Madame Bonneville promptly sued Cheetham for slander. Cheetham had betrayed his "pal," Carver, by printing the letter concocted to blackmail Paine, for whose composition the farrier no doubt supposed he had paid the editor with stories borrowed from "Oldys," or not actionable. Cheetham probably recognized, when he saw Madame Bonneville in court, that he too had been deceived, and that any illicit relation between the accused lady and Paine, thirty years her senior, was preposterous. Cheetham"s lawyer (Griffin) insinuated terrible things that his witnesses were to prove, but they all dissolved into Carver.
Mrs. Ryder, with whom Paine had boarded, admitted trying to make Paine smile by saying Thomas was like him, but vehemently repudiated the slander. "Mrs. Bonneville often came to visit him. She never saw but decency with Mrs. Bonneville. She never staid there but one night, when Paine was very sick." Mrs. Dean was summoned to support one of Carver"s lies that Madame Bonneville tried to cheat Paine, but denied the whole story (which has unfortunately been credited by Vale and other writers).
The Rev. Mr. Foster, who had a claim against Paine"s estate for tuition of the Bonnevilles, was summoned. "Mrs. Bonneville," he testified, "might possibly have said as much as that but for Paine she would not have come here, and that he was under special obligations to provide for her children." A Westchester witness, Peter Underbill, testified that "he one day told Mrs. Bonneville that her child resembled Paine, and Mrs. Bonneville said it was Paine"s child." But, apart from the intrinsic incredibility of this statement (unless she meant "G.o.d-son"), Underbill"s character broke down under the testimony of his neighbors, Judge Sommerville and Captain Pelton. Cheetham had thus no dependence but Carver, who actually tried to support his slanders from the dead lips of Paine! But in doing so he ruined Cheetham"s case by saying that Paine told him Madame Bonneville was never the wife of M. Bonneville; the charge being that she was seduced from her husband. It was extorted from Carver that Madame Bonneville, having seen his scurrilous letter to Paine, threatened to prosecute him; also that he had taken his wife to visit Madame Bonneville. Then it became plain to Carver that Cheetham"s case was lost, and he deserted it on the witness-stand; declaring that "he had never seen the slightest indication of any meretricious or illicit commerce between Paine and Mrs. Bonneville, that they never were alone together, and that all the three children were alike the objects of Paine"s care." Counsellor Sampson (no friend to Paine) perceived that Paine"s Will was at the bottom of the business. "That is the key to this mysterious league of apostolic slanderers, mortified expectants and disappointed speculators." Sampson"s invective was terrific; Cheetham rose and claimed protection of the court, hinting at a duel. Sampson took a pinch of snuff, and pointing his finger at the defendant, said:
"If he complains of personalities, he who is hardened in every gross abuse, he who lives reviling and reviled, who might construct himself a monument with no other materials but those records to which he is a party, and in which he stands enrolled as an offender*: if he cannot sit still to hear his accusation, but calls for the protection of the court against a counsel whose duty it is to make his crimes appear, how does she deserve protection, whom he has driven to the sad necessity of coming here to vindicate her honor, from those personalities he has lavished on her?"
* Cheetham was at the moment a defendant in nine or ten cases for libel.
The editor of Counsellor Sampson"s speech says that the jury "although composed of men of different political sentiments, returned in a few minutes a verdict of guilty." It is added:
"The court, however, when the libeller came up the next day to receive his sentence, highly commended the book which contained the libellous publication, declared that it tended to serve the cause of religion, and imposed no other punishment on the libeller than the payment of $150, with a direction that the costs be taken out of it. It is fit to remark, lest foreigners who are unacquainted with our political condition should receive erroneous impressions, that Mr. Recorder Hoffman does not belong to the Republican party in America, but has been elevated to office by men in hostility to it, who obtained a temporary ascendency in the councils of state." *
* "Speech of Counsellor Sampson; with an Introduction to the Trial of James Cheetham, Esq., for a libel on Margaret Brazier Bonneville, in his Memoirs of Thomas Paine.
Philadelphia: Printed by John Sweeny, No-357 Arch Street, 1810." I am indebted for the use of this rare pamphlet and for other information, to the industrious collector of causes celebres, Mr. E. B. Wynn, of Watertown, N. Y.
Madame Bonneville had in court eminent witnesses to her character,--Thomas Addis Emmet, Fulton, Jarvis, and ladies whose children she had taught French. Yet the scandal was too tempting an ill.u.s.tration of the "Age of Reason" to disappear with Cheetham"s defeat.
