by Ron Carter
She flew down the stairs to face her father.
“What was it he gave you? What was it? It was an invitation, wasn’t it? I’ve seen them before. It was an invitation!”
She felt light-headed as she waited for his answer.
“Yes. It was.”
“For whom?”
“Yourself, and Rebecca and Ruth.”
“To what?”
She felt faint.
“The meschianza.”
“You accepted?”
The world stopped, and an eternity passed while she waited.
“Yes. I did.”
She sucked air and threw herself against her father, arms locked around his neck. “Thank-you, thank-you, thank-you. Oh, Father, thank- you.”
He waited until color returned to her face, took her hand in his, and led her into the library.
“I must warn you. You will attend only because I dare not offend the British. My dealings with them right now are somewhat . . . tenuous . . . because I will not swear allegiance to either side in this war. And, I still have strong reservations about this celebration—this meschianza. They want you and your sisters and some other young Philadelphia debutantes to participate in some sort of a play, or production. I’ve seen a sketch of the costume, and when it’s finished, I could change my mind if it offends decency.”
“It won’t. I promise, it won’t. I’ll make you proud, Father.”
“Dressmakers will come here for the fitting, and a hairdresser.”
“When?”
“Tomorrow, I’m told.”
Suddenly Peggy gasped. “Peggy Chew! Was she invited?”
“I believe she was.”
Without a word, Peggy spun on her heel and fled up the staircase and down the hall to her bedroom.
Edward listened to the rustling of her dress and the sound of her fading footsteps, then leaned back in his great leather chair. He rounded his lips to blow air, then shook his head in bewilderment at what he saw as the giddy, irrational thought processes of the female gender, and the emotional wells from which they sprang. With a little effort he could make some semblance of good sense of all else the Almighty had created. But the mind-set of the female gender? For one moment of unvarnished heresy he wondered if the Almighty had somehow allowed one single flaw to creep into what otherwise was a perfect performance in creating the world and all that in it is. He quickly pushed the unsettling thought from his mind and busied himself with the correspondence neatly stacked on one corner of his desk.
In her room, Peggy jerked the ribbons of her best bonnet into a knot beneath her chin, seized her best flowered silk parasol, ran down the stairs, out the door, and turned toward the Chew mansion, one block over, one block up. Breathless from her dash, she stopped beneath the four-columned portico and banged the massive door knocker three times. A somewhat perturbed-looking servant opened the door, then softened at the familiar sight of Peggy Shippen. A minute later she burst into the bedroom of Peggy Chew, breathing hard. There was no pretense of formality between the two, who had been close since infancy.
“Did you get one?” Peggy Shippen blurted.
“Yes! You?”
“Yes. And Rebecca and Ruth.”
The girls fell into each other’s arms, giggling.
Peggy Shippen drew back. “Who else got invitations? Father said there are just fourteen of us.”
“I know,” Peggy Chew squealed. “Just fourteen. I’m simply enthralled! I don’t know who else got them. The minute I find out I’ll tell you, and if you learn first you come straight here!”
“I promise. Do you know what we’re supposed to do? A play, or something?”
“My father heard a British officer talking at the courthouse yesterday. That darling John André is arranging something to do with knights jousting and courting beautiful, young ladies. That’s us!”
Both girls giggled, and Peggy Chew continued. “And in a million years you will never guess where the beautiful young ladies are supposed to come from.”
“Philadelphia, of course.”
“No. I mean, what country. Not America.”
“Not America? Where? England?”
Peggy Chew had milked it far enough. “No!” she exclaimed. “Turkey!”
Peggy’s mouth dropped open, and five seconds passed before she recovered enough to snap it shut. “Turkey? You mean harems and veils and all such?”
“Exactly! We’re going to be costumed as Turkish harem girls. Can you even imagine how wicked that will be? How utterly . . . heavenly?” Suddenly Peggy Chew’s eyes popped wide, and she erupted in gales of laughter, pointing at Peggy Shippen.
“What’s the matter? What did I do? What’s so funny?”
