The Coquette by Hannah Webster Foster

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[Illustration: Eliza Wharton]

THE
COQUETTE;
OR,
THE HISTORY OF
ELIZA WHARTON.

A NOVEL:
FOUNDED ON FACT.

BY
A LADY OF MASSACHUSETTS.

HISTORICAL PREFACE,
INCLUDING
A MEMOIR OF THE AUTHOR.

He who waits beside the folded gates of mystery, over which forever
float the impurpled vapors of the PAST, should stand with girded loins,
and white, unshodden feet. So he who attempts to lift the veil that
separates the REAL from the IDEAL, or to remove the heavy curtain that
for a century may have concealed from view the actual personages of a
well-drawn popular fiction, or what may have been received as such,
should bring to his task a tender heart and a delicate and gentle hand.

Thus, in preparing an introductory chapter for these pages which are to
follow, many and various thoughts suggest themselves, and it is
necessary to recognize and pursue them with gentleness and caution.

The romance of "Eliza Wharton" appeared in print not many years
subsequent to the assumed transactions it so faithfully attempts to
record. Written as it was by one highly educated for the times,--the
popular wife of a popular clergyman, connected in no distant degree, by
marriage, with the family of the heroine, and one who by the very
profession and position of her husband was, as by necessity, brought
into the sphere of actual intercourse with the principal characters of
the novel, and as the book also took precedence in time of all American
romances, when, too, the literature of the day was any thing but
"_light_"--it is not surprising that it thus took precedence in interest
as well of all American novels, at least throughout New England, and was
found, in every cottage within its borders, beside the family Bible, and
though pitifully, yet almost as carefully treasured.

Since that time it has run through a score of editions, at long
intervals out of print, and again revived at the public call with an
eagerness of distribution which few modern romances have enjoyed. Its
author, Hannah Foster, was the daughter of Grant Webster, a well-known
merchant of Boston, and wife of Rev. John Foster, of Brighton,
Massachusetts, whose pedigree, but few removes backward in the line of
her husband,[A] interlinked, as has been already hinted, with that of
the "Coquette." Thus did they hold towards each other that very
significant relationship--especially in the past century--of "_cousins_"
a relationship better heeded and more earnestly recognized and
cherished than that of nearer kin at the present day. Therefore, not
only by family ties, but by similarity of positions and community of
interests, was she brought into immediate acquaintance with the
circumstances herein combined, and especially qualified to write the
history with power and effect. Nor is this the only work which bears the
impress of her gifted pen. There is still another extant, of which I
need not at this time and place make mention, besides many valuable
literary contributions to the scattered periodicals of that day. It is
to be regretted here that a short time previous to her death she
destroyed the whole of her manuscripts, which might, in many respects,
have been particularly valuable.

She has, however, transmitted her genius and her powers, which find
expression and appreciation in two daughters still living in Montreal,
Canada East, one of whom is the gifted author of "Peep at the Pilgrims,"
"Sketches from the Life of Christ," and "Confessions of an early
Martyr," all of which have been very popular; the first having been
republished here within a short period, and also in England with still
greater success. The other daughter, the widow of the late Dr. Cushing
who, while firm at his post as physician at the Emigrant Hospital, fell
a victim to that terrible malady, ship fever, in 1846, is also author of
many minor works, and co-editor of the "Snowdrop," a monthly publication
of much merit in Montreal. Mrs. Foster died in that place, at the
residence of her daughter, Mrs. Cushing, April 17, 1840, at the advanced
age of eighty-one years.

It may seem, however, at a period so long subsequent to the actual
transpiration of events herein recorded, that little could be said to
throw light or interest upon the history, and even less upon the
character, or in extenuation of the follies or the frailties of the
unfortunate subject of the following pages, and upon which public
opinion had long ago rendered its verdict and sealed it for a higher
tribunal. Yet I am happy in assuring any who may pause over these
prefatory leaves that this is not the fact; and it harms us not to
believe that over every life, however full of error it may be, there is
an unwritten chapter which the angels take into account as they bear
upward the tearful record, and which He, the great Scribe, "who ever
sitteth at the right hand of the Father," and from whose solemn
utterance on earth dropped the forever cherished words which have so
often given life and hope to the penitent fallen,--"_neither do I
condemn thee_,"--interpolates on the mighty leger of eternity for the
great reckoning day.

