He did not seem to regard the future, being wholly occupied with the present, or feared danger untill he was overtaken by difficulties. Thus he stayed some time at his sisters without thinking that the anger of his creditors

would induce them to use means to secure him in a horrid Gaol.

The debtor, in prison or in flight, is a familiar figure in eighteenth-century history, not to mention the history of art. Yet we have here a pleasant variation on the theme. This debtor was eluding the law with the avowed hope of being able to earn the needed sums elsewhere and so return at last in triumph. That had been the object of the first hegira, and of the next more sudden one, and of the next, and the next, and although it was to take eleven years, the thing would be done. His creditors, with their money accumulating at 6 per cent, had really no great cause for complaint. Peale’s determination, and his sense of guilt, were quickened by the shock of surprise. When the stern-faced sheriff with James Tilghman’s writ appeared within the tavern door, his intended victim had but a moment’s warning in which to dash out and into hiding. Fortunately there still remained one other haven within the widening circle of the Peale family. Not long before, in her nineteenth year, Elizabeth Digby Peale had married a young Virginia seafarer, Robert Polk, of Accomac County. The young couple now lived in that county, directly to the south of Maryland’s Eastern Shore, a ride of about a hundred miles from ‘Tuckahoe. With some of the money received from Captain Cole, Charles bought a little mare named Gimlet, took a hurried leave of his Rachel, with the yet-unborn heir, and at eight o’clock on the morning of June 19, 1765, set out for Virginia at the small beast’s fastest pace, for he was in terror of pursuit and capture. The earliest Peale diary brings us part of this story, the autobiography more. In the diary, brief and incoherent, fright and the allure of perilous adventure stand together. At a wayside inn, a German doctor and tales of a footpad on the road. He hastened on. On the fourth day, finding Gimlet’s hips badly galled by the paintbox knocking about upon them, he threw away box and palette rather than risk delay, stuffing the paints into his saddlebags. After three or four more days’ hard riding past plantations and along sandy forest roads, at last he crossed the Virginia line, sick with fatigue, and begged shelter at a private house. Morning found him feeling better, and one more day brought him to the Polk’s and a warm welcome. Bobby Polk, just turned twenty-one years of age, three years younger than Charles, was the owner of a small vessel in which, as fate would have it, he was about to set sail for

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Charles Willson Peale New England with a cargo of corn. He gladly accepted Charles as his companion on the voyage, and so now comes the first thrill of being sea-borne on the way to a distant port. Danger! Narrow escapes again and again, though this was the mildest season of the year and, however real the perils, they were not from storm or wave. By the Boston record of port arrivals we know that she was the sloop Ginger, John Bradford, master.’ The Chesapeake craft of this day were jauntily painted in bright colors, often with a gilded lion at the prow.

Ginger, from the facts that she sprang a leak at the first strain of lifting her burden over the ocean swells and that Bobby traded her for another as soon as he had sold the corn, I suspect to have been a weather-beaten old-timer, snub at the bow, a high quarter-deck astern where a sailor leaned on the long tiller bar, his eye on the great patched sail holding the wind overhead. All this would only add to the excitement of seeing the land dwindle to a far and faint horizon blue, to the mystery and watchful expectation of an ocean voyage and, under the smoky lantern below, to the pleasure of the companionship of sailormen. Diary

We are detain’d Till Saterday 29th. Leave Porgateague and Early on Sunday came to Anchor in Mother Hawkins Hole. Wait for a Fair Wind till 3d July. In the after-noon put to Sea. ‘The Wind Blows hard which makes our Vessel Leaks a Little. I suffer Silently. After Varable Weather we Beat about for 3 Days, the Wind hard a head. Our Captn. Undertakes to Carry her into an Inlet called Metomkin that we were Opposite.® This Inlet is Recken’d the Best of the Eastern

Shore of this Province. In the Channel there [is] 2’ Fathom Water, but very narrow and Something Crooked. We were Oblig’d to Gibe, and the Vessel not Answering her Helm directly we were much Affrighted, thinking Every minute to Strike. Some of the Hands sd. they felt her Tutch. However we got safe in and Lay here Till 7th, and Divert our Selves with Gunning and Gather’d Turtle’s Eggs of which the Shore abounds in Great Plenty. ‘The Wind Proving fair,

we put to Sea and [with the wind] fair and Gentle South and 8S W terly in 7 Days Arrive at Boston the Metropelis of new England and the Largest Town in America but very irregular Streets paved with Pebbles. Autobiography

This Voyage was made with light breezes, as are common at this season of the year, yet not without some dangers, as the coasts of new England are very much subject to be covered with thick Fogs. And this Vessel had like to have run on Block Island. The Fog was so heavy that

they could not discover the land although it is light, but by good fortune the fog suddenly clearing up gave them time to avoid the dangers they were like to fall into. They then shaped their course for Martha’s Vineyard, where Mr. Peale wished much to have time to gather some paints, with which the Banks seem to abound, but a fine breeze springing up, gave them a delightful sail through the sound, having a strong tide in their favor. A little before night they had like to have been on a point of shoals belonging to Nantucket Island, but having just light enough to see their danger they avoided the shoals. The next morning they arrived at the entrance of Boston Bay. The wind favoring them, they had a most pleasing sail amongst many Islands, some of which were highly cultivated and have a delightfull appearance in the summer season. It was on a Sunday morning [July 14, 1765] when

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Sons of Liberty they reached Boston, and having been a week cooped up in a small Vessel, they would have been glad to have taken a walk to view the Town, but the Policy of the place was such, that no Person was allowed to go any where but to and from the meetings or Churches, on that day.

The diary at this point, describing Christ Church, Trinity Church, and King’s Chapel,

implies that Charles did take a walk, but within the letter of the law. Gome Monday morning, he found his way to a color shop in Queen Street and bought some paints. The shopkeeper was John Moffatt, a nephew of John Smibert, the Scottish painter who had come to America in 1728 with Dr. George Berkeley, Dean of Derry, in whose fabulous “College of St. Paul” he was to have been Professor of Art. Smibert had settled in Boston, opened this shop, and had died here fourteen years before. Moffatt, learning that this customer with the sea-blown brown hair, the large gray eyes, and the soft accent of a southern province was a painter, promised him “a great feast”? and led him through the shop and up the stair behind. They entered a large, well-lighted room whose walls were lined with green baize and hung with pictures all around. The paintings were everyone in “a style vastly superior’ to any to be seen in Maryland—pictures with whole groups of figures standing like actors in a play: the copy from Poussin’s Continence of Scipio, copies from Italian masters, an unfinished piece of the heads of the ancient philosophers, which was long remembered. Many had been painted at Florence, where Smibert had lived under the patronage of the Medici Grand Duke Cosimo III. These paintings were to be to John Trumbull and other American artists as they were to Peale, a first exciting glimpse of “high art,” the art of immortal deeds, of lofty thought and noble action, in the opinion of the cognoscenti far transcending portraiture. To Peale, I should hastily add, they were exciting simply as painters’ problems cleverly solved. There seems to have been no response in his

practical mind to the classical and abstract. Wednesday there was “the Commencement of Cambridge Scoollars,” a great holiday, with crowds from everywhere. On Friday they set sail again. Autobwgraphy

Captn. Polk finding no sale for his Corn here, they go to Newburyport, about 30 Leagues to the eastward of Boston. Here Peale painted the Schooner with Colours that the captn. bought at Boston, and having disposed of his Cargo, he lent Peale 16 Dollars, and left him at his lodgings in this Town, where, having nothing to do, he painted a small portrait of himself. This being seen got him the portraits of 3 children of a wealthy merch’t [Nathaniel Carter] to paint.? He only painted one other portrait piece, the Portrait of a Lady, and was loosing his time here, without any further prospect of employment. He only made a slight sketch of the Town from the opposite shore, the rest of his time being spent in some readings and other Amusements.

His reading included one of James Otis’ pamphlets, probably The Rights of the British Colonies Asserted and Proved, poring over it into the night by a candle set on a chair by his bed. Falling asleep, he somehow overturned the candle and awoke in the morning to find

that it had burned itself out on the floor in a pool of grease close to the inflammatory tract. The amusements lay in going out with other young people to Plum Island and romping

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Charles Willson Peale

i ? | 7. CG. W. PEALE: Joshua Carter. 1765

if | A little boy in gray coat and blue-green

Sy Pe vest. The earliest located Peale work, \ A , i reflecting the style of John Hesselius.

in the sand. Boys and girls, locked together in embrace, would roll down the dunes while others stood laughing from above and below. They gathered plums from bush to bush and ate them with the food brought out in baskets. When Charles, finding a lonely spot, stripped

and plunged into the water, some of the girls came promptly into view to watch him, whether in mischief or from a lack of modesty he could not be sure, but it kept him swimming beyond the surf far longer than he would have preferred.

So the time passed, and he was still enjoying the life of the town in late September when the fury against the Stamp Act was sweeping the country. In this effort he joined with zest, painting some of the emblematical designs by which the citizens of Newburyport made

manifest their detestation of the law. He was a spectator, too, of their climactic carting and tearing to pieces of an effigy of the stamp distributor, the cheering, rum-swoggling rabble

dragging it with them through the darkening streets, pouring along to drumbeat and the roar of cannon, beating their sticks together and bellowing, “Stamp him! Stamp him!” But if he earned any more money at Newburyport, it was not by painting. A return to Boston would be the thing. There at least, he reflected, he could be improving himself. Back in Boston, he found lodgings at the Exchange ‘Tavern where, after agreeing to teach Mr. Blodget’s son to draw, he was boarded for only two dollars a week. He called again,

Sons of Liberty of course, at the color shop, and it was there that he first heard of John Singleton Copley. He was directed to Copley’s house, where he introduced himself as a beginner in the art of painting portraits. Copley received the stranger kindly. If the sight of Smibert’s pictures had been “a great feast,” here was a greater, for these were portraits of his own time, new and bright, and here in the flesh was a successful painter, only three years older than himself. Copley lent him a head painted by candlelight to copy as a trial of skill, and nocturnes, by candle or lamplight, as trials of skill, carry a reflection of this one down into the next generation of the Peales. After this visit, Charles tried his hand at miniature painting for the first time— again, a portrait of himself. Time and money were slipping away, not unpleasantly, but with no prospect of better things. He sought employment as a journeyman saddler, then sold his watch for five pounds to a hatter, taking a hat in part payment. An order for a small portrait brought him twelve dollars, and, with this much money in hand, he dickered with a sea captain for a passage to Charleston, partly on credit, hoping that South Carolina might offer a better prospect for a beginning painter. Passing through the market, just before he was to sail, he met a Virginia captain bringing letters for him from his family and news of the birth of his son. The allure was too much to resist and, “horrid Gaol” or no, he took passage instead to Virginia in this ship. Narrow escape made this voyage memorable also. Gliding through the night under full sail and with a steady breeze, the watch suddenly raised the shout of “Breakers!” All hands tumbled on deck and brought the craft about, though not before they had the roar of the surf under her bowsprit. This was at the Egg Harbor shoals, off the Jersey shore. At last she crept safely into Metomkin Inlet, and here the roving painter had to decide where to

go and what to do. He knew no one in this locality, and he had only one shilling and sixpence in his pocket. His only thought must have been to make his way somehow across to Bobby Polk’s on the Bay side and from there send word to Rachel and his friends. Looking across the water in this uncertainty, he saw a boat put out from the shore. The

rowers brought it alongside and a gentleman stepped aboard. The gentleman, coming down into the cabin, saw the self-portrait, asked who had made it, and was introduced. Autobiography

And approving the work, he was pleased to invite our young adventurer to his House, with a promise to recommend him to several Gentlemen of his Acquaintance in that County, in order to get him imployments. In short, from that time he became a sincere and warm friend. Mr. [James] Arbuckle was a Man of kind & Generous disposition. He had his own, his Ladys and Childs portraits done immediately, and his having an Ingenious turn of mind, they lived happily together for 6 months. The congeniality of their Sentiments, their alike fondness for Mechanicks, for arts & for Musick, gave them ample food for their active minds in various amusements, which filled up all their time. They never felt the listless moments of wanting something to do. Being together they never felt the pains of Ennuz.

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Charles Willson Peale Those pains of ennui—the whole life of Charles Willson Peale may be seen as an effort to avoid them. He had his times of reflection, times of quiet contemplation of the world, but even in this area he needed some sense of meeting a problem. The world was a watch to be mended. Life could be caught and held in the mirror of a painting. Now, to have found a kindred spirit after so much lonely wandering was a great joy. He taught his new friend the mysteries of clock and watch repair and of silversmithing, trades which the genial Arbuckle, a very wealthy young man, followed for the rest of his life, giving his services in return for the pleasure of obliging his neighbors. The three-quarter-length portrait of Judge Arbuckle of Accomac and its companion piece of little Edward with his mother are a step forward from the Newburyport pictures of the

Carter children. The stiffly erect little figures of Joshua and Thomas Carter are in the outmoded style he had learned from Hesselius. At Copley’s studio he had seen the new air of elegance and ease with which the London artists were now endowing their sitters. ‘The old emphasis had been upon attitudes of status and command. Now, for the rising Age of Reason, the emphasis was upon natural poses, relaxed and comfortable, the look of intelligence and charm. Copley had made frequent and direct use of British mezzotint portraits both of the older and the new school. It was from this source that he had learned of the change in fashion, and it is reasonable to suppose that he advised Peale to equip himself in the same way. Certainly Peale had with him now the beginning of his own collection of prints, for during this sojourn he made a painting from one of Sir Joshua Reynolds’ subjects and sent it to Annapolis as a gift for the Barrister. The Barrister, much interested, made inquiry as to where his young friend had been, and hearing the story of the northward voyages, advised that he return to Annapolis. ‘There is no fear of Peale’s living anywhere,” he said, “if he can make shift to live in that country.”’ Mr. Carroll had once made a journey into New England for his health and regarded the whole region with distaste. St. George Peale, on this advice, drew up a letter of license allowing his brother four years’ indulgence. This was signed by all his creditors in the city, save those four who had

brought suit. Charles, with high hopes, his earnings from painting Accomac planters in pocket, set out at last for home. The friendly Arbuckle offered to give him land and build him a house if he would return, a proposal declined with many thanks. That would have been, as he observed, “no way to get forward in the world.” Thus, after the passage of a full year, the family was once more united, Charles and Rachel, the infant heir, brother Jemmy, Mother Peale, Peggy Durgan. Actually, it was Rachel’s expected inheritance from her father’s estate which had made possible the reunion, this being made over as security for the quartet of most determined creditors. They still allowed the youth no alternative but to give such a pledge or go to prison. He called upon one of them, Thomas Richardson, to plead “that he hoped to get improvements in his new profession, and that he would be glad to serve him in that way.” To this Mr. Richardson replied, stroking his chin, which was remarkably long, that “he

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Sons of Liberty

i neneas ne me .° ASS

oo me i - | eg! . 4

, : . . . Dg 4 i . a. ta . aN "ee ee ae .

Kg | f aA , eS eee . Se ae. : ae |Py ae

28 ie. ee : . ree wes Pg .

8. C. W. Peace: Judge James Arbuckle of Accomac. Mrs. Arbuckle and Their Son. 1766

The relaxed and natural poses reflect Peale’s brief contact with Copley not long before. The Judge has been reading Thomson’s Seasons. Tabitha Scarborough Custis Arbuckle wears pale blue. Little Edward brings her cherries.

did not know but that he might have his cat painted’’—a cruel jest that Rachel could never forgive as long as she lived. Having succeeded so well with his gift to the Barrister, and hearing that Beale Bordley,

now a judge of the provincial court and a member of the Governor’s Council, was to arrive soon in Annapolis, Charles made a painting in his new manner for him also. He left it at the home of Miss Elizabeth Bordley, the sister with whom Judge Bordley stayed when in town. Bordley, a connoisseur and amateur of sorts, was sure to view the production with a more critical eye. He arrived at night but on the next morning went at once to the room where Charles’s picture had been placed. The room was cold and Mr. Bordley not yet fully dressed; nor even his stockings were gartered up. But here he stayed, viewing it, for nearly two hours, weighing, we may suppose, not only the quality of the work but the career that a well-trained painter of this sort of thing might enjoy in Maryland. When he came out he said to Elizabeth, “Something must, and shall, be done for Charles.”’

Charles Willson Peale Charles was sent for immediately and came. In all his life he was never to find a friend more true and warm than this diffiident, mild-mannered country gentleman with healthy, florid face, dark hair, and kindly gray eyes under dark and heavy brows. After they had

talked for a while, Mr. Bordley asked him if he would be willing to go to England to study, if the means could be provided. To this he eagerly agreed, and Bordley, turning to his desk, set down a proposal on paper which he desired him to submit to the approval of Mr. Barrister Carroll. The upshot was that to Mr. Bordley’s ten guineas the Barrister added twenty-five, and to this Governor Horatio Sharpe contributed eight pounds, Daniel Dulaney ten guineas, Robert Lloyd, Benedict Calvert, ‘Thomas Sprigg, and Charles Carroll of Carrollton five guineas apiece, and Benjamin Tasker, ‘Thomas Ringgold, and Daniel of St. ‘Thomas Jenifer three guineas each.’° It was all for the honor of bringing an artist to Maryland, Court and Country Party together. ‘The sum would be ample for a year’s stay in London if the young man lived thriftily and perhaps earned a little as he went along. ‘To Charles, of course, it was this and much more. Here was that Manor of Wotton at his feet, all the excitement of riches within reach at last, the rightful heir returning to his own. His backers had at first no idea as to with whom he might study, an important point, since an artist’s charge for taking a pupil was often high. William Allen of Philadelphia was consulted, he having sent a young man to Europe to study art. Mr. Allen furnished Peale with a letter to his protégé, Benjamin West, now in London and doing well. On

the chance that this should fail, Mr. Dulaney gave him another to the Reverend Mr. Douglas, a friend of Allan Ramsay, portrait painter to the King. Bordley gave him an introduction to his half brother, Edmund Jenings, which was to be, perhaps, the most helpful

of all. As for the Barrister, he wrote neither to gentry nor to cloth but to the man of business who had for many years looked after his affairs in London, and his letter had its cautionary message for the bearer as well. Charles Carroll to William Anderson, October 30, 1766

The Bearer hereof Charles Wilson Peale a young man of this Town has a Turn for Limning and some other Branches of Painting. He has Likewise Pretensions to an Interest in Oxfordshire. As his Circumstances are but Low I am willing to advance twenty or twenty five Guineas to

Enable him to take a Trip to England to see what he can make of his Pretensions and to get some further Insight into the Profession. I therefore desire that you will at times as he shall want it Let him have in the whole to the amount of the above sum and Charge the Same to my Account. If it lays in your way and you can Recommend him to the Employ of or Get Him Introduced to any of the Profession it may be of Service to him and I shall be obliged to you as I have no other motive to what I advance but to give him an opportunity of Improving himself ‘That he may be better able to Support himself and Family. I hope he will behave with Diligence and Frugality.!!

There were long farewells to be said before this new, auspicious, parting. He crossed the

Bay to take his leave of Margaret Jane and found her alone and in trouble. M’Mordie

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Sons of Liberty had added a mill to his other ventures, had lost money as before, and had been lodged in Queenstown jail awaiting a settlement of his debts. Intemperance had ruined his health and his good nature. Jenny rode to Queenstown every day to comfort him and bring him food, a fidelity he returned with abuse. She was “going fast into a confirmed consumption,” so it seemed to Charles, “‘and he took leave of her with an aching heart, believing he would never see her more.” Somehow, however, continuing her daily ride all through that winter,

p) 9

an unusually severe one, Jenny was restored to health. In time, the plantation and mill were sold, and M’Mordie released. After that, he set up as a tavernkeeper at Annapolis, and

in this congenial occupation died, so that it was he, rather than Jenny, whom Charles would see no more.”

Early in December the time of departure came at last. In Annapolis that month the Forensic Club, of which Samuel Chase was a member, was debating the proposition as to whether it would be right and proper to “take up arms to deliver subjects from the yoke of a strange prince who is become a tyrant.’’!° It was decided in the affirmative. The Stamp Act paper, over which there had been such a wave of tumult a year before, had been lyin ever since aboard a royal ship in the harbor, and now, with the act repealed, Governor Sharpe ordered it sent back to London. Stamps and this roving Son of Liberty Charles Willson Peale were to sail together. Charles’s passage had been arranged as a favor also. ‘The Brandon was a ship with a captain long in the Barrister’s service, Henry McLachlan. With advice from many, promises to all, great hopes of future wealth and fame, and with all the sad tenderness of parting, he went

at last on board, joining in the flutter of farewells as the anchor came up to the seamen’s chant and the cold wind caught and filled the sails.

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eern: ee re A aRang Eoesibe AenA2 Soo ene Bo 12. C. W. PEALE: London Lovers. Diary sketches, c. 1767

A diary note of fifty years later suggests that Benjamin Franklin and a friend were the subjects of the sketch at the right.

visited the Society of Artists exhibition, and went to a play. The friendly staymaker of saddlery days was now head of “Charles Wallace and Company,” importing European and East Indian goods to Maryland. He would be returning soon and would bring back to the Barrister and the others a favorable report on the progress their protégé was making. He had certainly also brought to London letters from Charles’s family, and these may have included the news of the death, in this year, of two-year-old James Willson Peale. The Wilson name of hopeful expectation would not appear again in the coming genera-

tion. The Peales of the future would bear the names of artists. While so “alone, even amidst the crowds,” a change had been wrought within this lonely heart. In shattered hopes and deep humiliation, pride remained, and pride must have a new and unassailable substantiation. Those lands, the imagined possession of which had marked him out a gentleman, were not his nor would he ever seek them now. He would stand instead upon the new concept of human worth, open to every man or woman, the new nobility of virtue and talent, the aristocracy of art. This is the self-image of Benjamin West, and it would not be amiss to suppose that West himself had brought it purposefully forward at this time as the right answer to his friend’s blighted hopes and overridden spirit. West had loved to tell, as Peale did later, of how an

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The New Nobility emperor had paid homage to an artist, or of how bluff King Henry had taken Holbein’s part in his quarrel with a nobleman, declaring that he could make a duke a day but never ever a painter. To be an artist, true to oneself and to the art, was to possess a loftier dignity than any conferred by birth. Art was an allegiance without boundaries of place, the artist a citizen of the world. It may well have been at this time and in affirmation of this idea that West painted the portrait of his student, wearing the air of a young nobleman, holding his brush in a light and lofty gesture as the symbol of a new dominion. By late summer, the diary expense account ends, leaving a few pages blank as evidence, probably, of a favorable balance on the side of income. But in drawing on the Barrister’s

funds he had mentioned his intention of returning to Maryland while there was still the price of a passage to his credit. Mr. Anderson reported this to Mr. Carroll. Benjamin West,

13. BENJAMIN West: Charles Willson Peale. 1767

The disappointed claimant to manorial rank and fortune, shown in the nobler character of a painter.

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|y\|| | 67 |

Charles Willson Peale finding him pining for Maryland, was urging and encouraging him to remain, an influence that, by early winter, was reinforced by a letter from Annapolis: Mr. Peale It was a Pleasure to me to find by yours of the 17th March last that you were in a way of Acquiring some Improvement in your Profession but I was a little surprized to hear from Mr.

Anderson that you had thoughts of Leaving England to sail for Maryland the November following the Dates of your letters as I supposed you would make your stay in England as Long

as Possible to Git all the Insight you Could and as I Calculated the Assistance you Carried from Hence would enable you to make a Longer stay but I hope both Mr. Anderson and myself were mistaken and that you have Conducted yourself with that Prudence and Frugality that you will not have occasion to hurry away before you have in some measure attained the Ends for which you went. You are to Consider that you will never be able to make up to your self and family the Loss of the opportunity and that those by whom you have been Assisted will be sorry to find their money Thrown away but I hope as I before said that I have been mistaken and those hints are unnecessary. I have wrote to Mr. Anderson and left it to his Descretion in Case he should judge you Deserving to advance you Eight or Ten Guineas more on my Account. I observe your Inclination Leads you much to Painting in miniature. I would have you Con-

sider whether that may be so advantageous to you here or whether it may suit so much with the Taste of the People with us as Larger Portrait Painting which I think would be a Branch of the Profession that would Turn out to Greater Profit here. You Likewise mention the Copying of Good Painting by which I suppose you mean the Study of History Painting. This I look upon as the most Difficult Part of the Profession and Requires the utmost Genius in the artist. Few

arrive at a High Point of Perfection in it and indeed in this Part of the World few have a Taste for it and very few can go thro’ the Expence of Giving that Encouragement that such an artist would desire. But after all Consult and be guided by the best of your own Genius and Study that Branch to which your Disposition Leads you and that you Judge most suitable to your Talents. You had better be a Good Painter in Miniature than an Indifferent one in Either of the other Branches and be assured that what I have above wrote and mentioned Proceeds from my Desire of your welfare. As I am Your Friend and Servant Cua. CARROLL

Annapolis October 29th 1767 To Mr. Charles Wilson Peale to the Care of Mr. Wm. Anderson?

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CHAPTER 7 “WORTHY OF LIBERTY...” THE BarRISTER’s ADVICE was sound. West’s new student had set out to become a miniature

painter, probably in part attracted by the small and exquisite, in part by the sentimental character of this art of lover’s tokens and pledges of friendship or admiration, and perhaps in part by the fact that this was a province less awesomely difficult than the high realm of history painting. For an English career he should specialize; miniatures were his choice. For America, however, a broad range would be the thing. In his autobiography he avers that if Rachel had joined him he would have worked the harder and might have become a successful English artist. “The Encouragement of Arts being so much greater in England than in America, he would then have been induced to continue there, and with diligence in his profession he must have advanced his fortune more considerably than he could in America.” Yet actually, like his patrons, he seems to have had no other thought than that of returning to Maryland. The other Maryland gentlemen, following Mr. Carroll’s lead, had now enlarged their contributions, adding a total of thirty pounds to his resources. This, with his earnings, would prolong his stay in London for more than a year.

Thus he himself, a member now of the Society of Artists, looked forward to entering works of his own in the exhibition in the spring. He shared the excitements, too, of an approaching climax in West’s career. Just before Peale’s arrival, West had painted for Dr. Drummond, Archbishop of York, his Agrippina with the Ashes of Germanicus, a thronged scene

through which the widow, chaste and downcast, reverently bears her husband’s ashes to the waiting ship. Then one day a lady of the court called unexpectedly at the painting room and, without disclosing her identity, hastily imparted the exciting news that Dr. Drummond had attracted to Mr. West the interest of the King. Hardly had she gone when a gentleman of the palace arrived to command Mr. West’s attendance upon His Majesty. It was a momentous occasion, and Peale long remembered his friend’s departure for it, ar-

rayed in court dress and wearing, contrary to his custom, a sword. It resulted in the monarch’s commission for a favorite subject of his own, The Departure of Regulus from Rome.

A sketch was drawn and borne to the palace. Peale heard the whole story at West’s return: how he had set the picture on a chair in an anteroom, how the Queen had come in and knelt down before it to examine more closely the small figures it contained, and how the King had entered, glancing at the piece and exclaiming, “Ah! West, I see you have chosen

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Charles Willson Peale the Doric order for the buildings, and that is my favorite order of architecture!” (The Agrippina had had a Corinthian colonnade.) George, a young man of West’s own age, had

helped him to set the picture in a more favorable light, had criticized it in the most friendly terms, and, in closing the interview, confirmed his order for the large painting. So begai. Benjamin West’s long sojourn under the personal friendship and generous patronage of George III. As for Peale, he posed for the figure of Regulus in the new piece and so contributed his mite. But with the passage of the oppressive Townshend Acts in the summer of 1767, he had determined never to pull off his hat with the others in the London street as the royal coach rolled by and to do all that would ever lie within his power to free his country from such tyranny. West was joining with His Majesty in plans for the new Royal Academy. Peale found an artistic glamour closer to his heart at the studio of Angelica Kauffmann in Golden Square. Her charm, her deft and delicate craftsmanship, her romantic history, all thrilled and moved him. He had lived much with women and all his life would do so, always a stout defender of feminine intelligence, an admirer of feminine fineness of perception. Autobiography

What a variety of mecanick arts may be executed by the fair sex, nay their slender fingers fit them in some things to excell the other sex, and when they possess a reflecting mind and genius what excellency of work may they perform in the watch making or engraving line? In Painting, that do not require labour, but as an essential a lively imagination, what excellencies might their fancy produce? Angelica Kaufman is an Instance of the perfection in painting which her studies enabled her to execute. She was not contented to paint portraits only, she painted historical Pictures, and not only told the stories lucidly but also made graceful Figures. She was in high estimation with the queen of England, and of course with many of the nobility at the

time that Peale was in London. He paid her a visit and she politely received him in her painting [room], at which time she had a number of portraits of persons of distintion. Not long after this time, a Man from Germany came to London. He had assumed the title of a person in Germany, and he got himself introduced to Angelica, and paid his addresses to her. Very probably he was of an imposing appearance, for he succeeded in winning her affection, &

when the queen heard of it, she advised Angelica not to marry him. But love is blind, and she did not obey the advice given her by the Queen, but was married to him. A very short time after it was found that he was an imposter. Of course a rupture took place between them, and he agreed to leave her and England, provided she would give £500. He went away, but this faux pas of Angelica cost her the favors of the Queen and the frowns of the Court. When Mr. West was in Itally, Angelica fancied him but Mr. West having his heart pre-engaged to Miss Sewel of Philada. would not yield to her attractions. And it was also said that she would have been glad to receive the affections of Mr. Dance, who was a distinguished artist in the same period of Wests renown. This may have been the idle chat of [the] times. However, [that] she wanted a husband is verified by [her] marrying a strainger.

All this is a recollection of the studio gossip of many years before. Angelica’s marriage to the impostor and bigamist “Count Frederick de Horn” had taken place on November 22,

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“Worthy of Liberty...” 1767, and she had bought her freedom and written finis to the affair in February, 1768. She was working hard to recoup her fortunes and redeem her reputation when this other foreigner, the youthful-looking miniature painter from around the corner in Silver Street, had come in to call. There are qualities in Angelica’s portraits of the time to suggest that this meeting had not only stirred his romantic feeling but had some influence on his art. He on his part was now as hard-working and as cut off from the world of pleasures as she: Autobiography

... he only went to seven plays in the whole time of his stay in that City. He visited Windsor once, was at hampton Court twice, on one party to Richmond, [and] he partook of the amusements of the several Gardens in the vicinity of London. With a very few exceptions these were the whole of his wanderings from close study. For he was not contented with knowing how to paint in one way, but he engaged in the whole circle of arts, except at painting in enamel. And also at Modeling, and casting in plaster of Paris. He made some essays at Metzo tinto scraping. And his application was such, that at several times [he] had nearly brought himself into a bad state of health. But with moderate exercise in the open air, the vigor of youth soon reinstated him.

Charles Willson Peale was listed in the catalogue as ““Miniature Painter” when the Ninth Exhibition of the Society of Artists opened on April 28, 1768. He showed three miniatures, A Lady, Two Ladies, and Two Young Gentlemen.| The two ladies may have been Mrs. James Russell and her granddaughter. James Russell was a Maryland merchant living in London, a friend of Jenings. The two young gentlemen were certainly ‘Thomas and Matthias, John Beale Bordley’s sons, who had just arrived in England to complete their education under Mr. Jenings’ supervision. St. Paul’s dome in the background records their arrival in London on their way to Eton. He also had one canvas in the show, Portrait of a Young Gentleman, in three-quarter length. Engaging “‘in the whole circle of arts,’ Charles was accumulating a studio gallery of his own: his copy of the Elisha; a Mercury and Argus; a pastoral scene of cows; three copies after Francis Swaine, Storm at Sea, Moonlight, and Ship on Fire; and probably a nude Venus copied after a West copy. Mr. Jenings helped matters along by employing him to paint portraits from time to time, a kindness for which the sensitive young man, aware of the charitable intention, was doubly grateful. There was also a jeweler on Ludgate Hill for whose country-

bred clientele Charles painted miniatures at two guineas a head, the jeweler taking his profit in mounting the ivories. Later, finding that this work took too much of his time, Charles raised his price to three guineas, and then again to four, at which figure he was brought into competition with better hands and ceased to have other employment than that which Mr. Jenings continued to give him. The modeling and casting mentioned above was probably under the tutelage of Capizoldi, an assistant whom the sculptor Joseph Wilton

had brought back with him from Italy in 1755.* This and the gradual withdrawal from active miniature painting are probably connected with the story of a new commission brought to him also by Edmund Jenings—a painting great in size and implication. Boldly and dangerously patriotic, it was to be the culmination of all these lonely months, a master-

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15. CG. W. PEALE: “Worthy of Liberty, Mr. Pitt Scorns to Invade the Liberties

O h f. e e s e e ° .

