Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860 by Various

V >> Various >> Atlantic Monthly Vol. 6, No. 33, July, 1860

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Swords are starting from their scabbards, grim and hardened warriors wait
Richard's slightest word or gesture that may seal the bowman's fate.
But his memory has been busy with the deeds of other times.
In the eyes of wakened conscience all his glories turn to crimes,
And his crimes to something monstrous; worlds were little now to give
In atonement for the least. He cries, in anguish, "Let him live.
He has reason; never treason more became a traitor bold.
Youth, forgive as I forgive thee! Give him freedom,--give him gold.
Marcadee, be sure, obey me; 'tis the last, the dying hest
Of a monarch who is sinking, sinking fast,--oh, not to rest!
Haply, He above, remembering, may relieve my dark despair
With a ray of hope to light the gloom when I am suffering--there!"

The captain neared the royal bed
And humbly bowed his helmed head,
And laid his hand upon the plate
That sheathed his breast, and said, "Though late
Thy mercy comes, I hold it still
My duty to do thy royal will.
If I should fail to serve thee fair,
May I be doomed to suffer--there!"

I've often met with a fast young friend
More ready to borrow than I to lend;
I've heard smooth men in election-time
Prove every creed, but their own, a crime:
Perhaps, if the fast one wished to borrow,
I've taken his word to pay "to-morrow";
Perhaps, while Smooth explained his creed,
I've thought him the man for the country's need;
Perhaps I'm more of a trusting mood
Than you suppose; but I think I would
Have trusted that man of mail,
If I had been the dying king,
About as far as you could sling
An elephant by the tail!

Good subjects then, as now, no doubt,
When a king was dead, were eager to shout
In time, "God save" the new one!
One trouble was always whom to choose
Amongst the heirs; for it raised the deuse
And ran the subject's neck in a noose,
Unless he chose the true one.

Another difficult task,--to judge
If the coming king would bear a grudge
For some old breach of concord,
And take the earliest chance to send
A trusty line by a trusty friend
To give his compliments at the end
Of a disagreeable strong cord.

And whoever would have must seize his own.
Thus a dying king was left alone,
With a sad neglect of manners;
Ere his breath was out, the courtiers ran,
With fear or zeal for "the coming man,"
In time to escape from under his ban,
Or hurry under his banners.

So Richard was left in a shabby way
To Marcadee, with an abbot to pray
And pother with "consolation,"
Reminding 'twas never too late to search
For mercy, and hinting that Mother Church
Was never known to leave in the lurch
A king with a fat donation.
But the abbot was known to Richard well,
As one who would smoothen the road to hell,
And quite as willing to revel
As preach; and he always preached to "soothe,"
With a mild regard for "the follies of youth,"--
Himself, in epitome, proving the truth
Of the world, the flesh, and the Devil.

This was the will that Richard made:--
"My body at father's feet be laid;
And to Rouen (it loved me most)
My heart I give; and I give my ins-
Ides to the rascally Poitevins;
To the abbot I give my darling--sins;
And I give "--He gave up the ghost.

The abbot looked grave, but never spoke.
The captain laughed, gave the abbot a poke,
And, without ado or lingering,
"Conveyed" the personals, jewels, and gold,
Omitting the formal To Have and to Hold
From the royal finger, before it was cold,
He slipped the royal finger-ring.

There might have been in the eye of the law
A something which lawyers would call a flaw
Of title in such a conversion:
But if weak in the law, he was strong in the hand,
And had the "nine points."--He summoned his band,
And ordered before him the archer Bertrand,
Intending a little diversion.

He called the cutter,--no cutter of clothes,
But such as royalty kept for those
Who happened to need correcting,--
And told him that Richard, before he died,
Desired to have a scalpel applied
To the traitor there. With professional pride,
The cutter began dissecting.

Now Bones was born with a genius to flay:
He might have ranked, had he lived to-day,
As a capital taxidermist:
And yet, as he tugged, they heard him say,
Of all the backs that ever lay
Before him in a professional way,
That was of all backs the firmest.

Kind reader, allow me to drop a veil
In pity; I cannot pursue the tale
In the heartless tone of the last strophe.
'Tis done, and again I'll be the same.
They triumphed not, if they felt no shame:
No muscle quivered, no murmur came,
Until the final catastrophe.

