Charlotte Temple , a tale of truth.

Front matter

Two Volumes in One

THE CHARLOTTE TEMPLE TOMBSTONE IN TRINITY CHURCHYARD

(LOOKING INTO BROADWAY)

Contents

PAGE

Why This Edition vii

Historical and Biographical Introduction . xvii

Introduction

I

MRS. ROWSON

Susanna Haswell Rowson, the author of "Charlotte Temple," was born in Portsmouth, England, in 1761. Her father was William Haswell, a lieutenant in the Royal Navy, and her mother Susanna Musgrave. In 1769 she came to America with her father, who settled at Nantasket, in Massachusetts, and remained here until 1777. She wrote, nearly twenty years afterward, in an introduction to one of her books : *

" It was my fate, at a period when memory can scarcely retain the smallest trace of the occurrence, to accompany my father to Boston, in New England, where he had married a

1 " Trials of the Human Heart," Philadelphia (4 vols.), 1795-

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second wife, my mother having lost her life in giving me existence. Blessed with a genteel competency, and placed by his rank and education in that sphere of life where the polite and friendly attentions of the most respectable characters courted our acceptance, and enjoying a constant intercourse with the families of the officers of the British Army stationed there, eight years of my life glided almost imperceptibly away."

Her education was carefully supervised during her stay in Nantasket. She is said to have attracted the notice of James Otis, the orator and statesman, who called her "my little scholar," and endeavored to inculcate in her mind his own political sentiments, but whatever success he may have had with the daughter did not extend to the father. She adds:

" At that time the dissensions between England and America increased to an alarming degree. My father bore the King's commission ; he had taken the oath of allegiance. Certain I am that no one who considers the nature of an oath voluntarily taken, no one who reflects

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SUSANNA HASWELL ROWSON From a miniature still owned in the family

/IDrs* 1Row£on

that, previous to this period, he had served thirty years under the British Government, will blame him for strict adherence to principles which were interwoven, as it were, into his existence. He did adhere to them. The attendant consequences may readily be supposed. His person was confined; his property confiscated. Having been detained as a prisoner two years and a half, part of which was spent in Hingham and part in Abington, an exchange of prisoners taking place between the British and American, my father and his family were sent by cartel to Halifax, from which we embarked for England."

A few years after her return to JEngr. land she began to support herself. At one time she acted as a governess in the family of the Duchess of Devonshire. She also wrote verses, and in 1786 published a novel called "Victoria," the characters in which she described as having been "taken from real life." To assist in its publication, subscriptions were secured, and several came from notable persons, including General John Burgoyne, Mrs.

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Siddons, Sir Charles Middleton, and Samuel Adams. This work, the only one that appeared under Mrs. Rowson's maiden name, was dedicated to the Duchess of Devonshire, who introduced her to the Prince of Wales, afterward George IV., through whom was secured a pension for her father.

In the same year she was married to William Rowson, a hardware merchant, serving as trumpeter in the Royal Horse Guards. Mr. Rowson soon failed in business, in consequence, it is said, of losses through a partner in America. She and he, as well as her husband's sister, then decided to go on the stage. 1 They made their first appearance in Edinburgh in the winter of 1792-3, and afterward acted in several other British towns. Meanwhile

1 The Rowson family appears to have included at least one other actress. In the Gentleman's Magazine for October, 1790, among the obituary notices, may be read the following: "Of a billious fever, Miss Rowson, of Covent Garden Theatre, a beautiful and interesting girl, on whose character, notwithstanding the blandishments of her situation, suspicion had never breathed."

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she continued to write books. " Victoria " was followed by a story called " Mary ; or, The Test of Honor," and then came in succession "The Inquisitor; or, Invisible Rambler," a work in three volumes, modeled on Sterne's " Sentimental Journey," 1788 (republished in Philadelphia in 1794); "Poems on Various Subjects," 1788; "A Trip to Parnassus"; "A Critique on Authors and Performers"; "Mentoria," being views on education, 1791 ; " Charlotte ; a Tale of Truth " (such was the original title of " Charlotte Temple," the "Temple" being omitted), two volumes, 1790, which within a few years reached a sale of twenty-five thousand copies; and "Rebecca; or, the Fille de Chambre," an autobiographical novel, 1792, of which a revised edition was published in this country in 18 14.