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. And, confidering the apparent Weaknefs of the Colonies, and the Power of the Parent Country, °

. it might not perhaps, have been improper to have executed it in that Manner; but in Truth the: * 4

i‘ AnCountry, have never difponded. . _—aa * .4 ALTAR, with a Flame is placed in the Foreground, to thew that the Caufe of Liberty’ is. . : AMPRICANS, being well founded in their Principles, and animated with a facred Love f6r their = *

| facred, and, that therefore, they who maintain it, not only difcharge their Duty to their King . «

and themfelves, but toGOD. It is decorated with the Heads of Sipney and HAMPDEN, wh , ‘ : . with undaunted Courage, {p'ke, wrote; and died in Detence of the true Principles of Liberty. : eof!

“ and of thofe Rights and Bleflings which Grear-Britain now enjoys: For, as the Banner ©. * ;

7 placed between them expreffes it, “oping ae sha hilar . -

a Sancrvs Amor Parria par ~ ANIMUM. a a | tizens and Subjects from Deftruction! ~ , oy | . Tre View of W——H-————- is introduced in the Back Ground, not meerly as anelegant __ . ; A Civic Crown is laid on the Altar, as confecrated to that MAN who pteferved histFelisw-Ci-* * * ;

: cople, . os i ne os Piece of ArchitcQure, but as it was the Place where ——__—___! fffered, for ‘attempting go,

. invade the Rights of the Brirtsa Kingdoms: And it is obfecvable, that the Seitue and Altar? 7 . _ of Bririsn Liberty are erected near the Spot where that great Szcrifice was mid; through fad |

# Recefity, to the Honour, Happinefg, Virtue, and in one Word, to the Liberty of the Bairisi "6

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. who are inade to glide ia with the courtly Streams of FALsuoop, be the faithful C aveyfince to . Se _ _ Poiterity of the Knowledge of thofe Garrat Tuines which we, who are not tu tx aeypoted on ve oe

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Charles Willson Peale Behind the figure of the Earl rises a massive Roman column, traditional symbol of portraitists for enduring integrity of character, and between this and “British Liberty” he filled in the background space with a view of the Banqueting House of Whitehall Palace, through one of the windows of which Charles I had been led forth to execution. This is strong stuff

indeed, touching the throne itself, a warning to the new young King to be mindful of past errors in his future policy—so much so, that here the broadside description from which I have been quoting recedes into veiled language that, like a stage whisper, serves to color and emphasize the threat: THE View of W——H—— is introduced into the Back Ground, not merely as an elegant Piece of Architecture, but as it was the Place where ——— suffered, for attempting to invade the Rights of the British Kingdoms: And it is observable, that the Statue and Altar of BRITISH Liberty are erected near the Spot where that great Sacrifice was made, through sad Necessity, to the Honour, Happiness, Virtue, and in one Word, to the Liberty of the Bririsu People.

The whole picture emphasizes in particular one idea (reinforced in the broadside by quotations in French from Montesquieu): nations enjoying the highest degree of liberty are

disposed to be the most “oppressive of those who are subordinate, and in Subjection to them”—cited as true alike of Britain and of Rome. Thus, in essence the painting, like its subject, pleads for the extension of the ancient rights of Englishmen throughout the empire. As the artist’s statement concludes: THE chief Object of this Design will be answered, if it manifests, in the least, the Gratitude of America to his Lordship. It will, with Tradition, unprejudiced by the Writings of Hzrelings, who are made to glide in with the courtly Streams of FaLsHoop, be the faithful Conveyance to Posterity of the Knowledge of those Great Tuincs which we, who are not to be imposed on by “the busy Doings and Undoings” of the envious Great, have seen.

Such a picture could not have been painted in West’s studio. West had now moved to a new home and painting room in Panton Square, better adapted to an artist under royal patronage, and where, loyal American that he was, warnings to tyrants would have been conspicuously malapropos. There are two slightly variant versions of the Peale work, and it is obvious that the first had met with some criticism he respected and that he had then painted a second, improving the composition and detail but not altering his text. The

first, which he would keep in his own possession, was 7 feet 10 inches tall and 4 feet g inches wide. The second, for Mr. Jenings’ gift to Westmoreland County, was 8 feet by 5. In the improved version he changed the lines of Whitehall so that the edifice looms higher, buttressed with shadow, pictorially stronger and a more effective warning of the fate of tyrants as well. “British Liberty” was spruced up with a more modish hairdo and the face of Pitt strengthened. In the matter of likeness, the picture might well have stood as a warning to artists who would try to dignify a portrait by classic costume. The subject’s features are clearly and cor-

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“Worthy of Liberty...” rectly there; yet with bare neck and without the heavy wig he surely looked a different man. Jenings himself noted at once how difficult it was to relate this likeness to the familiar contemporary prints and mentioned this in transmitting the picture as his personal gift to the gentlemen in Virginia: But as the honest cause of America hath been supported with true liberality by that great man, Lord Chatham, I could wish that his merits were not forgot, and therefore take the liberty of sending you by Captn. Johnston his Portrait, which if you think it worthy of acceptance of the Gentlemen of Westmorland, I beg you would offer them in my name—it was executed by Mr. Peale of Maryland, who was recommended to me by several friends in that province as a young man of merit and modesty. I have found him so—and heartily wish that he may meet with every encouragement on his return to America, which I believe will be soon, he having made a great actual proficiency, and laid the grounds I hope of perfection in his art.°

Just as his introduction to sculpture may have accompanied this work, so also did, more surely, his study of mezzotint scraping. Before the final version left, he made from it a print of unusual size, 20% inches by 14%. Under it in neat script was engraved the title, Worthy of Liberty, Mr. Pitt scorns to invade the Liberties of other People.

Armed with his first version of this formidable effort, with his supply of prints, with his two years’ accumulation of paintings, sculpture, and varied skills, he could now look for-

ward to returning home. It would be a journey as full of expectation as his coming to London had been, and with a clearer, sounder horizon of bright hopes. The fame of his great picture would be spreading. He would be received as an artist of repute. His mezzotint

would hang in homes from New England to the Carolinas. And although actually the influence of the Mr. Pitt in this way was to be somewhat disappointing, there was in it nonetheless a personal and public commitment which would characterize his art and life in future. The remote themes of history and mythology he would leave to others. The intention of his own work whenever he reached beyond plain portraiture would be to inform

and persuade, to face immediate issues and touch immediate emotions. This was to his own taste and to that of his fellow countrymen as well. Further, as he was doing with his Mr. Pitt, in both painting and mezzotint, he would tend to address a broad public rather

then the few sophisticates of wealth—natural enough in a country where well-to-do sophisticates were rare indeed and where a large part of the population was excited by a pictorial approach and receptive to the rudiments of European culture. He had one final public appearance in London, one painting among the 225 of a special

exhibition held by the Society of Artists in the autumn of 1768 in honor of a visiting monarch.® Christian VII, whom one young Englishman characterized at the time, and not

inappropriately, as “that woman-like painted puppy, the King of Denmark. . . a puny vicious boy,”’ could only at their meeting have confirmed the Maryland member of the Society of Artists in his antimonarchical feeling. The Peale offering was on canvas, a Portrait of a Girl, a work which I believe to be identical with Little Girl with Toy Horse, now at the

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Charles Willson Peale Bayou Bend Collection of the Museum of Fine Arts at Houston, Texas. I have entertained a suspicion that Peale may have been attempting in this piece to rival the child portrait John Singleton Copley had sent from Boston, Mary Warner, listed in the 1767 show as Young Lady with Bird and Dog. Peale’s, signed and dated 1768, shows us a little girl with her toy horse woven into an ingenious composition of rhyming lines and angles, and the picture itself repeated as a painting over the background mantel. Occasionally in later portraits Peale was to play with geometric alliteration of this sort, and occasionally he would build compositions upon an opposite idea that had much taken his fancy in these London years, William Hogarth’s “Line of Beauty.” The Line, as defined in Hogarth’s Analysis of Beauty of 1754, is a slow, repeated curve, each part moving in the opposite direction, balanced and precise. ‘This he advanced as a standard of beauty, and even applied it to the dance, to color, although he himself in practice did not make it a ruling principle. It must be done with grace and delicacy and was a thing, he declared, that the Italian masters had understood. He felt that Rubens had used the Line in his bold, original style, but with too-ample “S-like swellings.” Hogarth quotes Charles Alphonse Du Fresnoy on the value of flowing, sinuous outlines, and there is a note in a book of Peale’s that Du Fresnoy’s poem De Arte Graphica, 1s “the best precept” for a painter. Du Fresnoy, also an admirer of Rubens’ dash and color, was a painter-poet of the seventeenth century who makes much of the sisterhood of painting and poetry, and whose rules of art are an important key to the eighteenth-century painter’s thought

and method. The artist must be true to nature, but never in dull exactitude. He must be selective, and must let the light of his own genius enhance and ennoble his work. All this Peale had read and taken to heart, and most of all, I think, in the relationship of painting and poetry. He sought poetic feeling, though sometimes, like other poets, he was too ready to think merely in terms of rhyme and rhythm. As one looks over the whole of Peale’s work, one sees an interesting dichotomy between the clear plain statement of some paintings and the eager flight into poetic symbolism of others, such as the Mr. Pitt. Yet the force of truth stood first in his thinking. Many years later he wrote to his son on this point, quoting a homely maxim which may well have come

to him from West and to West from his studies in Italy not long before: “I must say something on painting which has employed some of my thoughts, as essential to us painters —which I hope you will take no offense at. Truth is better than a high finish. ‘The Italians

say give me a true outline & you may fill it up with Turd.’” He goes on in this letter to advise solid color as against showy but insubstantial glazes. He loved the practical and sure, and yet as a young man and throughout his life was always experimenting, sometimes disastrously. He admired plainness, and yet loved fine dress. He regarded a purely classical education as useless, and yet regretted his own unfinished studies. In London his reading, his few friendships, had given him a new sophistication—unimpressive in England but definitely to be an asset in America. Similarly, while his professional

status in London was modest indeed, he would return to America pre-eminently well equipped.

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Peale’s favorite theme: Domestic Harmony. Elizabeth Tayloe Lloyd with fingers on guitar, the Colonel, little Anne, and “Wye House,” the heart of the great Lloyd plantation.

denied the dictum that painters, poets, and the like are a race by themselves. Talent, like virtue, was a choice to be made by the man of intelligence. A good mind, the autobiography assures us, 18 like rich soil where only the proper planting and cultivation are needed to produce the desired fruition. Saint, confronted by this doctrine, roundly declared “that he had no conception how the portrait of anything could be made with colours, that he did not believe he could be taught to make the likeness of a face in seven years.” Then: Charles took a pen, and drew the line of beauty, as Hogarth defines it. The practice of this amused the brother for some days. He then was shewn the application of this line in various

Peale of Maryland drawings, how it may be made a part of a face in profile, and the Character varied, and from drawing profiles he was set to copying Le Bruns passions, and within three months St. Geo. was so great a proficient, that he could paint a tolerable portrait in Crayons.

Thus was the painting room the heart of this agreeable household. You catch a glimpse of it in The Peale Family Group, a large room in which a canvas with the underpainting of a

19. The Johnsons of “Rose Hill.” 1772

Thomas Johnson, a successful lawyer, poses in his robes, with wife and children. Later, in Congress, he studied the manufacture of gunpowder with Nathaniel Ramsay, nominated Washington to be Commander-in-Chief, joined Washington in 1777 as a brigadier at

the head of 1,800 Maryland militia, and still later became the first Governor of the State of Maryland.

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Charles Willson Peale picture of the three graces stands at one side and portrait sculpture is arrayed along the opposite wall. St. George is being given a lesson in draftsmanship while the family clusters around. Family unity is this picture’s enlivening theme, so that no attempt is made to show the other appurtenances of the room—the revolving platform, the great chair, the curtains, the gallery of paintings. In Annapolis the painting room made the artist at once a public figure. There would be

visitors, just as there had been at the London studios of Reynolds, Cotes, or Angelica, though there was certainly no “waiter” here to usher persons in and out, hand extended for a gratuity. The public, too, would be of a different sort. ‘The connoisseur of informed taste

would rarely appear, but there would be a constant stream of persons much inclined to marvel and prodigal with praise. This painting room was to change in form in later years, the painter responding to his

20. CG. W. Peace: The Peale Family Group. c. 1772-1809

At the left, St. George is making a drawing with James Peale at his side. Charles bends over to watch, Margaret Jane standing next to him. Rachel is at center. Mother Peale and Elizabeth Digby are at right, with Peggy Durgan behind them. In the foreground, Argus.

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Peale of Maryland American public, the room expanding into a museum and gallery housing all the wonders

of nature and art, the prototype of imitations that were to spread over the length and breadth of America. Here at Annapolis in 1769 a picture in colors, the magic mirror image

of reality, was a vital rarity, touching and charming the heart. The artist, like the actor, must have audience response. In young America he received it in full measure. Praise can be more important than financial reward, as it was throughout his life to Peale. He was among his own people, confident and admired, holding by his art an influence over them which he might never otherwise have had. In proud anticipation he had painted his signature on the huge Mr. Pitt of 1768, “C. W. Peale of Maryland.” The first version of the great allegory was now a dominant feature of the painting room. It must have been while Edmund Jenings watched this massive structure of symbol and warning take shape that Jenings had ventured a bit of comment and advice which Peale was to recall seven years later as a striking example of prescience. “I well remember,” Peale wrote, “your once telling me that when my brush should fail, that I must take the Musket. I believe your foresaw all that has since happened.’ Now he had no thought of the test of arms but was ready with his brush. The issue balanced now on American self-sufficiency. Economic reprisals were sustained by legal argu-

ment—British liberty for all under a constitution imperial in scope. It was a forward step toward this sort of independence for Maryland to have a new artist of her own, and to strengthen this transplantation of the arts Peale was persuaded to take a young gentleman as pupil, Edmund Brice, a Bordley relative.* Bordley was himself taking lessons in painting from his protégé, while at the same time, in his own modest, sensible way, holding a place

of leadership in the political ferment: “Mr. Bordley, who is my kind patron and only advisor in matters of any moment.” Edmund Jenings had asked that portraits of Beale Bordley and other friends be sent to him in England. The Bordley as Peale planned it now would be full length, a new chefd’oeuvre, a new Mr. Pitt. The huge picture of Britain’s champion of liberty would have its American counterpart. London would see upon the canvas an American standing firm for ancient British law and traditional rights, and catch the glint of American determination. As a personal monument, the picture would celebrate Bordley’s move in a new and more congenial direction. Early in 1770 he acquired the estate on Wye Island on the Eastern Shore for which he is today, perhaps, best remembered. His was the only mansion on the island, though a part of its low-lying, immensely fertile acres was owned by his brother-inlaw, William Paca. Just as Mr. Paca was to become increasingly eminent in public life, as congressman and Governor, so Mr. Bordley from this time forward turned away from law and politics to the purposeful enjoyment and cultivation of the land. As a lawyer, he had found himself in “slavery” to the “British Ministry.” He would make Wye Island selfsupporting, a model of American economic emancipation. Disliking tobacco from every view, he made wheat his staple, added cattle and sheep and orchards. He added carpenter’s and blacksmith’s shops, spinning and weaving, a brewery, the manufacture of salt, and

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Charles Willson Peale much more, all organized, all conspicuous for that neatness which Peale, on his part, was wont to say must always characterize a painter’s room. Mr. Bordley rose with the dawn, with a written plan for each day’s occupation.® The Wye plantation from its first inception was a thing of note and consequence, worthy of commemoration in art. While this was in the making, it had become clear to Peale that, except when planters came in for the spring and autumn races, the Annapolis painting room could not support his family and pay his debts. He must travel, a necessity common to American painters for many years to come. He made a folding easel, cased in leather, for the road. Saddlebags for painting materials and for clothing and a handsome brace of holster pistols completed his equipment. Tours through the countryside would always be profitable, since the hospitality of the planters took care of every expense whether there were portraits to paint or not.

But Philadelphia was the point of promise. He was there in the starkly cold winter of 1769, and again at one season or another in every year to 1773, perhaps also in 1774. Removal to Philadelphia was in prospect from the first, though he would keep his home in Annapolis till all debts were paid. Philadelphia had the best market for his Mr. Pitt mezzotint, which he was leaving with friends and in shops along his way. Unhappily, though statues of Pitt went up in New York and Charleston in 1770, the great man’s American fame had subsided since Stamp Act days—and Americans just did not take to the figure in “Consular Habit.” Though Dr. Franklin and others who knew the statesman well had praised the likeness, the colonial public could not see their hero so. Peale reinforced his explanatory broadside with another entitled “Extract of a Letter” defending the authenticity of his masterpiece. The “Extract” has been suspected, not without reason, of having been composed by the artist himself, and couched in this form in order to give an air of proper impartiality to the statement.’ He did, on his 1769 visit to Philadelphia, sell twenty impressions at fifteen shillings each.® Later sales fell short of that, but a gift of one to Copley brought back from Boston a reward of praise and encouragement: ...1t gave me a toofold pleasure; first because it is the portrait of that great Man, in the most exalted carractor human|ity| can be dignified with, that of a true Patriot vindicateing the rights of Mankind; and secondly for the merit of the work itself, and the fair prospect it affords of Americas rivaling the Continant of Europe in those refined Arts that have been justly esteemed the Greatest glory of ancient Greece and Rome; go on Sir to hasten forward that happy Era... .?

This the Southerner was doing his best to achieve. In Philadelphia in the summer of 1770 he painted John Dickinson, one of the portraits commissioned by Jenings, and a replica for Dickinson himself. Rachel had accompanied him this time, bringing their baby, Eleanor,

born on the twentieth of March. ‘They who had been so poor lived here in the midst of a cheerful, hospitable opulence. Mr. Dickinson, newly married, was intent upon having family portraits around him, as was his cousin, John Cadwalader, whose town house was then being built to a new standard of luxurious elegance.!° These two, Dickinson a lawyer and politician, author of an enormously popular and effective protest against the Townshend

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Peale of Maryland Acts, Letters of a Pennsylvania Farmer, Gadwalader a vastly successful merchant-planter, urged

him to make Philadelphia his home at once. In the glow of the moment he thought that it might be done by autumn—failing to reckon in the many doubtful factors and the alltoo-certain augmentation of debts at 6 per cent. The Dickinson, the first of a large group of family pictures, was sensitive, poetic, promised

well. It has caught the reflective spirit of the man, a mood of almost thoughtful sadness in the face, a rhythm of downward-flowing lines echoed in the background of wooded hills and river. Having painted also a miniature of Mrs. Cadwalader, a canvas of Mr. Dickinson’s aunt and other pieces, he moved southward again, on the roads to Wye. Mr. Cadwalader’s Kent County lands were not far from Bordley’s, his close friend. He ordered some landscapes for the new house in Philadelphia, looking forward to seeing the late summer or autumn foliage of Wye reproduced in paint. But the landscapes were never made. All of Peale’s sojourn on the island was given over to work on the symbolic portrait of the American patriot planter, on a canvas 7 feet high by 5 feet wide. No Roman habit here, though Latin inscriptions add a note of classic 1mmutability. The subject, wearing a plain brown suit of conservative cut, points with his

21. CG. W. PEALE: Falls of Schuylkill. 1770

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Jenings had asked for American views in the backgrounds of the portraits of his American friends. The one in the Dickinson was adapted from this sketch in ink and watercolor.

+, ne8 7emis we anOT. Rye which amused him for one or two evenings. Then he coppyed some drawings, draws from the Busts, and has painted several pieces in Crayons some of which is from nature. I expect he will only do a little with crayons as an amusement. Please to give my kind respects to Mrs. West and love to Raphel who I hear is a fine Boy— my kind compliments to my fellow students. I am Dear Sir your very Hum Servt CHARLES PEALE?

This was written on the same day and to go on the same ship as that letter to Edmund Jenings already quoted (page 85), in which Peale mentions that with the full-length picture of Bordley and other portraits he sends also as a gift one of “Mrs. Peale and Child. . . an attempt of a Tender Sentiment.” This must be the painting that, two days before, had received a poetic tribute in the Maryland Gazette, a tribute, I suspect, possibly from pen of the artist himself. He included it in a letter to Beale Bordley: . . . These lines was found pin’d to Rachel’s portrait when I was over the Bay— On a Picture of Mrs. P———e

When P——e his lovely Arria drew, Like Reubens erst, by Love impel’d; Nature to love and Genius true, Herself the glowing pencil held.

Yes Plastic Nature could alone, To this fair form this meaning give; Or else she taught her genuine Son To bid the breathing Canvis live. The Rose & Lillies mingled Dye, And every mere external Charm; A while may please the vacant Eye But can no feeling Bosom warm. Give me, depictured warm from Life Each soft Emotion of the mind; Give me the Mother and the Wife, As here, in sweetest Union join’d. Who do you suspect to be the Author?4

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“Each Soft Emotion of the Mind” It may have been Mr. Bordley who sent the poem to the Gazette, with a prefatory note and a slightly amended quotation: To THE PRINTER. As the following Verses, lately found pinned to Mrs. Peale’s Picture, at once shew the exquisite Sensibility of the unknown

Author, and do Justice to the Merit of Mr. Peale, your publishing them will infinitely oblige many of your Readers.

On A PICTURE of Mrs. PEALE, Drawn by her Husband, August, 1770. “What find I here? “Faw Arria’s Counterfert? What Demi God “Has come so near Creations?” Shakespeare.°

In the newspaper version of the poem some words have been set in capitals for added emphasis, and the last line is altered to “As here in beauteous ARRIA joined.” The Annapolis paper had its “Poet’s Corner” in which a number of anonymous contributors were courting the muse, often inspired by the Roman poets or imitating them. William Eddis, a Poet Laureate of the Hominy Club, was one of them, as was Thomas Jennings, another Hominy Laureate, so that there were plenty of others at hand who might have sung the praises of the painting. Yet it remains possible that Peale himself, something in the spirit of his “Extract of a Letter” on the M7. Pitt, was extolling his own work—not to puff himself, but because the work had genuinely stirred his emotions to the point of expressing them also in rhyme. Another later instance of a poem “found pinned” to one of his

pictures 1s open to the same conjecture. The theme of mother and child would have excited his lyric mood, while modesty made it imperative that he not appear as his own panegyrist. [he classic allusion to Arria, the heroic and devoted wife, is unexpected, though he might readily have picked it up from those about him. Rachel, heaven knows, deserved the compliment. Nor did he need to sing his own praise among all the little city’s voices raised in song. Back in September of 1770, one of them, celebrating the bright charm of a favorite actress, Miss Nancy Hallam, had ended with a summons to the artist that he let future generations also feel the glow of it.© William Eddis, author of Letters from America, probably wrote both the objective prose review of Hallam’s Imogen in Cymbeline and the exuberant lines which follow it: To Miss HALLAM.

HAIL wond’rous Maid! I, grateful, hail "Twas his to paint, with Touch refin’d,

Thy strange dramatic Pow’r: Beyond the Rules of Art To thee I owe, that Shakespeare’s Tale Each varying Passion of the Mind,

Has charm’d my Ears once more. And probe the human Heart.

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Charles Willson Peale "Tis thine, with kindred Reach of Thought Do solemn Measures slowly move?

And magic Pow’rs, to please; Her Looks inform the Strings: What he, sweet Child of Fancy, wrote Do Lydian Airs invite to Love?

To act with Grace and Ease. We feel it as she sings. Great Bard of Nature! Hard the Part Around her, see the Graces play,

Thy forceful Scenes to play; See Venus’ wanton Doves:

And few, like HaLiam, have the Art And, in her Eye’s pellucid Ray,

To catch thy glowing Lay! See little laughing Loves.

Say! Does she plead as though she felt Ye Gods! ’tis Cytherea’s Face;

The tender Tale of Woe? "Tis Dian’s faultless Form: Our Eyes, albert vanes d to melt, But her’s alone the nameless Grace

With Tears of Pity flow. That ev’ry Heart can charm.

Or, does she charm the jocund Hours When laid along thy grassy Tomb

With Strokes of comic Wit? What Pencil, say, can paint See, Laughter holds his Sides, and pours Th’unlustr’ous, but expressive Gloom

Full Ios round the Pit. Of Thee, fair, sleeping Saint!

She speaks!—What Elocution flows! Or thine, or none, self-tutor’d PEALE!

Ah! Softer far her Strains Oh! then, indulgent, hear

Than Fleeces of descending Snows, Thy Bard’s Request, and let him kneel

Or gentlest vernal Rains. A weeping Hermit there!‘

It must have been when Nancy returned with the American Company for a summer engagement in 1771 that “self-tutor’d Peale” responded to the poet’s call. He chose for his picture, rather than the flower-covered tomb, the moment in the play when the beautiful and distressed Imogen, disguised as a boy, Fidele, emerges from the forest cave with fearfully

uplifted eyes.8 A response, grateful and at length, appeared in the “Poet’s Corner’ of November 7, 1771: To Mr. PEALE, on his Painting Miss HALLAM 1n the Character of Fidele in Cymbeline.

THE grand Design in Grecian Schools was taught, Venetian Colours gave the Pictures ‘Thought. In thee, O PEALE, both Excellancies join, Venetian Colours, and the Greek Design.

Thy Stile has match’d what ev’n the Ancients knew, Grand the Design, and as the colouring true: Pursue the Path thou hast so well begun, And second be to Nature’s eldest Son. Shakespeare’s immortal Scenes our Wonder raise, And next to Aim thou claim’st our highest Praise.

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“Each Soft Emotion of the Mind” When Hallam as Fidele comes distress’d,

Tears fill each Eye, and Passion heaves each Breast; View with uplifted Eyes the charming Maid, Prepar’d to enter, tho’ she seems afraid: And see, to calm her Fears, and sooth her Care, Bellarius and the royal Boys appear. Thy Pencil has so well the Scene convey’d, Thought seems but an unnecessary Aid: How pleas’d we view the visionary Scene, The friendly Cave, the Rock and Mountain green; Nature and Art are here at once combin’d, And all Elysium to one View confin’d. Another Scene still claims thy Pencil’s Aid, Storer in Artel. Enchanting Maid! Whose easy Nature every Grace affords, And charms without the empty Pomp of Words; The list’ning Ear on every Word intent, Catches the Sound, and guesses what is meant. ‘Her Name, the Boast of ev’ry tuneful Choir, “Shall tremble on the Strings of ev’ry Lyre.” Accept, O PEALE, these friendly, artless Lays, The Tribute, that a fond Admirer pays; Unrival’d, as unmatch’d, be still thy Fame, And Shakespeare’s Scenes still raise thy envy’d Name.?

The Hallam as Imogen must have been on view in the painting room during the performance of Cymbeline in October, 1771. The New Theatre had been opened in September,

just before the races. A letter from Peale to Bordley reveals his eagerness to be at “home during the publick times coming on.”?° William Eddis, who found the new building too narrow for its length, praised appointments of boxes, pit, and gallery, and added that “several of the scenes reflect great credit on the ability of the painter.”’! It must be inferred, Annapolis being richer in poets than in painters, that Peale had turned his hand to theatrical work, and the conjecture carries with it the probability that the background of his portrait reflects Miss Hallam’s actual setting at the New Theatre as she stepped tremblingly into view and raised her eyes to the expectant audience, including Colonel Wash-

ington and the gentlemen of the Jockey Club, the lords and ladies of Maryland and Virginia.

As far as I am aware, Peale never responded to the prayer that he perpetuate the beauty of Maria Storer— “Storer in Ariel. Enchanting Maid!” Yet in America an artist must needs be versatile, and this one was so with a will. He had experienced the truth of the Barrister’s prediction that he could not subsist on miniature painting alone, to which Franklin had added that warning of the change in eyesight which would unfit him for such fine work.

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Charles Willson Peale The quality of his miniatures in these years is evidence that this was still his favorite branch, however. They have a jewel-like, opalescent coloring, with shadows of blue or lilac

and the glow of the ivory beneath. This is a characteristic of the limner’s art at its best, and even more so that air of an intimate and even yearning tenderness in mouth and eyes

and the pose of the head. It was still a private art, and an art of personal affection. Miniatures were more regularly exchanged by lovers than were rings, each intended for the eyes of one another only. The black cord about a lady’s neck, a downward “line of beauty” to the bosom where her locket lay concealed, marked her at once as the possegsor of a romantic attachment. In other miniatures parental or filial tenderness is preg -rved, the lost child, the aging father, the absent friend, with the success of the artist depending in a measure upon his own emotional response to the love or affliction of others. This art, as a mechanical formula without such empathy, falls short of its purpose. The Peale mind had its steadfast, stalwart substance, but upon those ramparts its banners flew with the winds or drooped without them. He had felt a jubilant exultation in sending his pictures to London, anticipating a warm response from Jenings and from West, a British echo of American success, a place for one of those pictures perhaps (it never came) on the

Royal Academy walls. Soon after, in thanking Mr. Jenings for a gift of books and prints that had somehow gone astray, gloom and a sense of decline enveloped him: .. . T will leave no stone unturned to find out who keeps them from me. It grieves me much that I should not get your letter or letters. ‘Those that have come to hand gives me the greatest satisfaction I ever felt. When you express your pleasure in being my Benefactor, I am glad that I was poor and in want of a friend, when you have so kindly supported me, yet I feel a sting in knowing how much better I ought and might have done with such good Fortune. Its past. The present I must strive to improve, for shortly now (according to the age of man) I must be going down the Hill of Life and have a fond Wife and Child and more coming, which my success in the art I hope will ennable me to provide for.!”

This at the age of thirty. The babe whose advent was heralded in such lugubrious vein was born on January 13, 1772, and christened Margaret Bordley in honor of Mrs. John Beale Bordley, the former Margaret Chew.!* The elder baby, Nelly, was now in her second year. A fortnight later, the father was persuaded to petition for admission to membership

in the Hominy Club, and we have in this document and in the minutes another view of Peale in others’ and in his own regard. To the Honourable the President, and other Members of the respectable Homony Club. The Humble Petition of Charles Willson Peale, Portrait Painter. Sheweth

That your Petitioner, holding your Honourable Society in the highest estimation—and flattering himself that in some respects he is duly qualified to be a member thereof—and

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“Each Soft Emotion of the Mind” further hoping that he may one Day have the Honour to Portray all the worthy Members in their Proper Colours—beg

leave to offer himself as a Candidate for a Seat in the said Society.

And your Petitioner will ever Pray &c. CHARLES WILLSON PEALE.

January 28, 1772.14

For many years their clubs had given a congenial form to Annapolitans’ enjoyment of one another’s society. The Hominy had been established in 1770, the year when the Reverend

Jonathan Boucher, one of its brightest luminaries, had come from Virginia to assume the rectorship of St. Anne’s. Its purpose, like that of its forerunner, the Tuesday Club of Dr. Alexander Hamilton, was entirely social. Its name, of Indian origin, suggests a derisive play upon that of the politically oriented clubs in this and other towns professing allegiance to “Saint Tammany,” aboriginal friend of the white man. It met once a week in winter, once a month in other seasons. Excerpts from the Bylaws of the Hominy Club

The Club shall consist of 17 members and no more, such members residing in Annapolis with their wives, if married, and if not married they must be forty years of age or upwards. The meetings shall be at the Coffee House and no where else. Whist and Backgammon may be played before supper for any sum not exceeding half a crown. No play is allowed after supper is announced by the waiter. At supper the first toast given by the president: “Prosperity to the Hominy Club.” The last toast: “Wives and Sweet hearts.” Any indecent allusions in a toast shall receive a repremand by the President.

The President shall have full power to confer the honour of knighthood on the Master of Ceremonies for the time being.

That at half after ten oclock it shall be the option of the president to call for a Bill, a last Bottle, and to adjourn the Club. Extract from the Minutes, February 13, 1772

The President being conducted to his Chair with the usual solemnity, silence was proclaimed whilst the master of the Ceremonies with a politeness peculiar to himself introduced Mr. Peale, a new elected member, who in return for the high honour conferred on him by the Club delivered a short but pathetic speech expressive of his Obligation, and of a sincere desire by study and close application to promote the welfare of the society, and thereby become a useful member thereof. The perturbation of Mr. Peale’s mind was observable whilst he expressed his sentiments, which prevented his expatiating on the virtues of the several members, the natural effect of modesty, when appearing before an august President and dignified members of a constitution formed on the most mature deliberation to promote none but men of virtuous principles and conspicuous merit. The President did not immediately perceive the conflict, otherwise would

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Charles Willson Peale have relaxed a little of his majestic deportment to have enabled Mr. Peale’s faultering Tongue to express the dictates of a heart replete with gratitude.

