PART II.

Having thus become acquainted with the two Miss Byleses, and understanding that they were always delighted when strangers were brought to see them in a similar manner, I afterwards became the introducer of several friends from other cities, who successively visited Boston in the course of that summer, and who expressed a desire to pay their compliments to these singular old ladies.

In every instance, the same routine was pursued upon these occasions by the two sisters, and the practice of nearly half a century had, of course, made them perfect in it. I was told by a lady who had known the Miss Byleses long and intimately, and had introduced to them, at their house, not less than fifty persons, that she had never observed the slightest variation in their usual series of sayings and doings. And so I always found it, whenever I brought them a new visitor. Miss Mary always came to receive us at the front door,—and Miss Catharine always produced her own effect by not making her appearance, till we had sat sometime in the parlour. The attention of the stranger was always, in the same words, directed to the cornelian ring on their father’s picture, and always the new guests were placed in the great carved chair, and the same wonder was expressed that “they should sit easy under the crown.” Always did their visiter hear the history of “their nephew, poor boy, whom they had not seen for forty years.” Always did Miss Catharine with the same diffidence exhibit the snake,—and always was the snake unwilling to re-enter his box, till he had been brought to obedience by a little wholesome chastisement. The astounding trick of the alphabetical bits of paper was unfailingly shown;—and, always when the visiters gave symptoms of departure, did Miss Mary slip out of the room, and lock the front door, that she might have an opportunity of repeating her excellent joke about the ladies’ night caps.

It was very desirable that all ladies and gentlemen, taken to see the Miss Byleses, should have sufficient tact to be astonished up to the exact point at the exhibition of their curiosities, that they should laugh, just enough, at their witticisms; and that they should humor, rather than controvert, their gratuitous manifestations of loyalty to the person they called their rightful king.

My friend Mr. Sully, (who was glad to have an opportunity of seeing Copley’s portrait of Dr. Byles,) enacted his part à mervëílle;—or rather, it was no acting at all; but the genuine impulse of his kind and considerate feelings, and of his ever-indulgent toleration for the peculiarities of such minds as are not so fortunate as to resemble his own.

Another gentleman who was desirous of an introduction to the sisters, rather alarmed me by over-doing his part,—and, as I thought, being rather too much amazed at the curiosities; and rather too mirthful at the jokes,—and rather too warm in praising kings and deprecating presidents. But on this occasion, I threw away a great deal of good uneasiness, for I afterwards found that the Miss Byleses, spoke of this very gentleman as one of the most sensible and agreeable men they had ever seen,—and one who had exactly the right way of talking and behaving.

A lady who testified a wish to accompany me on a visit to the Miss Byleses, found little either to interest or amuse her,—the truth was, that being unable to enter the least into their characters, she looked very gravely all the time, and afterwards told me she saw nothing in them but foolishness.

I must do the Miss Byleses the justice to say, that they appeared to much less advantage on these the first visits of new people, than to those among the initiated, who took sufficient interest in them to cultivate an after-acquaintance. I went sometimes alone to sit an hour with them towards the decline of a summer afternoon,—and then I always found them infinitely more rational than when “putting themselves through their facings,” to show off to strangers. In the course of these quiet visits, they told me many little circumstances connected with the royalist side of our revolutionary contest, that I could scarcely have obtained from any other source,—the few persons yet remaining among us that were tories during that eventful period, taking care to say as little about it as possible: and every one is so considerate as to ask them no questions on a subject so sore to them.

But with the daughters of Dr. Byles, the case was quite different. They gloried,—they triumphed, in the firm adherence of their father and his family to the royalty of England,—and scorned the idea of even now being classed among the citoyennes of a republic; a republic which, as they said, they had never acknowledged, and never would; regarding themselves still as faithful subjects to the majesty of Britain, whoever that majesty might be. Of the kings that they knew of, they had a decided preference for George the Third, as the monarch of their youthful days, and under whom the most important events of their lives had taken place. All since the revolution was nearly a blank in their memories;—they dated almost entirely from that period,—and since then, they had acquired but a scanty accession to the number of their ideas. From their visiters they learnt little or nothing, as they always had the chief of the talk to themselves. With English history, and with the writers of the first half of the last century they were somewhat conversant,—but all that had transpired in the literary and political world since the peace of ’83, was to them indistinct and shadowy as the images of a dream not worth remembering. But they talked of what, to us, is now the olden time with a vividness of recollection that seemed as if the things had occurred but yesterday. In the coloring of their pictures, I, of course, made allowance for the predominant tinge of toryism, and who for a large portion of the lingering vanity, which I regarded indulgently, because it injured no one, and their self-satisfaction added to the happiness of these isolated old ladies. They once showed me, in an upper room, portraits of themselves at the ages of seventeen and eighteen, painted by Pelham, the brother-in-law, I believe, of Copley. The pictures were tolerably executed; and I think they must have been likenesses, for the faded faces of the octogenarian sisters still retained some resemblance to their youthful prototypes. The Miss Byleses were not depicted in the prevailing costume of that period. They had neither hoop-petticoats, stomachers, nor powdered heads,—both were represented in a species of non-descript garments, imagined by the painter,—and for head gear, Miss Catharine had her own fair locks in a state of nature,—and Miss Mary a thing like a small turban.