Americans in their peaceful habitations were easily made suspicious of a French woman who had left her husband in Paris and followed Paine; they could little realize the complications into which ten tempestuous years had thrown thousands of families in France, and how such poor radicals as the Bonnevilles had to live as they could. The scandal branched into variants. Twenty-five years later pious Grant Thorburn promulgated that Paine had run off from Paris with the wife of a tailor named Palmer.
"Paine made no scruples of living with this woman openly." (Mrs. Elihu Palmer, in her penury, was employed by Paine to attend to his rooms, etc, during a few months of illness.) As to Madame Bonneville, whose name Grant Thorburn seems not to have heard, she was turned into a romantic figure. Thorburn says that Paine escaped the guillotine by the execution of another man in his place.
"The man who suffered death for Paine, left a widow, with two young children in poor circ.u.mstances. Paine brought them all to this country, supported them while he lived, and, it is said, left most of his property to them when he died. The widow and children lived in apartments up town by themselves. He then boarded with Carver. I believe his conduct was disinterested and honorable to the widow. She appeared to be about thirty years of age, and was far from being handsome."*
* "Forty Years" Residence in America."
Grant Thorburn was afterwards led to doubt whether this woman was the widow of the man guillotined, but declares that when "Paine first brought her out, he and his friends pa.s.sed her off as such." As a myth of the time (1834), and an indication that Paine"s generosity to the Bonneville family was well known in New York, the story is worth quoting. But the Bonnevilles never escaped from the scandal. Long years afterward, when the late Gen. Bonneville was residing in St. Louis, it was whispered about that he was the natural son of Thomas Paine, though he was born before Paine ever met Madame Bonneville. Of course it has gone into the religious encyclopaedias. The best of them, that of McClintock and Strong, says: "One of the women he supported [in France]
followed him to this country." After the fall of Napoleon, Nicholas Bonneville, relieved of his surveillance, hastened to New York, where he and his family were reunited, and enjoyed the happiness provided by Paine"s self-sacrificing economy.
The present writer, having perused some thou-sands of doc.u.ments concerning Paine, is convinced that no charge of sensuality could have been brought against him by any one acquainted with the facts, except out of malice. Had Paine held, or practised, any lat.i.tudinarian theory of s.e.xual liberty, it would be recorded here, and his reasons for the same given. I have no disposition to suppress anything. Paine was conservative in such matters. And as to his sacrificing the happiness of a home to his own pleasure, nothing could be more inconceivable.
Above all, Paine was a profoundly religious man,--one of the few in our revolutionary era of whom it can be said that his delight was in the law of his Lord, and in that law did he meditate day and night Consequently, he could not escape the immemorial fate of the great believers, to be persecuted for unbelief--by unbelievers.
CHAPTER XX. DEATH AND RESURRECTION
The blow that Paine received by the refusal of his vote at New Roch.e.l.le was heavy. Elisha Ward, a Tory in the Revolution, had dexterously gained power enough to give his old patrons a good revenge on the first advocate of independence. The blow came at a time when his means were low, and Paine resolved to apply to Congress for payment of an old debt.
The response would at once relieve him, and overwhelm those who were insulting him in New York. This led to a further humiliation, and one or two letters to Congress, of which Paine"s enemies did not fail to make the most.
* Paine had always felt that Congress was in his debt for his voyage to France for supplies with Col. Laurens (i., p.
171). In a letter (Feb. 20, 1782) to Robert Morris, Paine mentions that when Col. Laurens proposed that he should accompany him, as secretary, he was on the point of establishing a newspaper. He had purchased twenty reams of paper, and Mr. Izard had sent to St. Eustatia for seventy more. This scheme, which could hardly fail of success, was relinquished for the voyage. It was undertaken at the urgent solicitation of Laurens, and Paine certainly regarded it as official. He had ninety dollars when he started, in bills of exchange; when Col. Laurens left him, after their return, he had but two louis d"or. The Memorial sent by Paine to Congress (Jan. 21, 1808) recapitulated facts known to my reader. It was presented by the Hon. George Clinton, Jr., February 4, and referred to the Committee of Claims. On February 14th Paine wroth a statement concerning the $3,000 given him (1785) by Congress, which he maintained was an indemnity for injustice done him in the Deane case.
Laurens had long been dead. The Committee consulted the President, whose reply I know not. Vice-President Clinton wrote (Mardi 23, 1808) that from the information I received at the time I have reason to believe that Mr. Paine accompanied Col. Laurens on his mission to France in the course of our revolutionary war, for the purpose of negotiating a loan, and that he acted as his secretary on that occasion; but although I have no doubt of the truth of this fact, I cannot a.s.sert it from my own actual knowledge."