Peale’s old friend, Charles Wallace, was present at this meeting. Thomas Jennings presided, John Lookup was Advocate General, William Eddis Poet Laureate, and William Deards Master of Ceremonies. Peale was elected Master of Ceremonies at the November 12 meeting, but was out of town at the time. Soon after we find him holding revel of a similar sort with the Independent Club—this in a bare fragment from its minutes of February 13, 1773, happily preserved in the Library of the American Philosophical Society.

The Independents held trials and exacted fines for libels upon one another. Samuel Chase, William Buckland and Mr. Hammond (probably he for whom Buckland built Annapolis’ most beautiful Georgian mansion) were among the ten gentlemen present. George Waggaman was President that night, and Mr. Brown Prosecutor. Alexander Contee Hanson was Secretary, assisted by Peale: Till the hour of Eight the time according to Custom was spent at Cards during which time there was some scolding, much talking, and a small matter of swearing. Supper now making its appearance, the Cards were thrown by, for the much more Important Business of eating & drinking, but how shall I now describe the tremendous Appearance of Each Independant, Arm’d with a Knife & fork, each prepar’d for the Attack, which was begun by Mr. Chase, who brandishing high the fatal Steel, made the first Atack upon the Turkey, & in the twinkling of an eye, Reduc’d the Noble frame to Ruins; This being Observ’d by Mr. Prosecutor, he wreck’d his Venjance upon two Old Hens, whose scatter’d Members quickly strew’d the dish; YE GODS what havock oft does hunger make, among your Creatures; The Atack thus Heroickly begun, & so well seconded, was a Signal for the general assault & then the battle rag’d; Hunger was quite Repel’d, and like the baseless fabrick of a Vision, scarce left a wreck behind; The Affair thus settl’d, as Related And on his throan, his honr. seated, With look benign, & Joyous front He fill’d his glass, & toasted Cu-t. Each lick’d his lips, & pass’d it round His honour then with look profound Drank all our friends, which being done The business of the night came on. No speech his honour had prepar’d And to Atack him each one fear’d, For well they knew the consequence That would attend such Impudence, Tho some have been so Insolent As to Araign the president, But soundly have ye Catifs smarted And sterling cash from pockets parted... .

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C. W. PEALE: Charles Carroll, Barrister. c. 17770 * The young artist’s patron and friend, cynical amusement covering a rich vein of kindliness.

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“Each Soft Emotion of the Mind” Here was a somewhat livelier milieu than that of the year before. Peale himself has left no record of these good times, apparently thinking pure conviviality not worth it. In time, only political and learned societies would interest him. There is evidence that he joined the

Masonic fraternity, but none of active membership. If the Hominy Club had had any serious purpose it had been to unite men of different factions in an atmosphere of jocund impartiality. The Secretary who composed those minutes of 1772 was Mr. Paca, tall, portly, complaisant, and one of the chiefs of the popular party ever since that stormy election of 1764. Conversely, the Reverend Mr. Boucher was a Royalist leader. He drafted the Governor’s speeches for him, and his activity in legislative affairs was to make him, in his own words, “obnoxious” to “all the forward and noisy patriots.”!6 Governor Eden shared the

amenities of the club as a guest. Peale, forward patriot that he was, remained on good terms with Boucher and, at a later and more bitter period, had the patronage of Eden. Jonathan Boucher, clumsy, inelegant, competent, and cheerful, made friends easily, one of them Colonel George Washington. He combined, as did so many others, the professions of clergyman and pedagogue. One of his boarding pupils at Annapolis was the Colonel’s stepson, John Parke Custis. He had shown Peale some of the boy’s efforts at drawing, had been pleased by the criticism given in return, and in the spring of 1772 suggested a trip to Mount Vernon. With Boucher’s letter of introduction in his pocket, the painter and Jack Custis rode down to Virginia together. The Colonel was at Alexandria when they arrived and did not return until the following day. This was probably a fortunate circumstance, since it allowed time in which to lay a foundation with Mrs. Washington. The Colonel’s interest in a portrait was negative. It was his wife who, at this time and later, entered into the matter of portraiture with an explicit feeling for the proprieties. John Wollaston had painted large companion pieces of herself and her first husband, Daniel Parke Custis. Hers now hung alone in the house and should be matched by that of her second husband. This gentleman, after some demur, was prevailed upon to pose in the uniform of his militia regiment—blue coat faced with red, a silver gorget at the throat, red breeches, red waistcoat with gold braid, and a paper, “Order of March,” protruding from the pocket. This was on May 19. On the twentieth he sat for the face, and the next day posed for the figure. Washington was then forty years of age, over six feet in height, and weighing two hundred pounds, a solid, complacent country gentleman, with small, mild eyes and a small, firm mouth. “Inclination having yielded to importunity,” he wrote to Mr. Boucher on the twentyfirst, “I am now contrary to all expectation under the hands of Mr. Peale; but in so grave— so sullen a mood—and now and then under the influence of Morpheus, when some critical strokes are making, that I fancy the skill of this Gentleman’s Pencil will be put to it, in describing to the World what manner of man I am.”!? On the morning of the twenty-second he sat again for Peale to finish the face, and in the afternoon they rode out together to the plantation mill. The time passed pleasantly, other guests coming and going from day to day, the gentlemen engaging in sports or joining the

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Charles Willson Peale ladies in an evening walk or a dance to give exercise to Miss Custis, whose delicate health required Mrs. Washington’s constant attention. Peale recalled: One afternoon, several young gentlemen, visitors at Mount Vernon, and myself were engaged

in pitching the bar, one of the athletic sports common in those times, when suddenly the Colonel appeared among us. He requested to be shown the pegs that marked the bounds of our efforts; then, smiling, and without putting off his coat, held out his hand for the missile. No sooner did the heavy iron bar feel the grasp of his mighty hand than it lost the power of gravitation and whizzed through the air, striking the ground far, very far, beyond our utmost limits. We were indeed amazed, as we stood around all stripped to the buff, with shirt sleeves rolled up, and having thought ourselves very clever fellows, while the Colonel, on retiring, pleasantly observed, “When you beat my pitch, young gentlemen, I’ll try again.”!®

After dinner on May 24, the Colonel was to set out on a tour of his western lands. As family and guests were rising from the table, he handed an empty cup and saucer to the artist. ““That Mrs. Peale may be associated with our pleasure,” he said, “will you present this cup to her with my best respects?”!9 Friends and kindred of the Washingtons were painted also on the Virginia tour. Back in Annapolis, Rachel was given her cup, fragments of which are treasured still in the family. Edmund Brice took his departure for England and Italy, taking along more paintings for Edmund Jenings and a portrait of Benjamin West’s brother, which was to be given to West without first disclosing its identity, to test the likeness. ‘Then, early in June, 1772, Charles set out for Philadelphia, accompanied by James, for what was to be the longest visit yet made to the Northern city. Parson Boucher disliked the open sameness of Philadelphia streets, and the open satisfaction of Philadelphians with themselves. “The almost universal topic of conversation among them,” he wrote, “is the superiority of Philadelphia over every other spot of the

globe. All their geese are swans.’*° Yet Philadelphia had in fact a unique character recognized even in Europe, a pre-eminence in America in the arts and sciences. Here were such men as the great astronomer, David Rittenhouse, of whom Peale had made a drawing

in 1771 with the intention, never carried out, of publishing a print from it. Here was Francis Hopkinson, who had studied art in London, perhaps with West, who was a skillful portraitist in pastel as well as a knowledgeable connoisseur and critic. Here was the painter, Matthew Pratt, who had been in West’s studio before Peale and whose circle of Philadelphia patronage Peale was now invading. Miniature painters were in town in force: a

Swedish amateur named Groath, the Swiss artist and antiquarian, Pierre Eugéne Du Simitiére, and two ladies of the profession, Miss Letitia Sage and Miss Mary Wrench.*? Du Simitiére, who was to blaze a trail for Peale as the founder of a museum, had already a room full of butterflies, snakes, medals, and memorabilia. He was a member of the American Philosophical Society, founded by Franklin, the city’s scientific elite, as was also Peale’s “Brother Brush,” Henry Benbridge. Benbridge had been painting in both Philadelphia and

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Charles Willson Peale was simple and sound, though his insistence that any man with a will to learn and nature for his model could become an artist was surely belied in the efforts of Charles Peale Polk. After years of patient tutelage, Polk still painted with harshness of line and color, a stiff and awkward effort at precision. Perhaps the will was lacking. Charley had at one time run away to sea, but only to find that he lacked also his father’s taste for salt water. He was married now, and the eldest of his numerous progeny with him. In May, 1787, at twenty years of age, he had advertised his services as house, ship, and sign painter and stood

on the threshold of a career that was to be marked by hardship and poverty. Jemmy’s new family, down Lombard Street a little way, was also in long dresses still, two little girls, Jane Ramsay and Maria, born in 1785 and 1787. On November 5, 1787, Peale advertised for sale “A Perspective View of Lombard-street, being the first number of an intended Series of Prints, to be taken of the principal streets in Philadelphia.—Price one-quarter of a dollar.”*? The plate was etched, a technique probably picked up from his friends of the Columbian Magazine. The series was to be, it would

seem, a fun thing—not the formal and entirely factual sort of view that was appearing in the magazine. In the foreground stood the artist’s own house. Before it, in the street, a little girl was weeping over a broken dish, while a group of chimney sweeps made fun of

her plight. Two explanatory couplets flanked the title: . The pye from Bake-house she had brought But let it fall for want of thought And laughing sweeps collect around The pye that’s scattered on the ground.

The little girl was probably Angelica, the picture memorializing a family adventure. The neighborhood bakery, whose sign stands out clearly in the print, had already played a part

in a domestic drama of which small Raphaelle and aged Peggy Durgan were hero and heroine. Autobiography

And Peggy Durgan ... not only attended to all the domestic concerns but also was a nourse to all of his children. She petted and, as some would say, spoiled them. We will cite one instance of her affection, but we will not say that it was a very judicious measure. Raphaelle, the eldest boy, in a whim would not eat bakers bread. The father, disliking such whims in his children, ordered all the bread used in the family to be had at a baker in the neighbourhood, in the idea that if the boy could not get home made bread, that in the end he would be glad to eat Baker’s bread or any thing of the like kind that should be given him. This order was continued untill the amount came to £20, and still he found that his son Raphaelle would not eat Baker’s bread. But it was found out that Peggy Durgan constantly supplied the pettish Boy with cakes which she secretly baked, saying she could not let the dear little fellow want bread.

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CHAPTER 18 ——. . RACHEL A Man may be characterized by his library, better, at times, than by any other evidence. Yet Peale’s books were scattered long ago and I have only a thin sheaf of titles for a reconstruction of his reading. I know that he kept up with the newspapers and magazines, eager to be aware of all that was new. I am sure that technical and reference books predominated on his shelves, the five volumes of Willich’s Domestic Encyclopaedia, for instance, and the three volumes of Gregory’s Dictionary of Arts and Sciences. His books on painting were of this practical character, and the Philadelphia Museum in its heyday had a good reference

collection on natural history. There must have been a liberal sprinkling of medical works, some of the “family physician” type and some special treatises. Politics probably figured rather less and may have concentrated on the French theorists, though I have here only a few rare pointers such as a jotted memo of 1778 or 1779: ——Voll. p 5 Quand linnocence des citoyens nvest pas assuré, la liberté ne Vest non plus. MOonTESQUIEU. !

It follows the draft of an article deriding the irrational and disingenuous character of the enemies of the state constitution. From the French political theorists Peale now went on to the naturalists Buffon, Cuvier, and others in his new field of interest. In this library, while works of practical application apparently predominated, it becomes even more apparent that the most-read authors were the poets, with Milton in first place and Pope nearby. Another certainly ranked high with him, judging in part by the fact that so many of his sitters, ladies particularly, are shown with this volume in hand—The Seasons by James Thomson. Other popular poets of the time may well have appealed to him too. Edward Young’s Night Thoughts invokes the forces of nature in a way Peale would have approved, and the dedication of “Night the First’? to Arthur Onslow, whom he knew as his father’s friend, would have been a mark in its favor.” Its wisdom and morality would have been congenial, but not the pervading tone of melancholy. In Thomson there is a joy in life and nature, a sparkling affirmation of “Truth, goodness, honour, harmony and love,”

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Charles Willson Peale a vision of the life Peale wished to live and the world he hoped to depict in his museum, an ideal of all creatures at peace in a reign of reason and order, when Nor yet injurious act nor surly deed Was known among these happy sons of heaven; For reason and benevolence were law. Harmonious Nature too looked smiling on.?

There is a charm, intelligence, contentment, in Thomson’s lines which you can find reflected also in the Peale face of the portraits. Yet now a subtle variation had come into his portrait style. The hand is mature, but purpose has drifted somewhat away from the pure poetic expression commended by Du Fresnoy. ‘The patron is now an indirect contributor to the all-important Museum, and the deference to patron taste rather than artistic feeling is at

times perceptible. In Philadelphia, unhappily, many potential patrons still viewed the Peale idealism with distaste.* It had the bitter flavor still of constitutionalism and confiscation, and as the conservative reaction hardened, so also did theirs. But in Maryland there was no such prejudice, and now to Maryland Peale turned again, as John Beale Bordley had long been urging him to do. Now for the greater part of sixteen months he would be in his native country, following his art, yet never losing touch with Philadelphia nor forgetting for a moment the project of the great museum of natural history.

He might have continued to linger at home but for word that Jenny was seriously ul. The Ramsays had been living in Baltimore since the Colonel’s resignation from the army, and after the war he had served two terms in Congress. In 1786 he had returned to the neighborhood of Charlestown, settling at ‘“Carpenter’s Point,” otherwise “Carpoint,” on the Chesapeake, and engaged in the shad and herring fishery. It was a somewhat uncertain livelihood, with problems on both land and water. In one remembered incident the fishery hands had sprung loose in a drunken riot of more than usual fervor, and the redoubtable Colonel dashed into the fray and restored order, armed with the sword he had wielded so gallantly at Monmouth.’ Carpoint was low and damp, and Jenny’s health had declined steadily after they left the city. Peale wrote to friends in Baltimore and secured commissions enough to justify frequent trips between his city and theirs. He set out alone in December, 1787, going by way of Carpoint. He found Jenny much enfeebled, and her death followed, apparently, early in the new year. Now, of the five children of Charles Peale, only he and James remained, though Nathaniel Ramsay was bound to them both by all the ties of brotherhood. Elizabeth Emerson Peale, St. George’s widow, who had been a teacher of drawing and painting at Washington College in 1784, had also recently died.

Peale met such good encouragement in Baltimore that he returned immediately to Philadelphia for Rachel and two of the children, whom he settled happily among their kin at Annapolis. He then divided his own time between Annapolis and Baltimore, with excursions elsewhere as fortune offered. He had now an opportunity to see again his work of

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Rachel fourteen or more years before. The flesh tints of many of the pictures had faded. By studying them carefully he eliminated the faulty pigments from his palette, thus beginning what he always considered one of the most important improvements in his art. He was ceaselessly active. He shot birds, pursued butterflies and bullfrogs, gathered and mounted specimens of all sorts with cheerful tireless labor. Around him a new excitement was in the air. The states, one by one, were voting in the plan of government drawn up at Philadelphia in the eventful summer of the year before. Again that excitement, that sense of a new era coming on, possessed him. He hurried away from Baltimore, early in April, 1788, to be present at Annapolis’ celebration of the ratification by Maryland of the new Constitution. It was to be on April 28, with an illumination

and a dinner and a grand ball at Mann’s Tavern. Autobiography

... and at his own expence painted a transparent picture on a canvis of g feet square. The subject was—a female figure to represent the gen[i]us of America. She was dressed in deep blue, ornamented with stars, a band on her forehead on which was written Perseverence. With her right hand she pointed to agriculture, Commerce, arts & sciences, and the various consequencies of good government in the chearful prospects of bussy and improved scienes. With her left hand she put back as disagreable to her nature, anarchy or Confusion, in the want of good government, designated by murders & cruelties in scourging the weak and helpless, also by a monster, whose many heads depicted envy, hatred, @ jaulicy, &c. Above was the figure of fame with 2

trumpets as proclaiming far and near the glad tidings. On the banners was written the NEW CONSTITUTION. This huge painting, entitled The Horrors of Anarchy and Confusion, and the Blessings of Order,

made, as can be imagined, a tremendous sensation, with the fame of it sounded all up and down the American coast. Baltimore bespoke it at once, to hold a central place in that city’s celebration in June. Rachel, pregnant once more and suffering from what seemed

to be a chronic cold, had returned to Philadelphia, longing, I can imagine, for the less active companionship of Mother Peale and Peggy Durgan. Her husband remained at Annapolis with Raphaelle. He spent many of the warm spring days in the tower of the State House, taking views of the town from each of its eight sides. He caught the preliminary outline with a new type of drawing machine made for him by Mr. Cram of the fans and fan chair. He proposed to put the drawings together to make a circular panoramic print of the whole view, a project which, in the volume of other effort, was never carried out. He made drawings of the State House itself, one of which was engraved for the Columbian Magazine.®

He had not only new portraits to paint, but cleaning and restoring to do. He went to see James Rumsey’s steam engine, to which the public had been invited by the town crier. The people of Annapolis sought his opinion on the important subject of lightning rods, and he consulted the Philadelphia savants, Franklin and Rittenhouse, in their behalf. He taught watch repairing to Richard Brewer, silversmith, who had not enough to do in his original

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Charles Willson Peale

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50. “Portracts”’

From the Papers of John Nicholson, whom Peale painted in 1790, and inscribed on verso, “Peele’s Prices of Portrait Painting.” Peale’s 30 x 25 inch canvas is today described as half length, and the 50 x 40 as three quarters.

calling. He saw a number of his brother’s landscapes raffled off among the gentlemen of the town. He had dinner occasionally with the Governor, the army officers he had known during the war, and others. He dined at the Fish Club, whither he went armed with his gun so that, while his friends amused themselves with skittles and quoits, he could shoot birds for the Museum. When, on June 26, he embarked for Baltimore with his Horrors and Blessings, he also had a large supply of museum specimens for Philadelphia, and kept himself

busy during a slow, rough passage by preserving and mounting the birds. : Federal parades and celebrations followed all over the country as state after state accepted

the new Constitution, silencing the mumblings of malcontents and laying a groundwork of acceptance. It was of course at Philadelphia, still the metropolis and soon again to be the national capital, that the change was welcomed in the most sumptuous style of all. The observance was to be held on Independence Day, when even the ruffled champions of the old order would be compelled to join. When Peale arrived in town on June 28, so

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Rachel laden with baggage that he had been obliged to leave behind a pelican, a swan, an owl, a mink, several ducks, and other treasures to follow later, the work of preparation had only Just begun. The gentlemen in charge, headed by Mr. George Clymer, at once called upon him and enlisted his aid.

A celebration like no other had been planned. With only six days to go, a whirl of activity such as Peale loved was required to bring it into being. James Peale was in it, too, of course, and Matthew Pratt and a host of others. Charles Willson Peale, looking over the variety of floats in preparation, soon found the one most to his taste and eye. He calls it in his diary “The Temple of the Immigrants,” though in all other contemporary accounts it is “The New Roof, or Grand Federal Edifice.” It seems to have been circular in form,

with ten Corinthian columns supporting a symbolic dome and three more columns yet unfinished. ‘Ten white horses were to draw it through the streets, with ten gentlemen comfortably ensconced within. There was to be a figure of “Plenty” on the summit of the dome, and this congenial detail Peale took for his own. He also cut out pasteboard armor to be covered with silver paper, devised simulated water upon which the “Federal Ship” could glide through the streets, and walked with a committee of three to determine the route of the procession. His final contribution was one approached with obvious distaste as an offense to his professional standing: decorating the beeves to be carried by the butchers as a symbol

of their trade. He was only persuaded to do this by finding that the chief butcher was a personal friend, and by being assured that the meat would be given to the poor at the end of the day.’ The great Federal Procession of 1788 has not had its like in Philadelphia history. More than five thousand men marched in its ranks, for the most part bodies of mechanics and tradesmen bearing the flags and implements of their callings. Twelve axemen, wearing ornamented caps and dressed in white frocks with black girdles, led the van, headed by Major Philip Pancake of the militia. Among them moved artillery, cavalry, infantry, the city watch, bands marching to music composed for the occasion, and floats of hitherto undreamed magnificence rolling cumbrously along, among them that “Grand Federal Edifice” with the Peale goddess floating aloft in glory and shining her blessings down upon the crowds. The Marine Society had its full-rigged ship (actually the long boat of the

captured Serapis), complete in every detail and manned by stout tars who trimmed her sails and sounded bottom at every change of course. The printers carried with them a press, from which they printed and broadcast a lengthy occasional poem composed by Dr. Franklin. Three robed judges, one holding a flag, rode in a decorated car called “Constitution,” and other dignitaries rolled on in similar state. The procession was topped off by a banquet, at which Peale heard James Wilson, chief foe of the old state constitution, deliver an oration. The remnant of Furious Whigs of that former day might groan and protest, a futile minority. Peale, for the nonce, was at peace with his former enemies. He had joined the Federal Procession. On the very next day he began the work of putting his new acquisitions in order in the

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Charles Willson Peale Museum, dipping those of a perishable nature in arsenic solution. Mrs. John O’Donnell, of “Canton” near Baltimore, had given him a collection of East Indian insects, a jackal, and a mongoose. (Captain O’Donnell, of whose family Peale had painted a number of portraits, had voyaged to India and China, seeking, as was Robert Morris also, new channels of trade to replace those which British hostility had closed.) There was to be a fine reopening of his infant institution with much that was new. With the whole world of nature to explore, Peale turned naturally to the more beautiful and more sensational aspects. From the first, birds interested him most of all and his collection, coming in time to number many thousands, would in itself have realized the scientific importance that he hoped to see the Museum achieve. After birds, snakes, and in particular poisonous snakes, engaged his attention, and after that those beasts distinguished by ferocity or by the strangeness of their habits—panthers and possums, the swordfish and the anteater. On July 19 he arranged an exhibit showing the rattler’s fangs and poison ducts, so placed under a magnifying glass that all the detail came clearly into view, a piece of exposition in which any museum man of today would acknowledge the professional touch.® There followed the final work of making

and placing labels, and then the announcement to the public in the Pennsylvania Packet of July 21, 1788: MR. PEALE’S MUSEUM, CONTAINING the Portraits of Illustrious Personages, distinguished in the late Revolution of America, and other paintings— Also, a Collection of preserved Beasts, Birds, Fish, Reptiles, Insects, Fossils, Minerals, Petrifactions, and other curious objects, natural and artificial.

Intended to be an easy and pleasant Instruction in Natural History. As this Museum is in its Infancy, Mr. Peale will thankfully receive the Assistance of the Curious. N. B. To pay for Attendance, &c. Admittance One Shilling, or One Dollar for a free ‘Ticket for one Year.

On August 27, 1788, by arrangement with the watchman who awakened him at an early hour, Peale set out alone for Baltimore, bringing with him, for sale or as a gift to patrons, some new impressions of his Washington and Franklin prints, a few of them on white satin, suitable to ornament a lady’s muff. In Baltimore he discussed Buffon with the French Consul who, himself a connoisseur, presented the artist with sixty-three young vipers taken from their mother’s belly. Peale was given also a large rattlesnake, alive, which he sent on at once to the Museum, accompanied by letters to James since Rachel could hardly be expected to cope with so formidable a subject of natural history. He left for home on November 4, having earned by his brush, in this sojourn of two months, nearly £150. The Alliance, the vessel that Robert Morris had sent on a pioneering voyage to China,

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Rachel had returned to her berth on the Delaware. Peale sent Mr. Morris and his lady complimentary tickets to the Museum, a politeness they reciprocated with gifts of a mandarin dress, a paddle from “Morris Island,” a silver pheasant, and other strange objects from the East.

In his absence, on October 25, a daughter had been born to him. She was now christened Rosalba Carriera in honor of the Venetian lady painter who had died at an advanced age some thirty years before. It was an auspicious name for a delicate child. But Rachel did not wholly recover after the baby was born. There remained a pain in her side, an ominous cough, and her health continued slowly to decline. As her strength failed, conversely her husband’s energy and ardor seemed to rise. Their fortunes, so often precarious on the long

51. CG. W. PEALE: Benjamin and Eleanor Ridgely Laming. 1788

The reclining pose with spyglass is Peale’s solution to the problem of bringing a large husband and a small wife into a balanced and graceful composition. In the background is a view of Baltimore.

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Charles Willson Peale road they had traveled together, were nearing a foundation of security at last. Afield, at least, portraiture was almost as well patronized now as in the days before the war. Only a day or so before his return from Maryland, the Pennsylvania Packet had published a poetical effusion of seventy-two lines extolling his “inimitable Painting,” citing the array of famous

faces in the portrait gallery, and giving particular attention to a historical painting of the skirmish at Whitemarsh in which General Reed had so narrowly escaped capture. The poet opens with a description of Christ’s sufferings on the cross as depicted in art, leads on through the gallery of heroes, and closes with the death of the General’s horse: Or, if with varied art the gen’rous horse Thy pencil shapes, his nervous limbs and force; Like Boreas fleet he skims along the plains, Regards no check, nor heeds the curbing reins; While sparks of flame dart from his fiery eye, And sounds like thunder from his nostrils fly:

The martial trumpet all his bosom warms, ]

He prances to the hoarser drum’s alarms,

And paws the trembling ground, pleas’d with the din of arms. J His lofty forehead feels the piercing ball, He tumbles prone in no inglorious fall; In crimson torrents from his wounded brain The life escapes, and paints the dusky plain. Such are th’effects our raptur’d bosoms feel, And such thy art,—inimitable PEaLE!®

With its rapid increase Peale’s whole collection was gaining prestige, and it was perhaps

in a similar patriotic fervor that he now called it for a brief interval “The American Museum,” the title that Du Simitiére had used. He wanted it to have more than a personal identification, though it was always to be Peale’s Museum in the minds of the public. Du Simitiére had been a curator of the American Philosophical Society, and Peale had now been elected to succeed him in this office, linking officially his project and the society’s purposes. On November 17 he gave Benjamin West a glimpse of his progress in these affairs: The bearer hereof, Mr. Clarkson, my friend and a considerable time my neighbor, and with whom I have passed many sociable hours, can give you a more particular account of my labours in the arts than I can by letter. My studies and labours for several years past has been incessant

but not always to much profit. For two or three years I studied and laboured to execute an Exhibition of mooving pictures. This injured my health and straightened my circumstances, and

after a full essay, I have quitted that for a new, but no less arduous undertaking. That is the preserving Birds, Beasts, &c. to form a Museum, and by constant application I have made a considerable progress in collecting, considering the difficulties I have laboured under, having all to learn and no opportunity of getting assistance. I now find it necessary to travel to get busi-

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52. CG. W. Peare: The Goldsborough Family. 1789

Judge Robert Goldsborough of “Myrtle Grove,” Talbot County, Maryland, with his wife and children. The bust of Washington was probably painted from that modeled by Peale himself in 1778.

ness sufficient in the portrait line to maintain my family, which is not small. I mention these things to shew you that the state of the arts in America is not very favorable at present. Altho’ I am so fortunate as to please all that employ me, yet I find it difficult to get wherewith to maintain me. I have begun a work from my collection of portraits, of which I send you by Mr. Clarkson some proof prints. This is a work which I mean to persue when I have no other business to do, for sale is not such as to induce me to persue it otherwise.?°

Leaving Philadelphia with Raphaelle early in December, he spent most of the winter and spring painting in Baltimore and Annapolis, but was home again in April in time to join in the city’s final celebration of the new order. President Washington was on his way from Mount Vernon to his inaugural at New York, with crowds of grateful citizens in every town hailing his approach, cheering his departure as he passed on. As a private citizen and

Charles Willson Peale as a soldier, the General had avoided displays of this sort, but the situation now was different. They were honoring the office as well as himself. Had he known what lay before him at Philadelphia, he might have hoped the more to escape, but the good people in charge had left no opportunity for that. At the boundary between Pennsylvania and Delaware he was met by the President of the Supreme Executive Council and the Speaker of the Assembly, escorted by the two city troops of cavalry and accompanied by a swarm of military companies and mounted citizens. Yielding to this superior force, he descended from his carriage, mounted a waiting charger, and rode forward toward the spectacular and semimechanical welcome that had been prepared for him by Charles Willson Peale. Land travelers of this day entered Philadelphia over a crude floating bridge that spanned the Schuylkill in what was then open country, Gray’s Ferry Bridge. It was here that Peale, assisted by George Gray, the amiable proprietor of the crossing, and other gentlemen, had been active. Instead of paintings or simulated statuary, they had constructed two lofty arches at the bridgeheads, heavily entwined with laurel, and they had banked the railings from one end to the other with greenery. Along the whole length of one side of the bridge

53. CG. W. PEALE: Gray’s Ferry Decorated. 1789

The triumphal arches where Washington was received on his progress to the Presidency, and crowned, or near-crowned, by Angelica Peale. (From the Columbian Magazine, vol. 3, May, 1789; engraved by James Trenchard after Peale.)

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Rachel the eleven flags of the states that had thus far ratified the Constitution were flying, while in front of the arches at the ends other state and revolutionary flags were fluttering gaily in the April wind. It was a beautiful and stirring sight, “in such stile,” as the Pennsylvania Packet informs us, “as to display uncommon taste in these gentlemen,” and to fill “‘the spectator’s soul with admiration and delight.” The great crowd waiting there among the hills and trees, with the city spires in the distance, had before its eyes such a magic scene as, so the Packet avers, “even the pencil of a Raphael could not delineate.”!! The genius of a Raphael might well have been unequal to the crowning artifice that Peale now had ready at the western arch, the first under which the chieftain would pass. A wreath of laurel had been affixed to its summit, controlled by a cord in such a manner that it could be made to fall with mechanical precision upon the hero’s brow. The control cord was in the hand of Angelica Peale, now a handsome girl of thirteen years, and for the occasion robed in white and herself decked and crowned with laurel leaves.!* The operation of the “civic crown” called for readiness and timing, and a signal system had been devised to bring warning to all of the procession’s approach. History does not agree as to just what happened when Washington, all unawares, rode under that western arch and Angelica pulled the cord. By one account, the wreath de-

scended accurately, incredible as that may seem, upon the noble head and that the spectators greeted the act with a mighty shout of acclaim. A family tradition, on the other hand, related by a son of the artist who was at this time still unborn, tells us that Washington put aside the crown with his hand, at the same time pausing by the bank where

the pretty girl was standing to print a kiss upon her rosy cheek. To Angelica, by this version, the shout of approval seemed to mark her failure and humiliation, though in later

years, as the whole matter settled comfortably into legend, she could recall it all with pride, a treasured moment of her own with the departed great.!? A few days later, her father left again for Maryland where, save for two brief homecomings in the summer and fall, he continued to travel and ply his brush on both the western and eastern shores until January, 1790. His painting, with such constant practice, had become even more finished and assured, but the Museum was still the first object of it all. On his first return to Philadelphia, after scarcely a month away, he brought home sixty birds. In Baltimore he received more valuable oriental pieces from John O’Donnell, an East Indian match gun, a Damascus sword, Chinese chessmen, skulls of the royal tiger, a live cockatoo, and more. He was entertained, too, at “Canton” in a way that he always remembered with delight. Autobiography

... in the evening he went to a ball. Although the weather was warm, the company danced a great deal. On such occasions, the company being dressed in tasteful modes, expecting to be pleased, hence such scienes are exhilarating. Can an assemblage of young people meeting together for the purpose of dancing, which is

an exercise that shows their persons to the best advantage, be an evil as injuring the moral

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Charles Willson Peale conduct of young people? Youth is the time of lively feelings, of mirth and happiness, and while the spirits are spritely, they require the endulgence of mirth, and, if properly directed, will not produce remorse. Care has not yet soured their tempers.