From their own account they must have been regarded somewhat in the light of belles by the British officers. They talked of walking on the Common arm in arm with General Howe and Lord Percy: both of whom, they said, were frequent visitors at the house, and often took tea and spent the evening there.

I imagined the heir of Northumberland, taking his tea in the old parlour, by the old fire-place, at the old tea-table,—entertained by the witticisms of Dr. Byles, and the prettinesses of his daughters; who, of course, were the envy of all the female tories of Boston, at least of those who could not aspire to the honor of being talked to by English noblemen. Moreover, Lord Percy frequently ordered the band of his regiment to play under the chesnut trees, for the gratification of the Miss Byleses, who then, as they said, had “God save the King” in perfection. By the bye, I have never heard either God save the king or Rule Britannia well played by an American band; though our musicians seem to perform the Marseillaise con amore.

The venerable ladies told me that the intimacy of their family with the principal British officers became so well known, that in a short time they found it expedient to close their shutters before dark, as the lights gleaming through the parlor windows made the house of Dr. Byles, a mark for the Americans to fire at from their fortifications on Dorchester heights, in the hope that every ball might destroy a red-coated visitor. Also, that the cannon-shot, still sticking in the tower of Brattle-street church, was aimed by the Cambridge rebels at General Howe, who had established his head-quarters at the old Province House. Unpractised artillerymen as they then were, it is difficult to believe that, if the Province House was really their mark, they could have missed it so widely.

The Miss Byleses related many anecdotes of their father; some of which were new to me, and with others I had long been familiar. For the benefit of such of my readers as have not yet met with any of these old fashioned jeux d’esprit I will insert a few samples of their quality.

For instance, his daughters told me of the doctor walking one day with a whig gentleman, in the vicinity of the Common, where a division of the British troops lay encamped. His companion pointing to the soldiers of the crown—said—“you see there the cause of all our evils—” “—But you cannot say that our evils are not red-dressed,” remarked Dr. Byles. “Your pun is not a good one,” observed his companion, “you have mis-spelt the word by adding another D.”—“Well—” replied the clerical joker,—“as a doctor of divinity, am I not entitled to the use of two D’s?”

They spoke of their father’s captivity in his own mansion. And one of them repeated to me the well known story of Dr. Byles coming out to the centinel who was on guard, in a porch that then ran along the front of the house, and requesting him to go to the street pump and bring a bucket of cold water, as the day was warm, and the doctor very thirsty. The soldier, it seems, at first declined; alleging his reluctance to violate the rules of the service by quitting his post before the relief came round. The doctor assured the man that he would take his place, and be his own guard till the water was brought. The centinel at last complied; and took the bucket and went to the pump,—first resigning his musket to Dr. Byles, who shouldered it in a very soldier-like manner, and paced the porch, guarding himself till the sentry came back,—to whom on returning his piece, he said,—“Now my friend, you see I have been guarded—re-guarded—and dis-regarded.”

The Miss Byleses also referred to the anecdote of their father having once paid his addresses to a lady who refused him, and afterwards married the Mr. Quincy of that time, a name which then, as now, is frequently in Boston pronounced Quinsy. The doctor afterwards meeting the lady, said to her jocosely,—“Your taste in distempers must be very bad, when it has led you to prefer the Quinsy to Byles.”

In front of the house was in former times a large deep slough, that had been suffered by the municipal authorities to remain there for several winters, with all its inconveniences, which in wet weather rendered it nearly impassable. One day, Dr. Byles observed from his window that a chaise, containing two of the select men, or regulators of the town, had been completely arrested in its progress by sticking fast in the thick heavy mud,—and they were both obliged to get out, and putting their shoulders to the wheel, work almost knee-deep in the mire before they could liberate their vehicle. The doctor came out to his gate, and bowing respectfully, said to them—“Gentlemen, I have frequently represented that slough to you as a nuisance to the street, but hitherto without any effect. Therefore I am rejoiced to see you stirring in the matter at last.”