In 1793 Mr. and Mrs. Rowson entered into a contract to come to America and act in the Chestnut Street Theater in Philadelphia When they arrived yellow fever

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was prevalent in that city, and the company for a time acted in Annapolis instead. For three years Mrs. Rowson continued her life here as an actress, appearing mainly in Philadelphia, Baltimore, and Boston. Coming to New York, she viewed the grave of the unfortunate Charlotte, and went to the house in which she died. Among the characters which she represented on the stage were Lady Sneerwell in "The School for Scandal," and Dame Quickley in " The Merry Wives of Windsor." She wrote several plays, among them "A Female Patriot," 1794; "Slaves in Algiers," 1794; "Americans in England" and "The Volunteers," 1793. The latter was a farce founded on the whisky insurrection in western Pennsylvania.

In 1794 appeared the first American edition of " Charlotte Temple," which was still called " Charlotte." William Cobbett (the once famous "Peter Porcupine") printed a rather brutal attack upon her

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writings at this time, entitled "A Kick for a Bite," in which he indelicately said that in "Slaves in Algiers" she "had expressed sentiments foreign to her heart." She replied in an introduction to her next book, "Trials of the Human Heart," described on the title-page as " by Mrs. Rowson of the New Theatre." " The literary world is infested," said she, "with a kind of loathsome reptile," and then added that " one of them lately crawled over the volumes which I have had the temerity to submit to the public eye." " Trials of the Human Heart," in four volumes, 1795, was her most ambitious literary undertaking, but it had only a moderate success. Prominent persons, including Martha Washington and Benjamin Franklin, were among the subscribers for it. It was followed in Baltimore in the same year by "The Standard of Liberty," being a patriotic address to the armies of the United States.

Abandoning the stage in 1796, her last

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appearance being made in Boston, Mrs. Rowson settled in Massachusetts. She taught for a time in Medford and Newton, and finally went to Boston, where for the remainder of her life she maintained a school in which were educated the children of many cultured families. Her experience as a teacher embraced twenty-five years. During this period she edited (1802-5) the Boston Weekly Magazine, wrote for several other periodicals, and published the following books : " Reuben and Rachel; or, Tales of Old Times," 1798; "Miscellaneous Poems," in which appeared original verse, including a song, "America, Commerce, and Freedom," that enjoyed wide popularity, besides translations from Homer and Virgil, 1804; "A System of Geography," 1806; "A Spelling Dictionary," 1807; "Sarah, the Exemplary Wife," 1813; "A Present for Young Ladies," being a compilation of poems, recitations, and dialogs, 181 1; " Exercises in History," 1822; and, finally,

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MEMORIAL TO MRS. ROWSON IN FOREST HILL CEMETERY,

ROXBURY, MASS.

From a recent photograph

/IDrs. IRowBon

"Biblical Dialogues Between a Father and His Family," 1822; this being her last work, except a posthumous one, entitled "Lucy Temple, Charlotte's Daughter," a sequel to " Charlotte Temple," but much inferior to it. " Lucy Temple " contained a brief memoir of Mrs. Rowson by Samuel L. Knapp. Many of these books were published through subscriptions obtained in advance, and the names of the subscribers were printed at the end of each book.

Mrs. Rowson died in Boston, November 2, 1824, and was buried in the family vault of her friend, Gotlieb Graupner, in St. Michael's Church, South Boston. A granite monument to her memory was in recent years set up in a family lot in Forest Hill Cemetery, Roxbury, by her grandnieces and nephew, Mary and Haswell C. Clark, and Mrs. Samuel Osgood, born Ellen Haswell Murdock, the mother of Mabel Osgood Wright, who designed the stone. Her body was not removed

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to this lot, however, inasmuch as identification of it after removal from St. Michael's Church had become impossible through the loss of a coffin plate. In 1859 the R ev - Elias Nason read a paper on Mrs. Rowson's life and work before the New England Historical and Genealogical Society, and in 1870 published in Albany a more extended memoir in book form, with a portrait.