"Eliza Wharton," generally known, perhaps, as Elizabeth Whitman, was the
eldest of four children--Elizabeth, Mary, Abigail, and William; the
latter of whom was a physician, twice married, and who also left a son
of his own name, (William Elnathan,) who died in Philadelphia in 1846,
unmarried. Her father, the Rev. Elnathan Whitman, was the son of Rev.
Samuel Whitman, who was the third son of Rev. Zechariah Whitman, the
youngest child of John, the original ancestor of the Whitman family. He
(Rev. Samuel W.) graduated at Harvard University in 1696, and was for
several years a tutor there. Thus having passed through the usual,
though then somewhat limited, course of theology, he was ordained as
minister of the gospel in Farmington, Connecticut, in 1706, at that time
one of the largest towns in the state. He inherited by bequest one half
of his father's lands in Stow, Massachusetts, and was thereby also made
executor of his will. He married, March 19, 1707, Mary Stoddard,
daughter of Rev. Solomon Stoddard, second minister of Northampton,
Massachusetts. Mr. Stoddard was born in Boston in 1643, and died in
Northampton in 1729. This Solomon Stoddard was the great-grandfather of
Hon. Solomon Stoddard, now residing in Northampton.

It is worthy of remark here that the early ancestors of "Eliza Wharton"
intermarried also with the Edwards family; so that Hon. Pierpont
Edwards, who figures in this volume as "Major Sanford," could be no less
than second cousin to his unfortunate victim.

Rev. Elnathan Whitman, the father of Elizabeth, was born January 12,
1708-9, and graduated from Yale College, New Haven, where he was for
several subsequent years a tutor. He at length settled as minister over
the Second Church in Hartford, Connecticut, and there married Abigail
Stanley, daughter of Colonel Nathaniel Stanley, treasurer of the colony
of Connecticut, a woman of uncommon energy of character and of superior
mental acquirements, (a correct portrait of whom accompanies these
pages, taken from an original painting.) He died in Hartford also, March
2, 1776, aged sixty-eight years, after having served in the ministry in
that place forty-three of the same. His tombstone bears the following
inscription:--

IN MEMORY OF

THE REV. ELNATHAN WHITMAN,

Pastor of the Second Church of Christ in Hartford, and one of the
fellows of the corporation of Yale College, who departed this life
the 2d day of March, A.D. 1776, in the 69th year of his age and 44th
of his ministry.

Endowed with superior natural abilities and good literary acquirements,
he was still more distinguished for his unaffected piety, primitive
simplicity of manners, and true Christian benevolence. He
closed a life spent in the service of his Creator, in humble confidence
of eternal happiness through the merits of the Savior.

"Blessed are the dead who die in the Lord."

His wife survived him nineteen-years, and died November 19, 1795, aged
seventy-six. It was during the dark, early period of her widowhood that
the sad events occurred which have furnished the historian and the
novelist with themes of the deepest pathos, and to which prominence is
given in the following pages. But,

"Woes cluster. Rare are solitary woes;
They love a train--they tread each other's heels."

So said the sublimest of poets, and so has all experience proved. Thus,
in her case, this affliction did not come alone; but at a period nearly
connected with this, in the dreary, solitary hours of the night,--_her
night_ of sorrow too,--her house was discovered on fire, which, for lack
of modern appliances, was totally destroyed, with all its contents,
consisting not only of many curious and valuable articles of furniture
both for use and ornament, but embracing, also, an uncommon library,
overflowing with rare books, pamphlets, &c., which her late husband had
collected with great effort and research.

Elizabeth, the eldest of her family, was born in 1752. She was a child
of early promise, and remarkable in maturer years for her genius (I use
the term in no merely conventional sense, as will hereafter appear) and
accomplishments, as well as for her genial spirit and tender and
endearing qualities. Her maternal ancestor, Thomas Stanley, was an
original owner and settler in Hartford, Connecticut, and removed to, and
died in, Hadley, Massachusetts, January 30, 1662-3.

Thus nobly descended and connected, so singularly unfortunate, and her
fate so afflicting and disastrous, it is no wonder that the novelist
pointed her pen to record, with historical accuracy, a destiny so
fearful, a career so terrible. By her exceeding personal beauty and
accomplishments, added to the wealth of her mind, she attracted to her
sphere the grave and the gay, the learned and the witty, the worshippers
of the beautiful, with those who reverently bend before all inner
graces.