He had brought from Philadelphia some landscapes for the home of General Otho Holland Williams, and from General Williams received the gift of an African bow, a weapon which, from its moral and romantic rather than its anthropological interest, he always prized as one of the principal treasures of the Museum. Mrs. Rebecca Motte, widow of a South Carolina planter, was the heroine of the tale, and Jambo, who in a former day had been one of her husband’s slaves, its hero. The slave, a chief in his own country, had been captured in war and sold to the traders. By virtue of his resigned and intelligent behavior, he had been allowed to keep his bow through every change of fortune, and after his death the bow had been preserved as a curious relic by his American master. ‘The mansion on the Santee River was seized by a British force in the campaign of 1781 and turned into a fort. Marion and Lee besieged it, and haste was necessary, for Lord Rawdon was marching to its relief. At this juncture, the patriot chatelaine came to the American commanders with the bow in hand. ‘Any arrow,” she said, “will waft a match. Spare not the house so you expel the foe.” In this way the roof had been set ablaze, and the garrison, surrendering, had joined with their enemies in putting out the fire.1* To Peale, therefore, the bow had a double significance and a single-pointed moral. With it the African, and then the American, had fought for his liberty. It was a gentle, positive, disturbing reminder that liberty is as dear to one race as another, and as well deserved. The last call of the long Maryland sojourn was at John Beale Bordley’s Eastern Shore estate, where Mr. Bordley’s portrait was painted again. Raphaelle was with his father now, and together, in January, they began the journey home, the artist’s mind filled anew with forebodings for Rachel’s failing health. Through the past two years she had been declining, and his own increasing energy in painting and collecting, that rising, compulsive fervor, was surely in some measure an emotional reaction, an escape, a flight from the slow descent of an enveloping tragedy. There is evidence of it in the very fact that, once home with her, his mind was running

again to thoughts of an achievement reaching beyond their own time, throughout the nation and the world. He sat down to bring these thoughts together in an address To the Citizens of the United States of America, issuing it as a printed broadside under the date of February 1, 1790.'° It went, in particular, to Members of Congress in the new government.

The pith of this appeal was to declare his aims and to enlist the co-operation of all in bringing into being an institution of central and national importance: All the national museums in the world (as far as he is informed) were from beginnings of individuals: the Public are therefore the more chearfully solicited to help forward this tender

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America fosters the arts, while youthful Agriculture turns the earth, and Commerce is symbolized by a ship with flying banners. (From the Universal Asylum and Columbian Magazine, title page for vol. 5; en-

graved by Thackara and Vallance, after Peale.)

Charles Willson Peale plant, while it is yet under the nurturing care and anxious attention of its present possessor, and until it shall have grown into maturity, and have become a favo.ite establishment in the hands of the great Public of the American States. He hopes this may be the case: For—“‘with harmony small beginnings effect great things.”

He bought two rattlesnakes a few days later, alive but rendered inactive by the cold weather so that he could take accurate and complete measurements of them. Then, from great projects and studious inquiry, he was recalled again and with finality to the fact that Rachel was dying. While the call To the Citizens of the United States was being sent out, she had taken to her bed. There she lay, with her long dark curls upon the pillow and the face that had been a perfect oval wasted by disease, her dark eyes sprightly no longer but large and sad. In all their troubled life together, Rachel had never uttered a word of complaint. Now she gathered about her all she had of gentleness and beauty, and so waited quietly for whatever the end might bring. For more than a month she continued so, absorbing the sympathy of family, neighbors, and clergy. Only her husband, with her approaching departure daily brought before him, could not accept its reality. He could not doubt the serious character of her illness and equally could not, it would seem, face the prospect of life without her. He had always looked on death without emotion, as he would meet any other event or problem. A positivist at heart, his speculations sought only to prolong life, never to define the soul or fix its destination. If, on her part, Rachel’s mind had been molded to her husband’s rational temperament, she had nevertheless sufficient store of religion to carry her through these days. Autobiography

... She was a truly devout Christian, but possessed a liberality of sentiment not often to be mett with. During her illness, several Ministers of the different churches in Philada. visited her, & all of them admired her chearful resignation to her approaching desolution. She very frequently talked to her children about the change that would shortly take place with respect to their situation, and endeavored to prepare them to meet their loss, advising them how they should conduct themselves to those from whom they might expect to get any assistance in improving and fitting them to live in a becoming manner. We mean such as were of years sufficient to hear instruction, and, although she became reduced to extreme weakness, yet her mind was active to the last minite, and in the whole of her illness she seemed to strive to give as little trouble to those who attended her as she possibly could. She would not have any setting up with her untill a few nights before her death, and then would order such things to be got for them as she thought they liked, and this solicitous[ness] & attention lasted to the very night before she died.

The day before, she ordered that all the children should come and take leave of her, and her husband thought it best to bring them one at a time, lest the seeing all together might be too distressing, the eldest first. She in a most affectionate manner beged them to be good children, to be dutiful to their father and mind to follow his advice, and would have gone on to a degree which her reduced situation could not have borne, had not the father interposed and told her that she ought not to weaken herself by too great exertions, that the children were

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Rachel good children, they had no inclination to do wrong, that they had not yet contracted any bad habits, and every one of them were promising children, and might easily be led to the true road to happiness, therefore she ought to be happy in the promising prospect of their becoming worthy members of the community.

Little Rubens, who had not yec reached his sixth birthday, retained in later years only a vague recollection of his mother, yet he always remembered this last scene, when she “kissed me and prayed that I would be a good boy.”?!® Rachel died on the twelfth of April, 1790. But her husband would not leave her yet, nor let them move her from the bed. The tearful children were sent away. His old mother and nurse tremulously hovered at the door. He would not let them make her ready for the grave. He thought of a Charles Carroll in Maryland who had revived after being prepared for burial. With this and other anecdotes he sought afterward to justify his conduct. But it was rather, simply, that they had lived so long together, had grown up from childhood together, that they belonged too much to one another to be so wholly parted. For three days he remained by the body, watching for a motion or a breath, unable to believe that Rachel had really gone away."’

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CHAPTER 19 “YE ZEPHER GAY” THE DEATH OF RACHEL, with the terrible agony of final severance, scored off the future

and left the painter—a forward-looking soul—aware only of the past. In a little book he set out to write down the story, his first draft of an autobiography, telling of his childhood, his apprenticeship and its hard years, young love, and the hard years in Maryland and England and during the war. It is a little manuscript, only a few pages in contrast to the compilation of thirty-five years later, but it gave him a sense of foundation, revived hope, opened the future once more and underscored that living dream of a national museum, brought back the eagerness and urgency which would be needed, in the years ahead, to bring it into being. Colonel John Trumbull had returned from abroad in 1790, visited Philadelphia, the newspapers resounding the fame of his new historical paintings. But Peale, looking backward to his father’s career, saw his opportunity in the office of Postmaster General of the United States, then vacant. He wrote to President Washington, putting the matter with almost painful diffidence, urging it only as a means by which the government might take natural history under its patronage: I will only add that my business in the portrait line is not a sufficient support for my family. I am obliged now to make journeys into Maryland to seek employ, and the thought of an office which would enable me to increase the Museum to a national magnitude, by the many opportunities of obtaining articles of curiosity from every quarter, without the least expense to Congress, would, I flatter myself, be a public benefit.!

General Washington, who had given his encouragement both to “the portrait line” and to the Museum, could not see this proposal as a public benefit. ‘The constant expansion of the collection, so necessary to the great objective, must be Peale’s own concern. So Peale turned again to Maryland. He would recoup his fortunes once more in the old familiar country under the summer sun, sure of a homecomer’s welcome, always, in the wide and friendly land. ‘There he could shake off the “pains of ennui” and set heart and mind in balance. There he would paint and collect, and there he who had always lived within the shelter of a woman’s love might find another life’s companion. This last objective, once in view, had to be pursued upon an open, rational plan. He

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“Ye Zepher Gay” must find a wife, a mother for his children, the seven of them—Raphaelle, Angelica, Rem-

brandt, Titian, Rubens, Sophonisba, and the baby, Rosalba Carriera. She must be, he declared, a woman not less than thirty-six years of age, a steady, sensible partner for a widower of forty-nine. With the interests of the Museum ever in mind, he hoped also that she might be a lady of fortune and powerful connections. He inquired carefully among his friends but found them not too helpful, and when he took his departure it was with no better advice than a suggestion from Moses Cox that he visit “an interesting widow,” a Mrs. Goldsborough of ‘Talbot County—he did not recall the full name. He was to find, too, that rational circumspection would be quite as hard to achieve in this matter now as it had been before. Offering oneself in marriage was like hanging a picture and calling in the public—but a hundred times more terrifying.” He engaged a housekeeper, for Peggy Durgan and his mother were no longer equal to the domestic burden, and on August 7, 1790, set out for the Eastern Shore. Here, then, was a suitor seeking the unknown, a man slim and sound of body, graying, a trifle bald, more than a trifle deaf, yet light of step and with a bright appraising eye. Raphaelle, a

laughing boy of sixteen, accompanied him. As usual in these plantation-to-plantation wanderings, they rode in a one-horse carriage, with room enough for stretchers, paints, and canvas, guns and game sacks, and a return load of museum exhibits. For themselves they carried only a change of linen: for Raphaelle six plain shirts, four cravats, three pairs of striped and mottled stockings; for his father four new ruffled shirts, four old ones, nine extra stocks and a couple of neck handkerchiefs, three pairs of silk stockings, and a few of spotted cotton and brown thread. Peale was sick at the time of their departure, poisoned, so he thought, by breathing arsenic dust while giving the Museum birds a final going-over. He went on his way, dosing himself with castor oil, sulphur, milk, soap water, and, in the hope of reaching some conclusion of medical value, keeping lugubrious notes upon the state of his bowels. The disease

yielded at last not to drugs but to the gentler action of ripe blackberries growing by the wayside, and Raphaelle ran happily by the carriage filling his hat with them. The first portraits were begun at the Milligan home on the Sassafras River, whence, after a few days, they proceeded southward. Now they were on the Eastern Shore, the broad, level country of his birth, with its long stretches of field and forest and the wide-winged buzzards drifting overhead. Friends were around him everywhere, and among them his paintings of an earlier day—work that he

now eyed critically, regretting that he had not used more mineral color in the reds and flesh tints. Diary

Sunday [August] 16th. Set out for Chester Town, the weather extremely hot. We got to Chester '2 past 2 O’clock and dined Mrs. Dunn’s (Formerly called Miss Callahan) an old acquaintance even from childhood. I waited on Mr. Hand, Mrs. Ringgold, to see my painting

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Charles Willson Peale done about 15 years past. The coloring as most of my other works of that period. The shadows too cold, having used no red in my shading except lake. The fading of the lake left the black predominant in the middle tints and deep shades. The pictures highly finished and the likeness strong in each piece. Had I used vermillion or light red how much better these paintings would have been.?

That day they visited other friends, including, if he may be so described, James Tilghman, now an old gentleman of eighty-four. Peale still cherished a grateful remembrance of Tilghman’s unsolicited loan with which his career as a saddler had begun. To be sure, Tilghman’s disapproval of his course in business and politics had very nearly lodged him in “a horrid Gaol,” but then the tables had been turned again when the Furious Whig had found the Tory on his proscription list. Peale was eager now to regain the friendship of his benefactor, with whose son, Colonel Tench Tilghman on Washington’s staff, he had always enjoyed a cordial relationship. He was given, however, but scant encouragement, and Mr. Tilghman’s coolness was soon to become even more evident. From Chestertown the travelers moved on to the Wye Island home where that oldest and dearest friend, Beale Bordley, was summering. Bordley’s portrait was painted anew, and his and Mrs. Bordley’s watches repaired. Then, as expected guests were filling the house, father and son crossed to the mainland again. Seeking shelter at the Singleton plantation, they found that there had just been a death in the family. Peale determined then to ride on and beg the hospitality of the “interesting widow” of whom he had been told. “I don’t know that in my whole life I ever felt more awkward than on this occasion,” his diary confesses. He had taken her hand and asked entertainment for the night, upon a traveler’s necessity. It was granted graciously. In conversation he soon learned that this Mrs. Goldsborough was not the one of whom his friend had spoken. For all that, she was a charming hostess. He found it easy to confide to her the objects of his journey, and they discussed at length the care one must exercise in the selec-

tion of a spouse. He was to visit her again in the course of his wanderings, and she receives a kindly notice in the record of his journey as “our favorite widow.” With his mind running upon this topic as they jogged out again across the swampy, mosquito-infested lowlands of Talbot County, Peale was moved to speculate upon the large proportion of widows in its population and the causes for such disparity. The answer, he concluded, was that the women remained healthfully about their business indoors, going out only in carriages to visit one another, while their husbands, at their labors, wet their feet, chilled their bones, and died. As for himself and Raphaelle, they paused to shoot birds along the way and stopped for a pleasant visit here or there. At every house Peale found

a friendly welcome. He was kept busy at his art, painting in both miniature and large. They turned northward after a time, toward Easton where the other Mrs. Goldsborough, the “interesting widow,” dwelt. This brought them to the Hindman plantation with its four-hundred-acre deer park and its flocks of wild turkeys, and to Wye Island again, whence Peale accompanied the Bordleys to a fish feast given by Colonel William Hindman. Hind-

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‘ ay oe = LT| 56. C. W. PEALE: Christiana De Peyster and William De Peyster. 1792 and 1798

Betsy’s parents, “Mama” and “Poppy” De Peyster, of New York.

saunter through the town, seeing sights “as pleasing to a painter’s eye as can be found in any city of America.”’ Come Sunday, they looked for a preacher to marry them. Diary

[May] 29 [1791]. Sunday. I went to church with my dear Betsy 3 times this day at the different churches. The best preacher that we heard was the Rev. Mr. Linn.’ 30th. We took an early breakfast and in coaches went to Mr. Nicholas DePeyster’s, 7 miles distant from the city. Our company were Mr. and Mrs. DePeyster, Mr. and Mrs. Cozine, Mr. and Mrs. Bogart and Miss Abby. The situation of the seat is on the North River, highlands and descending to the water in a gentle declivity of a fine enameled green, with here and there a clump of fine trees. We seated ourselves under one of these fine shades, from which we had a fine view of the river, on which there were turning against a gentle breeze numbers of craft. Under the opposite shore, by the comparison of those great heights, they looked like the boats of children. And below those heights of wood and here and there projected rocks were many farms and cultivated fields rich in varied colored grains. At one of those habitations in our view was a ferry, where the road to pass into the country was made slanting along the steep hill, too high and steep to be ascended in any other manner. While we had our eyes feasted

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Charles Willson Peale with this pleasing perspective views of great distances, and near the lovely fair, my Betsy looked charmingly, and delighted my ears with her melodious voice in several songs. We strummed the guitar and talked of love. He must have had with him that first draft of an autobiography, begun in such reflective

style, for written in at the end of it is a song, taken down just as he caught the words with which she, assuredly, was brightening the hour. Ye Zepher Gay that fans the Air And wanton through the Grove Go whister to my charming fair I die for her & Love. This lass so neat &c How happy must that Shepherd be Who calls this nymth his own. Oh! may her heart be fixed on me Mine fixed on hers alone This lass so neat &c.8

The DePeysters wished the wedding to be as private as possible, and so it was. On the evening of this same day, May 30, 1791, a note was sent to Dr. Linn, who came at ten. Mr. and Mrs. DePeyster, the bride’s brothers John and Philip, and Angelica were there. ‘After the congratulations of these friends, we took a cold repast and retired in peace and

quiet to our chambers.”’ |

The newlyweds gave a week more to the sights of New York, including the museum recently established by the Tammany Society, or Columbian Order. On June 7 they took a warmly affectionate leave of “Papa” and “Mama”—or “Pa” and “Ma” in the Philadelphia style, with a flat a. The bride would have a brief sojourn with her new family, then a wedding trip through Maryland, where Peale looked forward to introducing her to the amenities of Southern life and to his far-flung circle of friends. Her stepchildren gave immediate loyalty to the plump and smiling Betsy. She arrived

among them on a Sunday morning, just as they were setting out for church. After the service, some of the ladies of the congregation enticed little Rubens away from her en-

ap ee ee

How hap-py will the Shepherd be Who cull this Nyme fis OUM, 1...

A Xv aw gene \—~--- wey one

O may her chowce be fix'd on me, Mine’s fied on her a--loné.......

NOTE: Music and original words, “The Lass of Richmond Hill.”

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“Ye Zepher Gay” tourage and questioned him about his new mama, whether she was good and kind to him. Rubens, perplexed and hurt, ran to tell his father, whose indignation drew them all together in their new allegiance. The Maryland trip began on June 13—first Baltimore, then Annapolis, then across the Bay and up the Eastern Shore, returning to town in September. Relatives and friends gathered to meet the bride and to cheer them on their way. Beale Bordley felt sure they would win the flitch of bacon, traditional prize for the couple who could pass a year without

a quarrel. He said he would make the award himself and declared that it might be rare enough to place in the Museum. Peale, as ever when happy, was full of mechanical ideas, improving his drawing machine, making a machine for keeping away flies, mending his friends’ watches, and tinkering with everything they had that needed it. The “‘steccado”’ had been left at Bordley’s and now could be brought out and played for the company. They visited singing and dancing schools as they continued on their way. Peale’s brush was kept busy too, despite the fact that a new rival, Jean Pierre Henri Elouis had been over the ground, painting in “a new style.” But with Betsy the trip had a social character quite lacking in previous tours. When two families, both prominent in their counties, slighted her, Peale was quick to resent it, in one case coldly declining the tardy invitation and in the other making complaint to his diary alone: ““They may have reasons for their conduct. . . . If otherwise, they are fools and wrong themselves.” Riding through Talbot, Dorchester, and Somerset counties there were disappointments in “the painting business.” This country was wild and lonely, damp and mosquito-ridden, and both of them began to feel its prevailing sickliness. But in Somerset a wonderful discovery atoned for everything. In Somerset lived a Negro slave, James, whose color had gradually changed from brown

to white. His father was said to have been a white man. His wife and children were all dark. Here, actually, was a case of vitiligo, a harmless, erratic disease that results in the depigmentation of the skin, known to both races but more common among Negroes and in

warmer climates. All this was quite unknown in 1791, and to Peale’s quick and eager imagination the thing was startling in its implications. If Negrves, by their association with the white man or for whatever other reason were to turn white themselves, a main prop of the ugly problem of slavery would break down. He made a careful inquiry into the genealogy

and past history of James, painted his portrait, and hastened home to lay the matter in the lap of the American Philosophical Society.

Peale was stricken with chills and fever on the road, and Betsy also soon after their return. This was the malady that haunted the lowlands, often becoming acute after the sufferer reached another climate. Dr. Hutchinson was called and administered warm draughts, bark, and other preparations. Betsy was tenderly nursed by her new family, while her husband, too ill to attend the society’s meeting of October 7, wrote out the exciting story of the transformation of James for its consideration, sending a copy to Philip Freneau’s National Gazette.?

With the passing of the older generation, the family had suddenly grown younger. Save

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Charles Willson Peale for the head of the house, who had never kept pace with his years, Betsy was the oldest at twenty-six. Raphaelle was seventeen, Angelica fifteen, Rembrandt thirteen, Titian eleven, Rubens seven, and little Sophy five. Only two remained of the kitchen family, the least alert and active, for Peale had been freeing his slaves as soon as they could maintain themselves. ‘This made a household of ten, frequently enlarged by visiting relatives and friends. Of the Polk children, Elizabeth—another Betsy—now a girl of twenty-one, had been in charge much of the time after Rachel’s death, and even after her marriage was still close to

the family group. Margaret Jane, the eldest, had been married in 1788. Charles Peale Polk was painting portraits in Baltimore, but would be in town from time to time. James Peale, with his heavy, friendly face, was often about. He had three small children in 1791, Jane Ramsay, Maria, and a little James, and a new baby, Anna. Betsy’s sister, Mrs. Stagg, came often with her small brood, among them two Indian boys whom she and the Major sought to rear as civilized Americans. Betsy had all these around her now, and more. Big Argus, who as a puppy five years before had been drawn from the folds of the grinning soldier’s coat, now presided over an unusually numerous complement of family pets—dogs, cats, squirrels, birds, and mice, some at large and some in boxes. A large rattlesnake joined the family in 1791, and there must have been others, for this was a favorite study.’ Outside, the five-legged cow with six feet

and two tails gave them milk, and a motley company of savage beasts, among them a bear newly arrived from the forests of Georgia, tugged at their chains. ‘There was always to

be this extemporaneous zoo outside the Peale door, since so many animals were taken when young and must mature before being mounted. It had been easier to bring Betsy into this household than it might have been to superimpose such a ménage and menagerie upon Betsy. She was by nature, like the children she was to bear, proud, sensitive, and strong-willed—not unreasonably so, for she was an intelligent, understanding woman. But her love was not of the meek and pliant cast that Rachel’s had been. She was to find herself in a home so given over to philosophic investigation that even the kitchen would be invaded, and at that point any housewife must be ready to speak her mind. As winter came she was still pale and weak, spending most of her time in the small back parlor at Third and Lombard, sheltered from the north and westerly winds and warmed by a Rittenhouse stove. Her husband stayed near her, unwilling this season to join the crowds of friends and fellow citizens who would be out on the Delaware ice for a day of sport and an ox roast at its end. Peale as a skater was distinguished by an unusual pair of pronged and curved “gutter skates,” upon which he glided along in slow and graceful curves.!!

“Here,” he wrote to his father-in-law, “we enjoy our Christmas amidst our prattling children, except that we dined with Brother Stagg on Christmas Day. Compliments are common at this season. Our wishes to you, Mama, and Brothers, are more: that ye may enjoy a long and happy life, happy in the enjoyment of each other, and that we in convenient seasons may be able to throw in our mite to increase your comforts.” !

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66 9 Ye Zepher Gay

The holiday was climaxed by a visit from Philip DePeyster. Rembrandt ambitiously undertook to paint the young man’s portrait, holding him for most of a week in the painting

room while his father chafed for opportunities to show the visitor the wonders of the Museum and the sights of the town. Rembrandt had left school this year and turned to art with passionate intensity. A self-portrait, just finished, shows us the serious, wide-eyed

boy with long dark hair curling by his cheeks. His next tour de force would be a selfportrait by candlelight. Ever since that day when Copley had lent the roving Marylander a candlelight painting to copy, the Peales had regarded this as a special test of skill. Rembrandt

57. CG. W. PEALE: John Strangeways Hutton. 1792

Painted for the Museum gallery as one who, in his 108th year, was approaching the “natural” life span of homo sapiens.

RA RE oa

Oe gt TE

oe ware

Pa evel

r | fe : | 253 |

Charles Willson Peale varied the theme by painting the burning of the Lutheran church, then turned to copying prints and some of his father’s portraits and landscapes. His first commissions came from a shoemaker and a flute maker for painting their wives—the payment a pair of shoes and a flute. The flute, and a guitar, now occupied all the time he would spare from painting. Raphaelle loved music too and drew well, but he was giving most of his time to helping his father with the Museum mountings and arrangement. Angelica had also learned to draw, as well at least as an accomplished young lady should, and Titian and Rubens were learning art and taxidermy together. Little Rubens, using a burnt stick dipped in candle grease, had once produced a landscape which so took the eye of John Page, later Governor of Virginia, that he paid a whole guinea for it and carried it away, so he affirmed, to hang in his parlor. And once old Dr. Franklin, seeing the child laboriously copying an engraving of a bird, had said to him, “Persevere, my boy, and you will make a painter yet.” Then, taking an address card from his pocket, the aged philosopher had written “Perseverantia” upon it. Gard and motto Rubens cherished throughout his life, but weak eyes, which had made these first attempts so labored, cut short the ambition to become an artist. Dr. Hutchinson earned the little boy’s undying enmity by prescribing bad-tasting medicines and ordering that he be kept out of the sun as much as possible. So Rubens was rarely permitted to play outdoors with the other children or to go after huckleberries in the commons beyond Sixth Street. If he went out at all at midday, he had to suffer the humiliation of being accompanied by a nurse holding an umbrella over his head.'? Sophonisba Angusciola, on the other hand, was a healthy little mite with a marvelous quickness of foot. Chased by her brothers and sisters, she would fly laughing from one piece of furniture to another, darting out of reach under the tables and scarcely having to duck her curly head. Formal schooling was not seriously pursued in this family, but in its place there were the older people always coming and going, men of learning and wideranging intellectual interests, some familiar, some from distant places, bringing with them a sense of excitement and discovery. And always the contagion of their father’s enthusiasms led them on to enthusiasms of their own. Bright enthusiasms are mutually sustaining. Other men of Peale’s time, at fifty, looked

forward only to the few and waning years; he, in moments of depression, might do the same. But his moments of depression were rare, and his sense of youth and future easily prevailed. A rational view—one accepted by other naturalists before and since—supported it. If one granted that the mature years of Homo sapiens should be, as with other animals, about ten times as long as his immature period, he could then expect a normal life of two hundred years. This, Peale conceded, might be too generous a figure. Buffon had calculated

the ratio at six to one. But it remained Peale’s opinion that intemperance, lack of exercise, and other disregard of nature’s laws had reduced the statistical life span. A man who observed them ought to pass the century mark before yielding to old age. There was right at hand an exemplar of all this in the person of John Strangeways Hutton, who in 1791 had attained the age of 107. Like Peale, he had been a craftsman, a silversmith. Like Peale,

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“Ye Zepher Gay” he had been a temperate, hard-working man, and had had a share, too, of excitement and adventure. He had been married twice, had had twenty-five children, and had, in all, 132 descendants. !4

The connection between longevity and politics may not be instantly apparent, yet both are

in the pattern of these exciting years. In France, the Bastille had fallen, popular government was claiming power, with all the world watching in shocked surprise or wild delight. Conservative Americans staunchly disapproved and stood with Britain. Liberals stood with France, sharing the old exultations of our own Revolution, that sense, again, of Reason and Freedom sweeping the world. Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man was published in 1791 with Thomas Jefferson’s prefatory assurance that the public would “rally a second time round the standard of ‘Common Sense.’” ‘This hope came true, for the work had tremendous popular success, and with it Jefferson, who had not expected his brief commendation to be printed, suddenly emerged as leader of the democratic wave. In both science and public policy Jefferson dominates the years that follow. Now science and politics, with Jefferson, Peale, and their ilk, move hand in hand. They see government as only the simple operation of reason and natural law. With rational justice comes rational behavior, and from that health and long life. In Peale’s vision, and there were many who would not deny it, the Museum stood at the center of this structure, the “School of Nature,” the key to all. In January, 1792, he had added Jefferson’s portrait to the Museum gallery. Paine’s was already there. John Strangeways Hutton was so honored in September of that year. It was in that September, 1792, that Betsy’s first child was born, a boy. In deference to the Dutch strain thus introduced into his house, the father chose the name Vandyke. The compliment vastly delighted Betsy’s brothers, who loved to encourage Peale in his conjugal prowess and had been calling

jovially for “a Dutch painter” or two together at a birth. Vandyke, who died in infancy, was the eighth Peale child to be named for an artist, and the last for some time. Natural history was now the thing.

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CHAPTER 20 PHILOSOPHICAL HALL AFTER His Return from Maryland with Betsy, Peale had declared that this would be his last trip afield for portrait painting. He had an income now from the Museum. With the constant addition of new exhibits, he was assured of its steady increase. He had, in fact, founded a new type of show business which was soon to have its imitators in nearly every American city. ‘They were all in the Peale pattern: a portrait gallery, plus curiosities of

nature and art. The basis of their popular success was their freedom from that taint of immorality which for so many years would haunt the theatre. Anybody could have fun in a museum, and most of them were designed with that alone in view. When Peale intro-

duced lectures on science, his imitators followed suit after a fashion, until, by midnineteenth century, some museums had become theatres in fact if not in name. He watched this vulgarization with dismay. His museum was to have a quite different character, defined at the outset and resolutely defended through the years. ‘To achieve what he wished, it must be owned and supported by the public, with himself and his staff as salaried officials. It was to be for the populace, and yet serve an educational function that

would extend to the highest level. The concept was encouraged by his friends of the American Philosophical Society and by others, and yet, like the democratic ideals of the Revolution, it was almost totally beyond the imagining of the democracy and the politician.

His chief model was the great National Museum in Paris, with its vast collections, its zoological and botanical gardens, its faculty of learned men, all state-supported and with a long history and a wide accomplishment behind it. Although in America at this time anything French had a controversial aspect, the idea of a national seat of learning was in men’s minds, to be promoted by Washington, Jefferson, and others of varying political outlooks.

In 1791 Peale was exchanging specimens with a member of the Swedish Academy of Sciences whom Dr. Nicholas Collin had introduced to him. From this time forward he was continually in touch with foreign institutions and naturalists. The best of this traffic, which included France, Germany, Spain, and Holland, was with Thomas Hall, a professional naturalist in London. From him Peale obtained the platypus, the duck-billed quadruped of Australia, and many other rarities. At the same time he maintained a correspondence with the Comte de Buffon, on whose works he largely depended, Sir Joseph Banks, Sir

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Philosophical Hall John Sloan, and others. In all this the subject of interest to him was not so much natural history as museum administration, particularly the character and progress of the European institutions. Peale’s vision, as he announced it and pleaded for it from time to time, was identical with

the Smithsonian Institution of today. In retrospect it all seems reasonable enough. To most of his contemporaries, however, it was absurdly grandiose. One need only reflect upon the dawdling dubiety with which Congress and the public received the news of James Smithson’s bequest, from 1835 to 1846, and of the long period thereafter before a broad

museum function was set up. In his address of February 1, 1790, To the Citizens of the United States of America, Peale had first declared his intention of founding a national museum.

A new declaration, dated “Philadelphia Museum, Jan. 13, 1792,” had now been published in the newspapers. Here he recounted his first determination to collect subjects of natural history “‘and to preserve and arrange them in the Linaean method,” besought the aid of all in bringing together objects of every sort that might “be useful in advancing knowledge and

the arts,” and so to “raise this tender plant until it shall grow into full maturity and become a Natzonal Museum.” In conclusion, he announced that he would personally invite a group of gentlemen to “become Inspectors or Visitors of the Museum.’

When these persons first met, it was as a “Society of Visitors or Directors.” The body was to hold an advisory position only until state or nation should see fit to endow the institution. At this eventuality, which Peale obviously hoped they would promote, these men would take over with the full powers of a board of directors. Ten attended the first meeting, February 5, 1792, at the Museum: Dr. Benjamin Smith Barton and his brother William; John Beale Bordley; Miers Fisher, a public-spirited lawyer then a member of the state legislature; Dr. James Hutchinson; James Madison, the future President, at this time a shy young Congressman who had shown an intelligent interest in the Museum; Colonel John Page, congressman from Virginia; Robert Patterson of the university, donor of the “first object”; Bishop William White with his lean, ascetic face; and the ever-genial Dr. Caspar Wistar. ‘The names of the others invited show how Peale sought to enlist political influence as well as learning and to cut across political lines: Thomas Jefferson and Alexander Hamilton; Edmund Randolph, the Attorney General; Governor Thomas Mifflin; Jonathan Bayard Smith, Philadelphia alderman and Auditor General of the state; Dr. Ashbel Green, professor of mathematics and natural philosophy at Princeton and in town as chaplain to Congress; Robert Morris, whose fortunes were now at their height; William Bingham, a man of even greater wealth; and Michael Hillegas, first Treasurer of the United States. Religious interests were kept in view with Bishop White, Dr. Green, and Dr. Nicholas Collin, pastor of the Swedish churches in Pennsylvania. There were twenty-seven in all.? Peale had prepared a printed broadside for the meeting, addressed in particular to those unfamiliar with the new science of natural history, whose classes he described in terms of what the Museum possessed. It supplemented his appeal to the public at large, and the two sheets were probably passed out together. Meetings followed on February 14, March 5,

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Charles Willson Peale and March 6, with Mr. Jefferson as chairman, but without the quorum that was required for Peale’s purpose—a memorial to the Pennsylvania legislature. At last fifteen, a bare majority, were mustered, with Morris and Bingham present and Hamilton in the chair. The memorial was then approved. It was a cautious appeal, asking only that a committee

be appointed to view the Museum and to recommend, as it saw fit, a plan for public assistance.

This was the only positive act of the “Society of Visitors or Directors.” The ardent painter was deeply disappointed by the response, mortified by the lack of interest. Then, angered by a discovery that one, Dr. Barton, had diverted subjects of natural history away from the Museum, he let the whole business go by default.4 Yet it was not entirely a futile effort. All of the group, with the exceptions of Fisher and Page, had been members of the Philosophical Society, and though unwilling to promote his cause on the level of public policy, he was to find the society itself the more ready to support him when opportunity should offer.