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II The Book

Of the twenty-four books and plays here enumerated, "Charlotte Temple" alone has survived. But what a survival that has been! Its early success in England merely foreshadowed the success it was destined to have in America, with scarcely an interruption down to the present day — a period of one hundred and fifteen years. As a survival among books of that generation it is probably matched in this country only by Franklin's "Autobiography," if indeed that book has matched it. Among novels it had no rival in its own day — not even "Evelina" or "The Children of the Abby." None of Scott's novels, which came a generation later, could have had so wide a reading here. Not until " Uncle Tom's Cabin " appeared

xxix did an American work of fiction dispute its preeminence in point of circulation.

Perhaps even now, in the number of copies actually printed and read, "Charlotte Temple" has not been exceeded by Mrs. Stowe's work, because, being not protected by copyright, it has been constantly issued by many publishers in the cheapest possible forms of paper as well as cloth. The editions are innumerable. It has been published in London, New York, Philadelphia, Boston, and several of the smaller American towns, including Ithaca, N. Y., Windsor, Vt, and Concord, N. H. Some of the early editions were in two volumes, but all later reprints seem to have been in one, tho some have appeared in the form of two volumes bound as one. Several have had a frontispiece, some a vignette, and a few have had illustrations in the text, but recent editions have commonly had no illustrations save now and then a frontispiece. In size the editions have been i8mos, i6mos, i2mos, and

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8vos. A translation has been made into German, and a play based on the storylong enjoyed much popularity.

Duyckinck, writing in 1855, said the story was still "a popular classic at the cheap bookstalls and with traveling chapmen." x Reprints of it to this day are offered in department stores, on sidewalk bookstalls, and by pushcart dealers. In the little stationery stores of tenement districts it can usually be found on shelves where are kept some hundreds of second-hand or shop-worn paper covered novels. The shopkeeper will probably say he keeps "Charlotte Temple" constantly in stock, and that it is one of his best-selling books. A collector in New York many years ago had secured a large shelfful of various editions, said to number about one hundred. Mr. Nason did not exaggerate the actual facts when he offered up the following tribute to the popularity of this book:

1 " Cyclopedia of American Literature."

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" It has stolen its way alike into the study of the divine and into the workshop of the mechanic; into the parlor of the accomplished lady and the bedchamber of her waiting-maid ; into the log hut on the extreme borders of modern civilization and into the forecastle of the whale ship on the lonely ocean. It has been read by the gray-bearded professor after his divine Plato; by the beardless clerk after balancing his accounts by night; by the traveler waiting for his next conveyance at the village inn; by the schoolgirl stealthily in her seat. It has beguiled the workman in his hut at night in the deep solitudes of the forest; it has cheated the farmer's son of many an hour, while poring over its fascinating pages, seated around the broken spinning-wheel in the old attic ; it has drawn tears from the miner's eyes in the dim twilight of his subterranean galley ; it has unlocked the secret sympathies of the veteran soldier in his tent before the day of battle."

In the best modern editions the integrity of the text has been better preserved perhaps than the circumstances, carefully considered, would have led one to expect, but, as already stated, the text to-day is

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extremely corrupt. Most errors in these editions were due to the carelessness of printers, since they seldom suggest the hand of an indiscreet editor or publisher. The original Preface I have not found in any available edition issued since 1 803. The poetical quotations given on the title-pages are also missing from editions printed since the very early one, and changes have been made in the chapterheadings, one heading having been dropped altogether.

Once errors had crept into the text, it can be understood how they were almost inevitably repeated at the next setting of the type. With each resetting further errors would be made, so that an edition now current might show accumulations from three, or possibly four, generations of compositors. So formidable a total of errors (1265, large and small, by actual count) gives further evidence of the extraordinary popularity of Mrs. Rowson's little book.

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In one edition among those I have seen, systematic condensation of the text has occurred, and other condensed editions are known to have been published. The one referred to was issued in Philadelphia in 1865, with the author's name omitted from the title-page. At least one-fourth of the matter has been eliminated, some of the chapters have been entirely rewritten, and their number reduced from thirty-five to twenty-eight. The publishers announced on the title-page that this was "the only correct and authentic edition" of the book; declared, in an introduction, that it was "the only correct one ever issued," and that it had been " printed from a copy of the original publication," which of course was impossible.