Certain fanatics who called themselves New-Lights had become very obnoxious to the more rational part of the community, and were regarded with much displeasure by the orthodox churches. A woman of this sect, who lived in the neighborhood, came in as usual, one morning, to annoy Dr. Byles, by a long argumentative, or rather vituperative visit. “Have you heard the news?” asked the doctor, immediately on the entrance of his unwelcome guest; he having just learnt the arrival, from London, of three hundred street lamps.

She replied in the negative.

“Well then,”—resumed the doctor,—“Not less than three hundred new lights have just arrived from England, and the civil authorities are going immediately to have them all put in irons.”

The lady was shocked to hear of the cruel treatment designed for her sectarian brethren that had just come over, and she hastened away directly, to spread the intelligence among all her acquaintances, in the hope, as she said, that something might be done to prevent the infliction of so unmerited a punishment. And the doctor congratulated himself on the success of the jest by which he had gotten rid of a troublesome visiter.

A son of Dr. Byles, that retired to Halifax, must have probably inherited a portion of his father’s mantle; for his sisters repeated to me one of his conundrums, the humor of which almost atones for its coarseness—“Why do the leaders of insurrections resemble men that like sausages?”—“Because they are fond of intestine broils.”

The Miss Byleses told me much of the scarcity of provisions and fire-wood, throughout Boston, during the winter of 1775, when the British and their adherents held out the town against the Yankee rebels, as they called them—and who had invested it every-where on the land side, taking especial care that no supplies should pass in. It was then that the old North Church was torn down by order of General Howe, that the soldiers might convert into fuel the wood of which it was built.

By the bye, Mrs. Corder, an aged and intelligent female, living at the North end, informed me that, when a little girl, she witnessed from her father’s house on the opposite side of the way, the demolition of this church; and that she was terrified at the noise of the falling beams and of the wooden walls, as they battered them down, and at the shouting and swearing of the soldiers as they quarrelled over their plunder. Nevertheless, when the work of destruction was over, and the soldiers all gone, she and other children of the neighborhood ran out to scramble among the rubbish—and she found and carried home a little wooden footstool or cricket, that had evidently been thrown out from one of the demolished pews. I bought of my informant (who was in indigent circumstances) this humble and time-darkened relic, and it is now in possession of my youngest niece.

To return to the daughters of Dr. Byles.—They still lamented greatly over the privations endured that winter by the British army shut up and beleaguered in Boston; though certainly the same sufferings were shared by all the inhabitants that remained in the town.—And they grieved accordingly, to think that these inconveniencies finally compelled their English friends to take to their ships and depart.

Miss Mary Byles related to me, that on one occasion she had given to a hungry British soldier a piece of cold pork that had been left from dinner. A few evenings after, the same man knocked at the door, and requested to see one of the ladies—Miss Mary presented herself, and the grateful soldier slipped into her hand a paper containing a small quantity of the herb called by the whigs of that time “the detested tea;” and which it was then scarcely possible to obtain on any terms.

Several years elapsed before I again was in Boston. In the interim, I heard something of the Miss Byleses from ladies who knew and visited them. I understood that, at length, they had found it impossible to prevent what they had so long dreaded, the opening of a street that would take in their little green lawn, their old horse-chesnut trees, and that part of their house that stood directly across the way. For this surrender of their property, they received from the city an ample compensation in money; also their house was made as good or rather better than ever besides being new roofed and thoroughly repaired. The despoiled sisters, though another and more comfortable residence was offered to them during the time of their destruction, as they termed it, steadily persisted in remaining on their own domain during the whole process of its dismemberment. Their house, as they said, was cut in half; that part which faced the end of Tremont street being taken away. They mourned over the departure of every beam and plank as if each was an old friend—and so they truly were. And deep indeed was the affliction of the aged sisters when they saw, falling beneath the remorseless axe, their noble horse-chesnut trees whose scattered branches, as they lay on the grass, the old ladies declared, seemed to them like the dismembered limbs of children. At this juncture, their grief and indignation reached its climax; and they excited much sympathy even among professed utilitarians. There were many indulgent hearts in Boston that felt as if the improvement of this part of the city might yet have been delayed for a few short years, till after these venerable and harmless females should have closed their eyes for ever upon all that could attach them to this side of the grave. And that even if the march of public spirit should in consequence have allowed itself to pause a little longer in this part of its road, “neither heaven nor earth would have grieved at the mercy.”