There was nothing found on the journals of Congress to show Paine"s connection with the mission. The old author was completely upset by his longing to hear the fate of his memorial, and he Wrote two complaints of the delay, showing that his nerves were shattered. "If." he says, March 7th, "my memorial was referred to the Committee of Claims for the purpose of losing it, it is unmanly policy. After so many years of service my heart grows cold towards America."
The letters are those of a broken-hearted man, and it seems marvellous that Jefferson, Madison, and the Clintons did not intervene and see that some recognition of Paine"s former services, by those who should not have forgotten them, was made without the ill-judged memorial. While they were enjoying their grandeur the man who, as Jefferson wrote, "steadily laboured, and with as much effect as any man living," to secure America freedom, was living--or rather dying--in a miserable lodging-house, 63 Part.i.tion Street. He had gone there for economy; for he was exhibiting that morbid apprehension about his means which is a well-known symptom of decline in those who have suffered poverty in early life. Washington, with 40,000 acres, wrote in his last year as if facing ruin. Paine had only a little farm at New Roch.e.l.le. He had for some time suffered from want of income, and at last had to sell the farm he meant for the Bonnevilles for $10,000; but the purchaser died, and at his widow"s appeal the contract was cancelled. It was at this time that he appealed to Congress. It appears, however, that Paine was not anxious for himself, but for the family of Madame Bonneville, whose statement on this point is important.
The last letter that I can find of Paine"s was: written to Jefferson, July 8, 1808:
"The british Ministry have out-schemed themselves. It is not difficult to see what the motive and object of that Ministry: were in issuing the orders of Council. They expected those orders would force all the commerce of the United States to England, and then, by giving permission to such cargoes as they did not want for themselves to depart for the Continent of Europe, to raise a revenue out of those countries and America." But instead of this they have lost revenue; that is, they have-lost the revenue they used to receive from American imports, and instead of gaining all the commerce they have lost it all.
"This being the case with the british Ministry it is natural to suppose they would be glad to tread back their steps, if they could do it without too much exposing their ignorance and obstinacy. The Embargo law empowers the President to suspend its operation whenever he shall be satisfied that our ships can pa.s.s in safety. It therefore includes the idea of empowering him to use means for arriving at that event. Suppose the President were to authorise Mr. Pinckney to propose to the british Ministry that the United States would negociate with France for rescinding the Milan Decree, on condition the English Ministry would rescind their orders of Council; and in that case the United States would recall their Embargo. France and England stand now at such a distance that neither can propose any thing to the other, neither are there any neutral powers to act as mediators. The U. S. is the only power that can act.
"Perhaps the british Ministry if they listen to the proposal will want to add to it the Berlin decree, which excludes english commerce from the continent of Europe; but this we have nothing to do with, neither has it any thing to do with the Embargo. The british Orders of Council and the Milan decree are parallel cases, and the cause of the Embargo. Yours in friendship."
Paines last letters to the President are characteristic. One pleads for American intervention to stay the hand of French oppression among the negroes in St. Domingo; for the colonization of Louisiana with free negro laborers; and his very last letter is an appeal for mediation between France and England for the sake of peace.
Nothing came of these pleadings of Paine; but perhaps on his last stroll along the Hudson, with his friend Fulton, to watch the little steamer, he may have recognized the real mediator beginning its labors for the federation of the world.
Early in July, 1808, Paine removed to a comfortable abode, that of Mrs.
Ryder, near which Madame Bonneville and her two sons resided. The house was on Herring Street (afterwards 293 Bleecker), and not far, he might be pleased to find, from "Reason Street." Here he made one more attempt to wield his pen,--the result being a brief letter "To the Federal Faction," which he warns that they are endangering American commerce by abusing France and Bonaparte, provoking them to establish a navigation act that will exclude American ships from Europe. "The United States have flourished, unrivalled in commerce, fifteen or sixteen years. But it is not a permanent state of things. It arose from the circ.u.mstances of the war, and most probably will change at the close of the present war. The Federalists give provocation enough to promote it."
Apparently this is the last letter Paine ever sent to the printer. The year pa.s.sed peacefully away; indeed there is reason to believe that from the middle of July, 1808, to the end of January, 1809, he fairly enjoyed existence. During this time he made acquaintance with the worthy Willett Hicks, watchmaker, who was a Quaker preacher. His conversations with Willett Hicks--whose cousin, Elias Hicks, became such an important figure in the Quaker Society twenty years later--were fruitful.