Peggy Chew could hardly bring herself under control. “You! Did you ever hear of a Turkish harem girl with blonde hair and blue eyes?”
The girls went into hysterics that left them collapsed on the huge, canopied bed.
The four days blended into an unending round of seamstresses forcing Peggy and her two sisters to stand erect and motionless while they carefully cut the costumes sketched by John André and patiently sewed them. The finished creation consisted of gauze turbans, spangled and edged with gold or silver. On the right side, a matching veil hung as low as the waist, and the left side of the turban was enriched with pearl and tassels of gold or silver, and crested with a feather. The dress was of the polonaise style, made of white silk with long sleeves. The sashes, which were worn around the waist, hung very low and were tied with a large bow on the left side. They were trimmed, spangled, and fringed according to the colors worn by the knight who was to be their escort.
Heated arguments erupted when Edward demanded to see the work, and the girls donned the nearly completed costumes to stand before their father’s stern stare. He revolted at the sight of his pure, proper, Puritan daughters seductively draped in filmy gauze and more jewelry than he had seen in his entire life.
“Never!” he raged.
Heart-wrenching sobs and desperate pleadings from his three daughters filled the second story of the mansion and sent him stalking down the stairs into his library sanctuary. He slammed the door, to pace and fume while the work continued on the costumes. They were finished and hanging in the girls’ closets at six o’clock p.m., May seventeenth.
That evening a French hairdresser and his assistant appeared at the door, faces haggard, drawn. They had had but four days to coif the heads of the fourteen Philadelphia belles; they had completed ten and were racing the clock to finish the four yet remaining before dawn. Shortly before midnight he pronounced his creations finished, peered at his list through bloodshot eyes, and walked out the front door on his way to the home of Peggy Chew, his last client.
Dawn broke with the spring sun flooding the city. The three girls were up with the fading of the morning star, ecstatic with what they were certain would be the greatest day of their lives. They flitted about, unable to touch a morsel of breakfast, all the while babbling meaningless trivialities.
None of them knew when a group of bearded, nervous, sober men dressed in black frocks with their low-crowned, wide-brimmed black hats held in their hands appeared at the front door. None saw Edward lead them to his library, where they sat in counsel for half an hour. Nor did any of the girls notice the men walk wordlessly from the library, down the long hall to the front door, which Edward held open while they filed out into the beauty of the morning, still carrying their hats.
Half an hour passed before the girls noticed that most of the servants were absent. It was then that Edward climbed the stairs to the second floor.
“I will need you all in the library. At once.” There was something in his voice that stopped all the gaiety. With a growing cloud of foreboding the girls walked down the stairs to stand in the library facing their father, who was on his feet behind his desk. Never had they seen such fierceness in his face. His voice was firm, strong, deliberate.
“The Friends paid me a visit an hour ago.
Our Quaker brothers. Six of them. Abijah Hauptman spoke for them. It is the opinion of their council that it would be seriously unseemly for you three to appear in public in the costumes you have upstairs, with your hair arranged as it is now. I agree with them. I have sent written messages to your three escorts that you will not be attending, and to have someone collect the costumes so they can be used by other . . . less decorous . . . young ladies.”
For three seconds a breathless, tense silence held before the girls erupted. Rebecca and Ruth burst into tears and wailing. Peggy took a step toward her father, nearly shouting, “You gave permission! You said we could!”
He faced her with eyes narrowed, mouth compressed, not uttering a word.
“Father, we will never . . . what will people say . . . what . . .”
Edward walked around his desk, out the door, down the hall, and away from the hysterical shrieks and sobbings of his three daughters.
At noon a messenger banged the door knocker. “I am instructed to collect three costumes from this household. Do I have the right address?”
The messenger left with the three filmy Turkish harem costumes wrapped in a sheet, all too eager to be far away from the rantings and sobbings of the three girls.