The captain jested a moment, then
He waved his hand and bowed to his men
With a single word, "Disbanded,"
And galloped away with three or four
Stout men-at-arms to the nearest shore,
Where a gallant array not long before
With the king in pride had landed.

He coasted around, went up the Rhine,
So famous then for robbers and wine,
So famous now as a ramble.
The wine and the robbers still are there;
But they rob you now with a bill of fare,
And gentlemen bankers "on the square"
Will clean you out, if you gamble.

He built him a Schloss on--something-Stein,
And became the first of as proud a line
As e'er took toll on the river,
When barons, perched in their castles high,
On the valley would keep a watchful eye,
And pounce on travellers with their cry,
"The Rhine-dues! down! deliver!"

And crack their crowns for any delay
In paying down. And that, by the way,
About as correctly as I know,
Is the origin true of an ancient phrase
So frequently heard in modern days,
When a gentleman quite reluctantly pays,--
I mean, "To come down with the rhino."

A LEGEND OF MARYLAND

"AN OWRE TRUE TALE."

The framework of modern history is, for the most part, constructed
out of the material supplied by national transactions described in
official documents and contemporaneous records. Forms of government
and their organic changes, the succession of those who have
administered them, their legislation, wars, treaties, and the
statistics demonstrating their growth or decline,--these are the
elements that furnish the outlines of history. They are the dry
timbers of a vast old edifice; they impose a dry study upon the
antiquary, and are still more dry to his reader.

But that which makes history the richest of philosophies and the most
genial pursuit of humanity is the spirit that is breathed into it by
the thoughts and feelings of former generations, interpreted in
actions and incidents that disclose the passions, motives, and
ambition of men, and open to us a view of the actual life of our
forefathers. When we can contemplate the people of a past age
employed in their own occupations, observe their habits and manners,
comprehend their policy and their methods of pursuing it, our
imagination is quick to clothe them with the flesh and blood of human
brotherhood and to bring them into full sympathy with our individual
nature.

History then becomes a world of living figures,--a theatre that
presents to us a majestic drama, varied by alternate scenes of the
grandest achievements and the most touching episodes of human
existence.

In the composing of this drama the author has need to seek his
material in many a tangled thicket as well as in many an open field.
Facts accidentally encountered, which singly have but little
perceptible significance, are sometimes strangely discovered to
illustrate incidents long obscured and incapable of explanation. They
are like the lost links of a chain, which, being found, supply the
means of giving cohesion and completeness to the heretofore useless
fragments. The scholar's experience is full of these reunions of
illustrative incidents gathered from regions far apart in space, and
often in time. The historian's skill is challenged to its highest
task in the effort to draw together those tissues of personal and
local adventure which, at first without seeming or suspected
dependence, prove, when brought into their proper relationship with
each other, to be unerring exponents of events of highest concern.

It is pleasant to fall upon the course of one of these currents of
adventure,--to follow a solitary rivulet of tradition, such as by
chance we now and then find modestly flowing along through the
obscure coverts of time, and to be able to trace its progress to the
confluence of other streams,--and finally to see it grow, by the aid
of these tributaries, to the proportions of an ample river, which
waters the domain of authentic history and bears upon its bosom a
clear testimony to the life and character of a people.

The following legend furnishes a striking and attractive
exemplification of such a growth, in the unfolding of a romantic
passage of Maryland history, of which no annalist has ever given more
than an ambiguous and meagre hint. It refers to a deed of bloodshed,
of which the only trace that was not obliterated from living rumor so
long as a century ago was to be found in a vague and misty relic of
an old memory of the provincial period of the State. The facts by
which I have been enabled to bring it to the full light of an
historical incident, it will be seen in the perusal of this
narrative, have successively, and by most curious process of
development, risen into view through a series of accidental
discoveries, which have all combined, with singular coincidence and
adaptation, to furnish an unquestionable chapter of Maryland history,
altogether worthy of recital for its intrinsic interest, and still
more worthy of preservation for the elements it supplies towards a
correct estimate of the troubles which beset the career and formed
the character and manners of the forefathers of the State.

CHAPTER I.

TALBOT'S CAVE.

