Philadelphia (Repplier)/Chapter 8

FOR nearly a century the history of Philadelphia is a placid record of unbroken good fortune. The tireless wrangling of two great conflicting interests injured the province very little, and gave her that most precious boon,—a standing quarrel which could be taken up by the combatants whenever they had leisure to engage in it. Had the Assembly and the proprietary party worked together in accord, the colonists would have suffered grievously from the benumbing of those angry passions which childhood is bidden to restrain, but which make life a thing of abounding interest to healthily contentious men. The Indian wars, though they cost Pennsylvania both troops and money, left the city undevastated by the horrors which dyed deep with blood the annals of less fortunate communities. The stubborn and conservative Quakers guarded their town—Penn's precious legacy—with a wise watchfulness, and she waxed fairer and stronger every year. Her prosperity was not, indeed, a matter of sudden acquisition, like the affluence of New Zealand, where, Mr. Froude assures us, the labourers eat ​hot-house grapes. It was built up on solid foundations of industry and thrift, having Franklin's maxims for its week-day sermons, and Franklin's shining example to illustrate the text. The man who amassed his fortune penny by penny, and retired from business at the early age of forty-two, with a modest income of three thousand dollars, taught his neighbours a triple lesson of assiduity, economy, and moderation. It is only to be regretted that the edifying spectacle of colonial honour and enterprise should be marred by the dark shadow of privateering. In the Spanish war, and in King George's war, the virtuous Quaker City sent forth these armed marauders to snatch what prey they could; and that she was proud of their success, and pointed them out with elation to strangers visiting her busy docks, proves the exactness of Sydney Smith's cynical observation anent the stanch moral support to be derived from the most dubious of theories.

The increasing wealth of the province manifested itself in farmhouses so strongly and admirably built that time leaves no impression on their massive walls; in country-seats more spacious and beautiful than could be found in any other State save Virginia; in the fast-growing luxury of town life; and in a sane philanthropy, devoid of whims and sentiment. The charity of the Quakers has always extended to the bodies as well as to the souls of men. In 1713, when the city was still in its infancy, they built "for ​the habitation and succour of the poor and unfortunate," the pretty rural cottages long known as the

Quaker Almshouse

Quaker almshouses. Each cottage had its patch of ground, where the aged inmates—unshamed by the ​stigma of pauperism—cultivated bright flowers and healing herbs. It was a peaceful haven, affording, not only shelter, but, as an old historian earnestly assures us, "opportunities for study and meditation." We smile when we read the words, but we sigh, too, recalling the bleak desolation, the abiding horror of a modern almshouse, and comparing it with the decent privacy of the happier poor nearly two hundred years ago, when the wisdom of our forefathers drew a deep line of distinction between the old and helpless, "the afflicted of God," and the sturdy beggar or shameless wench, for whom was made sharper and sterner provision. It is to the Quaker almshouse,

that tradition points as the final meeting-place of Gabriel and Evangeline; and antiquarians who disprove the story with aggressive and importunate details might find a better use for their time and knowledge. In the graveyard of old St. Joseph's—hidden away in Willing's Alley from the wrath of hostile creeds—the lovers slept side by side; and the clamour of a great city echoed but faintly through the narrow, walled-in strip of consecrated ground, where, after so many years of sorrowful wandering, their faithful hearts found rest.

​What the college was to the Episcopal and proprietary party in Philadelphia, the Pennsylvania Hospital was to the Quakers,—a party stronghold, as well as a cherished and admirably administered institution. On its ancient corner-stone was cut deep this cheerful and devout inscription:—