It was a thin, paper-covered octavo, with illustrations showing styles of dress worn in 1865 — that is, ninety years later than the period of the story. Besides these sensational woodcuts in the text,

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BEAUTIFUL AND ACCOMPLISHED

AS!" ACCOUNT OF HEKEMPI5MEKT WITH

LIEUTENANT M0NTR0¥1LLE S

A'

SENSATIONAL COVER-TITLE OF "CHARLOTTE TEMPLE, WITH A SO-CALLED AUTHENTIC PORTRAIT From the condensed edition published in Philadelphia in 1865

Ufoe Boofe

it pretended to have a likeness of Charlotte, "taken from an original portrait," but looking like a fashion-plate, Charlotte being arrayed in an evening dress supported by a hoopskirt. This stupid misrepresentation of Charlotte is reproduced elsewhere in the present volume, with the sensational cover-title which the portrait was supposed to adorn. As an appendix, an article on the tombstone in Trinity churchyard was printed with an outline of "Lucy Temple." It was written by John Barnitz Bacon. 1 Owing to these pictorial and editorial features, newly introduced, the publishers were able to copyright this edition.

Other liberties, much more reprehensible, have been taken with the book. In the slums of large cities, many years ago, perverted editions were common, the text having been altered in a way to secure

1 Mr. Bacon wrote under the penname of " John Tripod," and in 1870 published "A Legendary Historv of New York."

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large sales. With sensational titles printed in type that suggests the "scareheads" of newspapers, and representing Charlotte as a noted courtesan, copies were unscrupulously paraded on the streets and sold in large numbers. About 1870 a sensational story-paper, then just started in New York, printed, with one of its advertising posters, a large so-called portrait of Charlotte, which is reproduced in the present volume, but reduced to less than one-fourth the original size. One of the features of the paper to which particular attention was called in the advertisement was a serial story entitled, "The Fastest Girl in New York."

By means of these publications, now forgotten, Charlotte's character became much perverted in the minds of ill-informed people, among whom doubtless were persons of respectability and intelligence. Something of that influence has survived to this day in the impressions

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ANOTHER SO-CALLED PORTRAIT OF CHARLOTTE TEMPLE From an advertising poster for a sensational story-paper published in New York

about 1870

ZEfoe Boofe

which many retain of the real character of Charlotte Temple.

The text of the rare first American edition, which appeared in Philadelphia while Mrs. Rowson was living there, has been carefully followed in this reprint. A copy was obligingly lent for the purpose by its owner, Mabel Osgood Wright. The original owner, as shown by an autograph on the title-page of the first volume, was Susanna Rodgers, the inscription being dated September 25, 1794. Except for the stains of time and twentyone pages which in the bottom margin have been invaded by a bookworm, the copy is perfect. The two volumes are bound as one in half morocco, the number of pages for the two volumes being 87 and 83 respectively.

Ill

CHARLOTTE

Mrs. Rowson's stories are pervaded by old-fashioned sentiment, which it has been the custom nowadays to mention as if it were a reproach. Sentimental^ they unquestionably are ; but whether this be a reproach, may be left an open question. Our own period is distinctly not a sentimental age — at least in so far as concerns the expression of sentiment, about which we have grown somewhat squeamish. Human nature, however, has not changed. The average man and woman remain very much what their forbears for many generations have been in their susceptibility to emotion.

The situations Mrs. Rowson describes, the sympathies she evokes, appeal to what is elemental in our nature and what is also eternal. Rudimentary as to right

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CHARLOTTE.

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' § Brt N TED-BY ». HUMPHREY!, fOR'M.-C&mr, ■No. i its ■ MAURET-ST aXET.

TITLE-PAGE OF THE FIRST AMERICAN EDITION.. 1794 From a copy of the book owned by Mabel Osgood Wright

Cbartotte

thinking and right acting they may be, but they are wholesome, sane, and true all the same. As old as the hills, we may call this sentiment, but it will last with the hills themselves, immovable and fundamental in all our acts and thoughts, if not in our actual speech.