It is now many years ago,--long before I had reached manhood,--that,
through my intimacy with a friend, then venerable for his years and
most attractive to me by his store of historical knowledge, I became
acquainted with a tradition touching a strange incident that had
reference to a mysterious person connected with a locality on the
Susquehanna River near Havre de Grace. In that day the tradition was
repeated by a few of the oldest inhabitants who dwelt in the region.
I dare say it has now entirely run out of all remembrance amongst
their descendants, and that I am, perhaps, the only individual in the
State who has preserved any traces of the facts to which I allude.

There was, until not long ago, a notable cavern at the foot of a
rocky cliff about a mile below the town of Port Deposit. It was of
small compass, yet sufficiently spacious to furnish some rude shelter
against the weather to one who might seek refuge within its solitary
chamber. It opened upon the river just where a small brook comes
brattling down the bank, along the base of a hill of some magnitude
that yet retains the stately name of Mount Ararat. The visitor of
this cavern might approach it by a boat from the river, or by a
rugged path along the margin of the brook and across the ledges of
the rock. This rough shelter went by the name of Talbot's Cave down
to a very recent period, and would still go by that name, if it were
yet in existence. But it happened, not many years since, that Port
Deposit was awakened to a sudden notion of the value of the granite
of the cliff, and, as commerce is a most ruthless contemner of all
romance, and never hesitates between a speculation of profit and a
speculation of history, Talbot's Cave soon began to figure
conspicuously in the Price Current, and in a very little while
disappeared, like a witch from the stage, in blasts of sulphur fire
and rumbling thunder, under the management of those effective
scene-shifters, the quarrymen. A government contract, more potent than
the necromancy of the famed wizard Michael Scott, lifted this massive
rock from its base, and, flying with it full two hundred miles,
buried it fathoms below the surface of the Atlantic, at the Rip Raps,
near Hampton Roads; and thus it happens that I cannot vouch the
ocular proof of the Cave to certify the legend I am about to relate.

The tradition attached to this spot had nothing but a misty and
spectral outline. It was indefinite in the date, uncertain as to
persons, mysterious as to the event,--just such a tradition as to
whet the edge of one's curiosity and to leave it hopeless of
gratification. I may relate it in a few words.

Once upon a time, somewhere between one and two hundred years ago,
there was a man by the name of Talbot, a kinsman of Lord Baltimore,
who had committed some crime, for which he fled and became an outlaw
and was pursued by the authorities of the Province. To escape these,
he took refuge in the wilderness on the Susquehanna, where he
found this cave, and used it for concealment and defence for some
time,--how long, the tradition does not say. This region was then
inhabited by a fierce tribe of Indians, who are described on Captain John
Smith's map as the "Sasquesahannocks," and who were friendly to the
outlaw and supplied him with provisions. To these details was added
another, which threw an additional interest over the story,--that
Talbot had a pair of beautiful English hawks, such as were most
prized in the sport of falconry, and that these were the companions
of his exile, and were trained by him to pursue and strike the wild
duck that abounded, then as now, on this part of the river; and he
thus found amusement to beguile his solitude, as well as sustenance
in a luxurious article of food, which is yet the pride of gastronomic
science, and the envy of _bons vivants_ throughout this continent.

These hawks my aged friend had often himself seen, in his own boyish
days, sweeping round the cliffs and over the broad expanse of the
Susquehanna. They were easily distinguished, he said, by the
residents of that district, by their peculiar size and plumage, being
of a breed not known to our native ornithology, and both being males.
For many years, it was affirmed,--long after the outlaw had vanished
from the scene,--these gallant old rovers of the river still pursued
their accustomed game, a solitary pair, without kindred or
acquaintance in our woods. They had survived their master,--no one
could tell how long,--but had not abandoned the haunts of his exile.
They still for many a year saw the wilderness beneath their daily
flight giving place to arable fields, and learned to exchange their
wary guard against the Indian's arrow for a sharper watch of the
Anglo-Saxon rifle. Up to the last of their appearance the
country-people spoke of them as Talbot's hawks.

This is a summary of the story, as it was told to me. No inquiry
brought me any addition to these morsels of narrative. Who this
Talbot was,--what was his crime,--how long he lived in this cave, and
at what era,--were questions upon which the oracle of my tradition
was dumb.

