Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 5

Browere's Life Masks of Great Americans 5

The fact is, such a halo of romance and supposed chivalry has garlanded

itself over André, owing to his youth and charming personality, that the

best judgments are warped and influenced, in his favor, when they take

up a consideration of his unhappy fate. Yet his case was an aggravated

one. He entered upon the errand of a spy with his eyes wide open to its

dangers and its consequences. He was taken red-handed, and suffered the

penalty of his daring, after a trial, not by his peers, but by his

superiors. His suppliant plea that he was unwittingly betrayed within

our lines by the very man with whom he knew he was holding unlawful

communication, and that he should be protected by the word and passes of

the traitor Arnold, are pathetic in their puerility; yet his cause has

not failed of advocates upon this plea. After all, it is merely the

settling of a sentimental point in history, and the consensus of opinion

is that André suffered justly and that posterity should “repeat with

reverence the names of Van Wart, Paulding, and Williams.”

 

The truth is, there is too much unnecessary iconoclasm abroad in regard

to historic characters. Where false reputations have been built upon

foundations laid by others, or impinge upon the honor due to another, it

is meet and right that they should be exposed and honor be given to whom

honor is due. But there is no such condition here; it is a mere attempt

to tarnish one of the most important acts of the American Revolution in

its far-reaching consequences, so that it shall be deprived of some of

its brilliancy. On the present question we can do no better than accept

the judgment of Washington--a man never carried away by his feelings,

but always calm, judicial, and just. He wrote to Congress: “I do not

know the party that took Major André, but it is said that it consisted

only of a few militia, who acted in such a manner upon the occasion as

does them the highest honor and _proves them to be men of great virtue_.

As soon as I know their names I shall take pleasure in transmitting them

to Congress.” And later, in forwarding the proceedings of the Board of

War, to Congress, he writes: “I have now the pleasure to communicate the

names of the three persons who captured Major André and _who refused to

release him notwithstanding the most earnest importunities and

assurances of a liberal reward on his part_. Their names are John

Paulding, David Williams, and Isaac Van Wart.”

 

The master spirit of the three captors seems to have been John Paulding,

who was the first of them to die, as also the first to have his mask

taken by Browere. Indeed, his bust is from the earliest mask we have

that Browere made, and is inscribed by the sculptor: “Made 1821 from the

mould made in 1817.” The latter was the year of the Tallmadge episode,

and Paulding, when in New York in connection with that affair, was

taken, by Alderman Percy Van Wyck, to Browere’s house at No. 315

Broadway, where the life mask was made.

 

The attempt has also been made to throw discredit upon the service of

the captors of André by underestimating their social position in the

community in which they lived. This absurd but too common practice in a

democracy like ours, where all men are supposed to be equal, can cut no

figure here; for whatever may have been the station in life of Williams

and Van Wart, who were kinsmen (the latter’s mother and the former’s

father having been brother and sister), Paulding belonged to a family of

consideration in his native State.

 

John Paulding was born in New York city in 1758, and died in Staatsburg,

Dutchess county, New York, February 18, 1818. His brother, William

Paulding, represented Suffolk county in the first provincial congress

that met in New York city, May 23, 1775; was a member of the New York

Committee of Safety, and commissary-general of the State troops. He,

himself, served throughout the war of the Revolution, and was three

times taken prisoner by the British, having escaped from his second

capture only a few days before the adventure with André. His unswerving

patriotism is therefore

 

[Illustration: ISAAC VAN WART

 

Age 66]

 

established by his personal service. Paulding was the one who actually

made the arrest by seizing the bridle of André’s horse, and he was the

leader and spokesman on the occasion. Nearly a decade after his death,

the corporation of the city of New York caused a monument to be erected

over his grave, at Peekskill, when his nephew, William Paulding, then

Mayor of New York, made the dedicatory address. Rear-Admiral Hiram

Paulding--who, at the time of his death, October 20, 1878, was senior

officer in the United States navy--was his son, and Commander Leonard

Paulding, who commanded the _St. Louis_, the first ironclad vessel in

the United States navy, in the war of the rebellion, was his grandson;

while James Kirke Paulding, the collaborateur of Washington Irving, in

the Salmagundi papers, and Secretary of the Navy under President Van

Buren, was his nephew. Surely this brief family history is sufficient to

set at rest any ridiculous squabbling as to his respectability and

position in the community. He very possibly wore the stigma of poverty,

in which case his refusal to release André, “notwithstanding the most

earnest importunities _and assurances of a liberal reward_,” only

emphasizes him to have been, in the words of Washington, a man of “great

virtue.”