Seven serene months then pa.s.sed away. Towards the latter part of January, 1809, Paine was very feeble. On the 18th he wrote and signed his Will, in which he reaffirms his theistic faith. On February 1st the Committee of Claims reported unfavorably on his memorial, while recording, "That Mr. Paine rendered great and eminent services to the United States during their struggle for liberty and independence cannot be doubted by any person acquainted with his labours in the cause, and attached to the principles of the contest." On February 25th he had some fever, and a doctor was sent for. Mrs. Ryder attributed the attack to Paine"s having stopped taking stimulants, and their resumption was prescribed. About a fortnight later symptoms of dropsy appeared. Towards the end of April Paine was removed to a house on the spot now occupied by No. 59 Grove Street, Madame Bonneville taking up her abode under the same roof. The owner was William A. Thompson, once a law partner of Aaron Burr, whose wife, _nee_ Maria Holdron, was a niece of Elihu Palmer. The whole of the back part of the house (which was in a lot, no street being then cut) was given up to Paine.*
* The topographical facts were investigated by John Randel, Jr., Civil Engineer, at the request of David C. Valentine, Clerk of the Common Council, New York, his report being rendered April 6, 1864.
Reports of neglect of Paine by Madame Bonneville have been credited by some, but are unfounded She gave all the time she could to the sufferer, and did her best for him. Willett Hicks sometimes called, and his daughter (afterwards Mrs. Cheese-man) used to take Paine delicacies. The only procurable nurse was a woman named Hedden, who combined piety and artfulness. Paine"s physician was the most distinguished in New York, Dr. Romaine, but nurse Hedden managed to get into the house one Dr. Manly, who turned out to be Cheetham"s spy. Manly afterwards contributed to Cheetham"s book a lying letter, in which he claimed to have been Paine"s physician. It will be seen, however, by Madame Bonneville"s narrative to Cobbett, that Paine was under the care of his friend. Dr. Romaine. As Manly, a.s.suming that he called as many did, never saw Paine alone, he was unable to a.s.sert that Paine recanted, but he converted the exclamations of the sufferer into prayers to Christ.*
* Another claimant to have been Paine"s physician has been cited. In 1876 (N. Y, Observer) Feb. 17th) Rev. Dr. Wickham reported from a late Dr. Matson Smith, of New Roch.e.l.le, that he had been Paine"s physician, and witnessed his drunkenness. Unfortunately for Wickham he makes Smith say it was on his farm where Paine "spent his latter days." Paine was not on his farm for two years before his death. Smith could never have attended Paine unless in 1803, when he had a slight trouble with his hands,--the only illness he ever had at New Roch.e.l.le,--while the guest of a neighbor, who attests his sobriety. Finally, a friend of Dr. Smith is living, Mr. Albert Willc.o.x, who writes me his recollection of what Smith told him of Paine. Neither drunkenness, nor any item of Wickham"s report is mentioned. He said Paine was afraid of death, but could only have heard it.
The G.o.d of wrath who ruled in New York a hundred years, through the ministerial prerogatives, was guarded by a Cerberean legend. The three alternatives of the heretic were, recantation, special judgment, terrible death. Before Paine"s arrival in America, the excitement on his approach had tempted a canny Scot, Donald Fraser, to write an antic.i.p.ated "Recantation" for him, the t.i.tle-page being cunningly devised so as to imply that there had been an actual recantation. On his arrival in New York, Paine found it necessary to call Fraser to account, The Scotchman pleaded that he had vainly tried to earn a living as fencing-master, preacher, and school-teacher, but had got eighty dollars for writing the "Recantation." Paine said: "I am glad you found the expedient a successful shift for your needy family; but write no more concerning Thomas Paine. I am satisfied with your acknowledgment--try something more worthy of a man."*
* Dr. Francis" "Old New York," p. 139.
The second mouth of Cerberus was noisy throughout the land; revivalists were describing in New Jersey how some "infidel" had been struck blind in Virginia, and in Virginia how one was struck dumb in New Jersey.
But here was the very head and front of what they called "infidelity,"
Thomas Paine, who ought to have gathered in his side a sheaf of thunderbolts, preserved by more marvellous "providences" than any sectarian saint. Out of one hundred and sixty carried to the guillotine from his prison, he alone was saved, by the accident of a chalk mark affixed to the wrong side of his cell door. On two ships he prepared to return to America, but was prevented; one sank at sea, the other was searched by the British for him particularly. And at the very moment when New Roch.e.l.le disciples were calling down fire on his head, Christopher Dederick tried vainly to answer the imprecation; within a few feet of Paine, his gun only shattered the window at which the author sat. "Providence must be as bad as Thomas Paine," wrote the old deist.