Peggy fled upstairs to her bedroom, bolted the door, and slumped onto her bed with her pitiful sobbings reaching out into the hall. At three o’clock, exactly on cue, under an azure sky and in dazzling spring sunshine, the orchestra in the open-air pavilion six blocks away opened the meschianza, and the rich sound of thirty-two violins reached out through the city. Cheeks tear-streaked, and eyes puffy and bloodshot, Peggy slammed her bedroom window and buried her head beneath the two large goose-down pillows on her bed.
At six o’clock a servant rapped on her door to announce that Edward had sent her a tray of hot soup, crackers, cheese, and tarts. Peggy refused to answer the door. The servant set the tray on the thick carpeting beside the door and quietly retreated down the hall. The tray, with the food untouched, was still in the hallway at ten p.m. Peggy lay in her dark room on her bed fully dressed until three a.m. before exhaustion took its toll. Her last clear thought before she drifted into an exhausted, fitful sleep tore at her heart.
What will people think? Say? How can I ever leave this house again? Ruined. Forever. Ruined.
Notes
Margaret Shippen, called Peggy Shippen by her circle of elite friends in Philadelphia, married Benedict Arnold and was instrumental in his treason against the United States, thus becoming a significant part of the American Revolution. Peggy was the youngest daughter of the politically powerful and wealthy Edward Shippen. Her birth, childhood, early training, and growth into one of the most beautiful young ladies in Philadelphia, were as described. She became a favorite of many high ranking British officers, including Captain, later Major, John André, with whom Peggy and her husband, Benedict Arnold, plotted the treason. She was selected as one of the fourteen young Philadelphia belles to participate in the great meschianza in which John André played such a significant role, only to have her conservative father withdraw his permission and forbid his daughters to participate on the afternoon of the great event. Peggy was devastated (Flexner, The Traitor and the Spy, pp. 187–216).
Saratoga to Valley Forge
October 7, 1777, through May 26, 1778
CHAPTER IV
* * *
Frosty October nights and shortened, crisp, cool days had transformed the forests of the Hudson River Valley into a canvas of reds and golds that reached to the furthest purple rise of the rolling, New England hills. The woods echoed with the whistling bugle of great, antlered bull elk, fat from gorging on the abundance of twigs and berries, nuts and acorns, ripened rich and full by the eternal round of seasons. Instincts as old as time rose from within, and the shaggy giants of the hills squared off in forest clearings to do battle for the rights of the fall rut among the cows. It was a matter of total indifference to the cows which of the thirteen-hundred-pound bulls won or lost. It mattered only that it was the ordained duty of the cows to stand at a respectful distance, watching, listening to the resounding grunts and the rattling crash of massive antlers colliding as the warriors lowered their heads to hurl themselves headlong into each other, their sharp, split hooves ripping huge chunks of sod from the forest floor. The cows watched, and waited, and finally went to the bull that was left alone in the clearing as the other limped away. There would be a new crop of calves in the spring, sired by he who had proved his superiority in battle. Their genus would survive for another year.
On September 19, 1777, at the place called Saratoga, on the west bank of the Hudson River, about twenty-five miles south of the southern tip of Lake George and twenty-five miles north of the wilderness village of Albany, the roar of cannon and the blasting of muskets and rifles and the acrid bite of gun smoke had emptied the forests. The elk and deer, bear and panthers, raccoons and squirrels, ravens and hawks and eagles, and countless other woodland creatures had silently slunk away from the place where the two-legged invaders had intruded into the orderliness and quiet of their kingdom. Better to leave than suffer the scourge that inevitably followed. Where men came, the forests became silent. There was no other way.
The two opposing armies, British and American, had established their lines and their command headquarters about seven miles apart—the Americans under command of General Horatio Gates, with his second in command General Benedict Arnold; the British under the command of General John Burgoyne.
The American camp lay at a place where the old, winding dirt road north of Albany forked at the Bemis tavern, with the left wagon track angling northwest into the wilderness, and the right one, called the River Road, turning northeast, parallel to the Hudson.
To the north, the British had built their cannon emplacements and breastworks just beyond what was called the Great Ravine—a gigantic gash in the earth running northwest from the west bank of the Hudson River. Between the two camps, and slightly to the side, was Freeman’s abandoned farm. Not far from the farmhouse was a sizable open space, known as Barber’s wheat field.
