The implications for the Howe brothers would be significant. Beginning in mid-1777, a derogatory public image of the two commanders in chief emerged in the newspapers, reaching such a level that the brothers would be unable to ignore it. Significantly, the negative stereotypes originated in London, rather than in the English provinces.92 The mudslinging undoubtedly had its origins in the metropolis, in the small, intense, aristocratic society of the West End, but also in the bustling merchants’ and tradesmen’s clubs and coffeehouses in the business district of the city, which were hothouses for news, gossip, and speculation. Reputations—in a world in which reputation mattered—could be at the mercy of evolving opinion in such volatile arenas. As we will see, a stereotype quickly emerged of the performance of the brothers in America that drew upon anti-aristocratic tropes that had begun circulating in the early years of the previous war.
‘[W]e have another instance of Howe’s declining a general engagement with Washington,” bellowed the Stanford Mercury in July. “Advices from America so late as July 6th, and nothing effective done or attempted.—Our grand army retreating under the supposition of a feint!” wailed the London Evening Post. The attacks were so prolific that they degenerated into cruel satire. A spoof advertisement appeared for “A Collection of Capital Paintings” to be exhibited to the public, including “A picture of an army advancing backwards—By General H—.” The war, it was charged, was being dragged out so that Howe and other elite officers could obtain promotion and pay.93
To William Howe were attributed the traits of a self-indulgent aristocrat whose love of recreation trumped his commitment to his duty. “Considerable betts have been laid at a certain coffee-house in the West end of the town, that General Howe would not relinquish the pleasures of New York, for the toils of the field, before the first of August,” read one newspaper. An anonymous writer declared that the American war was merely an opportunity to extract money from the public to enrich the wealthy and powerful.94
The Howe brothers—all three—had been lionized in the Seven Years’ War as the epitomes of active, daring, silent Englishmen. Now the dynasty found itself on the receiving end of the same media-generated personal attacks that had been deployed twenty years earlier against the nation’s unsuccessful commanders. In a century when, to the derision of ordinary Britons, the upper classes adopted many of the fashions and manners of France, failed military leaders were often pilloried as cultural traitors. The outstanding example was the unfortunate Admiral Byng, executed in 1757 for his failure to relieve Minorca from the French. Byng was popularly depicted as a Frenchified fop, a man whose supposedly un-English style of living, modeled on French decadence and effeminacy, lay at the root of his inadequacy as a naval commander. Conspiracy theorists went further, conjecturing that behind Byng’s failure was a treacherous plot by aristocratic British ministers to undermine the empire. Public hostility reached such a pitch that it played a part in the decision to deny the admiral a reprieve from execution.95
Closer to home for the Howe dynasty than the fate of Byng were the experiences of their kinsman Sir John Mordaunt—the army commander for the notorious Rochefort expedition in 1757. Mordaunt was abused, ridiculed in the press, called a coward, and heaped with contempt. The ministry succeeded in shifting much of the blame onto him in the tribunal of public opinion, despite his acquittal in a court-martial. Conspiratorial rumors suggested that the Rochefort expedition had miscarried because of suspicious orders whose contents had been concealed from the public.96 In 1777, as we have seen, similar tales would emerge regarding allegedly suppressed orders to General Howe from Lord Germain.
But the attacks on the Howes had an entirely new dimension as well, for the American War of Independence was the most atypical war of the century.
The narrative that carried Britain into war in 1775 was strikingly different from that of any previous war against a European foe. The string of failures confronting the nation at the start of the Seven Years’ War twenty years earlier—Braddock’s Road, Rochefort, Fort William Henry, to name but a few—provoked a national outcry, but they also fit into a British tradition that regarded unpreparedness for war as the characteristic of a free people. Britons were proud of the fact that they did not maintain the repressive standing armies of absolute monarchies, even if one consequence was a slow start to wars against major continental military powers like France. The reaction in the Seven Years’ War had been a bout of national despair and soul-searching, which was succeeded by a return to the struggle with renewed vigor.
In 1775, the situation was very different. This was essentially a civil war, and there was nothing inherently noble in it. Instead, armed repression was a necessary evil needed to bring the Americans to their senses and restore imperial harmony. William Howe was expected to win, and win quickly. Success alone would vindicate the use of force. A large number of Britons did not support American constitutional claims but nevertheless did not like the war. They saw it as a threat to British national security, and they were uncomfortable with their nation’s unaccustomed role of a Goliath pitted against the colonial Davids.
This no doubt was an important factor in the extraordinary circumstance that, during the American War of Independence, the British public was reluctant to assign hero status to its own military leaders. Instead, it handed acclaim readily to the rebel commander, George Washington, who was popular in the British press throughout the conflict. William Howe never lost a major battle, and George Washington lost more than he won, yet it was the American who was portrayed as the model military commander and citizen, the “Flower of American Chivalry,” as one newspaper put it.97
Even in the social circles of the Howes, Washington had his open admirers. Lady Mary Coke angrily recorded a spat over cards in which Lady Sarah Napier—the former Sarah Bunbury, now remarried—declared she “adored Mr Washington.” “[S]o do I said the silly Old Dowager [Lady Albemarle],” who was also present and had taken too much champagne. Lady Mary retorted that she hated the rebel general, to which Lady Albemarle tried to set her down with “I don’t believe Mr Washington cares what you or I think of him.”98 Tea-table tiffs of this kind were going on while William was being subjected to bitter abuse.