Prominent among these was the Rev. Joseph Howe, then pastor at the New
South Church, on Church Green, in this city, a young man of rare talents
and eminent piety. Unfortunately, the fear and excitement consequent on
the hostile relation of the colonies at that time towards the mother
country forced him from his position here; and he left, with the family
whose house had been his home, for a more quiet, temporary retreat in
Norwich, Connecticut. Soon after this he repaired to the residence of
Rev. Mr. Whitman, in Hartford, for a short visit, high in the
anticipation of soon becoming the happy husband of the gifted daughter
Elizabeth. But Providence, in wisdom, had ordered it otherwise; and,
while on this visit, he suddenly sickened and died.

However much or little of soul or of sorrow she had in this event we are
not to know; but another stood ready to-worship in his place, what we
will endeavor to believe was in some degree worthy of homage. This was
"J. Boyer," known as the Rev. Joseph Buckminster, a graduate of Yale
College, and at that time tutor in the same institution, who afterwards
settled as minister over the religions society in Portsmouth, New
Hampshire, and whose Biography was but a few years ago published.

We have no reason to believe, however, that either of these persons was
her earliest choice, especially the latter, or that, in this case most
certainly, there could have been at all that sacred congeniality of
spirit so deeply necessary to woman's nature, bearing out from her bosom
that deathless affection which nor pride, nor affluence, nor folly, nor
love of conquest, with the victory every where certain, could in any
wise overcome.

The feeling that existed on her part was of circumstances only,
influenced by strong parental predilection, and the desire which so
often obtains in the heart of a true woman--that of soothing the love
she cannot return, resolving itself at length into pity.

We might here also dwell upon the idiosyncrasies of genius as applicable
to her case, which are generally banned, of whatever character they may
be, and evermore shut out all sympathy, till, in despair or despite,
folly is made crime. But since sin must ever be arraigned for itself,
and error is prone to plead for mercy, I leave no word here that can be
misconstrued or misapplied. Certain it is that Elizabeth Whitman was
marked as one of strangely fluctuating moods, as the truly gifted ever
are, and of a wild, incomprehensible nature, little understood by those
who should have known her best, and with whom she was most intimate.
Over this, in tracing her history, it were well to pause, were it not
that thus we might give countenance to this prominent fact of modern
days, that the eccentricities of genius are often substituted for genius
itself, or are made its prime characteristics, as the gold of the
jeweller is recommended for its beauty and strength in proportion to its
alloy.

However much we may regret the waywardness of such a heart in the
present instance, in that it rejected one so nobly qualified as was Mr.
Buckminster to appreciate its genius and its love, while sympathizing
with his own mortifying disappointment, (for this we must admit,) that
she had in the secrets of her nature a preference for another, we cannot
altogether know its results. So cautiously and discreetly did he,
through a long and beautiful life, qualify both his lips and his pen,
that little or nothing remains beyond these letters of the
novelist--which we may not doubt are authentic, as they were long in the
possession of Mrs. Henry Hill, of Boston, the "Mrs. Sumner" of the
novel--to tell how the heart was instructed, and how blighted hope and
blasted affection were made the lobes through which the spirit caught
its sublimest and holiest respiration. We know

"Through lacerations takes the spirit wing,
And in the heart's long death throe grasps true life."

One little remark which has been suffered to creep into his Memoirs is,
however, of peculiar significance. I quote it here.

In speaking of Connecticut to a friend, he says, "My place was there; I
always wished that state to be my home; but Providence has directed my
line of duty far away _from the place of my first affections_."

He also--as one who had every means of knowing the fact has informed
me--was deeply affected on reading the "romance" here following, and at
the time remarked that, had the author been personally acquainted (not
knowing that she was) with the circumstances of his engagement with
Elizabeth Whitman, she could not have described them with more graphic
truth.