In May and June of this year, Peale and his wife, with Sophy in attendance, visited New York again, a sojourn which he divided equally between family portraits and a search for rare birds on the outskirts of the city. In January, 1793, Raphaelle left for Georgia to collect for the Museum. Later, in the summer, Peale took Betsy, Titian, and baby Vandyke out on a similar excursion to Cape Henlopen and lower Delaware Bay, leaving Angelica in charge of the household in town. He found bird collecting en famille not without its discomforts. But he was totally unprepared for the shock that awaited him when at last, one early morning in September, 1793, they sailed up the river and slid into port in the shadow of the town. The dreaded yellow fever, from which Philadelphia had been free for thirty-one years, had returned with devastating fury. The few friends Peale met expressed wonder that he should have brought back his family at such a time. About them now were all the horrors of a plague city—a silent terror in the empty streets, wild rumors fed by fear, the nightly rumble of the carts that bore away the dead. About seventeen thousand people had fled. More than four thousand died, a hundred a day at the height of the pestilence. Just as the disease had been approaching its greatest severity, in August, the situation had been complicated by the arrival of a crowd of refugees from the bloody slave revolt in Santo Domingo, and the city, which could scarce bear its own burden of woe, was obliged to do what it could for these poor people. Peale befriended in particular one family that had taken lodgings near him, providing them with furniture and other necessities and taking courage from their view of the epidemic. To them it was a more commonplace matter, and

they went stolidly about, chewing garlic at all times. Live discreetly, they advised, and make a free use of liquids. One of them Peale set up in business as a gilder of frames. Another, Jean Thomas Carré, who with his brother later founded the Clermont Seminary near Philadelphia, wrote for him a vivid account of events on the island.° Peale, ever sanguine and ever certain of the efficacy of temperate and sensible living,

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Philosophical Hall did not travel on to New York or even send Betsy and the children, as the DePeysters were strongly urging him to do. Instead, he kept them all within doors as much as possible.

He was constantly busy with the Museum, welcoming an opportunity to work uninterrupted by visitors. The birds they had brought back from the cape provided them also with food and so delayed the necessity for going to market. He sprinkled everyone and the furniture lavishly with vinegar, and a few times a day he fired off a musket charge from room to room, filling the house with acrid powder smoke. Then, suddenly, in spite of all precaution, Betsy was stricken with the dread disease. Autobiography

... in the time of this fever he made the arrangement of all the minerals which he had collected since the beginning of the Museum, and he had to study the nature of essaying them from a work of Linnius, and a supplement of Chambers Dictionary. And he has been much surprised that with so little knowledge as he had, and without any other aid, that he should have made a tolerable corrict arrangement and nomenclature of them. But having much leisure, his application was not a labor but rather a pleasing study, and while his family continued to enjoy good health he could keep himself very busily employed. But after some time Mrs. Peale was taken ill. She said that a few evenings before, as she was passing through the yard she smelt a disagreble smell. A corpse perhaps was then passing by in the street and the yard paralell to the street. Doctr. Maise was sent for and he visited her twice. At the 2d time he attempted to bleed her in the foot. Very little blood was taken. ‘The Doctr. was now in the fever and could not attend her, and Peale thought it would be difficult to get a Phisician, for Doctr. Hutchingson who used to tend the family had died with the yellow fever. Therefore Peale determined to treat this as he conceived it best, as a putrid fever, and for her drink he had barley water constantly prepared to give to allay her thirst, & when he found that her pains was excessive, he gave her a few drops of Laudanum, and he was very careful in keeping her bowels open by injections. He sprinkled the bed cloathes occasionally with vinager, and sometimes opened the windows for a few minutes to change the air. He let no one come into the room except his daughter Angelica. By constantly giving her drink of the barley water, which was well boiled, it afforded very considerable nourishment to her—otherwise she must have suffered for want of food, for she could scarcely eat anything. In the first of the fever, she was flighty, and wanted to go out in the carriage, the fever at the same time causing violent pains of her back and head. Peale keept a pen and Inck, and constantly wrote every hour to her father, to let him know her situation and what he did for her. Those letters was shewn by Wm. DePeyster to Doctr. Cockren of New York, and it was said that the treatment was judicious. Peale wishes that he had taken copies of them, for he cannot recollect the particular remedies which he applied. But he remembers that one morning he left Angelica with her while he could take his breakfast in the room below, and he told Angelica if anything was wanted to strike the flocr with a cane. He had not drank one dish of coffee before a very loud rapping of the cane was made. He ran up to the room and found that Mrs. Peale had a parralatic stroke which iffected the left side of her. He instantly gave her a glass

of Madera wine, and then with all his strength rubed that side, and in about half an hour restored her to speach, and there only remained a little contraction just perceivable of her mouth

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Charles Willson Peale on the left side, which remained for one or two days. Her situation about that period was very

critical, for blood at times appeared in the corners of her mouth, and some spots of purple colour on some parts of her body. Yet in about 2 weeks, the fever was gone off. Moses Williams had taken the fever at the same time or within a few days that Mrs. [Peale] had it, and Peale gave the prescription which Doctr. Rush published. He attended him at the same time that he nursed Mrs. Peale, and he took the same precautions to change the air. This was generally done at least once in the night, and he took care to remoove everything offensive in a regular manner, and fortunately none of the family besides took the fever. But one morning he became much alarmed thinking that he was now seized with the fever. Suddenly he was so debilitated that he was obliged to hold the banisters to enable him to get up stairs. He told his daughter that she must put a bed on the floor and that she must attend to him and to Mrs. Peale also. But as he expected that he should soon not be able to eat anything, that now he would eat a hearty meal, that she must get him bread and molasses and a tumbler of gin & water. This was got directly, and he set to and eat as much as his appetite would allow, and it is a fact that this meal restored his strength and no fever followed. How to account for so wonderful a change 1s difficult. ‘The miasma may have entered on his stomach, and possibly may have caused the sudden & extreme debility, and the stimulas immediately applied may have destroyed that effect. Could this debility be from his constant watching day and night? And perhaps he took but little food to nourish the system, for care, anxiety and watchfulness of his two patients absorbed his whole thought, and want of his usial exercise might not excite a craving for food, and he had only sleept by short naps in his chair or for one hour at a time. He did not undress himself for the two weeks of Mrs. Peale’s sickness. The distress of those times cannot be comprehended, except by those who was present and could know the real situation of many of the inhabitants. Fear seemed to absord all the finer feelings of the heart, and many men and also women had neglected in those moments of alarm to give the necessary care of nourishing those whose misfortune it was to take the fever. And many husbands as also wives seamed to have forgot their vows to cherish and comfort each other in seckness and in health untill death should seperate them. And although many Instances might be cited of those shameful neglects of sacred duties, yet doubtless many striking instances may be found out, where affection produced the most patient and unremitting assiduities, fearless of any consequences, & to strive with their utmost power to alleviate the distressing calls for help of Patients raving mad with pain. The friends (called quakers) shewed their persevering industry to relieve the distresses of their fellow citizens. Their charities in those times did them honour.

James had fled with his family to the Ramsays at Carpoint, where his youngest daughter died of the disease, and little James very nearly so. Raphaelle joined them there on his return from Georgia, lingering until word came of an improvement in the stricken city. The fever did not entirely disappear until the first autumn frost. Gradually the people met in the streets again, and the refugees began their return, neighbors greeting neighbor as might soldiers after battle, learning who had survived and who would not be seen again. Doctors and volunteer nurses who had remained to carry on their blind and desperate campaign were long and rightly honored in the town. James Hutchinson, warm friend

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Philosophical Hall

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: Ati gg i as 58. C. W. Peace: James Peale Family Group. c. 1791

A family scene reminiscent of Peale’s lost painting of Rachel with her baby at its bath.

and Furious Whig of former days, was one of those who had given his life. As Physician of

the Port, he had felt a particular responsibility in combating the disease. The good man was mourned by all the family but one. Little Rubens Peale saw only his own providential release from medication. The child ran about the house in uncontrollable delight, climbed on a rush-bottomed chair to reach the shelf where his medicines were kept, and hurled them all into the kitchen fire. Then he lugged the watering pot out into the garden into the bright, forbidden sunshine, wetting down the flowers and himself with all the ecstasy of a liberated spirit. ‘The rebellion was not suppressed, and Rubens’ health improved under a regimen of his own choosing.® During the epidemic the DePeysters had supplied Peale with sums of money and now,

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Charles Willson Peale eager to repay this debt, he announced in the papers not only the reopening of the Museum with many improvements, but a return to portrait painting with colors which, he assured his patrons, would not lose their brilliance as those in many of his former works had done.? He followed this in January with a new plea for public support of his museum, asking this time for support of a more immediately practical nature through a drive for subscribers to the annual admission ticket. A blank book was provided for the purpose and citizens flat-

teringly invited to enter their names as “Friends of Science.” The subscription was a success. One hundred and fifty-nine signatures were entered in the first month, beginning with President Washington, who took four tickets, and including eventually almost every person of note in the city.2 On March 20, 1794, as if to crown these successful proceedings, Mrs. Peale was delivered of a boy, to whom the name Charles Linnaeus was given. Betsy may have been raising objections to the Peale nomenclature, which was even then exciting amusement. She may have urged him to give the child his own name, and he, with that trait of self-effacement, may have brought in the great naturalist as a compromise.

A month later, April 24, Peale announced in the press that he would “bid adieu” to portrait painting, declaring that the Museum permitted him no further work beyond unfinished engagements and recommending his sons Raphaelle, who had just returned from a collecting tour in “South America,” and Rembrandt.? He followed this, two days later, with an appeal for museum specimens. There was a continual inflow of gifts, but they were almost all oddities of a haphazard sort. He wanted to start people contributing in a way that would really support his purpose: He especially wishes to collect into one view, specimens of the various kinds of wood growing in America; they may be in cubes of 2 or 3 inches: All sorts of Fossils, Minerals, Spars, Stones, Sand, Clay, Marle and earthly substances: From a better knowledge whereof the arts will derive improvement; especially in the manufacturing of Porcelain, Earthen and Stone wares, and in the various useful metals. It will always be acceptable to have some account (if known) where they grew or were found,

and whether alone, or with but a few, or with appearances of their being in large quantities, and with any particular circumstances that may attend them. Besides the above particular subjects, curiosities or rare things of every other kind are desirable: birds, beasts, reptiles, insects, alive or dead; tools, dresses, utensils or other articles heretofore or at present in use among the Indians of America.!°

Much of value was freely contributed. Helpful publicity came in the same way. It seems likely that some newspaper pieces, such as the letter from “A Lover of Nature,” pleading the cause of the Museum, came from his own hand, and he would soon be regularly advertising new exhibits.!! The “Extract of a letter from a person in Philadelphia to his friend

in Maryland,” giving an excellent picture of the collection as it stood at the end of the yellow fever summer, seems more like a visitor’s genuine praise: The room so called is about 50 feet long, and 20 high. On the floor, and near the door, the American Buffaloe stands in its huge and natural shape; this aborigine of the western hem1-

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Philosophical Hall sphere may properly be called a substitute for the Cow: the taming and domiciliation of which, is one of the greatest desideratums of the inhabitants in the Trans-Allegheny regions of NorthAmerica, as it can support itself in the winter season, without the help of man. Yarn spun from the wool of this animal was produced by Mr. Peale, and cannot be distinguished from that made of sheep’s wool. Every portion of this spacious apartment exhibited objects to excite wonder and admiration, these, believe me, sir, are undescribable, you must see them, then, I expect you’ll say with me, “I must see them again,” for it is like Horace’s finished piece of poetry, “decies repetita placebit.” In any part of this room, a vast variety of monsters of the earth and main, and fowls of the

air are seen, in perfect preservation and in their natural shape and order. Several of these curiosities are from the Pacific ocean. Over them are suspended 50 portraits, being complete likenesses of American and French patriots. Col. Smith, Capt. Barney, and many others of these are from Maryland. At the further extremity of this room are to be seen a great collection of the bones, jaws, and grinders of the incognitum, or non-descript animal, royal tyger, sharks, and many other land and marine animals, hostile to the human race: shields, bows, arrows, petrifactions, Indian and European scalps, &c. &c. &c. I was then conducted to the grotto, which resembles a place cut out of the solid rock, the impending precipices in seeming disorder, ready to drop down, the rocks apparently forming shelves for the convenience of the designer. From this room I was requested to enter an apartment where rattle, black and spotted snakes are confined in cases, enclosed with wire and glass. The rattle snake as soon as alarmed, shook

her rattle, as if cautioning us not to approach. Mr. Peale opened a box in which two black runners were confined, each about four or five feet long; one of these reptiles is very tame, which Mr. Peale took out as unconcerned as if it had been dead. I would not do the like for the wealth of Croesus; but, perhaps, Mr. Peale never saw a black runner enraged and combatting with a dog for its life, as I have. The ferocity of this species of snakes would probably damp

his too sanguine assurance of inviolability; nay, he permitted the reptile to touch his cheek, and it inclined to intertwine itself round his neck.

Eagles, owls, baboons, monkeys, a six-footed cow, &c. &c. were seen in the yard and stable. . . .12

“Lang Syne,” an anonymous writer of thirty years later, recalled the Museum as it was at this time, with Moses Williams, its factotum, delighting especially in the public ceremony of feeding the animals in the yard—raising a roar of laughter when he tossed his quid of tobacco into the mouth of the baboon instead of the poor beast’s expected apple. As for the interior, ‘“‘Lang Syne” was particularly impressed by Peale’s compact and orderly arrangement: “He had so contrived everything in his Museum with an eye to economy in space, that there appeared to be a place for everything and everything in its place, decorated and enlivened by appropriate miniature scenery of wood and wild, blended and intermingled with insect, bird and beast, all seemingly alive, but preserving, at the same time, the stillness and silence of death.”!8 Henry Wansey, the English traveler, ““was entertained for two or three hours” when he

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Charles Willson Peale saw the Museum in 1794. He was impressed in particular by the mammoth teeth, the collection of birds, the Chinese articles, the Indian and Tahitian costumes, and compared the whole to the Leverian Museum in London.'* James Hardie’s Philadelphia Directory of this year commends the Museum as “one of the most important institutions” of the city, and his American Remembrancer and Universal Tablet of Memory, published in 1795, describes it in

even more glowing terms.!° It stood far above its few competitors. One of these was Daniel Bowen, a retired sea fighter of the Revolution, by his own statement a “‘particular friend” of Peale’s. Bowen moved his assortment of waxworks and curiosities to Boston in 1795, so he said, out of a friendly desire to avoid competition. '®

Peale had already added the snake room beyond the “grotto,” his quondam movingpicture room at the end of the main gallery, and yet, for all his economy of space, more was needed if he was to show the ranks of nature in an orderly way. He was contemplating the erection of another long hall at right angle to the first when friends suggested that he should move the whole into the American Philosophical Society’s newly completed Philosophical Hall, at the corner of Fifth and Chestnut Streets in the shadow of the State House. It was a large square edifice of brick and marble, Philadelphia style, now almost ready for occupancy after thirteen years of effort. The society needed only one or two rooms, and the terms under which the state had granted the site forbade its use for other purposes. Peale accordingly made application for its rental and a committee reported favorably on May 30, 1794. All save two corner rooms on the second story, reserved for the society and the College of Physicians, was to be leased to him for ten years. It was also stipulated that Peale, who planned to move in with his family as well as his museum, should act as the society’s librarian and curator of its collections, and should be caretaker of the whole. “Your committee need not represent the advantages to be expected and derived from Mr. Peale’s Museum when they consider the affinity it hath with the objects which engage the views of this society.”!" To Peale it was, after a decade of constant labor, a public endorsement of his personal ideal and an institutional alliance which, he still hoped, would lead on to national recognition and support. The family took possession as soon as kitchens could be built in the cellar and the unfin-

ished rooms plastered and decorated. The Museum followed soon after, and never was there known before or since in the history of our learned bodies such a day as that upon which this collection flowed out from Third and Lombard and down to Philosophical Hall, six blocks away. Autobiography

This [removal] in that early period of the museum was a work of considerable magnitude, as almost the whole of the articles belonging to the Museum must either be carried in hands or on hand barrows. However, to make [it] as easy and at the same time expeditious, he hired men to go with the hand barrows. But to take the advantage of public curiosity, he contrived to make a very considerable parade of the articles, especially of those which was large. And as Boys generally are fond of parade, he collected all the boys of the neighbourhood, & he began a range

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Philosophical Hall of them at the head of which was carried on men’s shoulders the American Buffalo—then followed the Panthers, Tyger Catts and a long string of Animals of smaller size carried by the

boys. The parade from Lumbard to the Hall brought all the Inhabitants to their doors and windows to see the cavalcade. It was fine fun for the Boys. They were willing to work in such a novel remooval, and Peale saved some of the expence of the remooval of delicate articles. Yet he was obliged to use every means to prevent injury & loss with so numerous a meddley, and yet with his care he lost only one article, a young alligator, and had only one glass broke amongst the many boxes of that kind.

The great parade must have brought people flocking to see the Museum in its new environment, with a consequent rise in income.!® It may well have been, however, the beginning of bitter hostility in another quarter. On July 15, 1794, at just about the same time as the move, Angelica had been married at St. Paul’s Church to Alexander Robinson,

an Englishman of a proudly aristocratic temperament. He had been introduced to the Peales by Septimus Claypoole, Betsy Polk’s husband. Robinson was a widower of fortythree, more than twice Angelica’s age, a reserved and sensitive person who, it is said, had come to America in 1781 1n search of a younger brother killed in action with the British forces. He had a plantation near Winchester, Virginia, and later engaged in business in

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the First Geranium. 1801

A monument to his brother’s interest in botany, painted in the year of the mastodon discovery:

object and the largeness of the other were dramatized. As usual at functions, each toast was followed by a burst of music, here rendered by Hawkins on his Portable Grand: “The American People: may they be as preeminent among the nations of the earth, as the canopy we sit beneath surpasses the fabric of the mouse,” followed by “Yankee Doodle.” “The Friends of Peace: to all else, such Bones to gnaw as, dried by ten thousand moons, may starve their hungry maws,” and this, a counterthrust at William Cobbett’s “Bone to Gnaw for the Democrats,” followed by the stirring strains of ‘“Jefferson’s March.” The final toast was equally well calculated to infuriate all Federalists: “Success to these boney parts in Europe.””° The paterfamilias smiled upon all this, but with far larger hopes in mind. If the legisla-

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Mammoth Works and Wonders ture would not grant him the State House, he would ask for something better, and perhaps get the State House as well. He had the architect Latrobe design a museum building to extend from Fifth Street to Sixth on the south side of State House Yard. The Yard between might serve as botanical garden. He expected, as he wrote in outlining the plan to President Jefferson, that his collections “‘will be greatly increased after my sons have visited Europe and made the exchanges of natural history contemplated. Things huddled together as I am now obliged to put them lose much of their beauty and usefulness. They cannot be seen to advantage for study.” A museum, a school, such as he imagined, must exhibit “every article by which knowledge in all its branches can possibly be communicated.”*! The President warmly commended all this, but advised him to push first of all for action by the legislature. He could see no immediate prospect of federal support. Peale went to

Lancaster and asked again for the State House. On his return, February 28, 1802, he is writing to the friendly Andrew Ellicott of the Land Office: I hope for the honor of republicanism that the members of the legislature will embrace this opportunity of nurturing Science, by the appropriation of the State House and Garden, that hereafter it may become a school of so much wisdom in the Science of nature as will illuminate

the Sons of Pennsylvania to her most distant bounds of Territory. ... Will it then be believed when 50 or 100 years had matured its Benefit, that Pennsylvania refused the smallest countenance to an Institution, which shall then have 13 professors, men of conspicuous talent, giving lectures in the various branches of science, diffusing light on the products of nature in her progress of life & growth whether animate or inanimate—accounting for causes and effects, in many things to us perhaps now unaccountable? In short teaching their pupils and through them spreading a knowledge that gives to man an interest in every object of his sight or feeling, making him capable of enjoying all things, every blessing showered down

on him by an all bountiful hand. This is not an exaggerated picture, no, my friend, I have laid the foundation, the plan will gradually unfold, | am constantly devising the means to produce these effects, and I feel strength and energy sufficient to go straight forward to ensure a stability and a happy issue to my labours. I neglect many little contrivances which might serve to catch the eye of the gaping multitude, but rather prefer a steady perseverance to gain experience to execute such improvements as may tend to give a scientific cast as being most effectual to make deep and lasting impressions on those who come to study the subjects of the Museum, and although this direction of my labour may not be immediately so productive of funds, yet it will ultimately be more important to the Institution and honorable to me.*®

To this idealism and, even more, to the popular fame of the mammoth and the approving nod of the President of the United States, the legislature at last responded. A unanimous resolution of March 12, 1802, praised the work of the Museum’s founder, hoped for its continuance, and granted him the use, rent-free, of the entire second floor of the State

House, the tower rooms above, and the East Room (the Declaration of Independence Chamber) below. He was to be responsible for the maintenance of both the building and the Yard, and his occupancy must not interfere with the annual elections, the only use to which the building had been put since the removal of the state government.*?

| 303 |

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Mammoth Works and Wonders The father was wholly occupied with the new arrangement of his collections, but found time to box up a couple of live rattlesnakes which Rubens could add to the flying squirrels and other native fauna accompanying the mammoth to England. He aiso wrote letters to be delivered to Benjamin West, Edmund Jenings, Sir Joseph Banks. President Jefferson was taking an interest and would be especially helpful if, as hoped, the tour could extend to France. Raphaelle, picking up an idea from a French sea captain, had made a machine for purifying salt water, and added one of these to the expedition’s impedimenta. Late in June, the brothers, Eleanor, the little girls, the cargo of bones, the snakes, and all the rest, slid down the shining harbor, bound for a year and more of Old World adventure.

On June 28, Peale published an announcement of his coming removal to the State House, defining his aims once more and asking all the world to support them.?? There was no

fanfare this time, but only a spreading-out into the new, much-needed space. The “Long Room,” fronting Chestnut Street, was the best for coherent display (Fig. 81). Portraits were ranged above, birds on the long wall below, insects, minerals, and other exhibits between the windows. A catalogue was framed under glass at appropriate intervals, the names given in Latin, French, and English, with numbers by which each could be identified in its case. Sophonisba was set to work gilding the frames, and also the moldings around the cases, a costly adornment but one whose brightness kindled a reflection in the proprietor’s

eye. The mammoth would remain in Philosophical Hall as a separate attraction. Mr. Vaughan of the Philosophical Society suggested an organ in the Long Room—music and nature, twin harmonies—and Peale liked the idea. “He says it is astonishing how much

money Bowen makes by such acts in his trifling museum at Boston,” and he added, ‘T shall as soon as I conveniently can make the purchase, get a printing press with a view of having a greater number of handbills &c. published than heretofore. ‘This savors also of Bowen’s plans to make money—no matter, provided I do not degrade the character of a naturalist by too much puffing—a little seems absolutely necessary to call the attention of the public to such objects.’’*? The return of the fever gave him time, as usual, to work on new projects. One publicspirited thought was to advertise the Museum as a haven where lost children would be kept

till called for.°4 Betsy became—he loved the military phrase or a play on it—‘‘Mother General.’’?° On an average, two or three toddlers a day were added to the host already at the Hall. Then, with a month-old baby of their own and all these others, Sophy spilled a pot of boiling syrup on the Mother General’s foot. Peale’s cold-water treatment for burns

brought on a catarrhal fever which, in turn, was cured by the Patent Portable Steam Bath. When it was all over he felt pride in having resisted the impulse to call a doctor. Too many people were dying of their “mercurial treatments.” The new arrangement of the Museum, meanwhile, was so admired by Dr. Barton that he asked permission to hold some of his lectures on natural history there. Peale, responding

with enthusiasm, thought of lecturing again himself, then gave up the idea as his friend Hawkins, of the Portable Grand, came forward with two new inventions which were to

| 305 |

Charles Willson Peale occupy much of his time and thought in the years ahead. Hawkins, with his passion for music, science, and American liberty, was returning to his native England bringing with him

an impressive range of patents and ideas—waterproofing for shoes and coats, distilling liquor, making paper, and others. He gave Peale the American rights for two, the physiognotrace and the polygraph. The physiognotrace was his gift, in particular, to the Museum. It was a device for tracing silhouette profiles in small size. There had been earlier machines for taking this line with accuracy, but here was one that could be operated in a moment by the sitter himself. The machine was accordingly made by Peale’s cabinetmaker, a flat affair fitting compactly against a wall, adjustable to the height of the subject, who pressed his cheek against a concave wooden plate while a long brass gnomen was run lightly around his head. By a pantograph, the line taken by the gnomen was traced in small size on a twice-folded sheet of paper. From this, four identical silhouettes could be scissored out. In an advertisement published December 28, 1802, Hawkins’ gift of the machine was announced, and visitors invited to take their own profiles.°® The new profiles became a fad at once and a major attraction of the Museum. At first only a penny charge was made to cover the cost of paper. Then after Moses Williams was placed in charge of the operation, he was permitted to charge a fee of eight cents if the sitter chose to have his help, an option everyone thereafter took advantage of. In cutting, a slight variant from the traced line could alter the whole likeness, and Moses became highly skillful at catching the true resemblance. He was the last of the Peale slaves to be freed, having passed the age of twenty-seven without demonstrating any ability to support himself in a regular way. Now he had found his metier. He became at once so expert that his eye could be better trusted than the machine. In 1803, the first year, he cut 8,880 profiles. As time went on he waxed wealthy in his new profession, bought a house, and married Maria, the Peales’ white cook who had formerly declined to sit at the same table with him.?" Thomas Paine was in town again in 1803. He had long been promoting an iron bridge of his own invention. Peale made a special exhibit of the model,*® in spite of the fact that his old friend’s activity in the French Revolution and his heretical Age of Reason had made him an object of dark suspicion everywhere. To a young lady seated at the physiognotrace Paine ventured a pun, and received a rebuke. “They take off heads here with great expedition, Miss.”

“Not quite so fast, sir, as they once did in France.” At first, Peale could only see evidence of human vanity in the rush for silhouettes. Then

he caught the fascination of the thing himself and began collecting the inside portion (“blocks,” “heads,” or “blockheads,” as they were variously styled within the family circle)

as a record of friends and acquaintances, and as an aid in the study of the relationship between physiognomy and character. Lavater, whom every portraitist read devoutly, had emphasized the expressiveness of the profile line when freed of all other detail.4° The sudden flowering of the physiognotrace deeply engaged also another heart, that of Raphaelle Peale.

| 306 |

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Charles Willson Peale In the above, culled from Nathan Bayley’s dictionary, he preferred this terse French form to the English: He that would live at Peace and Rest Must hear, and see, and say the best.

Years later, in 1819, he added another pedestal with a pyramidal top, inscribed with ‘“‘the ninety memorable events of North America” and their dates. The events all led up to the

Battle of New Orleans, but after this he had left space for an anticipated, culminating achievement, the first crossing of the Atlantic by a steamboat. There were other inscriptions up and down the walks, here and there—all of a “moral tendency.” These garden sentiments were always in his heart, and often on his lips, or pen. In part they were for himself, and much for the younger Peales as well as the world at large. To the absent sons, Linnaeus especially, he quoted them repeatedly.

He was dreading that Franklin or Titian might follow in the way of Raphaelle or Linnaeus. Franklin marked his eighteenth birthday in 1813, with Titian two years younger.

In that summer Peale arranged that, instead of returning to school, the boys should be placed with George Hodgson and Brother, manufacturers of spindles and laborsaving machinery, whose “Rockford factory” was on the Brandywine near Wilmington. Franklin was to spend a year, Titian to be bound for a term of six. Titian had acquired a “habit of idleness,” was ‘‘firm and bold,” and his father felt justified in binding him apprentice, even though the recourse had failed with Lin. The boys would be well treated. The great powder plant was nearby, and Irénée du Pont had invited the boys to spend their Sundays with his family. Mr. du Pont had recommended the Hodgsons to Peale as the best machine makers in America. Sybilla and Elizabeth, at the same time, were sent to Septimus Roberts’ Quaker boarding school, also near Wilmington. Both were developing into lively young ladies of fashion, a trend which their training at this excellent institution did little to alter. Their father, alone with Hannah and Rachel Morris, was writing to Angelica in November, 1813, pining for a

family reunion in the Christmas season: “It would be a jubilee if I could have all my children together!!!” Completing his year at Hodgsons’ in December, 1814, Franklin went for another twelvemonth service at William Young’s cotton factory near Wilmington. The Young carding machinery was made at Coleman Sellers’ wireworks. Thence Franklin went to Belfield to set up a cotton factory of his own. In the meantime, however, to the mingled amusement and distress of his family, the youth had fallen in love with a Quakeress—not an ordinary Quaker girl, but a strange, unctuous creature, older than himself, given to awesome silences and sudden pious ejaculations. Of course he must join the Society of Friends. His father wrote in praise of the Friends, sent him a copy of the Portraiture of Quakerism, and hoped for the best.

It was a changed Franklin now who visited the farm—the tassels off his boots and the ruffles gone from his shirt front—his eyes warm with devotion, his lips formed to

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War, and the Wonderful Garden serious utterances. “I have been wild, very wild, as you well know,” he confessed to Linnaeus.*?

To Linnaeus, now a soldier at an army post, Sybilla was writing in a different vein: “Oh! I only wish you could come home to see a fine job of a wedding here and some Quaker

preachers that are coming into the family. You would crack your sides laughing to know who it is. Try all your might to get a furlough, for besides the pleasure of seeing you, I would not that you should miss the pleasure of being groomsman and going into meeting with your great sword by your side and uniform on for the world.”?° Lin’s own story was a saga indeed. He had returned from his runaway voyage a little better mannered—at least he would eat what was set before him at table. Yet his love of adventure was as strong as ever, and he had sailed again for South America in December, 1811, turning up in October of the following year with a present of a horned lizard from Rio de Janeiro for his father. In May, 1813, he had been on the privateer schooner /Judza, homebound from France, fighting a running battle with a British ship of war in a calm sea off Long Branch. He had been one of the five who had held off the enemy boarders with musket fire, and it had been he who had fired the last cannon before the crew abandoned their vessel in flames and made for the shore.*! Lin had ridden post for the /Judza’s owners to Philadelphia, eighty miles in eight hours.

There, with other seafaring men made idle by the blockade, he joined the Washington Guards, a militia body of “gentlemen volunteers.” Peale, disgusted by the boy’s swaggering mien and careless, racy talk, was enraged by this last act. He felt sure that Lin had enlisted as a common soldier hoping to force his father to seek a commission for him, and this he determined not to do. The Guards marched to Wilmington, where Lin disgraced himself

by getting into a fight with a comrade. Lin was back in town in November, full of the military cant and manner, looking for another berth on a letter of marque, and talking also of the regular army. His father inveighed against “the murderous life of a soldier, whether by sea or land . . . a miserable life, and to put oneself in the way of being shot for $4 a month is a foolish thing at best.’’4 Lin refused to go to Belfield, and pressed his brothers to join him in signing a statement that they would all absent themselves until Rachel Morris had left for good.4 This, however, the others declined to do, for all their dissatisfaction with domestic discipline’s selfappointed representative. Their feud burned on, smoked and smoldered for years, with mutual recriminations between the lady and the younger Peales, to all of which Hannah’s husband seems to have been benignly oblivious. Lin did come to the farm for Christmas in 1813, and soon after joined the regular army, a private in the light artillery, spending the rest of the war in the Northern Department. It was there that he received the news of Franklin’s Quaker preacher. His father had vainly offered to set him up instead in the fulling business—better “an honest man conducting a small manufactory than see him the greatest general in the United States”—a “killer of men.’*4 Yet he relented insofar as to write to the Secretary of War asking promotion for his son, and Lin wound up as a purser at General Jacob Brown’s headquarters.

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Charles Willson Peale While Lin had been making such a stir among his city friends in the fall of 1813, Raphaelle was on crutches, both legs crippled by gout. This followed a summer of apparently exemplary conduct in which he had been painting still life. His father encouraged him in this work, moved by the excellence of the pieces and by the fact that Raphaelle’s portrait business seemed hopeless. His touch did not command the “dignity and pleasing effects” which sitters desire. In the summer following Raphaelle rented a house near Belfield for his family, painting in town during the week and spending Saturday and Sunday in the country, mostly at the farm. He began to look better with the change, and his children, seven of them, rosy and well. One of them, St. George, was recovering from an almost fatal illness of which Sybilla wrote in acid comment, “Sister Patty seems to think if he dies he dies, and there will be one less in the family to maintain.” Peale, in his loneliness, took charge of the eldest boy, his namesake (Raphaelle believed in family, not fancy, names). He had planned to keep him permanently, but then wisely did not persist in the idea, finding he had all the paternal burden his constitution could stand without starting anew with a lad of twelve. He had an expressed determination not to become, like others he knew, “‘a slave” to his grandchildren. Yet he had reached that age where the passing of old friends adds sorrow to the sense of isolation. Confident as ever in his rules of health and acquiescence to natural law, he found no satisfaction in the mere idea of outliving others. Nathaniel Ramsay had become but a shadow of his former self. William DePeyster’s widow had died in 1813. William and Christiana’s warmth of family affection had endeared all the DePeysters to him, but now troubles about the estate shattered that tie also. The Peale share was in John DePeyster’s hands, Peale drawing on it as need arose. Now the war had involved John in business difficulties, and Peale’s call for funds with which to start Betsy’s sons in manufacturing opened a rift between the families.