Such a story would naturally take hold of the fancy of a lover of
romance, and kindle his zeal for an enterprise to learn something
more about it; and I may reasonably suppose that this short sketch
has already stirred the bosoms of the novel-reading portion, at
least, of my readers with a desire that I should tell them what, in
my later researches, I have found to explain this legend of the Cave.
Even the outline I have given is suggestive of inferences to furnish
quite a plausible chapter of history.

First, it is clear, from the narrative, that Talbot was a gentleman
of rank in the old Province,--for he was kinsman to the Lord
Proprietary; and there is one of the oldest counties of Maryland that
bears the name of his family,--perhaps called so in honor of himself.
Then he kept his hawks, which showed him to be a man of condition,
and fond of the noble sport which figures so gracefully in the annals
of Chivalry.

Secondly, this hawking carries the period of the story back to the
time of one of the early Lords Baltimore; for falconry was not common
in the eighteenth century: and yet the date could not have been much
earlier than that century, because the hawks had been seen by old
persons of the last generation somewhere about the period of our
Revolution; and this bird does not live much over a hundred years. So
we fix a date not far from sixteen hundred and eighty for Talbot's
sojourn on the river.

Thirdly, the crime for which he was outlawed could scarcely have been
a mean felony, perpetrated for gain, but more likely some act of
passion,--a homicide, probably, provoked by a quarrel, and enacted in
hot blood. This Talbot was too well conditioned for a sordid crime;
and his flight to the wilderness and his abode there would seem to
infer a man of strong purpose and self-reliance.

And, lastly, as he must have had friends and confederates on the
frontier, to aid him in his concealment, and to screen him from the
pursuit of the government officers, and, moreover, had made himself
acceptable to the Indians, to whose power he had committed himself,
we may conclude that he possessed some winning points of character;
and I therefore assume him to have been of a brave, frank, and
generous nature, capable of attracting partisans and enlisting the
sympathies and service of bold men for his personal defence.

So, with the help of a little obvious speculation, founded upon the
circumstantial evidence, we weave the network of quite a natural
story of Talbot; and our meagre tradition takes on the form, and
something of the substance, of an intelligible incident.

CHAPTER II.

STRANGE REVELATIONS.

At this point I leave the hero of my narrative for a while, in order
that I may open another chapter.

Many years elapsed, during which the tradition remained in this
unsatisfactory state, and I had given up all hope of further
elucidation of it, when an accidental discovery brought me once more
upon the track of inquiry.

There was published in the city of Baltimore, in the year 1808, a
book whose title was certainly as little adapted to awaken the
attention of one in quest of a picturesque legend as a treatise on
Algebra. It was called "The Landholder's Assistant," and was
intended, as its name imported, to assist that lucky portion of
mankind who possessed the soil of Maryland in their pursuit of
knowledge touching the mysteries of patents, warrants, surveys, and
such like learning, necessary to getting land or keeping what they
had. The character and style of this book, in its exterior aspect,
were as unpromising as it's title. It was printed by Messrs. Dobbin &
Murphy, on rather dark paper, in a muddy type,--such as no Mr.
Dobbin nor Mr. Murphy of this day would allow to bear his
imprimatur,--though in 1808, I doubt not, it was considered a very
creditable piece of Baltimore typography. This unpretending volume was
compiled by Chancellor Kilty. It is a very instructive book, containing
much curious matter, is worthy of better adornment in the form of its
presentation to the world, and ought to have a title more suggestive
of its antiquarian lore. I should call it "Fossil Remains of Old
Maryland Law, with Notes by an Antiquary."

It fell into my hands by a purchase at auction, some twenty years
after I had abandoned the Legend of the Cave and the Hawks as a
hopeless quest. In running over its contents, I found that a Colonel
George Talbot was once the Surveyor-General of Maryland; and in two
short marginal notes (the substance of which I afterwards found in
Chalmers's "Annals") it was said that "he was noted in the Province
for the murder committed by him on Christopher Rousby, Collector of
the Customs,"--the second note adding that this was done on board a
vessel in Patuxent River, and that Talbot "was conveyed for trial to
Virginia, from whence he made his escape; and after being retaken,
and" (as the author expresses his belief) "tried and convicted, was
finally pardoned by King James the Second."