Miss Mary Byles, who with more sprightliness had less strength of mind than her younger sister, never, as the saying is, held up her head again.—Her health and spirits declined from that time—she sunk slowly but surely; and after lingering some months, a few days of severe bodily suffering terminated all her afflictions, and consigned her mortal remains to their final resting-place beside her father. In the meantime she had lost her nephew, Mather Brown, the painter, who died at an advanced age in London and who was to have been the heir of all that his aunts possessed.

In addition to the rest of their little wealth, the Miss Byleses had in a sort of strong hold up stairs a chest of old-fashioned plate, no article of which was on any occasion used by them. Also, they retained some rare and valuable books that had belonged to their father, and a few curious and excellent mathematical instruments brought by him from England, and which the University of Harvard had vainly endeavoured to purchase from them. Among other articles was an immense burning-glass, said to be one of the largest in the world, and which the old ladies kept locked up in a closet, and carefully covered with a thick cloth, lest, as they said, it should set the house on fire.

On a subsequent visit to the metropolis of the American east, I went to see the surviving Miss Byles; and when I reached the accustomed place I could scarcely recognize it. The main part of the old house was yet standing; but the loss of one end had given it quite a different aspect. There was no longer the green inclosure, the fence-gate, and the narrow path through the grass—the door opened directly upon a brick pavement and on the dusty street. To be sure there was a fresh-looking wooden door-step. New tenements had been run up all about the now noisy vicinity, which had entirely lost its air of quiet retirement. All was now symptomatic of bustle and business. The ancient dwelling-place of the Byles family had ceased to be picturesque. It had been repaired and made comfortable; but denuded of its guardian trees there was nothing more to screen from full view its extreme unsightliness. Above its weather-blackened walls (which the sisters would not allow to be painted, lest it should look totally unlike itself) the new shingles of the roof seemed out of keeping—I thought of all the poor ladies must have suffered during the transformation of their paternal domicile.

On knocking at the door, it was opened for me by an extremely good-looking neatly dressed matron, who conducted me into a room which I could scarcely believe was the original old parlor. The homely antique furniture had disappeared, and was replaced by some very neat and convenient articles of modern form. The floor was nicely carpeted; there were new chairs and a new table,—a bed with white curtains and counterpane, and window-curtains to match.—Nothing looked familiar but the antique crown chair and the pictures.

I found Miss Catharine Byles seated in a rocking chair with a pillow at her back.—She looked paler, thinner, sharper, and much older than when I last saw her. She was no longer in a white short gown but wore a whole gown of black merino, with a nice white muslin collar and a regular day-cap trimmed with black ribbon.

Though glad to find her so much improved as to comfort, I take shame to myself when I confess that I felt something not unlike disappointment, at seeing such a change in the ancient lady and her attributes. The quaintness, and I may say the picturesqueness of the old mansion, and its accessories, and also that of its octogenarian mistress, seemed gone for ever. I am sorry to acknowledge that at the moment I thought of the French artist Lebrun, who meeting in the street an old tattered beggar-man with long gray locks and a venerable silver beard, was struck with the idea of his being a capital subject for the pencil, and engaged him to come to him next day and have his likeness transferred to canvass. The beggar came; but thinking that all people who sit for their pictures should look spruce, he had bedizened himself in a very genteel suit of Sunday clothes, with kneebuckles and silk stockings; his face and hands nicely washed; his chin shaved clean; and his hair dressed and powdered; the whole man looking altogether as unpaintable as possible.—All artists will sympathize with the disappointed Lebrun, as he contemplated his beggar with dismay, and exclaimed “—oh! you are spoiled!—you are spoiled!” I suppose it is because I am a painter’s sister, that I caught myself nearly on the point of making a similar ejaculation on seeing the new-modelling of Miss Catharine Byles, and her domicile.

But a truce with such unpardonable thoughts—Miss Catharine recognized me at once, and seemed very glad to see me. She soon began to talk about her troubles, and her sorrows, and alluded in a very affecting manner to the loss of her sister, who she said had died of a broken heart in consequence of the changes made in their little patrimony; having always hoped to die, as she had lived, in her father’s house just as he had left it—“But the worst of all,” pursued Miss Catharine—“was the cutting down of the old trees.—Every stroke of the axe seemed like a blow upon our hearts. Neither of us slept a wink all that night. Poor sister Mary; she soon fretted herself to death. To think of our having to submit to these dreadful changes, all at once; when for ten years our dear father’s spectacles, were never removed from the place in which he had last laid them down.”