Of the public spirit here gratefully commemorated, the erection of this hospital gives abiding proof. When, in 1750, Dr. Thomas Bond and a few charitable citizens realized the necessity of providing shelter for "sick and distempered strangers," their appeal for funds met with an immediate response. The Assembly voted at different times five thousand pounds to help them with the work. All classes endeavoured honestly to assist. An especial subscription was asked from "rich widows and other single women," and they answered nobly by raising ​a fund sufficient for the purchase of drugs. Although most of the money came from the Quakers, who kept the hospital always under their control, yet other churches contributed with amazing generosity. The pious free-lance, Whitefield, collected, after an ardent and persuasive sermon, one hundred and seventy pounds. England, ever liberal to colonial charities, lent such material aid that the directors found their burden almost easy to bear. An Act of Parliament gave to the hospital all the unclaimed funds remaining in the hands of the trustees of the Pennsylvania Land Company in London, and this extraordinary windfall amounted to thirteen thousand pounds. The Proprietors, Thomas and Richard Penn, gave a portion of the land on which the building was erected, and an annuity of forty pounds a year. Finally, Dr. John Fothergill of London sent a beautifully articulated human skeleton, and so admirable a collection of anatomical models and drawings that the thrifty Friends refused to exhibit them gratuitously to the public. They were placed in a room apart, and Dr. Shippen explained them learnedly every other Saturday afternoon to such seekers after knowledge as were willing to pay a dollar for its acquisition.

It does not surprise us to find the name of Benjamin Franklin on the first board of managers. In point of fact, a Philadelphia board of managers which did not ​include Franklin would have been as great an anomaly as a Roman or a Florentine church without a trace of Michelangelo. It was Franklin who drew up the very sensible rules for the direction of the hospital, Franklin who was elected president of the board in 1756, and Franklin who characteristically proposed the distribution of tin boxes, lettered in gold, "Charity for the Hospital," and destined to receive the chance donations of benevolent friends and visitors. A penny given was a penny made, and the yearly reports of the institution show how much of its income was derived from the small contributions of well-wishers whose narrow means forbade a larger dole. Gifts of various kinds were proffered by prominent citizens; among them a second skeleton (skeletons were rare enough to be held in high esteem) which, being presented by Miss Deborah Morris, after the death of her brother, Dr. Benjamin Morris, was, we are assured, "gratefully received, and honourably deposited in the apothecary's shop."

The site on which the hospital was erected—not without long contention, for the Proprietors had wished to donate a less available piece of ground—was admirably chosen, and the building itself, like all other important buildings of the time, is a model of dignified simplicity, finely proportioned, and free from meretricious decoration. It is well for us who live in an age of over-ornamentation that we can rest our weary

​eyes upon the graceful severity of colonial architecture where nothing needless can be found. The ample lawn was shaded by two rows of beautiful trees planted by Hugh Roberts, one of the first managers, in 1756, and among them grew and flourished a scion of the famous Treaty Elm, pleasantly refuting the slanderous tongues which mocked that historic monument, that mute witness of a nation's peace.

The prosperity of the hospital was unbroken, its efficiency unimpaired, until the dark days which followed the Revolution, when the terrible depreciation of the currency, the chaotic confusion of the public service, and the determination of the legislature to tax charitable institutions, crippled and well-nigh ruined it. Resolute labour and resolute resistance on the part of the managers averted the impending shipwreck, but years dragged by before the old sphere of quiet usefulness was even partially regained. It is pleasant to record that at this juncture the First Troop of Philadelphia City Cavalry gave to the Pennsylvania Hospital the entire sum received by it for services during the Revolutionary war; and the maternity ward for poor married women was built and endowed with this money. A very different, but equally welcome donation was the picture of "Christ Healing the Sick," which Benjamin West generously presented to the institution in 1817, and which awakened such enthusiasm in the hearts of our uncritical grandfathers that the adroit ​managers of the hospital—mindful still of Dr. Franklin's maxims—placed it on exhibition, and realized nearly twenty thousand dollars from the eager crowds

A Bit of Pennsylvania Hospital

who thronged to see it. The big canvas is a replica of the painting originally intended by West for Philadelphia; but which, when it was seen in London, ​excited, we are told, "such a glow of admiration that nobles and commons, rich and poor, united in the determination to retain it in the country." Verily, an artist so blessed by the patronage, so burdened by the praises of his own generation, might well afford indifference to the acrimonious verdicts of posterity.