Mrs. Rowson was not gifted so much with creative imagination as with the power to delineate every-day human emotions. The situations which could move her were not those which she herself might have created, but those which she knew to have existed in the life she had seen. She wished always to draw some potent moral from them, holding up for emulation the staple virtues which keep the world strong and make it possible for men and women to be happy in one another's society. She was born to be a teacher, and a notable teacher she became in Boston. In her books she aimed also to teach, and in doing so adopted what we may call the "direct

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process" style in fiction, taking her scenes and characters from real life. She began in this way with "Victoria", she made "Rebecca" autobiographical, and one or two other books partly autobiographical; and she wrote plays that were photographic pictures of things she had seen. When she wrote "Charlotte" she founded a novelette on a tragedy that had occurred in her own day, the incidents in which she knew to be true, and the characters persons who once had been of flesh and blood, and at least two of whom she herself had personally known.

"A tale of truth" Mrs. Rowson declared "Charlotte Temple" to be, and Mr. Nason describes it as "a simple record of events as they happened, and as truthful as Macaulay's sketch of Charles I." Writing of the motive of the story, Mr. Nason says Mrs. Rowson had seen so much of the scandalous lives of land and naval officers in that period that she

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"determined to warn her countrywomen against their seductive arts." 1 Charlotte is described by Mr. Nason as "a young lady of great personal beauty, and daughter of a clergyman who, it is affirmed, was the younger son of the family of the Earl of Derby " — that is, of the Stanley family. Mrs. Rowson, in the story, seems to refer to this family in such expressions as " the

Earl of D ," and "the Countess of

Mr. Nason then explains that it was

1 One of Mrs. Rowsor^s poems, written with the same moral purpose as " Charlotte Temple," is as follows :

" The primrose gay, the snowdrop pale, The lily blossoming in the vale Too fragile or too fair to last, Withers beneath the untimely blast

Or rudely falling shower.

No more a sweet perfume they shed, Their fragrance lost, their beauty fled, They can revive no more.

" So hapless woman's wounded name If Malice seize the trump of fame Or Envy should her poison shed Upon the unprotected head

Of some forsaken maid; Tho pity may her fate deplore, Her virtue sinks to rise no more

From dark oblivion's shade."

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by a lieutenant in the British Army, who was afterward a colonel, and was then in service, that Charlotte, in 1774, was induced "to leave her home and embark with him and his regiment for New York, where he most cruelly abandoned her, as Mrs. Rowson faithfully and tragically relates." Mrs. Rowson, in the Preface to "Charlotte Temple," printed two years after the death of the officer who is accepted as the original of Montraville, said:

" The circumstances on which I have founded this novel were related to me some little time since by an old lady * who had personally known Charlotte, tho she concealed the real names of the characters, and likewise the places where the unfortunate scenes were acted. I have thrown over the whole a slight veil of fiction, and substituted names and places according to my own fancy. The

1 The Mrs. Beauchamp of the story, whose husband was an officer in the English Army and served in America. Mrs. Rowson heard the story from Mrs. Beauchamp after the Revolution, when the army had returned and they first met in England, where the book was written, and in 1790 first published.

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principal characters are now consigned to the silent tomb: it can therefore hurt the feelings of no one."

Mrs. Rowson had ascertained who the original characters were, and where the events took place. When Cobbett assailed her for expressing sentiments foreign to her heart, she said in the course of her reply :

" I was myself personally acquainted with Montraville, and from the most authentic sources could now trace his history from the period of his marriage to within a very few late years of his death — a history which would tend to prove that retribution treads upon the heels of vice, and that, tho not always apparent, yet even in the midst of splendor and prosperity, conscience stings the guilty and ' puts rankles in the vessels of their peace.' "

The year of Charlotte's arrival in New York was the immediate eve of the Revolutionary War. The Boston Tea Party had taken place the year before (December 1773), and in the same month New

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York had sent back to England a ship laden with tea, the captain of the ship being escorted out of town with much enthusiasm. In May, 1774, General Gage had been sent from New York to Boston as Governor of Massachusetts; on June 1 the port of Boston had been closed by decree of Parliament, and in September the First Continental Congress had met in Philadelphia. In the following year actual war began (at Lexington in April, at Bunker Hill in June), and eight days after the battle of Bunker Hill, George Washington, the new commander of the American Army, passed through New York to enter upon his duties in Cambridge.