The Hon. Pierrepont Edwards, to whom was given the preference and
precedence above referred to, and who is made to assume in the chapters
of the novel the name of "Sanford," was the son of Rev. Jonathan
Edwards, president of Princeton College, New Jersey. His maternal
grandmother was Esther, the second daughter of the Rev. Solomon
Stoddard, and sister to the paternal grandmother of Elizabeth Whitman,
the wife of Rev. Samuel Whitman before mentioned. A Mr. Burt has by some
been identified with this "Sanford," the rival of "Boyer," yet without
the least pretension in history to authenticity. Nor can we place much
reliance upon the letters here introduced as his in point of
originality, as there is sufficient reason for believing that these are,
for the most part, of the author's invention, founded upon the current
reputation of his after years. And we may be happy in so considering
them, since they would betray a character, even in earliest manhood, too
depraved and debased for honorable mention, although his errors were no
doubt altogether beyond the palliation of a woman's pen. Yet we would
fain look at him, in youth at least, as undebauched and uncorrupt,
however stained may be the record of his manhood.

Between him and Elizabeth Whitman there was, notwithstanding, over all
and under all, a close affinity of spirit; and there is no question,
aside from the frailties and objections which the writer of the romance
has introduced, that there was a marriage of the soul, superseding all
after ties which worldliness and depravity might have consummated, that
overshadows sin, and may not pass into our reckoning. Not only such a
marriage, but one, though secret, actually sanctioned by the laws of the
land, she is known to have declared a fact previous to her death.

Question this who may, that deep down under the impulses of surging
passion there existed a purer and holier affection for her, is in
history sufficiently clear. They had been set in family connection,
intimate by kin, intimate in earliest life by every outward tie, and
especially intimate by the subtile affinities of their spiritual
natures. Yet he who can, under any circumstances, entreat the love of
woman, and then take advantage of her weakness or her confidence, is an
anomaly in nature, and should have a special, judiciary here and in
heaven.

Since so much of the romance here following is truth, veritable truth,
it is to be regretted that any error of historical character was
suffered to assume importance in the narrative. Yet this is so often the
case in works of this kind, that it is not remarkable here. More
surprising is it that truth was so carefully and conscientiously guarded
and preserved.

In conflicting statements, it is difficult to determine the precise year
of the marriage of Mr. Edwards, whether before or after the death of
"Eliza Wharton," although it may have been long before, even as one of
his biographers has it, and that recklessness and extravagance may have
lifted him to a too fearful height from the calm Eden of love and
honor, till he at length compromised the influence of both to baser
avarice.

That he married Frances Ogden, of Elizabeth-town, New Jersey, for his
first wife, is the fact, and the date given is 1769. Yet the ciphers may
be questioned, I think, as it would make him but nineteen years of age
at the time of the event, besides other considerations which make it
appear more doubtful still.

He was, however, as has been already stated, the eleventh and youngest
child of Rev. Jonathan Edwards, and was born in Northampton,
Massachusetts, _Sabbath_. His biographer has been particularly faithful
in thus recording it, as if the hallowed influences of the Sabbath upon
birth have a bearing on subsequent life, and were in his case either
strikingly marked or missed. He was born, then, Sabbath, April 8, 1750,
and was cousin, in good or evil, to the notorious Aaron Burr. He was
also brother to Rev. Jonathan Edwards, president of Union College.

His mother, Sarah Pierrepont, was of aristocratic origin, and the
daughter of Rev. James Pierrepont, and granddaughter of John Pierrepont,
of Roxbury, from whom descended Rev. John Pierpont, the celebrated poet
and divine of our own time. The Pierrepont family was a branch of the
family of the Duke of Kingston, (Pierrepont being the family name;) and
the mother of Mr. Edwards was thus cousin-german to Mary Pierrepont,
(Lady Mary Wortley Montague.)

Through his whole ancestral line we trace the "laying on of hands" in
the most conspicuous as in the divinest order; and thus might he be
truly called a child of prayer and consecration. What pity that his
biographer should have been compelled to record, "The most remarkable
feature of his character was his unbridled licentiousness"! But we
cannot drop the curtain here. We would relieve the picture by this
somewhat lighter shade. "His intellectual energies were gigantic. As a
pleader and a determined and artful advocate, he had few equals. Hence,
as a lawyer, he scarcely ever lost a case in his whole practice." An
amusing anecdote is related of him in his professional career.

"In an insurance case, the evidence of which was strongly against him,
he went in disguise to New London, where the witnesses, mostly sailors,
resided. In a loafer-like swagger he proposed and secured bets from
every material evidence in the case, and thus disqualified them from
bearing testimony, on the ground that they were interested witnesses."
In his old age he married his housekeeper, and closed an eventful and
unblessed life at Bridgeport, April 14, 1826. 'Tis well to memorize him
here, and thus register birth and death on the very page that records
the most mysterious chapter of his history.