It was not in philanthropy alone, in the building of almshouses, libraries and hospitals, that the rich colonists of the Quaker City found a use for their ample incomes. They spent their money, after a reasonable fashion, upon creature comforts, and in moderate display. Within their red brick houses, "stately and three stories high, in the mode of London," writes Gabriel Thomas as early as 1696, reigned security and modest affluence. Balconies and sun-dials lent to these demure homes an occasional air of gayety and picturesqueness. "Every necessary for the Support of Life throughout the whole Year," might be found in the far-famed Philadelphia markets; and, if we may trust the evidence of colonial letters and diaries, more ingenuous and less jubilant as a rule than colonial chroniclers, our forefathers heartily enjoyed the good things which Providence had kindly placed at their disposal. In the published journal of Jacob Hiltzheimer, who lived to see the Revolution, and was apparently but little interested in that great crisis, we find such scandalous entries as this: "Feb. 14th, 1766. At noon went to William Jones's, to drink punch; met several of my ​friends, and got decently drunk. The groom could not be accused of the same fault." Whether this means that the groom drank not at all, or that his libations went beyond the limits of decency, does not very clearly appear; but noon seems an early hour to settle down seriously to punch, even on Saint Valentine's day. On other occasions we read that Mr. Hiltzheimer went with his two sons and Daniel Wister to Joseph Galloway's place, "to eat turtle,"—a more innocent indulgence; that on the tenth of May he saw a "ten-pound race between Joseph Hogg's and John Buckingham's horses"; and that—being well disposed to divers sorts of entertainment—he found equal pleasure in bull-baiting, and in witnessing the performance of "Romeo and Juliet," at the Old Southwark Theatre. An opportunity for especial festivity was the King's birthday, June 4th, when he dined on the green banks of the Schuylkill, in company with three hundred and eighty loyal citizens, all in most jovial humour. Any number of healths were drunk at this gay repast, "among them Dr. Franklin's, which gave great satisfaction to everybody." A long boat was then dragged to the water's edge and launched, while the firing of "many great guns" announced King George's birthday to the town.

No one was better disposed towards a moderate conviviality than Franklin himself, for all his maxims and apothegms. In that old house on High Street ​where he lived and died, where, in the garden, he flew his immortal kite, and where he attached his own lightning-rod to his own wall, thereby greatly entertaining his curious neighbours, there reigned always hospitality and good cheer. True, he sent his sister Jane a spinning-wheel instead of the coveted tea-table, desiring her to be a "notable housewife." True, he recommended the "Whole Duty of Man," and the "Young Lady's Library," as proper reading for his daughter Sally, in place of the novels for which her spirit yearned. But, nevertheless, there remains now in the possession of the Pennsylvania Historical Society that delightful punch-keg which could be rolled so easily from guest to guest, and which carried the generous liquor circling around Franklin's board. A curious little keg this, pretty, portly, and altogether unlike other punch-bowls left us from colonial days. And what of that often quoted letter written by Franklin in England to his wife, and promising her, not spinning-wheels and decorous dull books, but the foreign crockery dear to the hearts of all colonial dames. Yet not every spouse would have felt pleased by this dubious compliment from an absent husband.

"I also forgot to mention among the china a large fine jug for beer, to stand in the cooler. I fell in love with it at first sight; for I thought it looked like a fat jolly dame, clean and tidy, with a neat ​blue and white calico gown on, good-natured and lovely, and put me in mind of—somebody."

Praise is not always charming. Had Mrs. Franklin loved poetry as well as she loved her husband, which happily does not seem to have been the case, she would have felt more pain than pleasure at hearing her merits extolled by him in such halting verses as these:—

Well, the lines show at least that Franklin did like to entertain his friends, and that it gladdened him to see his wife lay aside her customary frugality on those blithesome occasions, when the punch-keg went rolling round. Mrs. Franklin—being but a woman, albeit a great man's helpmate—found perchance a keener joy in furnishing her house than in feeding her husband's guests. There is a delightful blending of conscious thrift and timorous extravagance in the account she writes him of her modestly garnished chambers.

​"The chairs downstairs are plain horsehair, and look as well as Paduasoy, and are admired by all. In the little south room is a carpet I bought cheap for its goodness, and nearly new. In the parlour is a Scotch carpet which has much fault found with it. In the north room, where we sit, we have a small Scotch carpet, the small bookcase, brother John's picture, and one of the King and Queen. In the room for our friends we have the Earl of Bute hung up, and a glass."

The simplicity of the philosopher's surroundings contrasted sharply with the beauty and elegance of more pretentious dwellings; with Edward Shippen's house, for example, which is described by a contemporary chronicler as a veritable palace of delights, girt by an ample park, "and having a very famous and pleasant summer-house erected in the middle of his garden, abounding with tulips, pinks, carnations, roses, and lilies, not to mention those that grew wild in the fields; and also a fine lawn upon which reposed his herd of tranquil deer."