George Washington is known to have cultivated his image carefully to suit the part he was to play on the world’s stage. In one sense, he was in new territory, as the commander in chief of a self-declared republic that consciously rejected the titles and aristocracy of its former mother country. He strove to live up to the image of a republican military leader, a citizen-soldier who, like the Roman hero Cincinnatus, reluctantly left the comforts of private life to fulfill his duty to his country. And yet he also appropriated the contemporary ideal of an English fighting man. Like popular British figures of the Seven Years’ War, such as George Lord Howe, he spurned grand living quarters and shared in the hardships of his men. The British press responded by embracing Washington as a man who embodied an “antique of self-sacrifice” that the British people had now lost. Even the circumstance that Washington was a slaveholder was dwelt upon lightly if at all, despite the fact that American hypocrisy on this score was a favorite trope of British pro-government writers. It was widely reported that, from the start of the war, Washington accepted no pay for his services. The contrast between the American leader and their own supposedly greedy and self-serving commanders was not lost on the British public.99
If the public had been unaware of the Howe family’s relative poverty at the beginning of the American war, it was public knowledge now, and it lent credibility to the accusation that they were profiting from their posts. A satirical cartoon appeared in Fleet Street entitled “The Conference Between the Brothers How to Get rich.” The Devil, seated between them, counsels, “How, How, continue the war.”100 In July 1777, when the press was losing all restraint, one newspaper announced that the Howes were making “100,000 per annum each, by the present American war.” “[T]hey will at least no longer be distinguished by the epithet
of the poor Howes,” snickered the newspaper, “whatever other appellation their conduct may merit from their countrymen on their return to England.”101 The same slanderous stories were circulating in America, where John Adams recounted them to Abigail: “These two Howes were very poor, and they have spent the little Fortunes they had in bribery at Elections, and having obtained Seats in Parliament, and having some Reputation as brave Men, they had nothing to do but to carry their Votes and their Valour to Markett, and it is very true, they have sold them at an high Price.” Adams pronounced, “I would not be an Howe, for all the Empires of the Earth, and all the Riches, and Glories thereof.”102
Curiously, as the British public lost patience with its own commanders, the Americans in rebellion continued to revere the English heroes of the previous war, George Lord Howe and General James Wolfe. General Wolfe was depicted by patriot newspaper scribblers as the embodiment of the vanishing type of a noble and virtuous British officer, and one who, had he lived, would undoubtedly have sided with the American cause.103 When General William Howe’s army was a week away from landing on Staten Island, in June 1776, the New York provincial Congress actually toasted his brother, “the late noble [George] Lord Howe,” at a dinner for General Washington.104
This cartoon, published in October 1777, shows Admiral Howe and General Howe discussing how they can enrich themselves. “How, how, continue the war,” advises the Devil.
Perhaps this is why Thomas Paine, the foremost propagandist for the American cause, was at pains to extinguish William and Richard’s prestige, which had been sustained for too long by the memory of George. Englishborn, Paine was the author of Common Sense, the single most influential publication to champion American independence. He took up his pen in January 1777 to discredit British military leaders in general, and the Howes in particular. He drew a deliberate and stark comparison between the supposedly venal middle-aged commanders in chief that William and Richard had become, and their brother George, who died young and was known for his rugged irregular soldiering and his willingness to accept hardships in the service of his country. In an open letter “To Lord Howe,” he wrote,
America, for your deceased brother’s sake, would gladly have shown you respect and it is a new aggravation to her feelings, that Howe should be forgetful, and raise his sword against those, who at their own charge raised a monument to his brother. But your master has commanded, and you have not enough of nature left to refuse. Surely there must be something strangely degenerating in the love of monarchy, that can so completely wear a man down to an ingrate, and make him proud to lick the dust that kings have trod upon.
With the passage of years, sneered Paine, the Howe brothers had supposedly sacrificed their characters, adopting the effete refinements and easy virtue of courtiers. Once valiant men of action, they now served a tyrant and a debauched court.105 A year later, the indefatigable defender of republicanism would transfer his attacks to William, calling him indolent, incompetent, and “the hero of little villainies and unfinished adventures.” Sir William Howe, pronounced Paine dramatically, had made his “exit from the moral world.”106 All of this would quickly be republished in Britain.
Caroline Howe’s peace of mind was eroding under the barrage of media assaults on her brothers in the summer of 1777. Lady Mary Coke, who saw her at Lady Spencer’s villa in Wimbledon in July, noticed that Caroline appeared subdued. It was a delightful day, wrote Lady Mary; the young Duchess of Devonshire was there, and the Spencers had a menagerie of exotic pet birds on view to amuse their guests, but Mrs. Howe was not herself.
Lady Mary, a staunch supporter of the king and of the government, was disturbed by reports that Britain would soon find itself at war with France. “[S]ome say it is unavoidable,” she wrote with concern. She expressed the view of many in English society when she accused the French of playing “a treacherous part” from the beginning of the conflict, professing peaceful intentions to British diplomats while secretly sending arms and French military advisers to America.