These marginal notes, though bringing no clear support to the story
of the Cave, were embers, however, of some old fire not entirely
extinct,--which emitted a feeble gleam upon the path of inquiry. The
name of the chief actor coincided with that of the tradition; the
time, that of James the Second, conformed pretty nearly to my
conjecture derived from the age of the hawks; and the nature of the
crime was what I had imagined. There was just enough in this brief
revelation to revive the desire for further investigation. But where
was the search to be made? No history that I was aware of, no sketch
of our early time that I had ever seen, nothing in print was known to
be in existence that could furnish a clue to the story of the
Outlaw's Cave.

And here the matter rested again for some years. But after this
lapse, chance brought me upon the highway of further development,
which led me in due time to a strange realization of the old proverb
that "Murder will out,"--though, in this case, its discovery could
bring no other retribution than the settlement of an historical
doubt, and give some posthumous fame to the subject of the
disclosure.

In the month of May, 1836, I had a motive and an opportunity to make
a visit to the County of St. Mary's. I had been looking into the
histories of our early Maryland settlement, as they are recounted in
the pages of Bozman, Chalmers, and Grahame, and found there some
inducements to persuade me to make an exploration of the whereabouts
of the old city which was planted near the Potomac by our first
pilgrims. Through the kindness of a much valued friend, whose
acquirements and taste--both highly cultivated--rendered him a most
effective auxiliary in my enterprise, I was supplied with an
opportunity to spend a week under the hospitable roof of Mr.
Carberry, the worthy Superior of the Jesuit House of St. Inigoes on
the St. Mary's River, within a short distance of the plain of the
ancient city.

Mr. Campbell and myself were invited by our host to meet him, on an
appointed day, at the Church of St. Nicholas on the Patuxent, near
the landing at Town Creek, and we were to travel from there across to
St. Inigoes in his carriage,--a distance of about fifteen miles.

Upon our arrival at St. Nicholas, we found a full day at our disposal
to look around the neighborhood, which, being the scene of much
historical interest in our older annals, presented a pleasant
temptation to our excursion. Our friendly guide, Mr. Carberry, took
us to Drum Point, the southern headland of the Patuxent at its
entrance into Chesapeake Bay. Here was, at that time, and perhaps
still is, the residence of the Carroll family, whose ancestors
occupied the estate for many generations. The dwelling-house was a
comfortable wooden building of the style and character of the present
day, with all the appurtenances proper to a convenient and pleasant
country homestead. Immediately in its neighborhood--so near
that it might be said to be almost within the curtilage of the
dwelling--stood an old brick ruin of what had apparently been a
substantial mansion-house. Such a monument of the past as this, of
course, could not escape our special attention, and, upon inquiry, we
were told that it was once, a long time ago, the family home of the
Rousbys, the ancestors of the present occupants of the estate; that
several generations of this family, dating back to the early days of the
Province, had resided in it; and that when it had fallen into decay,
the modern building was erected, and the old one suffered to crumble
into the condition in which we saw it. I could easily understand and
appreciate the sentiment that preserved it untouched as part and
parcel in the family associations of the place, and as a relic of the
olden time which no one was willing to disturb.

The mention of the name of the Rousbys, here on the Patuxent River,
was a sudden and vivid remembrancer to me of the old story of Talbot,
and gave new encouragement to an almost abandoned hope of solving
this mystery.

CHAPTER III.

A GRAVEYARD AND AN EPITAPH.

Within a short distance of this spot, perhaps not a mile from Drum
Point, there is a small creek which opens into the river and bears
the name of Mattapony. In early times there was a notable fort here,
and connected with it a stately mansion, built by Charles Calvert,
Lord Baltimore, for his own occasional residence. The fort and
mansion are often mentioned in the Provincial records as the place
where the Council sometimes met to transact business; and accordingly
many public acts are dated from Mattapony.

Calvert was doubtless attracted to this spot by the pleasant scenery
of the headland which here looks out upon the noble water-view of the
Chesapeake, and by its breezy position as an agreeable refuge from
the heats of summer.

Our party, therefore, determined to set out upon a search for some
relics of the mansion and fort; and as a guide in this enterprise, we
engaged an old negro who seemed to have a fair claim in his own
conceit to be regarded both as the Solomon and the Methuselah of the
plantation. He was a wrinkled, wise-looking old fellow, with a watery
eye and a grizzled head, and might, perhaps, have been about eighty;
but, from his own account, he left us to infer that he was not much
behind that great patriarch of Scripture whose years are described as
one hundred and threescore and fifteen.

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