On September nineteenth, the two armies had stumbled into each other, more by accident than design, at Freeman’s farm. At day’s end there was no clear winner, but the Americans had stopped the British in their tracks, in their march for Albany. For the next seventeen days the two armies entrenched themselves and skirmished and waited—Burgoyne for reinforcements from General Clinton or General Howe, Gates for the British to run out of food and supplies.
By nightfall on October sixth, it was clear that the time for waiting was over. No British reinforcements had arrived to relieve Burgoyne, and none were coming. The snows of winter were but short weeks away. Burgoyne had to move but could not retreat with General John Stark and his tough American New Hampshire militia behind him. He had to move forward, south, and try to overrun the Americans facing him, or lose his army to freezing and starvation in the oncoming winter.
In the darkness preceding dawn of October 7, 1777, General Daniel Morgan, the “Old Wagonmaster,” dressed in buckskins with his long hair tied back with a rawhide string, led his crack corps of backwoods riflemen on a silent scout, probing for any change or movement in the British lines.
There was none.
He made his report to General Gates, took his breakfast at the officers’ mess, then went to his tent to sit on his bunk to rest his aging hip and ailing knees. He buried his face in his hands for a time, pondering, reflecting, then heaved himself back onto his feet. Soldiering had taken its toll on joints and muscles, and he stood for a moment, letting his six-foot frame take the weight of his two-hundred-pound body while he worked with his thoughts.
Why isn’t Burgoyne making his move? Winter will lock him in soon if he doesn’t either try for Canada or to beat us.
He shook his head. If he tries to get past us, there’ll be a fight—a heavy one. And if I heard it right, Arnold has just resigned—can’t abide Gates’s refusal to hit the British b
efore they hit us. If Arnold leaves, what will Gates do without him? So far he just sits there in his headquarters drinking coffee. Won’t go to the front lines. Won’t commit to the battle that’s got to come. Won’t let any of us do it for him—especially Arnold. Bad blood between those two—bad. What’s going to come of it all? What?
He could not force a conclusion in his mind, and he walked out through his tent flap feeling a rising sense of frustration, nearly anger. He was halfway to General Gates’s low, log headquarters building when the rattle of distant musketfire reached him from the north. He slowed for a moment and turned his head to better hear, trying to read the far-off crackle.
The pickets and scouts are under fire!
His pace quickened as he hurried on toward Gates’s hut. As he approached, eight other officers came striding, including generals Lincoln and Learned, Major Dearborn, and General Poor. They all slowed then stopped to wait when they saw Benedict Arnold hurrying toward them. With Arnold among them, Morgan rapped on Gates’s door. It opened and Gates stood facing them, fully dressed except for the top of his tunic, which remained unbuttoned.
Standing in the morning sun, the contrast between the two men, Gates and Arnold, was painfully obvious to every man in the group. Gates, corpulent, soft, gray-eyed, a light complexion unblemished by sun or weather, loose-jowled, thick-lipped, by aptitude and lifelong design a politician and paper shuffler. Arnold, stocky, hard, blue-eyed, thin-lipped, so swarthy and burned by summer sun and winter snows that the Iroquois Indians had given him the name “Dark Eagle.” Arnold was absolutely blind to the game and nuance of politics, despised the grinding monotony of paperwork and reports, and detested confinement or inactivity for any reason. Of all the world offered a soldier, nothing fulfilled him like leading men into the white heat of mortal combat. It was his narcotic, his intoxicant, his mistress, his Lord and master, his Deity. Finding himself subject to a commander in chief whose polar star seemed to be avoiding the very battle that had to be, had brought Arnold to a constant state of sullen, smoldering rage. Chaffing under the intolerable conditions, he had written a long, vituperative letter to Gates, requesting that he be returned to General Washington and the Continental Army, where “I might serve my country, since I am unable to do so here.” Gates forwarded the request to Congress, shuffled papers, and left the matter unresolved.