Caroline’s mother, the Dowager Lady Howe, was also visibly failing under the pressure. Now seventy-three, Charlotte had seen her sons go away to war three times, one never to return. Maintaining a stoic front did not get easier with advancing years. Lady Mary, encountering her at a party, noted that “[s]he droops very much & if we have not some good news from America to revive her, I question whether she will hold out long.” Her eyesight was impaired, and she was unable to play cards.107
It was Caroline who now had to act as dynastic head. A few weeks after the Wimbledon party, Lady Mary met her again and found her in better spirits. She rallied to Lady Mary Coke’s comments on the “many disagreeable reports in the papers” about British military operations in America. “[N]one of them are to be believed,” Mrs. Howe had assured her in convincing terms; it was simply too early in the campaign for any reliable news to reach the metropolis. Two days later, Lady Mary heard a rumor that General Burgoyne had captured Fort Ticonderoga. “Everybody grows impatient to hear from Sir William Howe,” she added.108
Burgoyne had indeed taken Ticonderoga, something General Carleton had failed to do in 1776. Confirmation reached England in late August. Although it was greeted as good news, it did not relieve the pressure on the Howe women. Instead, gossips were incited to make unfavorable comparisons between William Howe and Burgoyne. A mutual friend of the Stracheys and the D’Oylys contrasted Burgoyne’s “spirited conduct” with the puzzling maneuvers of General Howe.109 At a high-society party, Lady Greenwich whispered to Lady Mary Coke and several others that the Dowager Lady Howe and her daughter Julie were jealous of Burgoyne’s victory. “[B]ut I cannot say I observed it,” wrote Lady Mary. She saw in the anxious mother only a wish for the success of all British arms in America.110 By this time, Lady Howe found herself living in a goldfish bowl, her very expressions and moods observed by critical onlookers. Her uneasiness could only have been magnified by the fact that she, along with everyone else, wondered where, exactly, William Howe and his army were bound.
When William had embarked from New York with his army, he had ensured that his destination was kept a secret; the enemy would of course find out in time, but meanwhile it could only be advantageous to keep Washington guessing. The aura of mystery heightened the demand for news in England. Caroline, at Battlesden in August with her Aunt Page and her sisters, found herself pursued there by letters imploring for intelligence of her brothers. She had no idea whether the army’s destination was Philadelphia or Boston. Responding to her friend Lady Susanna Leveson-Gower, she wrote that the last letters received from the brothers had been dated mid-June. The army was to embark from New York in the first week of July, and whatever her brothers undertook, whether in New England or Pennsylvania, “will be a stroke of consequence,” she asserted stoutly.111 She dropped the confident veneer with Lady Spencer, simply lamenting, “No news yet from America, horrid lies in this days papers.”112
Speculation about the whereabouts of General Howe and his army was laced with frustration and ill will. “No news of Sir William Howe,” recorded Lady Mary Coke, who had remained in London for the summer. In the absence of concrete intelligence, she lamented, “ill-natured reports” about the commander in chief were rife. Lord and Lady Hertford, both of whom played cards with Caroline, thought General Howe was being unduly influenced by his brother the admiral, who was “an excellent Sea Officer” but did not understand military operations.113 Lady Mary was not reading newspaper chatter but instead listening to critical remarks between individuals who knew the Howes personally.
As their numbers shrank, Caroline’s supporters closed ranks against the malice of high-society gossip. Lady Spencer wrote to Caroline from Spa, where Lord Spencer was taking his cure, “& now my Dear Howey let me beg you to give me all the intelligence you possibly can about America. I hate the Newspapers more than ever because they abuse your Brothers—I never will read them—nor believe any thing but what I hear from you upon that Subject.”114
When Lady Spencer wrote this, she had probably already received a letter from Lord Jersey that illustrated her friend’s growing isolation. Lord Jersey had been at the Christmastime theatricals at Phyllis Court in January, but a great deal had changed since that happy time. After discussing the widespread despondency over the course of the war, he concluded his letter with a damning summary of what was being said about the Howes:
The Blame is entirely upon the two Brothers, a general condemnation of their conduct; everything almost is laid at their charge; Want of Spirit & quickness last year. . . , delay now, want of generalship in the one, & want of management in the other in not defending the coast & letting the Boston Fleet get out. In short the fault must be laid somewhere to account for the miscarriage of an undertaking which has been given out as impossible to fail.
Lord Howe had been much criticized when a rebel squadron escaped from Boston in late May 1777. By August, the American ships were harassing the coast of Britain, snatching up provision-laden merchantmen and even boldly threatening the shipping lanes in the English Channel.115 The war was being brought home; its depredations impinged upon Caroline’s own set, as aristocrats bound for a tour on the Continent were constrained to be careful. At the end of August, Lord Jersey again cautioned Lady Spencer that he was hearing malicious talk against the Howes. “I trust you will not suffer those Friends [the Howes] to be run down,” he enjoined her. “If you have read the Paper you will know what I mean.”116
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