Here, in New York, English sentiment at that time was extremely potent, officials owing their places to direct appointment from London, and the tone of society in the upper ranks being distinctly royal. But the people as a mass were notably patriotic — quite as much so as the people

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of any other part of the Colonies. They had amply proved their loyalty in the Stamp Act controversy, and in the conflict which, under the name of the Sons of Liberty, they had had with British soldiers. Here, in fact, in 1770, had been shed the first blood of the Revolution. The town, when Charlotte arrived, was in a state of political and military turmoil such as it had not known since the Stamp Act Congress met in Federal Hall or the Battle of Golden Hill was fought in John Street.

New York at that time was only third in population among cities in the Colonies, Philadelphia and Boston both being larger. Save for a few houses around Chatham Square, the built-up parts did not extend north of the present City Hall Park, then an unnamed piece of vacant land, described in the Montresor map of 1775 as "the intended square or common." The only highway that led northward from the city first followed the line

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of the Bowery, and then, near the present Twenty-third Street, divided into Bloomingdale and Boston Post roads. Along this highway — in reality a great, and now an historic, thoroughfare — passed each day a varied procession of carriages, stage coaches, farm wagons, men on horseback, soldiers in red coats, and worka-day pedestrians. Near the south end of the road — that is, near the beginning of the Bowery as it exists to-day, and forming one of the houses in the Chatham Square neighborhood — stood the cottage to which Charlotte was taken by her betrayer, the " small house a few miles from New York" 1 described in the story. The exact place has been identified by Henry B. Dawson, as follows:

" Below Bull's Head, 2 on the same side of the Bowery Lane, at a distance from the street, but near the corner of the Pell Street

1 From this point to the Battery the distance is about two and a half miles.

2 The Bull's Head Tavern occupied the site of the present Thalia (formerly the Old Bowery) Theater.

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-t

CHARLOTTES HOME IN NEW YORK AS SHOWN ON THE RATZEN

MAP OF 1767

* CHARLOTTE S HOME AND MRS. BEAUCHAMP'S * * POINT IN THE BOWERY

WHERE PELL STREET WAS CUT THROUGH

From a copy of the original map in the Lenox Library

PART OF COL. JOHN MONTRESOR S MAP OF NEW YORK IN 1775 From a copy in the Lenox Library

Cbatlotte

of our day (not then open), in 1767 stood a small two-story frame building, which was the scene of the tragedy of Charlotte Temple. A portion of the old building, removed to the corner of Pell Street, still remains, being occupied as a drinking-shop, under the sign of the ' Old Tree House.' " *

The house Mr. Dawson describes is plainly shown on the "Plan of the City of New York," surveyed by Lieutenant Bernard Ratzen, of the British Army, in 1767, and published with a dedication to the governor, Sir Henry Moore. 2 A part of this map, embracing the Chatham Square neighborhood, is here reproduced. Pell Street was subsequently laid out through land on which stood Charlotte's

1 Introduction to " New York City During the American Revolution; being a Collection of Original Papers Belonging to the Mercantile Library Association," published in 1861.

2 This map, as showing- streets and houses, is the most important one we have for that period. Colonel John Montresor, in 1775, published a map, reproduced elsewhere, which is more important in a military and topographical sense, but not so satisfactory in its details of streets and houses.

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home. It is the next street below Bayard, runs west to Mott, and is now chiefly inhabited by Chinamen.

Mr. Dawson wrote in 1861. Since his time that remnant of Charlotte's home has been supplanted by a modern building, in which a drinking-shop is still maintained, the upper floors being used as a lodging-house of the better class for that neighborhood. Over the doorway one still reads the sign, "The Old Tree House." This corner of the Bowery and Pell Street is the northwest corner. Next door to Charlotte, so that " their gardens joined," as stated in the story, lived Charlotte's friend, Mrs. Beauchamp. It will be observed that the Ratzen map shows two buildings at that point in the Bowery.

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"THE OLD TREE HOUSE"

PRESENT BUILDING OF THAT NAME ON THE LATER SITE OF THE ORIGINAL " OLD TREE HOUSE," IN WHICH CHARLOTTE LIVED, AT THE BOWERY AND PELL STREET

From a recent photograph