Let us return to unite and conclude our story. In June, 1788, a female
of uncommon beauty of person, yet with an oppressed and melancholy
bearing, suddenly appeared at the old Bell Tavern in Danvers,
Massachusetts, (a drawing of which is here introduced.) She was habited
in black, and was seldom seen abroad, never except alone, and at
twilight, when she was observed to wander as far as the old burying
ground hard by, and there to pause at its entrance, gazing long and
earnestly upon its silent, scattered mounds, at length retracing her
steps with the same melancholy gait and air.

Here she remained nearly a month, discovering to none her real name or
situation. She passed her time in writing, and occasionally playing upon
a guitar, which was the only companion of her solitude. After remaining
there about two weeks a chaise was seen to pause before the door, upon
the lintel of which had secretly been traced in chalk, as it afterwards
appeared, the letters "E.W." A gentleman hastily alighted, and was also
observed through the darkness of the evening to examine the casing of
the door, and then return to the chaise and drive rapidly away.

The opinion was, by those who were cognizant of the fact, that this was
a secret, preconcerted sign by which the lover should recognize the
place of her retreat; and being too faintly drawn, through the darkness
of the night he failed to discover the characters.

From this time, however, the spirits of the stranger evidently sunk; and
in two weeks more birth and death had followed each other, and the grave
had closed over all.

This stranger had, in her peculiar situation, tenderly won upon the
sympathies of a few kind-hearted individuals who had made their way to
her, one of whom, a Mrs. Southwick, lived directly opposite the Bell
Tavern. These were with her in her last great agony, in which all sense
of guilt was lost in pity. Mrs. S. has related that no word of complaint
or accusation was heard to fall from her lips, while the spirit seemed
brightening with an unearthly hope, till what was charming in life was
indescribably lovely in death. Thus they laid the beautiful stranger in
the saintly robes of the sepulchre without censure and without
accusation, not knowing how painfully she was mourned and missed, as a
star shut out of vision by clouds and storm, in the home of her
childhood and in the heart of a widowed mother.

She had passed under the assumed name of Walker while at the Bell Tavern
of Danvers, and her wardrobe was found marked with the corresponding
initials, "E.W.," although applying to her real name as well. These
facts, in connection with her death, were immediately published in the
Boston and Salem journals, and her friends advertised to appear; and
thus were her real name and place of residence elicited.

A short time afterwards, and a stranger came and caused to be erected in
the old burying ground in Danvers, on the spot where she was interred,
two "gray stones," after the manner of Ossian, with the touching
inscription which this volume records; and the feet of strangers, moved
by pity and humanity, have worn a path to her grave which he who covets
most in the world's memory might even envy.

The tombstones (which the fathers of that ancient town should shame to
have recorded) have been battered and broken for relics, till much of
the inscription is gone already, and the footstone entirely removed.

But I have noted that Elizabeth Whitman was of superior merit, and had
been recognized as a child of genius in its most earnest sense. From her
earliest childhood she had been remarkable for a deeply poetic
temperament, and it appears she was recognized as a poet of no common
order by the most distinguished writers of the day--Barlow, Trumbull,
and others. Why her name and writings have not been handed down to us by
those who have essayed to make careful compilations of the literature of
the past century, I am unable to divine. She was a relative as well of
the last-named poet, Trumbull, on the side of his mother, who was Sarah
Whitman, a sister of Rev. Elnathan Whitman, the father of Elizabeth.

I find in the journals of that time the following poem, which, though
not the best of her productions, certainly gives evidence of much poetic
power:--

TO MR. BARLOW.

_By his Friend_ ELIZABETH WHITMAN, _on New Year's Day_, 1783.

Should every wish the heart of friendship knows
Be to your ear conveyed in rustic prose,
Lost in the wonders of your Eastern clime,
Or rapt in vision to some unborn time,
Th' unartful tale might no attention gain;
For Friendship knows not, like the Muse, to feign.
Forgive her, then, if in this weak essay
She tries to emulate thy daring lay,
And give to truth and warm affection's glow
The charms that from the tuneful sisters flow.

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