This amounted to a sort of contest like that of old between the prophets of Baal and those of Jehovah. The deists were crying to their antagonists: "Perchance he sleepeth." It seemed a test case. If Paine was spared, what heretic need tremble? But he reached his threescore years and ten in comfort; and the placard of Satan flying off with him represented a last hope.
Skepticism and rationalism were not understood by pious people a hundred years ago. In some regions they are not understood yet. Renan thinks he will have his legend in France modelled after Judas. But no educated Christian conceives of a recantation or extraordinary death-bed for a Darwin, a Parker, an Emerson. The late Mr. Brad-laugh had some fear that he might be a posthumous victim of the "infidel"s legend." In 1875, when he was ill in St Luke"s Hospital, New York, he desired me to question the physicians and nurses, that I might, if necessary, testify to his fearlessness and fidelity to his views in the presence of death. But he has died without the "legend," whose decline dates from Paine"s case; that was its crucial challenge.
The whole nation had recently been thrown into a wild excitement by the fall of Alexander Hamilton in a duel with Aaron Burr. Hamilton"s world-liness had been notorious, but the clergymen (Bishop Moore and the Presbyterian John Mason) reported his dying words of unctuous piety and orthodoxy. In a public letter to the Rev. John Mason, Paine said:
"Between you and your rival in communion ceremonies, Dr. Moore of the Episcopal church, you have, in order to make yourselves appear of some importance, reduced General Hamilton"s character to that of a feeble-minded man, who in going out of the world wanted a pa.s.sport from a priest. Which of you was first applied to for this purpose is a matter of no consequence. The man, sir, who puts his trust and confidence in G.o.d, that leads a just and moral life, and endeavors to do good, does not trouble himself about priests when his hour of departure comes, nor permit priests to trouble themselves about him."
The words were widely commented on, and both sides looked forward, almost as if to a prize-fight, to the hour when the man who had unmade thrones, whether in earth or heaven, must face the King of Terrors.
Since Michael and Satan had their legendary combat for the body of Moses, there was nothing like it. In view of the pious raids on Paine"s death-bed, freethinkers have not been quite fair. To my own mind, some respect is due to those humble fanatics, who really believed that Paine was approaching eternal fires, and had a frantic desire to save him.*
* Nor should it be forgotten that several liberal Christians, like Hicks, were friendly towards Paine at the close of his life, whereas his most malignant enemies were of his own "Painite" household, Carver and Cheetham. Mr.
William Erving tells me that he remembers an English clergyman in New York, named Cunningham, who used to visit his (Erving"s) father. He heard him say that Paine and he were friends; and that "the whole fault was that people hectored Paine, and made him say things he would never say to those who treated him as a gentleman."
Paine had no fear of death; Madame Bonneville"s narrative shows that his fear was rather of living too long. But he had some such fear as that of Voltaire when entering his house at Fernay after it began to lighten.
He was not afraid of the lightning, he said, but of what the neighboring priest would make of it should he be struck. Paine had some reason to fear that the zealots who had placarded the devil flying away with him might fulfil their prediction by body-s.n.a.t.c.hing. His unwillingness to be left alone, ascribed to superst.i.tious terror, was due to efforts to get a recantation from him, so determined that he dare not be without witnesses. He had foreseen this. While living with Jarvis, two years before, he desired him to bear witness that he maintained his theistic convictions to the last. Jarvis merrily proposed that he should make a sensation by a mock recantation, but the author said, "Tom Paine never told a lie." When he knew that his illness was mortal he solemnly reaffirmed these opinions in the presence of Madame Bonneville, Dr.
Romaine, Mr. Haskin, Captain Pelton, and Thomas Nixon.* The nurse Hedden, if the Catholic Bishop of Boston (Fenwick) remembered accurately thirty-seven years later, must have conspired to get him into the patient"s room, from which, of course, he was stormily expelled. But the Bishop"s story is so like a pious novelette that, in the absence of any mention of his visit by Madame Bonneville, herself a Catholic, one cannot be sure that the interview he waited so long to report did not take place in some slumberous episcopal chamber in Boston.**
* Sec the certificate of Nixon and Pelton to Cobbett (Vale, p. 177).
** Bishop Fenwick"s narrative (U. S. Catholic Magazine, 1846) is quoted in the N. Y. Observer September 27, 1877.
(Extremes become friends when a freethinker is to be crucified.)