I attempted to offer a few words of consolation to Miss Catharine, but she wept bitterly and would not be comforted. “Ah!”—said she—“this is one of the consequences of living in a republic. Had we been still under a king, he would have known nothing about our little property, and we could have enjoyed it in our own way as long as we lived. There is one comfort, that not a creature in the states will be any the better for what we shall leave behind us—Sister and I have taken care of that. We have bequeathed every article to our relations in Nova Scotia since our nephew, poor boy, was so unfortunate as to die before us. In all our trials it has been a great satisfaction to us to reflect that when everything was changing around, grace has been given us to remain faithful to our church and king.”

The loyal old lady then informed me that, on his accession to the throne, she had written a letter of congratulation to his Britannic Majesty, William the Fourth, whom she remembered having seen in Boston before the revolution, when he was there as Duke of Clarence and an officer in his father’s navy. In this epistle she had earnestly assured him that the family of Dr. Byles always were, and always would be, most true and fervent in their devotion to their liege lord and rightful sovereign the king of England.—To have attempted to argue her out of this feeling, the pride and solace of her declining life, would have been cruel; and moreover entirely useless—I did not hint to her the improbability of her letter ever having reached the royal personage to whom it was addressed.

The old lady told me that her chief occupation now was to write serious poetry, and she gave me a copy of some stanzas which she had recently composed. The verses were tolerably good, and written in a hand remarkably neat, handsome, and steady.

Miss Catharine Byles survived her sister Miss Mary about two years, and died of gradual decay in the summer of 1837. Her remains repose with those of her father and sister beneath the flooring of Trinity Church. They left the whole of their property to their loyalist relations in Nova Scotia, true to their long-cherished resolution that no republican should inherit the value of a farthing from them. The representative of the family is said to have come to Boston and taken possession of the bequest.

It is curious, as well as instructive, to contemplate the infinite varieties of human character, and the strange phases under which human intellect presents itself. The peculiarities of these two sisters strikingly evinced the lasting power of early impressions, almost always indelible when acting upon minds that have not been expanded by intercourse with the world. For instance—their steadfast, gratuitous and useless loyalty, cherished for monarchs whom they had never seen, and who had forgotten the very existence of Dr. Byles (if indeed they had ever remembered it) and who, of course, neither knew nor cared anything about his daughters; their rooted antipathy to the republic in which they lived, and where if they had not persisted in shutting their eyes they must have seen everything flourishing around them; the strict economy which induced them to deny themselves even the comforts of life, and their willingness to be assisted by the benevolent rather than render themselves independent by an advantageous disposal of their property. The almost idolatrous devotion with which they clung to the inanimate objects that had been familiar to them in early life, showed an intensity of feeling which was both pitied and respected by their friends, though reason perhaps would not have sanctioned its entire indulgence. By living so much alone, by visiting at no other house, by never going out of their native town, by perpetually thinking and talking over the occurrences of their youth, they had wrought themselves into a firm belief that no way was right but their own way, no opinions correct but their own opinions: and above all, that in no other dwelling-place but their paternal mansion was it possible for them to be happy or even to exist.

As a set-off to their weaknesses, their vanities and their prejudices, it gives me pleasure to bear testimony to the kindness of their deportment, the soft tones of their voices, and to the old-fashioned polish of their manners; which at once denoted them to be ladies, even in their short-gowns and petticoats.

Though, in the latter part of their lives, the daughters of Dr. Byles were subjected to the sore trial of seeing the little green lawn on which they had played when children converted into a dusty street, and the fine old trees (which would take a century to replace) demolished in a few minutes before their eyes: still they were both permitted to die beneath the same roof under which their existence had commenced. The house of their heavenly father has many mansions; and there, in their eternal abode, now that their mental vision has cleared, and their souls have been purified from the dross of mortality, they have learnt the futility of having set their hearts too steadfastly on a dwelling erected by human hands; and more than all, of fostering prejudices in favor of that system of government which, according to the signs of the times, is fast and deservedly passing away. Is it too much to hope that ere the lapse of another half century, not a being in the civilized world will render the homage of a bended knee, except to the King of Heaven.