A herd of deer reposing on South Second Street seems as strange an anomaly as the concealed staircase, the "priest's escape," in James Logan's country-seat, "Stenton." Who in that dignified and law-abiding household could ever have needed to escape, save from importunate visitors, or from the friendly Indians who came again and again to Logan, as to ​their truest ally, seeking counsel and aid in their difficulties. It was not unusual for several hundred Indians to stay a week encamped in the Stenton woods, and treated always with the greatest kindness and hospitality by the master of the house, whose public duties left him scant leisure for rest. Small wonder that Cannassetego, chief of the Onondagas,

Stenton

bewailed the approaching end of their most trusted friend, and touchingly entreated the Council that when Logan's soul went to God, another might be chosen in his place, "of the same prudence and ability in counselling, and of the same tender disposition and affection for the Indians."

The beauty of Stenton lay in its broad lands, its superb avenue of hemlocks, which tradition pleasantly ​but mendaciously asserted to have been planted by William Penn, its lofty wainscoted rooms, its generous fireplaces, ornamented with blue and white tiles, its graceful staircase,—that test of colonial architecture,—its air of dignified and scholarly repose. Here, in the well-lit library, were ranged those noble old books which subsequently became the city's legacy; and looking at them with love and pride, their owner felt a not unreasonable regret that no one in the future was likely to cherish them as he did. "I have four children now with me," he writes to Thomas Story in 1734, "who I think take more after their mother than me, which I am sure thou wilt not dislike in them; yet if they had more of a mixture, it might be of some use to bring them through the world; and it sometimes gives me an anxious thought that my considerable collections of Greek and Roman authors, with others in various languages, will not find an heir in my family to use them as I have done, but after my decease may be sold or squandered away."

If ghosts can reasonably rejoice as well as groan and rattle chains, then must the spirit of James Logan, scholar and statesman, have exulted over the patient toil of his grandson's wife, heir of his name though not of his blood, as she faithfully and intelligently sorted, copied and annotated the important letters stored in the Stenton library, and wrought ​from them a lasting record of his life and work. The "Penn and Logan Papers," with their wealth of historic and colonial interest, might never have seen the light, had not Deborah Logan worked year after year with unwearied and unrewarded fidelity in those too scant hours of leisure which the mistress of a large and busy household could dare to call her own.

We think of Quakers now as clad perpetually in sober drab, with close bonnets or broad-brimmed hats; but for many years after the founding of Philadelphia they wore no exclusive costumes, contenting themselves with avoiding in a general way the allurements of fashion and finery. Hence the stern warnings, the sharp reproofs directed from time to time against those daughters of Eve who yearned after fancy fig-leaves, who let their hair stray wantonly over their brows, or sought to widen their modest petticoats with the seductive crinoline. As Thomas Chalkley vigorously but vainly remarked, "If Al mighty God should make a woman in the same Shape her hoop makes her, Everybody would say truly it was monstrous; so according to this real truth they make themselves Monsters by art."

Nor were the female Friends averse to glowing colours, remembering perhaps Penn's sky-blue sash which gave them warrant for their weakness. Their silk aprons rivalled the rainbow, and not infrequently their gowns were of red or green, instead of that dove-​like hue which Whittier loved and praised. Sir Godfrey Kneller's portrait of Sarah, elder daughter of James Logan of Stenton, and wife of Isaac Norris of Fairhill, shows us a stately young woman dressed in deep blue, and with the air of an English court beauty rather than a colonial Quaker matron. Thomas Lloyd's daughter, Mary, who married Isaac Norris the elder, is also painted in a blue gown relieved with crimson; and her granddaughter, Mary Dickinson, appears all in red, that deep seducing red which the Paris artists of to-day love better than any other shade. These women, despite their partiality for vivid tints, were strict Quakers, but Quakers upon whom the rigid rules of an exclusive costume had yet to be imposed. Perhaps Mrs. Dickinson was one of the last to rejoice in the glory of colour, for we find her daughter, Maria Logan, painted in the orthodox dress of the Friends, and presenting a curious contrast to her resplendent kinsfolk. There is ample evidence to show that the scarlet cloaks so popular in provincial England (who does not remember poor ill-fated Sylvia's?) found their way over the ocean, and created much disturbance among the sober-minded and austere. That one of these gay garments, "almost new, with a double cape," was stolen from Franklin's house in 1750, proves that the philosopher did not seek to restrain the natural longing of wife and daughter for the shining, dress-laden booths of Vanity Fair.