Through the years of natural history, Peale had developed a frame of mind and a physique that could transcend worry, care, and grief of heart. He had himself become an embodiment of the qualities that he believed inherent in his science—reason, order, and peace. It was rooted in his temperament, mild and cherishing always. Yet always, in his own view, it was the result of rational procedure. “TI am disposed to do all I can to make others happy, and thus make myself so.”#° In every situation of conflict his advice was to return good for evil, though he had to admit that he himself had few opportunities to practice the precept. Many looked with wonder on the old man’s energy and evenness of temper. Few realized the self-discipline by which he maintained them. In 1813 he wrote to Angelica, replying to her claim that one of her daughters possessed as mild a disposition as he: The fact is that I have a choleric disposition and therefore am obligated to keep a bridle constantly tight-reined to stay my tongue and hands from mauling everyone that approaches me. My temper being very irritable gives me a wonderful deal of trouble to keep my resentment from teasing those I have to deal with, who would retort back on me. Therefore, knowing this,

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War, and the Wonderful Garden self-love induces me to trial of the exercise of patience, with some endeavors to please others in

order that I may be favored with some indulgences. If we do not exercise gentleness and do some kind actions to others, can we expect any favor or even civility from the world? Our best interest is by every means in our power to please and serve our fellow creatures, to obtain a like return, and even to carry the Christian into action by doing good to those who despitefully treat you.*"

That motto on the obelisk out there in the garden, “Never return an Injury,” he told her now, had been put there “to keep myself in a proper temper. And I shall not be sorry if others reading it receive a useful lesson.” “Although an old man,” he wrote a year later, again to Angelica: I am a young farmer, and learning daily to improve the place, which pleases me so well that I seldom visit the city, and indeed the noise, bustle and stench is truly disgusting to one of my time of life; even the murmuring of the falls of water becomes after some time at the farm

disagreeable, and I am glad to retreat into some still place free of noise of every kind. My labor is constant here, sometimes rather too severe for one of my years, but when necessity requires I go through thick and thin with alacrity. . . . The farmer’s life is rough, of little profit, but that of obtaining health and independence.*8

The successful defense of Baltimore brought its thrill of triumph, followed by news of the victory at New Orleans, and then of peace. There was an illumination at the Museum in February, 1815, with transparencies featuring an eagle descending with a “scroll of peace.”’?? But the real illumination was in the old man’s heart, welcoming the end of war as he had welcomed it before, looking out across his wide, rich land, sensing the spring and summer, and sure of glorious years ahead—thin as a rail at seventy-four but hearty enough, he boasted, for common labor of any kind.

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CHAPTER 26 C¢

TIME FLIES SWIFTLY LIKE A DREAM”

THe Lasr Letrer from Monticello had been, as he wrote in acknowledging it, “abounding in useful information to the farmer and mechanic.” He had begun his reply on the first rainy day, May 2, 1815, adding to it from time to time thereafter until fourteen pages had been filled with descriptions of his greenhouse, his mill, his windmill, his fruit picker and other contrivances, including recent experiments with false teeth made of enamel. He had sometimes private doubts of the value of all this diverse effort and laid them before his friend: ... yet if I am successful in making a good enamel I may give an important business to some ingenous Person who may relieve the Distresses of many who want teeth for health as well as

beauty. I am not unconscious that I have mispent much of my time. A steady habit to any one object perhaps would have been more advantagous. I can reconcile this conduct to myself, because it has constituted much of my happiness—but the judicious and prudent will condemn me. It seems almost impossible to forbear putting my hands to execute what the fancy dictates, but having frequently trifled away my time I have of late paused and turned over in my mind the means and the end, and sought advice from my friends. Yet at this moment I am doubtful whether my actions are governed by Wisdom. I frequently think that my Pensel ought not to

lay Idle. I still fancy that I could produce things worthy of notice, more valuable than my mechanic labours. By a diversity of objects, time flies swiftly away like a dream.

Here also he opened his heart again on a deeper concern, the future of the Museum: I have ten children, five of them married. I am now in my 75th year, and it is my wish to settle all my worldy affairs in the best manner I can. The Museum must be sold, for if it is not disposed of, before my death, a division of it will be its distruction. ... My present Idea is to dispose of it by lot. ‘The plan is now under consideration. I must enquire what will be the cost amo|ng]st those who are active in this kind of business. I have thought that when a certain number of Names have been, in Philada., subscribed, that then they should appoint a President

and Directors to manage the business & see what is comprized in the Museum and guard against any part being taken from it, and every increase made as usial; that all the monies arising from the sale of tickets should be safely deposited in Banks, and not subject to my controle until a transfer of the property is made. The Museum ought to belong to government, yet

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“Time Flies Swoftly Like a Dream” it should be seen by a payment of a small sum which would pay the expence of attendants and support the institution in good order. An individual may do a great deal by industry for its improvement, yet legacies and donations would be more numerous & of greater value when in the hands of the Public, and a great many more Persons would exert themselves to increase its stores. I will be much obliged to you for your sentiments on this subject.?

Twice during the year he had narrowly escaped death by sudden accidents and was heeding these warnings more than advancing age. Yet the real sense of urgency came from the jealous eagerness of his sons to share in the family’s one dependable source of income. Receipts from the Museum, as he figured it in this letter, represented a capital investment of at least $120,000, a fortune in that day, and there was a prospect of increase. No one could expect the mill operation to equal that, hopeful as they were. The background of doubts and fears impelled him to take up brush and palette again, the tools that truly fitted his hand. He wrote Benjamin West that he would produce better work than ever before, his judgment ripened and his eyesight but little impaired by age.” He even felt equal now to “historical subjects.” Not to compete with brother or sons, he would paint for the Museum or for family and friends. The agricultural correspondence with Jefferson went on, yet it was not long before he

let out the land again to a tenant farmer and so regained full leisure. On fair days he drove to town with Hannah at his side, meeting friends, laughing back at those who laughed at the idea of an old man making a new painter—declaring that an inactive old age “savors in my opinion of laziness.’”’ On cloudy days he stayed at home, reading aloud

to Hannah and Rachel or working in his painting room.’ He sought lessons again from Rembrandt, as eager, I am sure, to stimulate his son’s career in art as to advance his own. Meeting Sully at an exhibition of Washington Allston’s latest work, the old painter brought the younger to the Museum to admire his own new pictures there.* Family portraits would be shown at the Academy. Sybilla and Rubens made a perfect contrast in the flesh tints, she very pale and he with a florid complexion, and for Hannah he chose the most difficult view, “entire front face, half shadowed. You will agree with me it is a trial of skill.”°? He hoped to add a better painting room to the mansion, but too much money was going into the new cotton mill to allow that just yet. Peale vastly admired the neatness and artistry with which Franklin was setting up the new machinery. On April 24, 1815, Franklin had been married to his ‘Quaker preacher,” Eliza Greatrake. He had been warned not to take a wife until he could support her. Sybilla and the others, however, had been planning the wedding for some time, and the parental

displeasure had merely turned it from a formal into a runaway affair.° Never was the cautious voice of age so surely vindicated, with the tragic aftermath heightened by the bridal couple’s religious zeal and the sly merriment of their young friends. By summer the terrible truth was plain to all: Franklin’s wife was insane. The young man’s brief joy became an agony of shame and bitterness. ‘Trying vainly to conceal what everyone soon knew, he became moody and silent, meditating suicide for all his father knew.’ A daughter was born

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Charles Willson Peale to him, March 25, 1816. Eliza ran away, threatened to kill the child, and, in these straits, was placed in the hospital in Philadelphia. Franklin doted on the baby, a fat and playful little thing, and gradually shook off the worst of his melancholy. By 1820 Peale had succeeded in obtaining an annulment of the marriage, and Eliza was returned to her parents.® Franklin did not marry again till 1839. His daughter, Anna Elizabeth Peale, lived, unmarried, to the ripe age of ninety. Franklin’s mill had an auspicious start, though it, too, was followed by disillusionment. Christopher FitzSimons, a wealthy South Carolina planter, coming to Germantown to place

his sons in the Carré academy, visited Belfield as a local attraction. Here he struck up a friendly acquaintance with Peale. Learning that the painter had taken up his brush after a lapse of ten years, he at once ordered portraits of himself, his wife, and his children. Peale received four bales of cotton for this work—enough to set the mill in operation—and sent one of his windmills as boot in the friendly exchange. By the spring of 1816 the machinery was complete and running smoothly. The peace, however, had brought in a flood of foreign goods at prices which the little American mills could not match. Peale, who never wore any but American cloth himself, nor ever failed to condemn those of lesser patriotism, kept the plant in operation, though for two years scarcely any cotton was sold and the profits after that were very meager.? And there had

been the discord among the young men. In 1815 Franklin had taken on Titian as an employee, then as a partner. Linnaeus was persuaded to turn from war to manufacturing on the same terms.!° Peale asked General Jacob Brown to discharge him from the army while the mood was on and reinforced his request by painting the General’s portrait for the Museum. At this juncture, Franklin quarreled with both brothers and refused to admit them to his company.!! Lin was established at the “Eagle Factory” in Trenton. Titian found congenial employment with Rubens, preserving subjects for the Museum. Romance still did its part in maintaining the sharp, precarious situation. Sybilla had been married on November g, 1815, but this was not known as yet. Andrew Summers, the groom, like the younger Peale sons, had been refused permission to take a wife till he could maintain her. After some months, he opened his heart to his father-in-law, who agreed to keep the secret from the elder Summers and was instrumental in getting the young fellow a clerkship in the United States Bank. Then, in February, 1816, Linnaeus was married to Christiana Runyon, a girl he met in Trenton. The father, with a sigh, dispatched a letter of advice, enclosing the essays on health and domestic happiness. But he was pleased with Christiana when he met her, found her small and pretty, quiet and good-natured. As for Lin, he quarreled with his Trenton employers and returned to his partnership with Franklin. Their yarn was of high quality, but they could not compete with the larger mills and foreign import. When they had enough business to employ hands, their father generally paid the wages. “Business is so dull”—this from Linnaeus—“‘that 1f we don’t go to the Devil soon he will certainly come for us.’!* They filled their last orders in 181g. In the next

year Lin was manufacturing razor strops, looking for a pursership in the navy, drifting

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“Time Flies Swiftly Like a Dream”

1818 / re . yp, ”aea

89. C. W. PEALE: Charles Linnaeus Peale. 7 a — A oS co

The intransigent adventurer son a few , f -

years after his marriage. q

along, aimless and dissatisfied. Franklin transferred his mechanical skill to Goleman Sellers’ enterprises and worked also at the Museum, where by that time Titian was well advanced

into his lifelong career as a naturalist. Titian had drawn the plates for Thomas Say’s American Entomology of 1817 and was known for the accuracy and beauty of his drawings.!°

In the autumn of that year he accompanied Say, William Maclure, and George Ord on an expedition sponsored by the Academy of Natural Sciences to the islands off Georgia and eastern Florida, following more or less the routes of John and William Bartram.'* All this was deeply satisfying to his father, who thrilled with pride when Titian returned in the ensuing spring, laden with neatly preserved specimens, only eighteen, but tall and distinguished-looking, “studious and discreet.’’!° Meanwhile Peale had been pursuing his deeper problem of the future of the Museum, meeting both high success and harsh repulse. The preoccupation with mechanical science, so evident in his letter to Jefferson of May 2, 1815, had become a feature of the Museum also. Demonstrations of new scientific discoveries served both its serious intention and its financial interest. Later in 1815, he was working on a “Santorian chair,” a self-weighing device, a forerunner of the penny scales, which touched his interest in health and could

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C. W. Peale to his daughter, May 5, 1816.

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“Time Flies Swrftly Like a Dream” become a popular attraction.!© Then, in the following winter, in the season of Museum illuminations, Rubens came forward with a far more exciting idea, which was to serve both those purposes superlatively well. He would illuminate the Museum with gas. Gaslighting was already well developed in England. Years before, James ‘Trenchard, the engraver, had been telling Peale of a visit to London and Cartwright’s exhibition of inflammable air. They had spoken of lighting a whole city in this way. “You or I, Mr. Peale,” he went on, indicating little Rembrandt, “may not live to see the day, but this boy may, perhaps, see it accomplished.” ?’ Rubens had been making and burning gas for a number of years as part of his public experiments.!® Now he would make the grandest demonstration of all. He must work fast to achieve his end in proper style before the season ended. He contracted with two eager young men to get the system in operation for six hundred dollars. They began forthwith, both Rubens and his father taking an active part in it.’ The primary equipment of tubs, tanks, and fires was set up in a large closet under the tower stairs. A worse spot could hardly have been chosen from the viewpoint of fire risk. Moreover, the opening of the retorts to replenish them let such a foul smell into the building that the public was up in arms against the project before its first trial. At this juncture Dr. Benjamin Kugler, a physician who had developed his own method for manufacturing gas, and who had first suggested the gaslight idea to Rubens, volunteered his help.*° William Henry, copper and tin smith, was engaged to help with the pipes, whose leaking had been another major difficulty. The gasworks were removed to the steeple, more roomy and unobserved by the curious and apprehensive public. By March 1 five hundred feet of soldered tin pipe had been installed, and elegant fixtures, with cut-glass ornamentation, were in place. Problems of leaking retorts and bursting water tanks were still to be overcome, but a month later they had gas burning in the rooms, blue, clear, and odorless. Rubens, who, as his father put it, “disregards labor when in prospect of any profit,”*! had worked himself to the point of exhaustion when, early in May, the first public illumination by gas took place—a scene of nocturnal brilliance such as America had never known before.

The old smoky “patent lamps” faded into insignificance before ‘“Carbureted Hydrogen Gas”—so advertised in all the papers with due acknowledgment to Dr. Kugler.** The illuminations were continued later than usual, until the Fourth of July. Rubens’ expenses, which had been heavy, were nearly repaid in the first two weeks, while the year’s income rose to the highest it ever attained.*? Rembrandt, the while, was in it as well. Aided by John Pendleton, Dr. Kugler, Robert Mills, his Baltimore museum flowered out in June, 1816, with a constellation of fifty burners and a “magic ring” of one hundred, which could be varied from small pearls of light to a great flood of brilliance.*4 Baltimore led Philadelphia in municipal gaslighting, with

Rembrandt instrumental in forming the first American company for the purpose, June 17, 1816. In Philadelphia Peale had persuaded the city councils to give serious consideration to gaslight, but they were slow to act. Now, also, the sudden high prosperity it had

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Charles Willson Peale brought to the Museum was about to bring disastrous repercussions from the city authorities. On March 11, 1816, the Pennsylvania legislature had ordered the division and sale of the State House Yard at auction, with a proviso that the city might purchase Yard and buildings

for $70,000. The offer was accepted by the councils one month later. Two members of each council, with Mayor Wharton, were appointed a committee to fix the rental that the Museum should pay. Old-line Federalists, still a power in Philadelphia politics, had never looked with favor upon public patronage of natural history—certainly not natural history run as a private business by an old-line Democrat. The city was heavily in debt. ‘The tenant of this property was enjoying runaway profits while exposing property and life alike to the risk of fire and explosion. Gas illumination was fraught with terror.2? London was just recovering from the panic that followed an explosion in the Westminster gasworks. Moreover, many wished to see these buildings given over entirely to city administration, and there were lawyers in the councils eager to have their offices in them.”° The gentlemen of the committee met with Rubens and “sifted out of him’’—his father’s phrase—what his recent and current proceeds were. Consulting briefly among themselves, they then “supposed” that the rent should be fixed at $2,000.27 The Museum, it will be remembered, had been paying $400 to the state. Rubens parried desperately, and another meeting, with Peale present, was held. The old man rehearsed every point—the scientific and moral values of the Museum, its service to business as a city attraction, the “precarious” character of its income (this last itself a precarious argument, for the Museum was

a much more stable business than many that rose and fell on fortune’s wheel). The committee finally compromised on $1,600, with the provision that Peale must insure the building against the increased fire risk and would continue his care of clock and bell. ‘To his vehement protest they replied that he would have to seek redress from the councils. Earlier, after the conclusion of the war, he had drafted an appeal for relief from city taxes, telling how “the madness to establish a great National Museum had seized my

imagination,’ and how he had developed the plan without “catchpenny shows,” but always as “‘a scientific museum.” In his earnest, discursive fashion he had argued that ‘the Museum should be considered as constituting a public benefit, and as little liable to taxes as seminaries of learning or places of worship.”*® Now the madness and the vain hope were awake once more, the same fury and phrases thrown into a new campaign. He would press the issue, not merely defend it; he would reaffirm the high standards of the Museum and win the support of the learned bodies. If the councils stood fast, he might go elsewhere. He must expand soon, anyway. The State House was already far too crowded, “too much of a medley.” A building could be erected for him, as Rembrandt’s had been in Baltimore. It would be inexpensive, but large and capable of enlargement.*9 He set to work at once upon his Address . . . to the Corporation and Citizens of Philadelphia.

Dr. Wistar, as a help in preparing the public for it, sent him copy for a newspaper announcement commending the Museum: “a collection which is unequalled in the New World and never mentioned without respect in the old.”°° The Address was delivered in

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“Time Flies Swiftly Like a Dream” the Academy Hall on Fourth Street on the morning of July 18, 1816, with seats reserved for the Corporation, the Philosophical Society, the Trustees of the University, and the Directors of the Library, and a general invitation to the public in the papers. Immediately after, it was printed and broadcast everywhere. It defended the scientific and educational character of the Museum, its idealism somewhat marred, however, by Peale’s characteristic

argument that his enthusiasm for natural history had denied him fame and fortune he might have earned by painting, and that this long and profitless labor had kept him poor. True, he had saved nothing, and the thought of wasted time and money lay upon his conscience. It was true that he had transferred his heart from painting to “the fascinating beauties of boundless nature, the infinite varieties of animal life on land, in the air, and in the waters, surpassing the most exuberant fancy of man to conceive. ... When in every step

I met with objects new, and as it appeared to me not discovered before, can anyone wonder that I should undertake so assiduously a work of such magnitude as the bringing into one view a world in miniature?”’ Simultaneously, he drafted an appeal to be laid directly before the councils, pleading for larger quarters in the State House and a permanent foundation in Philadelphia that

would do honor to city and state. Again he preached the value and significance of a museum, beginning this time with the history of that ‘“‘attributed to Ptolomy Philadelphus —somewhat analogous to my Museum having its beginning in Philadelphia” and expounding again the methods of scientific exposition. ““A Museum well organized is a great book that

every human being may read, be improved in their morals and instructed in everything useful to man.”’?!

By the advice of some of his audience at the reading of the Address, the petition was never sent. Peale himself, they cautioned, must do nothing further. Let the action come from a group of citizens. A discussion was held at Rubens’ house and then a meeting at the University with Charles Biddle serving as chairman and Dr. Robert M. Patterson as secretary. Joseph Hopkinson, Nicholas Collin, and William Tilghman were also present, along with George Ord, ‘Thomas Say, James Milnor, Tench Coxe, and other friends of the Museum. Over their signatures a new memorial was dispatched to the Corporation, proposing that the city should have title to the Museum, that the Museum remain in the State House under Peale management and city supervision, and that a fixed part of the proceeds should be set aside for its improvement.” The gentlemen of the councils, on their part, proceeded more coolly. Very few, if any, had come to hear Peale’s Address. Since they had not yet acted on their committee’s report, they now accused him of precipitancy and disrespect.’ The discussion flared into the newspapers where the general public had its first good view of it. Friends of the Museum asked that “justice be done.” Angry citizens retorted that there was no justice in being taxed to house ‘‘Mr. Peale and his article of trade.”°* The Corporation, vexed and obdurate, were nonetheless fearful of the threat of a removal of the Museum to some more friendly city. This was now Peale’s sharpest weapon.

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Charles Willson Peale He had declared himself “a citizen of the world’’—superior, as were art and science, to mere loyalties of place. New York was waiting. Washington also. He would visit both and

sound them out. At the same time he would not only paint new pieces for the Museum gallery, but would renew its intercourse with foreign societies and learned men, neglected by

Rubens. He had recently read in the papers that Jefferson could hardly handle his huge correspondence, and this suggested the enlargement of his own.*? The councilmen were friendly in private conversation, hostile as a body. Peale allowed eight months to go by before venturing a formal proposal. He then laid before them a plan

for a “City Museum.” Philadelphia would own the collections and guarantee use of the State House, including new space over the wings. Peale and his heirs would retain management, paying $800 for the privilege, investing at least $400 in improvements, and receiving all additional income for their services. In order to regulate the family control, it was to be organized under trustees as a stock company, with one hundred shares and a total value of $100,000."

On April 16, 1817, a committee of the councils met at the Museum. Peale had ready new plans for expansion over the offices, drawn by a young man whom Sully had recommended. Only one of the committee, a lawyer, was openly unfriendly, and his contention that the extension would be illegal Peale met with a counter opinion from Jared Ingersoll. For more than a month action was delayed, the lawyers in the Corporation gradually winning their colleagues to a belief that 1t would be inexpedient if not illegal to give the Museum permanent occupancy of the building.*” Late in May the impatient proprietor learned of their unfavorable decision and immediately handed them an angry note of protest, begging only that the rent might be made as reasonable as possible until the Museum could be disposed elsewhere. He sent a full account to Jefferson, who would be his chief reliance in obtaining a foundation at the capital.?® Two days later, May 23, with Hannah at his side, he set out for New York to explore a removal thither and to obtain, if he could, needed funds from the DePeyster estate.*? At Burlington he called on his old friend, Elias Boudinot, an invalid now, but cheerful and still in touch with the learned world. He advised Peale to sell his museum to the city

of New York, which he declared to be more liberal in its encouragement of arts and sciences than Philadelphia. In town, Peale found confirmation of the statement. The city had recently made a ten-year grant of the old Alms House—where the Patent Fireplace had been installed so many years before—to a number of learned bodies grouped together as “The New York Institution.” Here, in the long brick building at the head of City Hall Park, Peale found everything that interested him most: the American Academy of Fine Arts, the Lyceum of Natural History, the Literary and Philosophical Society, the New-York Historical Society, together with the Institute for the Deaf and Dumb and some other agencies. Along with these, the entire west wing had been granted, also rent free, to ““The American Museum,” an affair cast in the image of his own. This was Gardiner Baker’s old collection, which had changed

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hands twice and was now being set up in these new quarters under the proprietorship of John Scudder. “His MUSEUM,” the public was informed in the New York Directory of that year, “from his indefatigable and unparalleled industry, stands unrivalled by any similar institution for splendor, correctness and scientific arrangement, &c., on the continent.”?°

Peale, looking about him with an appraising eye, was forced to admire his rival’s “unrivalled” neatness, brilliance, and lavish disregard of expense. Natural history, however,

was thinned down by waxworks, cosmorama, and the like, and the birds and animals, though their “classical order’ was noted on the cases, were mounted for show and brightness only—the attitudes often unnatural and the form of the muscles not preserved. At the end of one room Scudder had covered the floor with moss in imitation of ground, added branches of trees, and filled the space with a crowded display of birds and beasts in dramatic poses, the hunter and the hunted. The ceiling above was being painted to represent sky, and there was a painting due to arrive from New England, a panorama of different climates. All this Scudder had dubbed—borrowing Peale’s phrase—‘‘a world in miniature.” He was featuring concerts as a popular attraction, and his new association

gi. JoHN Lewis KRIMMEL: Election Day at the State House. 1816

The Museum occupied the upper rooms of the central edifice. Krimmel’s watercolor shows the recently built city offices connecting the three older buildings.

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Charles Willson Peale with the learned bodies would soon enable him to realize what Peale had so long sought: regular lectures on natural history, illustrated with museum specimens. Imperfections there might be, but it was good enough to make it very unlikely that Peale’s proposed move to New York would receive any solid encouragement. He found more congenial company in the other rooms of the Institution. At the Lyceum of Natural History he was kindly received by his old friend, Dr. Mitchill, and he was introduced at one of its meetings as “‘the father of natural history in America,” a most gratifying tribute and one not altogether undeserved. ‘The Literary and Philosophical Society lkewise

did him honor, and he was welcomed also by the Historical Society where, under Dr. Mitchill’s direction, collections of shells and minerals were being put in order. The Academy of Fine Arts had its second annual exhibition on the walls, and this absorbed much of his

attention, his diary pages filled with critical estimates of the work. We learn here of his admiration for the genre paintings, so pointed, spirited, and contemporary, of the young German, John Lewis Krimmel, “a prodigy in the art.” Later, having completed a satisfactory portrait of his own, he brought this to the show, though disappointed that William Dunlap, keeper of the Academy, could not hang it in a satisfactory light. He called on Samuel Lovett Waldo, the artist whose portraits he had most admired at the American Academy, introducing himself as “the oldest painter in America.” Waldo took

him to see a privately owned collection of Flemish paintings.4! His diary critique of the American Academy work had been an objective appraisal of strength and weakness alike, but to Waldo, “I prudently praised what I found was natural and well painted, but found fault with nothing. It has been my observation that men who wished to be thought connesoars, would praise some parts of a picture and condemn others, that they seldom pleased the owners of a collection. I would rather give pleasure to any person than be thought learned.”” He and Hannah dined with Mr. and Mrs. Waldo. The invitation had been for tea, but Peale, now quite hard of hearing, misunderstood. He turned the joke on himself by reading them his diary account of his embarrassment, how Hannah had “huntched”’

him during their conversation, and afterward explained his error. He called on John Trumbull also. Trumbull, Waldo, and Dr. Mitchill were complimented by being asked to pose for Museum gallery portraits. Philip DePeyster was their guide on their tours of the city, the markets, the waterfront, the wonderful new City Hall. They visited the Lancastrian school next door to the New York Institution, where Peale was charmed to see so many children observing perfect order under the remote control of a single master, but the effect was spoiled for him by the sight of one little girl enduring punishment. They visited Nicholas DePeyster’s seat on North River, and at “Art’s Retreat,’ nearby, the old painter wept to see again the little room in which his son had died. John DePeyster avoided them, however, and it became clear that the money due Betsy’s heirs by her father’s will could not be had. The executors refused to arbitrate and Peale

would not go to law. On the larger problem, the disposal of the Museum, Dr. David

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“Time Flies Swiftly Like a Dream” Hosack’s suggestion that he combine with Scudder held no attractions. He liked better Dr. Mitchill’s advice that he promote in Philadelphia a project similar to the New York Institution. They reached Belfield, June 14, 1817, after an absence of three weeks. Soon after, a furious

storm swept over the place, blowing down the tall kitchen chimney. Hannah had been right below when the bricks crashed thunderously through the roof to the floor above her her head. This near tragedy had its compensations in the building of a new painting room over the kitchen ell. Through summer and fall Peale labored with his men as stonemason, bricklayer, carpenter, painter, glazier, and reared at little cost an elegant addition to his house.**

Painting, using Rembrandt’s new technique and palette, absorbed all his attention now. He made Rembrandt a formal gift of the Baltimore mastodon in return for this “system of coloring for portrait and landscape painting.’’4? He painted family portraits, landscapes, more portraits for the Museum, and some professional work including Quaker ladies of Hannah’s acquaintance—enemies of the fine arts, but “when they get anything done they generally pay handsomely.”** He painted a “prophetic portrait’? of Rembrandt, showing the young man against a warm and brightening horizon, a mountain in the distance. He made an improvement in the lenses of his spectacles which greatly facilitated his work, an idea good enough to be shared with Jefferson. Two events brought the painter suddenly back from these happy bypaths to the business of the Museum. The first was the death, on January 22, 1818, of Dr. Caspar Wistar, President of the Philosophical Society, naturalist and physician. Few men of learning have been so widely known and loved. Peale had been intimate with the doctor and his family for many years and here lost the friend and adviser who had done and who might have done more than any other for the furtherance of the Museum ideal. Peale had learned to depend upon the doctor’s superior good sense, though he yielded none of his own empirical medical views to the other’s knowledge and experience. Dr. Wistar had laughed when Peale had told him of his own cure for a cold—running up hill with the mouth open.*? Peale joined in the laugh but continued to take his own vigorous treatment, generally in the form of a long, brisk walk, and to urge it upon others. Hannah did not follow the strenuous therapy. She found his vapor bath beneficial, but, like most other people, relished a good table and

the small indulgences, her husband the while declaring to all and sundry that he who followed the simple rules of health needed no physician. Eat what foods experience has shown the body needs, just enough and no more, drink plenty of water, exercise for strength

and elasticity, ““keep the mind in a quiet and tranquil state... in short . . . do nothing that is useless. In this mode of conducting ourselves we may better enjoy life, and prolong it until the marrow of bones becomes bone—and finally go to sleep an everlasting sleep.’’*® A decade before, when Peale had called at the doctor’s, Mrs. Wistar had politely asked the painter how he did—was he in good health? “Madam,” says Peale in mock reproof, “how can you ask me such a question?”

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Charles Willson Peale

“Why so?” ,

‘Because, Madam, it would be questioning my prudence. I hope I shall do nothing to entitle me to disease.’’4"

This was intended in part as a warning to the doctor. Peale was fearful then that his friend lived too well to live long. There were other congenial exchanges. When Mrs. Wistar’s

teeth, made by Dr. Edward Hudson, did not suit her, Peale made the old lady a set like his own. No others fitted mouth and face so well or could be worn constantly with comfort.

Dr. Wistar insisted that he accept a check for one hundred dollars, and to this the painter returned a pair of gold spectacles, fitted with lenses and springs such as he wore himself.4® Now, in January, 1818, he had been painting his friend’s portrait for the Museum

gallery. The third sitting was cut short by the doctor’s illness. A week later he was gone. Even as this tragic loss occurred, the Corporation was reconsidering the Museum’s rent. He learned its decision soon after. The sum would be $1,200. The building must be insured for $10,000, but insurance might be paid from the rent. Strong disapproval of the gasworks was expressed—and no wonder, with flames licking close to the tower rafters and charcoal and barrels of tar nearby. Peale was to be held directly responsible for damage by fire.*9 The rent seemed to many a fair one, since the city received $2,600 for the two rooms below. But Peale was no better pleased, and he now brought forward the idea conceived in New York, a co-operative union of learned societies, a “Pennsylvania Institution.” He worked out a scheme that was well received, planned to call a meeting, but, with no building

like the New York Alms House available, the proposal soon languished and died. He thought perhaps the University might take the Museum to itself. Most of all, he still hoped for a national foundation.°” He had heard some months before that Jefferson, Madison, and Monroe had joined in “forming a plan for a great system of education.’””°’! He consulted with Jefferson again and wrote to Burgess Allison, now one of the chaplains of Congress. Congress, he hoped, would take up the idea on a point of national pride. Even if Congress would do no more than consider it, that might induce the city to give in.