 

Isaac Van Wart, who next followed Paulding to the grave, died at Mount

Pleasant, New York, on May 23, 1828, having been born, in Greenburg,

sixty-eight years before. He was the youngest of the three captors. Van

Wart was a West Chester farmer, and a staunch adherent to the cause of

his country; and there is no more reason to throw doubt upon the purity

of his motives in the great affair of his life than upon the motives of

Paulding, which are beyond questioning. His social position also seems

to be established by the fact, that he was a brother of Abraham Van

Wart, Adjutant in the Continental line, whose son Henry married the

youngest sister of Washington Irving. Van Wart’s mask was made by

Browere at Tarrytown in 1826, and until its discovery by the writer

there was no likeness of him known to be in existence.

 

David Williams, the eldest and the last survivor of the three, was born

in Tarrytown, October 21, 1754, dying near Livingstonville, August 2,

1831. He served under Montgomery in the expedition to Canada, and

remained actively in the service until disabled by frozen feet. Many of

the details of the capture of André that we have, are from Williams’s

sworn statement, made on the day following, when everything was

perfectly fresh in his mind. He passed the closing years of his life on

a farm in the Catskills, that had belonged to the leader of Shays’s

rebellion, and it is still in the occupancy of Williams’s descendants. A

monument has been erected to his memory, by the State of New York, near

Schoharie Court House.

 

Browere had great trouble in securing Williams’s mask.

 

[Illustration: DAVID WILLIAMS

 

Age 75]

 

Twice he went by sloop and on foot for this purpose to the latter’s home

at Schoharie, only to find the veteran absent. Finally, in 1829,

Williams visited General Delavan, at Peekskill, and sent Browere word,

whereupon the artist went thither and took the mask, the only portrait

extant of the sturdy patriot.

 

Therefore to Browere’s art,--or “process,” whichever one pleases,--we

owe, among other causes for congratulation, the possession of the only

authenticated likenesses of Paulding, Williams and Van Wart, the three

pure and unyielding patriots who captured the unfortunate André, and

who, “leaning only on their virtue and an honest sense of their duty,

could not be tempted by gold.” Thereby they saved Washington and his

army from capture, and possibly preserved the infant nation from a

return to servitude. Each one of them received the thanks of Congress,

and from the State of New York a two-hundred-acre farm. “Vincit amor

patriæ.”

 

[Illustration]

 

 

 

 

V

 

_Discovery of the Life Mask of Jefferson_

 

 

I had been familiar, for years, with the tragic story told by Henry S.

Randall, in his ponderous life of President Jefferson,[2] of how the

venerated sage of Monticello, within a year of his decease, was nearly

suffocated, by “an artist from New York,” by name Browere, who had

attempted to take a mask of his living features; and how, in fear of

bodily harm from the ex-President’s irate black body-servant, “the

artist shattered his cast in an instant,” and was glad to depart quickly

with the fragments which he was permitted to pick up.

 

This unvarnished tale, copied word for word, was put into the mouth of

Clark Mills, the sculptor, by Ben Perley Poore, and published by him,

some years later, under the caption of “Jefferson’s Danger.” With these

statements fixed in my mind, I came across, while searching for

information anent my article on the “Life Portraits of Thomas

Jefferson,”[3] a letter from James Madison to Henry D. Gilpin, written

October 25, 1827, in which Madison writes, respecting Jefferson’s

appearance, “Browere’s bust in plaster, from his mode of taking it, will

probably show a perfect likeness.”[4]

 

I was struck by the utter inconsistency of Randall’s circumstantial

account of the shattered cast, picked up in fragments, with Madison’s

pointed observations upon “Browere’s bust,” as being in existence

fifteen months after Jefferson’s death.

 

The latter directly negatived the former.

 

This made it both interesting and important to ascertain the exact

status of the subject, by tracing it to and from the fountain source, a

task I found comparatively easy through the calendars of Jefferson and

Madison Papers, in the State Department, at Washington. From an

examination of these manuscripts, together with the newspapers of the

time, it was clearly to be seen that Mr. Randall’s method of writing

history, was to accept and repeat irresponsible country gossip, rather

than to turn to documents at his hand, that would explain and refute the

gossip.

 

The existence at one time of the bust of Jefferson, from Browere’s life

mask, being thus established, the next and more difficult quest was to

discover its whereabouts, if still extant. I instituted a systematic

search, that gained for me among my friends the sobriquet of Sherlock

Holmes, and my persistency was finally rewarded not only by the

discovery of this bust of Jefferson, but also of all the other busts

that had remained in Browere’s possession at the time of his death. They

were in the