​Gayer and gayer grew the Quaker City that had been so demure in childhood. Coaches emblazoned with heraldic devices rolled through the ill-paved streets. In the bitter cold of winter days the frozen Delaware was covered with merry throngs; and there is a pleasant flavour of colonial simplicity in the interesting information, wafted along a century and more, that the best skaters of their day were General Cadwalader and Massey the biscuit-maker. In the bitter cold of winter nights, wax candles shone softly down on Philadelphia's sons and daughters, as they met for the famous Dancing Assemblies that date from 1749, and lend an air of prim worldliness to the uneventful annals of the town. Dancing seems never to have been regarded with the same stern disapprobation that made the theatre a forbidden joy. Whitefield, indeed, who was impartially opposed to cakes and ale in any shape, waged an earnest crusade against this, as against all other diversions, and set himself the serious task of remodelling the nature of youth. But before he came to make a dull world duller, the colonists who were not Quakers had smiled indulgently upon such harmless mirth; and the Quakers, though not dancing themselves, had been serenely content that others should. Mr. Richard Castelman, writing in 1710, records with a grateful heart the kindness and courtesy of "the facetious Mr. Staples, the dancing-master, who was the first stranger of Philadelphia that did me the ​honour of a visit. To his merry company I owe the passing of many a sad hour, that might have hung heavy upon the hands of a man deprived of friends and fortune in an alien land."

Thirty years later, we find several dancing-masters prepared to teach "fashionable English and French dances, after the newest and politest manner practised in London, Dublin, and Paris"; and, with the perfection of such accomplishments, there came naturally in time subscription balls, in which the graces thus acquired could be properly shown to the world. These balls, if they somewhat scandalized the elect, were favoured with the approbation and patronage of the Episcopal clergy, who were well disposed towards any form of entertainment which the Quakers rejected, and of which the Presbyterians disapproved. The Assemblies were not scenes of wild dissipation, nor was there any excessive extravagance to provoke the direful eloquence of the pulpit. They began at precisely six o'clock in the evening, and by midnight the dancers were all wending their ways homeward. The old subscription ticket cost forty shillings; and for this moderate outlay a gentleman could take the lady of his choice to sixteen or eighteen entertainments, the dances being given every Thursday night in the winter and early spring. The supper was of the very lightest order, consisting, it was said, "chiefly of something to drink"; a not inadequate description of a repast ​where five gallons of rum and two hundred limes were consumed in punch, and nine shillings' worth of "milk bisket" represented the solid food,—a half-pennyworth of bread to this intolerable deal of sack. Card-tables were prepared for the amusement of those who did not dance, and who appear to have been less patient then than now, and less disposed to play a purely passive part.

The invitations were often printed on the undecorated backs of common playing-cards, blank cards of any kind being exceedingly scarce, and spades and hearts being only too abundant in an age which had not yet learned to repudiate gambling as a sadly unprofitable vice. No wife nor daughter of mechanic or tradesman was suffered to enter the Assemblies which were rigidly aristocratic, and no flippant coquetry was permitted to interfere with the decorous order of procedure. The ladies who arrived earliest had places duly assigned them in the first set, and those who followed were distributed throughout other sets, either at the discretion of the directors, or according to the numbers they drew,—a melancholy arrangement, fraught, like the modern dinner, with many painful possibilities. It was Miss Polly Riché who in 1782 first revolted against this stringent rule, and insisted on standing up in any set she fancied, thus precipitating a quarrel between the gentlemen who supported her recusancy and the managers of the ​Assembly. But what other conduct could have been expected in 1782? Cornwallis had surrendered; the war of the Revolution was practically at an end; independence had been won, and Philadelphia was slowly struggling to emerge from chaos into a new law and order. An evil time this for conservatives, as Miss Polly Riché doubtless understood; so she struck her little blow for liberty, and struck it not in vain. The exaltation of freedom manifested itself on all sides in a general disposition to obey nobody, and the hour was ripe for revolt.

Franklin's Punch Keg