The capital must be the scene of his next campaign. To Washington he and Hannah must go, and the visit would be a long one, from November through January. The Museum would be the central purpose, but there would be much more to do. President Monroe’s portrait must be added to the gallery, the Vice-President also and other political leaders, perhaps even General Jackson if he should come to town. Private commissions could be

expected, and it was planned that his nieces, Anna Claypoole and Sarah Miriam Peale, young painters, would accompany them. There was a pension due the girls’ father, James, and Peale would see to that as well as a land bounty for Linnaeus, while Raphaelle’s son Charles wanted a commission in the navy. Titian was eagerly hoping for an appointment to the new expedition under Major Stephen H. Long, who was preparing to explore the upper waters of the Missouri, an advance into the unknown from which great things were popularly expected—even the opening of a new route to China. Then, also, since the public

had not taken up his idea when offered gratuitously, he would now patent his windmill

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“Time Flies Swiftly Like a Dream” improvement. On top of all this, he would try to persuade the Post Office Department to adopt for general use a mail pouch manufactured by Coleman Sellers. Dr. William Thornton,

head of the Patent Office, had been urging him to come; the doctor wanted a new set of teeth and lessons in painting.” The little party of four set forth on November 5, 1818.°° They lingered a few days with Rembrandt in Baltimore, and Sally, whose career as a painter had barely begun, remained there. Peale thought her talent good, but she seemed unwilling to work hard unless there were a promise of profit before her. Sally was only eighteen. Anna, at twenty-seven, was now a miniaturist of acknowledged promise, entering the career from which her father was of necessity stepping out. James Peale’s eyesight was failing. He was gouty, often on crutches,

a perfect contrast to his exuberant elder brother. With only one son, five daughters, two grandchildren, the James Peales were in financial need, and Anna had this situation as well as critics’ praise to urge her on. Washington was crowded and the three travelers found lodgings with difiiculty—halfway between the Capitol and the White House, upstairs unfortunately, but with a painting room where Peale at once rebuilt the fireplace (it smoked), covered the white walls with a wash of yellow ocher, red ocher, and Spanish white (‘‘a very good color for a painting room’’), added new blinds. He set a carpenter to work making stretchers and an easel, while he himself sallied forth in search of “influential characters” to paint. Dr. ‘Thornton introduced him to the President, who received the old man with kindness, asked a few days’ grace to study some recent dispatches, and would then pose for both uncle and niece. It wanted but a week till the opening of Congress and the capital was readying itself for the whirl of gaiety and great events. Each day Peale rose with the dawn, set his palette, grinding his white while there was still scarce light enough to see it. Then he went out to his early morning calls. Hannah and Anna rose next, swept and tidied, and they all met for breakfast at nine. The President, for the most part, posed between seven and nine in the morning, the two artists joining him at breakfast. But even so early, constant interruptions held up the work and limited the conversation—talk on the Museum and the possibility of lighting the government buildings by gas. Other sitters climbed the stairs to Peale’s own painting room. John C. Calhoun, Secretary of War, sat. Peale was amazed by the ease with which Calhoun handled a multitude of affairs and delighted to see his own business quickly dispatched: James entered on the Revolutionary pension rolls, Lin’s back pay and bounty

assigned to him, and Titian granted leave to accompany his friend ‘Thomas Say on the Long expedition. Commodore David Porter and Commodore John Rodgers also consented to sit, but were not helpful in placing Raphaelle’s son in the navy. Young Charles was a nearsighted youth with no particular qualifications, nor was his cause aided by his grand-

father’s frank disapproval of the service, “which I am convinced,” as he stated it, “is a famous school of vice.” Peale thought of offering the Secretary of the Navy a place in the gallery on the chance that he might do something, but gave it up as too slim. The Secretary

was a New England man, unknown to him. Similarly, he discarded the idea of painting

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Charles Willson Peale Postmaster General Meigs in the interest of Coleman’s mail pouch. The department had placed a trial order and the issue must depend on that. Throughout his stay, the sack lay on his painting-room floor for all to see and admire, made of riveted leather, a new process many times stronger than stitching and with a formidable lock. Coleman, by way of pub-

licity, had had the thing shown to Red Jacket when that warrior toured Philadelphia. The Chief had given it a long, dry smile, commenting, through the interpreter, that it “made his knife laugh.”°4 Hannah sometimes joined in the studio talk, where old friends of the painter gathered to watch him work, chafing him—at first—that he should still be painting portraits at seventy-

seven. Such talk set the old man on his mettle, for he meant to live fifty or a hundred years longer and had no intention of being idle all that time. “Why?” asks he, at once. ‘‘Because you are too old.” “How?” “Why, you can’t see well enough for such nice work.” “Oh, but suppose I make use of spectacles?”’ ‘But, then, your hand is not steady enough.” “Here,” says another, “there is no defect of his nerves, for he can even paint with long brushes”—and there 1s a shaking of heads all around.

“Then,” says the painter, setting to work, “we will use no more argument, but try the goodness of the pudding by eating it, and if I cannot make portraits which are esteemed, I will burn my brushes and break my palette.”? Vice-President Daniel Tompkins’ portrait was taken; also John Quincy Adams, Secretary of State, a Yankee whom Peale was nonetheless forced to admire for his knowledge of the arts, and who, he thought, might well succeed to the Presidency; also William H. Crawford, Secretary of the Treasury, William Wirt, the new Attorney General; Henry Clay, Speaker of the House; John W. Eppes and James Barbour, senators from Virginia, Rufus King, senator from New York; John Holmes, a Massachusetts representative who had supported the federal government against regional opposition in the late war; and Colonel Richard Mentor Johnson, a representative from Kentucky. Allison had recommended Johnson as

a powerful figure in the new Congress. He had shown the Peales much kindness and Anna painted a miniature of him. To these, Peale added another good man and true, Yarrow Mamout, a Mohammedan Negro who claimed to be 134 years of age. Peale thought one hundred years more likely, but even that was memorable enough. Yarrow was a freedman with a small competence of his own, a hearty old soul with whom the painter could enjoy a laugh. Joseph Hopkinson, one of the few remaining Federalists in Congress, was coldly critical of Peale’s selections for his gallery, and it is true that they had not been made with dispassionate care. He had even extended the invitation to a distinguished-looking gentleman introduced to him at the White House in consideration of the man’s having a handsome head, the type

he loved to paint. Later he learned that Major General John Peter Van Ness was only a

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“Time Flies Swiftly Like a Dream” wealthy banker whose military career, in the local militia, had been inglorious. Well, he had overheard his wife and niece discussing the forgetfulness of old age as exemplified in himself, and he would just give them one more example of it and forget Van Ness. His sitters were warmly appreciative of the honor accorded them, though some were shy at first, having had experience with Joseph Delaplaine’s gallery and Repository of the Lives and Portraits of Distinguished Americans, a distinction for which the subject must pay. Peale hoped only for their friendly interest in his museum. The prospect of a national foundation, however, soon faded. Adam Seybert, chemist and mineralogist and one of the Philadelphia

representatives, convinced him there was no possibility of any appropriation for such a purpose. Other members confirmed the opinion. Few favored it even conditionally. Washington was too small a city to support it, and Congressmen would not vote money for some-

thing their constituents could not see. Peale confided to Jefferson his determination to persist. “The time will come when they shall be sorry for having let it slip through their fingers. . . . Having laid aside all other pursuits except what may tend to the improvement of the Museum, I hope I may live long enough to place it on a permanent mount.”°® He was disappointed, too, in receiving no private commissions, for he wanted to prove himself a professional still. When he had twelve of the portraits done he called them his jurymen, for they were to determine whether he was still a painter or not. The pictures were good, but his insistence on a high price, one hundred dollars, was a deterrent. Anna was doing better, and there was satisfaction in that. In the gay life around them regrets were out of place, though he looked with Jeffersonian disfavor on official frivolities, and Hannah,

in her Quaker simplicity, concurred. For all that, they went to every one of the Presidential “levees” and enjoyed themselves immensely. At the first one, Mrs. Monroe paid special attention to Hannah, keeping her at her side the whole time, and later the two passed quiet evenings at the White House. Of that first occasion, he wrote home to Coleman: We went to the Levee last evening, the splendor of the rooms with the most superb furniture of every kind, chandeliers with upwards 40 spermaceti candles reflecting a thousand lights by

polished cut glass festoons, a carpet with the arms of the United States in the center and curious and rich ornaments and borders, the room an oval. Hannah was not anxious to go, and Anna very desirous to see the show of a court. However, your mother could not be otherwise than gratified, as Mrs. Monroe paid greater attention to her than to any other lady in the room, of which there were many superbly dressed. Coffee, tea and a variety of cakes went the rounds—afterwards, punch, wine and shrub, cakes &c. There we see chapeaux @ bras, and black silk stockings and short breeches in abundance, and many like myself with pantaloons. One personage had a star. Who he was I did not inquire, but I see several of my old acquaintance of 40 years past. The heat of the room with an almost roar of voices disagreeable though novel. I shall never desire to see the same scene renewed, which they tell me comes round every fortnight.”

They did go again, however, and Sarah came down from Baltimore in December to share the experience. Sally, bright of eye and cheek, dressed in the very latest, made a conquering progress that her venerable uncle could only watch with pride. Then there

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Charles Willson Peale was the great New Year reception at the White House—“‘raree show at the President’s,”’

Peale called it. Hannah declared she did not wish to go, but as her husband obviously did, and as he refused to be seen without her, she of course gave in. They were whirled away in Colonel Johnson’s barouche, into the moving, brilliant throng, a band of music sounding through the roar of voices, shrub punch for all—and home at last with the salutation, “We wish you a happy New Year and as many of them as you desire,” still ringing in their ears.

They visited friends and relations in Georgetown and Alexandria, among them the Joseph Brewers and Colonel William Marbury, who had married Rachel Brewer’s niece and had been a close friend of Colonel Ramsay’s. Here Peale pored over the Colonel’s collection of models and watched the young people dancing on carpets to the light music of a piano, with refreshments afterward, “even to ice cream.” He had spent hours at the Patent Office with Thornton, had learned that the windmill improvement intended as his gift to the world was now patented by another, but found, in compensation, a new form of organ that interested him greatly. Thornton himself had made a number of improvements in musical instruments. Another congenial character was Colonel George Bomford, a connoisseur of the arts whose wife was a sister of Mrs. Joel Barlow. He had recently inherited the paintings of the English animal painter, Charles Catton, among them one of Noah ushering his charges into the Ark. Peale afterward borrowed this painting and copied it for the Museum, introducing variations of his own. With his nephew Charles Peale Polk now a government clerk, he called on William Wirt whom he found one of the most interesting of his sitters—probably because Wirt had freed himself from a drunken youth to fulfill a brilliant career. Rumors of General Jackson’s coming were in the air, and the Peales lingered in Washington through January. “Old Hickory” made a dramatic entrance on the twenty-second, while Congress was debating his conduct in the Seminole War. He granted at once the request for a sitting, and came to the painting room every morning before breakfast, accompanied by a group of friends who maintained the conversation and gave the painters more freedom to work. Peale, hearing much talk of hostile personalities, threw in a few words on a favorite theme, the folly of dueling, but fortunately did not go too far, being then quite ignorant of Jackson’s prowess on the field of honor. He had once lectured young Thomas Jefferson Randolph on the subject, getting a fiery riposte from the boy, whose father had fought a duel. Peale warmly admired Jackson, man of blood and battle that he was. He felt confident that the General would “‘abash” his opponents on the Hill, an expectation that was to be fully carried out. The painters were at their best, Anna producing an exquisite miniature while her uncle, in even less time, brought a distinguished likeness to his canvas.

With this accomplished, early in February, 1819, the travelers set out for Baltimore by stage, a merry Journey. One passenger, a horse trader known to the world as “Doctor,” or “Jackass,” Perkins, possessed an endless fund of information and anecdote. He dealt in

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invention, and the Philadelphia Analectic Magazine published an account in June, 1819. But by that time Peale had one of his own in operation, attracting crowds to the Museum and astounding the citizens as the thing came rattling along the sidewalks around Washington Square with one or another of the Peales astride. It was of iron and too heavy, so they set to work on other machines at once, each with improvements, including a “waymeasurer” made by Isaiah Lukens. This would make the device of service in surveying land, giving it a useful purpose where before there had been the mere pleasure of speed. Most fun of all was ripping down the walks at Belfield, the old man’s thin white hair streaming behind him as he shot along the winding way. One could go from the house to the Echo without touching foot to ground. Lin, Franklin, and Rubens were in on it, and even Sybilla and Elizabeth took up the sport, their shrill laughter echoing in the glade. In England they made twelve miles per hour, Lin explained to the absent explorer, Titian: “ours is too heavy to go at that rate of speed, but goes down hill like the very devil.”®! In town others took up the fad, scorchers and speed demons flying along on brick and cobble until the Mayor put an end to the dangerous practice. But at Belfield it remained a delight to all, and to the lord of the manor always a restorative after a spate of hard work in painting room or field. In December, Rubens, whose father had believed him in fear of the modern woman, announced his engagement to Eliza Burd Patterson of Harmony Grove, near Belfield. His fiancée was an orphan whose three brothers had come from the sheep-raising country on

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“Time Flies Swiftly Like a Dream” the Juniata River and now ran their father’s woolen mill in Germantown.® They were married by the Reverend, later Bishop, Jackson Kemper, on March 6, 1820. Here was none of the impetuosity of other Peale alliances. Rubens was a solid, well-to-do businessman. He lived in the house that Rembrandt had built, “one of the most pleasant in the city,” his father thought, facing Washington Square, with tree-shaded walks all the way from his front door to the Museum, except where you crossed Sixth Street.®? Soon after this wedding came the engagement of Elizabeth DePeyster Peale to the bride’s brother, William

Augustus Patterson. The wedding took place on November 2, also with the parental blessing—her new husband “a clever young man” in Peale’s eye, “not a dandy fop.’’® Financial panic had struck the nation in 1819, and with this Philadelphia endured again the terrors of yellow fever in that summer and, worse, in the next. Museum income dwindled and the rent was raising a structure of debt.®? Peale was working on a new picture, a historical piece, which he hoped would be a Museum attraction and teach a moral as well. Inspired perhaps by Sully’s new Washington Crossing the Delaware, his picture showed the crossing he himself had witnessed: the retreating army coming over the river by night to join the militia reinforcements awaiting it on the Pennsylvania side. It would be a lesson on the horror and folly of war. The scene was as clear in memory as were the visions of Paradise Lost he had read as a boy—the winter night, the watch fires lighting the dark water, the wild, bawling execrations of the men as they moved across it, “the most hellish scene I have ever beheld.’’®®

It was finished in February, 1820, as Rembrandt, eagerly encouraged by his father, sought to weather the depression by painting a dramatic picture of his own. His was to be of portentous import and enormous size, twenty-four feet wide and thirteen high. This was his vast and shadowy imagining, The Court of Death. Death, a poem by the late Beilby Porteus, Bishop of London, then enjoying a wide circulation among both adult and juvenile readers, was its inspiration. Peale-like, it had its family aspect, with the artist’s daughters posing for some of the allegorical figures—Faith, Hope, Virtue, Pleasure—and his father (the likeness modified by the bust of Homer) as Old Age.®’ His father had been called on for financial aid, since a special studio had to be built. Peale could not imagine meeting this additional expense with his other burdens, but under the spell of the young man’s enthusiasm and plans he had smiled and said, “Build the room and paint the picture.’’®® Rembrandt’s “Great Moral Painting” toured the cities in a blaze of publicity and achieved a resounding success. Rembrandt, truly and deeply moved by his creation, declared it the

first attempt in modern art to follow the counsel of the ancients and affect “the heart without doing violence to the understanding.” It was likewise the first attempt at “metaphysical painting” since Apelles of the fourth century s.c.®? To the modern world of 18201821, however, it had the impact of a successful movie. Notices made clear that the foreground corpse had been painted from an actual medical school cadaver. In New York, the Common Council, without invitation, attended in a body, and at the Albany showing the delegate from Ulster County fell dead at the moment of purchasing a ticket.’° Everything,

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Charles Willson Peale in short, went well, and in its first thirteen months on the road the picture earned more than nine thousand dollars.” The Philadelphia Museum, meanwhile, had recourse in March, 1820, to the services of Signor Hellene, a musical entertainer lately from Italy, via New York and a series of performances at Scudder’s museum.” Hellene styled himself ““The Pandean Band.” Using hands, elbows, and knees, he played the Italian viola, Turkish cymbals, and tenor drum, simultaneously blowing upon a set of Pandean pipes afhxed to his person and, by wagging

his head, chiming in with a frame of Chinese bells worn as a sort of crown.” It was grotesque but it drew well and, at a cost of five dollars per night, showed a good profit. Signor Hellene’s stay was extended by popular demand, and he became, off and on through

succeeding years, a feature of the Museum evenings. Peale hated the Pandean Band. It degraded the character of a museum of natural history.’* It shamed him to be forced to such a measure. What he wanted were scholarly lectures. In the preceding December he had petitioned the city councils to grant him space over the city offices for this purpose.” Franklin Peale had added new excitements to the scientific experiments, but nothing, it seemed, could draw like the Italian. Even gaslight had lost its novelty, and since this was the principal obstacle to favorable action from the councils, Rubens removed the entire system in the summer of 1820.’° The councils then asked the removal also of the workshop over the tower stair. Peale protested but obeyed.” At the same time, without waiting for action by the councils, he took a positive course of his own. In November, 1820, he published an offer to exchange Belfield for a suitable museum site in the city.”° There was no satisfactory response. Then, on December 11, he deeded the Museum to his sons, retaining the right to all proceeds during his lifetime and an annuity of five hundred dollars for his widow. This was followed by the incorporation of

the Museum as a stock company of five hundred shares valued at two hundred dollars each, the collection to remain permanently in Philadelphia. ’? On December 26 he petitioned the councils once more for a reduction in rent.®°

The act of incorporation of “The Philadelphia Museum Company” was passed February 1, 1821. On March 5, Peale, the sole shareholder, appointed the trustees: Pierce Butler, Robert Patterson, Zaccheus Collins, Coleman Sellers, and Rubens Peale. These gentlemen met and organized on April 11, with Butler as President, Patterson VicePresident, and Sellers Secretary. Rubens was appointed Manager. Four lectureships were established.*! Titian’s friend Thomas Say, now returned from the Long Expedition, was to be Lecturer in Zoology. Dr. John D. Godman, a scholarly, ambitious young physician and naturalist, the fiancé of Rembrandt’s daughter Angelica, was given the field of Physiology. Mineralogy went to Dr. Gerard Troost, one of the founders and first President of the Academy of Natural Sciences, and Comparative Anatomy to Dr. Richard Harlan. Lectures were to be open to all Museum visitors, with students admitted at half price and teachers

accompanying their classes without charge. This was the ambitious program by which Peale had long hoped to establish the scientific and educational character of his handiwork.

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Two days later, on April 13, the councils reduced the Museum’s rent to six hundred dollars.®”

All this, though short of his fondest hopes, gave the old painter a sense of achievement and success. He had now a new historical work in the painting room at Belfield, begun in January, 1821, Christ Healing the Sick at the Pool of Bethesda. It was one of his largest pictures, eight feet wide and more than six feet high—not an original composition but an adaptation from a print by Christian Wilhelm Ernst Dietrich, which Peale thought better than West’s treatment of the subject.2* West had died the year before, else he would never have undertaken it, not wishing to seem a rival of his master. He toiled away on the big

canvas, utterly absorbed, sure that it would help confirm the Museum’s place on the forefront of science and art. It was finished in three months. In mid-course he fell from his

scaffold while working on the upper part, breaking one or more ribs. Hannah implored him to stop, but this he would not do, explaining to her that while at work he could feel no pain. So she rubbed and nursed him at day’s end, dressed and undressed him, tucking him, as ever, gently into his bed at night. In March they showed the completed picture to

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Charles Willson Peale a “‘genteel company” at Germantown—three hundred in a single day. Later, duly announced in the press, it came to the Museum.*4 The Museum might stand higher now with the public, but not so with its new owners, the Peale sons. Rubens began to think of starting a museum of his own, in Washington, perhaps, tailored to his own taste and profit with no stringent scientific ideal.®° Titian had returned from the West in January, 1821, rosy-cheeked, tall and straight as an Indian.°°

Belfield was in a tumult of joy at his coming, none more jubilant than the savage old cockatoo that roamed the house at will. The bird, a biter, had few friends, but Titian was one of them. He had been assistant naturalist on the expedition, in charge of the collections, had made drawings, and had done most of the hunting for both specimens and game. The specimens were added to the Museum in March. The portraits of Major Long and his staff, the civilians in a uniform designed especially for them, had been hung in the gallery before their departure. Titian now demanded Franklin’s place in the Museum, claiming that an experienced naturalist was needed rather than a mechanic.®’ Franklin had been set up in business at the mill and should have continued there. Titian worked for a while at the Baltimore museum, thought of launching out as a portrait painter, thought of joining Commodore Charles Stewart of the Pacific squadron as a naturalist, but in the fall the Museum trustees, elected him assistant manager under Rubens. Franklin, still overshadowed by the gloom of his tragic marriage, was continued as before.°® The arrangement did not reconcile the brothers, though Titian was successful at once in combining scientific accuracy and attractive display.

Raphaelle now blamed his ill health on those hours spent with the arsenic solutions in the Museum, where once he had been his father’s chief dependence. “Gout” racked his stomach, shoulders, chest, and limbs. “Chalk knuckles” were unfitting him for fine miniature work. In 1820 and 1821 he broke into print again with theories on the divergent subjects of carriage wheels and lightning rods.°% He had often been away from home, at times near death, his family hearing from him only by an occasional illegible scrawl. Back in Philadelphia in September, 1821, he was advertising his artistic skills, as usual with a joke—“‘Still Life,” under which heading he included both fruit pieces and portraits of the deceased.”°

Peale no longer saw Patty, but kept in touch with the family through Eliza, the eldest child.9! With Raphaelle himself, he reasoned affectionately, tirelessly: “If you applied yourself as you ought to do, you would be the first painter in America. . . . Your pictures of still life are acknowledged to be, even by the painters here, far exceeding all other works of that kind—and you have often heard me say that, with such talents of exact imitation, your portraits ought also to be more excellent. My dear Raphaelle, why will you neglect

yourself? Why not govern every unruly passion? Why not act the man, and with a fine determination act according to your best judgment? Wealth, honors and happiness would

then be your lot!’ Raphaelle always listened with respect, and always replied with promises that awoke

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Painted by his father “in the character of an artist,’ and in the hope of instilling a sense of professional pride. Six years later, Raphaelle painted his After the Bath over a replica or copy of this portrait.

his father’s hope anew—promises he could not keep. Hannah defended and welcomed this errant son, who was always attentive and gallant to her,?? his friendly, kindly face colored

in the toper’s flush and marked with the lines of both laughter and pain. Raphaelle was happiest with an audience to amuse. He blundered once, with the slow step and the 9

twisted, tremulous hands, into a Yearly Meeting Week gathering of Quakers at the Sellers house, a meeting not for worship but almost equal in solemnity. Coleman, finding him in

retreat, politely begged him to help his sister entertain the guests, and this Raphaelle undertook to do. The incident comes to us through the eyes of Escol Sellers, a boy to whom

Charles Willson Peale “Uncle Raphaelle” was a hero and his audience objects of teen-age contempt.%4 They were all sitting on the sofa and chairs around the walls of the Sellers parlor, rigid and silent, the children huddled into the corner between the fireplace and window. ‘Cousin Sammy Rhoads” was there with his wife Sallie, and the Nathan Garrett cousins (Garrett known to all the boys as “Belching Nathan’’), and “Spare John Pratt’? with his fat wife, and others. Rhoads and Pratt, with Jesse Kersey and Edward Hicks, were ‘accepted and approved” Quaker ministers. There they sat, rigid and silent. ‘The facial muscles,” as Escol saw it, ‘““seemed to be reserved for the time when the conventional cake baskets and waiters of lemonade and current wine would circulate around.”’ Glancing about him at this audience, Raphaelle drew a large spotted India silk handkerchief from his pocket, winding it about his hand. Cousin Sammy Rhoads was sufficiently aroused by this maneuver to inquire, “Raphaelle, has thee hurt thy hand?” “Oh, no. I am only wrapping up something I want to preserve. I will show it to you if you will not tell anyone what it is.” The promise was given. The whole room was watching. The children could not hear what Uncle Raphaelle was saying, but they could see Cousin Sammy’s lips quiver and then open in a sort of yawn. Cousin Sallie must see it too, and she responded also by staring and gaping, and so, privily, from one to another all around the room. Raphaelle had made his hand under the handkerchief into a grimacing little face from whose lips whispered words, appropriate to each viewer, seemed to come. Having completed his circuit with this, he captured their attention all together with his recital of “The Crooked-Mouth Family.” It brought them to their feet, crowding around and laughing. Just at the end, where everyone in the story has failed to blow out the candle and the visitor shown them how to do it, refreshments arrived. Instantly there was a rush for the chairs, faces grew solemn, handkerchiefs were spread over laps. When all were satisfied, Cousin Sammy arose and, with a peculiar jerk of his body known to all, declared himself “painfully oppressed at the hilarity of some of our most esteemed Friends,” and, dropping on his knees, called for communion in prayer. An appalling silence followed, which he broke at last with further remarks on the “‘carnal feelings instigated by the words and actions of a God-forsaken mountebank, the spirit of the Devil and flesh.” It was Jesse Kersey, a more enlightened minister, who finally put an end to this part of the performance, his hand on the other’s shoulder, “Samuel, I think thee has gone too far in terms applied to the brother of thy hostess whose hospitality thou art enjoying.” Raphaelle was a perfect mimic and could imitate to a turn the actors of the day, and the actresses as well. As a ventriloquist he is said to have had no equal. In preference to his home he often took his meals at the Black Bear Tavern, where the country folk, come in to market, would stare in bewilderment as Raphaelle rose to carve and the turkey, goose, or chicken pled for its life in sepulchral tones, then shrieked with pain as the fork was thrust in. He could turn them cold in their seats by making a fried fish speak out upon some topic of the day. His father loved Raphaelle’s songs and stories, but could not abide

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ventriloquism. Perhaps his deafness made him unappreciative, or as a mere act of deception he may have disliked it. Raphaelle avoided this practice in his presence. In the spring of 1821 the currant wine of Belfield was advertised by the merchants as ‘superior to any sweet wine imported.” Peale was reading Dr. James Johnson’s Influence of Civic Life, Sedentary Habits and Intellectual Refinement on Human Health and Human Happiness.

96. C. W. PEALE: Hannah Moore Peale. 1816

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Charles Willson Peale A new dam must be built this summer or the near-defunct cotton mill would be totally useless. Lin was ready to give up, but his father would not surrender and, to save money, worked with his men at the digging and hauling. He would give them an object lesson on how such heavy work could be done without the stimulus of whisky, bearing more than the

best of them and his eighty years as well. “I was first in the morning, and the last at night at the spade.’’”® For recreation, he painted a little and made observations on the life habits of snakes.

So passed this summer at “Belfield Fort, Commandant C. W. Peale—Head Officers of the Inquisition, S. Summers and R. Morris.” The high language is Elizabeth’s, but stemmed

from her father’s use of the military phrase, calling Hannah, his “Aide-de-camp” and any absence from home a “furlough.”?! One warm day late in that September Peale took his velocipede and went to attend to some business in Germantown. He often did so, disdaining what he called “the stare of the multitude,” even frankly delighting in the excited pleasure of the children as they watched him speed by. He had a hot, hurried ride home, not wishing to be late lest Hannah worry. A few days later, on October 1, while repairing a watch, he was stricken with an ague, dosed himself in vain, then realized that he had caught the dreaded fever. This year the yellow fever predominated in the country rather than in the city, though a greater proportion of its victims recovered. He blamed that hot ride from Germantown, as a deviation from his rules of health. Soon after, Hannah also was taken ill. He was unwilling to send for Dr. Betton and did not do so until the children urged it in Hannah’s presence and she joined their plea. “But you will let me have a doctor?”

“To be sure I will.’ The doctor found Hannah in bed, her husband seated in his painting room. Peale distrusted the profession in these cases especially. They depended too much upon calomel, and he refused to take it. The physician replied tactfully that he did not need it, but that Mrs. Peale’s case was different and required the medicine. Thereafter, one patient took no medication, while the other had everything that experience advised. Both became weak and delirious, losing track of time. Hannah grew worse, and the doctor ordered blisters. Peale, in the next room, restless through the slow and tedious passage of the night, heard the talk, then woke again to find the house in silence. ‘“T hoped from the silence they had given her an anodyne while the blisters was drawing. No, the stillness was death.”

Hannah died on October 10, 1821, and was laid to rest in the Friends’ burying ground at Germantown. Her husband was carried to Rubens’ house in the city, and there nursed back to a slow and desolate recovery—moaning, worrying, begging his children, if he died, to bury him on that side of the obelisk where stood the words, “It is a noble Triumph to overcome Evil by Good.”

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CHAPTER 27 THE RETURN OF LAFAYETTE Ir May We tL Have BEEN the old man’s obstinate adherence to his own medical practice that saved his life. Slowly, in the autumn of 1821, his strength was returning, bringing him back into a world whose changed spirit he would now meet head-on, obstinate, bland, indomitable. Sixty years before, in Maryland, he had felt the thrill of a new era dawning, and it was with him yet, although for the young republic the ideals of the enlightenment had long gone by. That confidence that man, guided by Reason and Nature, commanded his destiny had yielded to orthodox reaction and wore the taint of infidelity. Nature was not now the foundation of morality. He was aware, of course, of the changing view, but would not yield. To the public, a museum was cheap showmanship, as Alexander Robinson had seen it long before. The Age of Barnum was coming in. Scientific bodies shunned popularization as a corrupting, degrading influence. All this had been in progress when he had begun to leave the Museum’s management to Rubens, and through Peale’s eleven years at Belfield Rubens had run the Museum as entertainment for a price—honest entertainment but with only a frivolous educational purpose. Now, from the Belfield years, he had returned to the Museum, his Museum, the faith of an older generation confronting the new. Rubens’ little son, another Charles Willson Peale, was learning to walk, tottering and laughing all the way across the room from his mother’s arms to those of the old painter sitting by the sunny window.! They could give him a painting room and workshop here, and his spirits rose quickly as soon as he could use his hands again. He broke into Poulson’s with a half-humorous protest against the “murder” of eighty-five snakes at Castine, Maine.” He had offered Belfield for sale, reserving the mill for Linnaeus and Franklin. The farm implements were sold. He had some forty portraits of relatives of his three wives, and these he would now be placing in other homes. It was sad to think that he might never himself keep house again. He would, indeed, as time wore on, cast an interested eye upon some lady or other who met his standards of feminine good sense, but needed now the shelter and care of others. He thought again of travel, to the European nations perhaps, cementing

that long-established tie between his museum and theirs.? Then, suddenly, came that dramatic confrontation of old and new: he would resume direct control of the Museum. Rembrandt, whose success with The Court of Death had convinced him that painting

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Charles Willson Peale should be his one career, and Rubens, who was yearning to fulfill his own ideas of museum

management, came to an understanding. Rubens would buy his brother’s controlling interest in the Baltimore Museum, assuming all the debts and obligations that went with it, as of May 1, 1822.4 His cash payment was enough to enable Rembrandt to move with his family to New York and open a studio on Broadway. Hard times and Rembrandt’s neglect had wrought havoc with the Baltimore institution, but Rubens, with the confident outlook of the Peales, hoped within a few years to buy out the stockholders, to whom an

8 per cent dividend was due, and control the entire concern. He resigned at once as manager of the Philadelphia Museum and betook himself to Baltimore. His father remained in Rubens’ house, with the sale of which he had been charged. Rubens’ housekeeper was there, and Franklin and Titian lived with him for a while in spite of their mutual enmity. Basket on arm, he went out himself to do the family marketing. James Peale, Jr., was married on May 11 to his cousin Sophonisba, Raphaelle’s daughter.

It was a merry time, with the wine of Belfield flowing freely and all the young people eager to see the Reverend Dr. Abercrombie take too much. Peale left for home at half past ten, to set a good example. “But whether the company will take the hint,” he wrote to Rubens that same evening, “I cannot tell. I see the parson take a glass of wine, and in a few minutes afterward the bridegroom asked him to take another. Thinks I to myself, “You

had better let it alone.’ My brother, Polly and the girls, all were there, also Rachel and Mrs. McGlathery. Oh, by the by, the bride said to me, ‘Suppose we have another wedding. Here 1s my [grand]mother, and the parson present, and we can get bridesmaids.’ My reply was that J am not yet old enough.” This was pure mischief from Sophy, for if there was anyone in the world her grandfather could not endure, it would be a McGlathery.

The Museum trustees, meanwhile, had elected him manager to succeed Rubens. His old friend, Dr. Robert Patterson, became their president, succeeding Pierce Butler, who had died. Two new members were added, Joseph Parker Norris, Quaker scholar and philanthropist, and Henry Pratt, successful merchant and son of Matthew Pratt, the portrait painter. This done, July 19, 1822, they voted “that Charles Willson Peale be requested to paint a full-length portrait of himself to be placed in the Museum,” and, simultaneously, requested that the new manager submit a full financial statement. The first was, of course, by far the more congenial task.° He began to prepare canvas at once, only pausing to protest that the Museum had no room for so large a picture, an objection quickly overruled.

‘“T think it important,” he wrote, “that I should not only make it a lasting monument of my art as a painter, but also that the design should be expressive that I bring forth into public view the beauties of nature and art, the rise and progress of the Museum.”? Upon a canvas six feet wide and fifteen high he set out to depict both present skill and past accomplishment (Plate XIV). He would show himself in an act of self-declaration, raising

with one hand a curtain to disclose the truths of natural history, represented by a view of

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,, C. W. PEALE: Yarrow Mamout. 1819

At the reputed age of one hundred and thirty-four, and, as the painter found him, “healthy, active and very full of fun.”

PLATE XII

C. W. Peace: Self-Portrait. 1821

Painted for his daughter, Sophy, at the age of 81, “without spectacles.”

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C. W. PEALE: Self-Portrait Study. 1822 : \ 4

A first experiment with the unusual lighting an kl of The Artist in His Museum. ‘““To make a trial : / ,

of it, I took a small canvas and painted a a ) portrait which is said to be more striking than that I painted for . . . Sophonisba.”

PLAT]

REMBRANDT PEALE: Franklin Peale. 1808 Rembrandt’s affectionate portrait of his halfbrother, aged 13.

C. W. PEALE: james Pea. 1822

“The Lamplight Portrait a monument to his brother career. “On the shade of tl

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PLATE XIV

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C. W. PEALE: The Artist in His Museum. 1822

Commissioned by the Directors of the Museum, and a monument to its founder’s career. The right hand raised in the symbolic gesture of revealing the wonders of nature. On the table behind, brush and palette laid aside to pursue the greater work.

The Return of Lafayette the Long Room. Always interested in unusual lighting effects, he would step out beyond the accepted practice in portrait painting. “The light I have chosen for my portrait is novel.” he told Jefferson, “and before I made

a beginning of the large picture, I made a trial on a small canvas to know if I could make the likeness sufficiently striking. My back is towards the light, so that there is no direct light except on my bald pate, the whole face being in a reflected light. You may readily conceive that it required a considerable knowledge of middle tints to make a striking

likeness—and whether it is novelty of this mode of portrait painting that captivates the connoisseurs of the art, but so it is, that I have great encomiums on the work, from artists as well as others.’’®

On a table nearby rested palette and brushes, symbolically laid aside for the greater work, and on the floor a few bones of the mammoth. At his feet on the other side a wild turkey lay ready for mounting, with tools for the purpose at hand. Behind, beyond the upraised curtain, the cases of birds ran back into distance, the double row of portraits above them. On the other side, where the Long Room windows were, with the cases for smaller objects, he showed instead the mastodon skeleton, only the lower part of its majestic bulk in view. Four small figures dramatized the background scene, a man gazing up at the faces of the heroes, another instructing his small son in natural history, and a Quaker lady, her arms raised in astonishment before the great skeleton.

He invited Joseph Hopkinson, whose critical eye he valued, Henry Pratt, and other friends to see the picture, drank in their praise with open pleasure, set about repainting such parts as some thought incorrect.? And, while the mood was on him and to share the honors, he painted another unusual portrait, a large piece showing his brother James seated by lamplight at a table, a miniaturist’s palette and brushes before him, a completed ivory

in his hand, the emblem of the Cincinnati at his lapel. James would share the honors as he had always done. “I think this is noting that my brother,” he confided to Rembrandt, “has deserved well of his country.”!°

The trustees, though they transacted their business with fidelity, would not take the aggressive stand that Peale desired. Some of them, he feared, valued the university above

the Museum. They had voted him a salary of 25 per cent of proceeds with freedom to engage such help as he might need. He took Franklin and Titian as assistants at a salary of six hundred dollars each. This was satisfactory to neither of the brothers, quick of temper as they were, and each resenting the other’s intrusion—Franklin by right of longer service, Titian by right of his experience as a naturalist. Titian talked of going west as a trapper.

His father countered by offering, of all things, to set him up as a dentist, giving both instruction and capital. Much of Peale’s time through the heat of this summer had been given to the making of porcelain teeth.’ As with the moving pictures, he had heard of the thing’s being done in Europe and with no guide but his own ingenuity worked out the problems of their manufacture himself, firing the teeth separately and fixing them upon a silver or platinum base, as he had done formerly with those carved of bone. In porcelain

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Charles Willson Peale teeth he was achieving a goal of many years’ endeavor, teeth that were natural in appearance and proof against decay. It could, he felt sure, be a source of wealth to someone, with dentists far too few to handle the practice. Titian, however, scorned the opportunity, no matter how profitable it might be. Harsh words passed between father and son, and the old man’s determination to be calm, forbearing, and rational, suffered sharp strain again. He knew that Titian was in love. Franklin’s experience, with the other frictions, had led him into a position of disapproval. It had been going on since before the expedition, and Raphaelle’s Sophy had kept Titian assured of his sweetheart’s constancy during his absence. Eliza Cecilia Laforgue was of French parentage. At an earlier day this alone would have won parental approval, but now Peale saw her as “low-bred” and a “bigoted” Roman Catholic. He had written a strong letter of disapproval to her mother.‘* He had written Titian, forbidding him to marry./° The wedding took place on October 10, 1822. Sybilla had prepared the reception. Titian himself broke the news. Peale’s letter to Rembrandt written the next day tells the story:

Titian was married last night. Some particulars may be acceptable. He asked me at noon if I would be at leisure at half after seven in the evening, as he would then be married in the chapel, if they consented to give him that favor. Attending at the hour (the evening was cloudy with some little rain) he had provided carriages and we drove to her mother’s where we found the bride and bride’s maids-in-waiting. I was introduced to her and her mother. We then set out for the chapel, and the priest in a little time read over the rites, but in so low a voice that I did not hear a single word. We reentered the carriages again and drove to our house... . When we entered, I accosted the bride, and told her she was welcome here. Next we were called to the painting room to tea. The tables extended across the room, with all necessary things, and in the center a large cake on a waiter. It was ornamented with various colored figures, and the top a round pedestal with two hearts colored red. This white pedestal and hearts was covered

with a sort of network made of sugar candy in the form of a temple, and glistening by the light of the candles.

After regaling ourselves with coffee and tea, and eating a few cuts of the cake, we then returned to the parlor, and I asked the bride if she would be free enough of tremor to play on a piano that had been provided. She readily consented, and she fingered the keys handsomely, then sang, and Franklin joined in several songs. At the hour of ten, I slipped away, to go to Coleman’s to lodge, as I had given my bed to the bridesmaids. As usual, I rose early and went to the Museum and read the newspapers, then, returning home, found them up. I then went to the bride, gave her a kiss, and wished her much happiness and a long life of enjoyment. And then I presented to her my Essay on Health, and that on Domestic Happiness, desiring her to read them once a year during her life. She promised to do it. After breakfast, I went into the painting room, and finding her alone, I fastened the door and and told her that I wanted some conversation with her. You know that there is not that har-

mony between Titian and Franklin that ought to be. I require the service of both in the Museum. But first I told her that I heard that she was an amiable woman, and since Franklin

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The Return of Lafayette was fond of music, and she performed well, if she would use her endeavor to produce harmony between the two brothers it would greatly oblige me, and it would most certainly contribute much to her happiness. I told her that during my whole life I had always labored to promote domestic happiness in the family. I told her that I well knew the temper and disposition of all my children, that my children by my second wife was hasty and passionate, but that they soon got over it, which was a good trait in their character.'*

As he had hoped, the feud between Titian and Franklin quieted down after the marriage and harmony reigned for a while. Eliza Cecilia was little and thin, discreet, and bore out the promise he had sensed in that light, sure touch on the piano. He agreed to board with the couple. That would give them the extra income they must have; they, in turn, would leave him room for a workshop and all conveniences. He was, at the same time, supporting Raphaelle, who worked hard with trembling fingers yet could not sell his still lifes, painted, as they were, with such delicate perfection. Raphaelle’s seventeen-year-old son, Edmund, lived with the Sellers family and worked in Coleman’s manufactory. He was a laughing, light-footed boy, so fond of dancing that Coleman sent him to a dancing school on condition that he would teach the other children what he

learned there. Edmund gave his lessons in the Sellers front parlor, and in the course of them fell head over heels in love with one of his pupils, Mary Ann Smith. As soon as her father, a respectable “fancy grocer,” got wind of this affair, the maid was withdrawn into strict seclusion. Obviously, the Peales themselves were not regarded everywhere as good marital prospects. Raphaelle—this was in November, 1822—took his pining son on a trip to Baltimore. There Edmund, to whom, as with all the family, these matters came very hard, swallowed a dose of opium and arsenic. An emetic saved his life but did not mend the wounded heart. He took ship for South America in December.!” His grandfather wrote the boy a parting letter, full of favorite admonitions, urging him also to learn Spanish, advice which Edmund took and turned to his advantage.!© Edmund’s adventures kept the family in turmoil for some time thereafter. In Baltimore he was too

late to board the ship on which he had taken passage for Porto Bello and sailed instead for Chagres in the schooner Hunter. ‘The Hunter, it seems, was laden with arms and ammunition on some project hostile to the Crown of Spain. The ship was seized by a Spanish ship

of war and carried into Havana, all her people thrown into the dungeons of the old castle and in due time condemned to death. Father and grandfather wrote in frantic appeal to Commodore Porter begging his intervention, Raphaelle requesting him also to take the boy into the service of the United States. There, at least, there would be some control over

him.“ It was Edmund himself, however, who cut the knot. Marching under guard along the sea wall from Morro Castle to the place of execution, he leapt into the water among the tumbling whitecaps and swam, still chained as he was, to a small schooner. She was an American, Baltimore-bound with a cargo of fruit, and so was the adventurous youth returned to his port of embarkation. After that, he settled in Cumberland, Maryland, went

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Charles Willson Peale into business with the landlogd of the principal hotel there, and married his daughter. Left

a widower in time, he returned to Philadelphia, met again and was united to, in 1839, his earliest love—Mary Ann Smith.?®

Just as Peale had to keep Raphaelle’s household from destitution, so also from time to time he had to contribute funds to forward Rembrandt on the career that seemed to promise so well. Rembrandt was in a fine house at 345 Broadway with examples of his best work on view: his Roman Daughter, a copy of Wellington by way of military hero, since Napoleon’s sun had set, and a portrait of his father. His father’s fear that “the dashing people of New

York will make but little work for artists,’ was to be shared by Rembrandt.!? Expenses were much higher than at Philadelphia, and he found he had to travel to meet them, ranging from Boston to the South. His father advised that shorter sittings might satisfy the “dashing people,” but Rembrandt could not maintain the standard he had set in short sittings. He talked morosely of going to England—the English were more appreciative of the needs of an artist—while his father fretted lest his son be thought to have a roaming, unsettled temperament. Rembrandt, however, had launched out upon what was to become one settled aspect of his career, producing—after seventeen trials, in a “poetic frenzy”— an idealized “‘composite”’ portrait of Washington. This is the famous “‘Port Hole,” so called from the painted oval of stonework surrounding the likeness, designed to give it an additional monumentality. The picture has strength and merit, and its place in history. It pleased

all of Washington’s old friends. The artist publicized it with fervor, repeated it many times, and by it became one of the high priests in the cult of Washington worship. Trumbull’s Washington Resigning his Sword, commissioned by Congress, was now on display. Rembrandt was planning a gigantic Washington at Yorktown, an equestrian portrait with attendant

figures, and was lobbying for it in House and Senate. In Philadelphia, Peale was hard put to it to scrape up extra money to help himself and his sons through the lean years. In 1823 he had debts of $4,600. He rented Belfield in that year, but at a sum that barely paid taxes.*? Unable to sell Rubens’ house, he rented it to

Dr. George McClellan, who opened a dissecting room there for private instruction in anatomy and surgery.*! The two big paintings of himself and James had given him the sense of creation fulfilled, of admiration won and held; he felt he had the strength for any task.

The Museum’s imitators had drifted far beyond any serious purpose of scientific exposition. His alone had a conscience, yet shared the ignominy of the others. Entertainment was

now a necessity, but it would be “rational entertainment” as of old, and he would press forward his plan of lectureships.** He could occasionally obtain the use of the Declaration Chamber, below the Museum, for this purpose. In 1822, Sully having vacated Philosophical Hall, Peale had sought to return to his old quarters there, to gain room for both lectures and exhibition. The society turned him down, in one more evidence of the scientific world’s growing distrust of popularization. Peale continued the evening “philosophical”? demonstrations into the summer, finding they

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The Return of Lafayette

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at least showed a profit. above the cost of oil. The magic lantern was a feature of these affairs. It was used principally to illustrate astronomy and other sciences beyond the range of a museum collection, but Rubens had developed it also for entertainment, even to showing pictures in motion.?? Peale had thought his scenes of moving ships very well done, though the effort to reproduce the motion of horses’ legs was not convincing.** By way of sound effects, he had used Raphaelle, the ventriloquist, who would keep the audience in a roar of laughter and wind up the evening with a dazzling display of sleight of hand. Rubens had

introduced the Sellers boys, Charles and Escol, to this work at the hollow table in the Lecture Room, and Franklin took part in it, too, in a studious, clever way. Occasionally, special demonstrations would be conducted here by recognized authorities, Dr. Thomas P.

Jones, Dr. John K. Mitchell, and Dr. Robert Hare among them. Electrical experiments enjoyed the greatest popularity—the dancing dolls, the lightning flashes that made a portrait appear on a glass plate, and, best of all, the thunderstorm, complete with cloud, lightning,

thunderclap, and the utter collapse of the miniature house.?? There was an air pump, always a fertile source of wonder, and a long repertory of chemical experiments, such as “the unaccountable Rotating Cylinders of Ampore .. . and a new, mysterious experiment of igniting cold platinum with a stream of cold hydrogen gas.” The evening always ended with the firing of the brass gas cannon. Titian never took part in these doings. His headquarters were in the preserving room. He identified new specimens and attended to foreign exchanges. He had restored all the exhibits to their scientific order, taking the monkeys out of the Marine Room and replacing

them with a display of fish, and moving the quadrupeds into the center of their room, behind a wire guard, safe from small boys and the bleaching sun.?’ Franklin had rearranged

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Charles Willson Peale the minerals and coins.*® Between 1822 and 1825 his chief project, working with the aid of Isaiah Lukens, Coleman Sellers, and Dr. R. M. Patterson, was the construction of a magnet

capable of lifting three hundred pounds’ weight.?9 Franklin was a leading spirit of the Musical Fund Society, and both brothers sang and played at concerts and social affairs,

so that their father must shift for himself at times if he would insist on keeping the Museum open every evening.°? Peale confessed that he made but “a bungling hand” at the magic lantern, reflecting gloomily, “I do not think a talent for singing is any advantage to a young man.””?! He achieved a small advance in income, but in April, 1823, was obliged to recall Signor

Hellene once more, at least until the quarterly accounting to the trustees would be past. He would have the Italian one evening a week—no more. There must be a “steady course”’ of combined amusement and instruction. Two of the Museum “professors,” Godman and Troost, had already delivered lectures, but Peale wanted them on a regular schedule. He would lecture himself, to start things off, and since Thomas Say had set no date, would force the issue by setting one for him at the close of his own appearance.®? Dr. Harlan’s chief contribution as professor of comparative anatomy was to be the collection of specimens which later transformed the Marine Room into the Anatomical Room. Godman and Troost agreed to go on, Dr. Troost repeating his earlier discourse, a long, scholarly treatise in the French language. Dr. Godman was the most loyal, by virtue of his recent marriage to Rembrandt’s Angelica. He was a restless, energetic figure, doomed to an early death by con-

sumption but eager to do great work while time and strength remained. He had just returned from a year in Cincinnati to head the Philadelphia School of Anatomy. He and Raphaelle now revised the manuscript of Peale’s lecture, which Peale read over to friends in advance, by way of practice and in hope of getting it talked about and so increasing his audience.*? ‘“T have lately amused myself,” he confided to Angelica Robinson, “with writing a lecture

on natural history, which I intend to deliver when the weather becomes more settled, and ladies can be a part of my audience. Natural history embraces an immense field, and I have enriched this discourse with considerable variety of subject, and what pleases me most is, that I have launched forth to prove that the female sex has been absurdly called ‘the weaker vessel,’ by which old adage much injustice has been done to the fair sex.’’4 The ladies shared this view of the science, as well as his enjoyment of the beauties of nature. Indeed, it was to be expected that an artist should feel himself in alliance with that part of an extremely practical-minded population willing to love beauty for its own sake. Thomas Sully was the same, his art pervaded by a delicate feminine quality. Sully was an intimate of all the Peales, but seems to have found the ladies most congenial; Sully, Mrs. Sully, and Sally and Anna Peale were a typical group, attending Dr. Samuel Calhoun’s lectures on anatomy. Peale’s lecture was read on April 9, 1823, in the Declaration Chamber, the old man standing on the historic dais and refreshing himself occasionally with ice water from a rose-glass

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The Return of Lafayette punch bowl at his side. His audience was small, but the ladies were there and warm in their appreciation. He spoke again on May 7, and then followed with a longer lecture in two parts on May 17 and 18. The first part dealt with the lower forms of life, ending with a discussion of the filial affections of insects. The second discussed birds and quadrupeds and concluded with moral reflections on man—nature’s lessons against war and the natural duty of love owed to one’s neighbor.*? The dwindling attendance left him with a better understanding of the reluctance of his other lecturers, and he pressed them no more. “The Philadelphians are, I believe, sick of lectures of late.” Yet he had so longed to see the thing established, with crowds pouring in and the Museum able to pay lecturers an honorarium. As for himself, he was willing to admit that neither his composition nor his delivery had merit, and that his friends probably only praised to please him. One part of the plan he would still pursue. He wished to give his lectures at the Baltimore Museum, hoping to introduce the serious note that he believed essential to its good name. ‘“Peale’s Baltimore Museum and Gallery of the Fine Arts” moved in the general

pattern of its parent:—the mastodon and lesser subjects of natural history exhibited, pictures hung, profiles cut and framed, “medical electricity judiciously administered,” and gaslights used for evening illumination. Rubens had brightened things up and added many improvements. He was now showing a large painting, Christ’s Entry into Jerusalem, by Henry

Sargent of Boston. He was only beginning, however, to untangle his financial situation. Rembrandt had always recorded receipts, but had taken no notice of expenditures, at least

after his original subscription money had been spent. Rubens had found a structure of debt which only an era of unbroken prosperity could erase. On top of this, just as his father, with Sophy Sellers and her daughter Elizabeth, James Peale and his daughter Maria, and Samuel Sellers, arrived in town, a number of citizens had created havoc by defrauding the United States Bank. Bright little Betsy Bend, Charles Peale Polk’s sister, had lost her savings, and the city as a whole was, as Peale viewed it, ““much in the suds.” Yet his first lecture on May 31, and the two parts of the second a week later, drew crowded houses. In between he visited Annapolis with Sophy, lectured there again in the Senate Chamber, and visited old friends.2° They climbed the State House tower together, walked through the gardens of Charles Carroll of Carrollton, gazed on the romantic ruins of “Bladen’s Folly,” where Peale as a youngster had risked life and limb in search of pigeons’ eggs, and went out to Strawberry Hill, designed by Buckland for Richard Sprigg and now a Maccubbin home. Coleman came down to Baltimore and escorted them back to Philadelphia.*9

Peale returned from this outing with three new projects. In the first place, he had purchased the Walnut Street house from Rubens. It was a bargain at $5,600, and he met the debt by a mortgage on Belfield, still easily worth twice the sum.*? He began at once to alter it for his own use. A first thing was to get rid of the reek of blood and bodies coming in force from Dr. McClellan’s dissecting room, undoubtedly one reason why the place had

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Charles Willson Peale been so hard to sell. The chaise house, facing Sansom Street, was refitted to serve as the Museum’s preserving and printing rooms, with a painting room overhead. Outside, the manure pit was walled up halfway and, with the addition of a furnace and a small room adjoining, made into a manufactory of porcelain teeth. Rembrandt cast an envious eye on the painting room and proposed doing his great equestrian Washington there. But the old man liked the ‘“‘dung-hole”’ best of all.

“This is my favorite room. I carry the key of it in my money pocket.’”*!

His two other projects were in the field of painting. He had wanted to render some special service to the Baltimore Museum and Rubens, hitting upon an idea he knew his father would enjoy, suggested another large self-portrait, with some of the sensational eyefooling character of The Staircase, still, after thirty years, a major attraction of the Phila-

delphia Museum. And, second, in his reminiscent tour of Annapolis it had occurred to Peale to ask the city fathers, most of them old friends, for Van der Myn’s full-length of Lord Baltimore, which he had so much admired as a young man. The old painting was in miserable condition, dark and neglected. In return for it, he would paint six portraits of governors who had held office since the Revolution, a proposal to which the authorities readily agreed. The Lord Baltimore was shipped at once to the Baltimore Museum, where Peale intended it should remain.** He was happy in the idea of being the founder of a gallery of the chiefs of his native state, feeling sure it would be continued through the years. His part of the bargain, too, would take him on painting tours again, through the

old, familiar countryside. |

He had not had the heart to visit Belfield, but this summer he went out to the place again and ate his fill of strawberries and cream. Yet memories were saddening and, even more, the decay he saw around him. The garden was growing wild, the figure of Mars had been blown down in a storm, the paths washed out by rain, and only the long walk was sound enough for a commemorative turn on the velocipede.*? He was glad to be back in town again, busy in his “tooth room” and his painting room. The “‘staircase”’ self-portrait for Baltimore was now his absorbing occupation, eight feet high and six feet wide, a medley of illusion and allusion. The picture has vanished, alas, but a letter to Rubens, August 5, 1823, describes the composition. It was completed later that month, and the painting room opened for a public showing on September 18. The figure, full length, was seen descending a short flight of steps, palette and maulstick in hand, a saddler’s hammer lying in the foreground at his feet. Behind, his painting room was seen, and beyond this, significantly on a higher level, the Museum. “I mean,” he had written in his usual mood of candor, “to make the whole piece a deception if I can. But I may be mistaken in my abilities, as of late I find it the case, instance, lectures on natural history. The steps will certainly be a true illusion, and why not my figure? It is said that Apelles painted grapes so natural that

the birds came to pick them, that he then painted a boy to protect them, but the birds still came to take the grapes.’’*4

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The Return of Lafayette In the painting-room scene he introduced another picture now also lost, his portrait of Rachel gazing down upon her naked babe, which, as he fondly recalled, “gained me much credit with the poets of that day.”*° The exhibition drew crowds at once, to the old man’s delight, though he made a show of begrudging so much time from his work. He framed and posted his prices on the wall, cherishing a hope that he might again be fully employed at his old profession. He got no orders, but was amply compensated by the amazemeni and praise of so many friends. Thomas Sully, thinking there was a false step built in front as in the old Staircase, advised sending an extra bit of the carpeting to Baltimore. ‘How can I do that? Can I send painted steps?” ‘Painted steps! Bless me, I am completely deceived.’’46 That fall, and again the following summer, he roamed pleasantly through Maryland and also went to Washington, completing his portraits of the governors. He had never

failed to find a welcome in this country and now bore a name known throughout the nation and abroad. He could speak with familiarity of the heroes of the Revolution, had painted the portraits of every President of his time. He held here a far greater prestige than in Philadelphia. New Year’s, 1824, was marked by a renewed effort to secure the Museum’s standing as

an institution of pure science and art. The holiday night was made brilliant by a new transparency symbolizing the ennobling qualities of both. A female figure, six and a half feet high, was shown feeding a swan, on her right hand a crouching lion held by a ribbon

and above her head the word “NATURE.” Then, on January 16, a new publication issued from the Museum Press, Volume I, Number 1 of The Philadelphia Museum, or Register of Natural History and the Arts. If courses of lectures could not be accomplished, a museum journal might serve as well. It was to be a monthly, but with one ominous condition noted:

‘“[The appearance of the second number will depend on the manner in which the first is received.” No other number followed, though Dr. Godman, well qualified to do so, had assumed responsibility for three more issues if it could possibly be done.*®

With this publication just off the press, Peale received a highhanded proposal from Rembrandt. The trustees should be dismissed and a new group—Rembrandt and his brothers, presumably—appointed in their stead. They should receive a percentage of the income and should act, by power of attorney, for the proprietor.4? The young men obviously

distrusted his ability to manage, feared his emphasis on science rather than diversion, wanted larger profits and a larger share in them. The old man immediately and indignantly turned the proposal down. Instead he begged his trustees to pursue the plan of obtaining room over the city offices.°? Somehow, more ample exhibition space must be found. He still held to his dream of a museum building erected for that purpose alone, cherished ever since Latrobe had laid out a scheme in 1802. He no longer looked to public bodies, however, for endowment.

“My Museum progresses in utility,” he wrote to Jefferson on January 25, 1824, “yet

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Charles Willson Peale

.‘\ we

y oF , 7 ney 97. CG. W. PEALE: Self-Portrait,

“4 ee ee Lecturing. 1824

[will] languish in the want of some great influential character who would be active to produce a building capable of being extended with its increasing subjects and usefulness.”?! He knew now how slight was the chance of such success, and the reply from Monticello was unconvinced and smiling. “I always learn with pleasure the progress of your Museum.

It will immortalise your name, and your body must be deposited in its center under a Mausoleum, light and tasty, to be designed by yourself or Rembrandt. But far off, in the flux of time, be that day of loss and sorrow, and be its intervening years and days as many and as happy as you can wish.”?? Peale finished another, smaller, self-portrait in the spring of 1824. Joseph Hopkinson had asked for it on behalf of the Pennsylvania Academy, that he might be remembered there as founder and active member through the years. Peale made this, too, a test of skill, deciding on a front face and with the light behind.°*? When some people criticized the lighting, he painted another “for the multitude,” conventionally lighted, posing himself as lecturer on natural history with a large mastodon bone in hand.** The critics, he confided to Jefferson

a little sadly, complimented all his new work, calling it the best they had ever seen, “considering as being done by one of my age. ‘Thus the reward of praise is softened down to almost nothing.’’°?

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The Return of Lafayette He painted Titian’s wife at about this time. He even painted a miniature. The subject was the brother of a Quaker lady who had brought him a drawing, asking for a silhouette of it. Moses made the profile, but lost the drawing and Peale, to make amends, painted the ivory, using the silhouette for outline and the lady’s own countenance for detail. She was charmed by it. He asked her which she would prefer to have, the miniature or the drawing. “Certainly the painting.” ‘““Then my peace is made, for unfortunately I have lost the drawing, and it has given me much trouble and vexation.”’

“Oh! It was not of much value, and I still claim my part of the bargain, which was that you would settle it to my satisfaction.” ‘True, I did say so. But I am well pleased to find what I have done is satisfactory, and that you pardon my neglect and let me enjoy the pleasure of reparation.’’°® Deafness now, more than old age, isolated him. The electrical machine had done no good. Injections of warm milk, suggested by Bishop William White, had nearly brought him to his grave.?’ He had made and tested ear trumpets in various designs, but they were awkward and cumbersome.?® He rarely went to Wistar parties or other crowded gatherings, finding conversation among many voices impossible. ‘Although I lose some enjoyments,” he confided to Jefferson, “yet I need not hear anything disagreeable.””°?

This was putting a cheerful face on it, for he had to confess, more frankly, that the handicap was “very mortifying.’®? Old age, however, had been bringing a compensation which, to an artist, was to be preferred by far. As his hearing worsened, his sight had been improving. Spectacles had been discarded, and the increasing clarity of vision brought a sense, almost, of youth restored. With one person or a few he could manage well enough, and the summer of 1824 brought a visitor from abroad whom he found as congenial and stimulating as Baron von Humboldt had been years before. Charles Waterton was a naturalist-adventurer just returning, like Humboldt, from South American exploration. He was popularly renowned, and is famous

still for having overcome an alligator, alone and barehanded. It was done in order to obtain a skin undamaged by weapons. He had come to the United States solely to see Peale’s Museum—brought to his attention by Wilson’s Ornithology and by accounts of the mastodon.®! In the Museum he had encountered Titian and unloosed upon that youth an outburst on the lack of good tea in Philadelphia. Titian at once invited him to sample their brew on Walnut Street. It won praise. The visitor then launched forth into a description of his own methods for preservation and mounting, holding the fascinated attention of both father and son, and producing as examples of his work a cat’s head and a South American

bird. Like Peale, he modeled the muscular form before mounting a skin. He objected, however, to Peale’s practice of showing the mouth open. Peale defended this on the ground that the form of the teeth characterized a species. Waterton objected that it gave the speci-

men an unnatural, grinning appearance. On this and some more technical points he

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Charles Willson Peale persuaded the Americans that his method was better, and, the point won, offered to instruct

Titian in all he knew. When Peale went south again in search of governors, Titian and his new friend crossed to Salem, New Jersey, where birds and animals abounded for their purpose.” Waterton, a man of wealth, would not even permit his expenses to be paid, accepting only the graceful recompense of having his portrait added to the Museum gallery.

Even as this colorful visitor was departing from our shores, another, far more famous, approached them. On August 17, 1824, Lafayette landed at New York to spend one happy year as guest of the nation for whose independence he had fought and bled, a General of Washington’s army returning to the land where he had first won fame and glory. The boyish

enthusiasm that had brought him to America in those dark days was with him still, and to the glamour of it the country responded a thousandfold. He had led the armies of revolution in France, had abandoned them rather than accept the death of the King, had languished five years in an Austrian dungeon, returning to France under Napoleon, opposing

Napoleon, opposing the restored Bourbons, as staunch a democrat as ever, smiling and indomitable. Federalists in their heyday had cried out against ‘“‘the hypocrisy and treason of that cox-

comb politician, La Fayette,”®* but for most Americans he had been ever a hero of the brave and free, one light of generous gallantry in a world darkened by war and despotism: Mourn, Victim of Oppression, mourn, Thy griefs, tho’ great, must still be borne, The base, the vicious, are thy foes: In vain the virtuous few oppose. . .

as we find it expressed in the American Universal Magazine’s department of ‘Poetical Effusions.”°4 Now the dark days were over, the base and vicious left behind, the “virtuous few” around him everywhere. Now principles were given little thought, the glamour everything. Heartfelt ovations would

greet the old hero in every town and village, the honors reflecting from him to all the remaining veterans of the war. Each would have his new hour of glory, and among them the painter who had chatted with the boy General in his own language forty-five years before, boasting of the “French reformer’s” blood in his veins as something that brought them closer in their mutual love of liberty. The years had given them one point more in common. Each had resisted the long tides of reaction. Lafayette does not stand in history as the most successful of liberal leaders, but for constancy and nobility of spirit he is among the very great. New York gave a thunderous greeting to the genial, dignified old man. Philadelphia was

preparing for his arrival with a wave of enthusiasm such as the city had never known before. The Select and Common Councils named a committee to plan and co-ordinate a reception of consummate dignity and splendor. Other groups took shape at a great mass

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The Return of Lafayette

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98. C. W. PEALE: Charles Waterton. 1824 a oer i i a ‘

The book is labeled “Waterton’s Method,” a - 2 - e on f 7

and the bird and cat’s head were the a : a i sw P specimens with which the method had | — i D., ‘ “¥

been demonstrated. pee. > ait ss

meeting in State House Yard. The whole town was suddenly moving in tune to a rising, lyrical excitement of expectation: All hail! gallant soldier, thy fame shall extend, As Liberty’s champion and Washington’s friend; Thy name, like his own, shall be honor’d on earth, As the watch-word of freedom and standard of worth.®

Triumphal arches sprang up across the streets where the hero would pass, thirteen of them. The last and greatest, directly in front of Independence Hall, had a front of fortyfive feet, a height of thirty-three. It was a wood-and-canvas affair, designed by William Strickland and made by the scene painters of the Chestnut Street Theatre. The arms of Pennsylvania, surmounting it, were by Thomas Sully, and William Rush had carved the flanking statues of Justice and Wisdom, up against the sky.® Peale lent a hand, probably

with that part which would have been well within his experience, the four paintings simulating statuary, “Liberty,” “Victory,” “Independence,” and “Plenty.” He was giving most of his time, however, to the nine great transparencies that would fill the windows of the Long Room, aided by a lively corps of boys, among them Escol Sellers and Escol’s

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Charles Willson Peale friend, Bill Wood, son of the actor.®’ He told the youths, who marveled as everyone did at his energy, that it came from that French blood flowing so warmly from heart to brain, a theory which, I am sure, was well borne out in the designs. The central panel of the nine featured a white bust of Lafayette, wearing a civic crown and garlanded with flowers, the American eagle screaming overhead, and around it all a glory of French and American flags, cannon, spears, muskets, the whole panoply of martial triumph which the young Lafayette had been so eager to achieve, unmarred by any trace of Peale the pacifist.© Belowstairs, the State House was being renovated and repainted, and the Declaration Chamber, under Mr. Strickland’s direction, fitted up with new cartpeting and with blueand-scarlet curtains as the “levee room” where the official reception would take place. Portraits borrowed from Peale’s collection were hung around it. In the midst of all this, word came from Chief Justice William Tilghman, heading Philadelphia’s reception committee, that the Museum must be closed when the Marquis arrived at the building and that the central stair, its best vantage point, must be reserved for the committee. It came

as an order. What had been implied by failure to consult Peale on the arrangements earlier was here explicit—the Philadelphia Museum was not to be in evidence in any way at this great moment.®?

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