Defiant Brides (20 page)

Washington arrived at Mount Vernon the next day—his first visit in six years—followed a day later by Rochambeau and his aides. By September 12, the two generals and their aides rode down the tree-lined path from the gracious plantation house bound for Williamsburg and Yorktown. Riding up that same path a day or two later to Mount Vernon came Lucy and infant son Hal. Few details remain about that visit, save for Lucy’s reminiscences. “Often have I heard her describe the agitated life they then led—the alternations of hope & fear, the trembling that seized them on the arrival of the daily express,” recalled her eldest daughter, Lucy Thatcher Knox.
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Walking the lush grounds overlooking the Potomac, sipping tea, or engaged in needle work in one of Mount Vernon’s wainscoted parlors, the two matrons must have made a remarkable contrast; Martha, its soft-spoken mistress, and Lucy, her warm but high-strung “northern” guest.

“I met a very kind reception from the good lady of this place,” Lucy reported to Knox on September 29. Appreciative as she was of Martha’s hospitality, Mount Vernon made her “ardently to wish for a home.” With remarkable insensitivity, Lucy wrote her husband on the eve of the Battle of Yorktown, “I see but one possible way to obtain one. You know my meaning [leaving the army]. I wish for nothing inconsistent with your happiness and future peace, but could you reconcile it to your feelings, I think it would make me happy.”
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Long accustomed to Lucy’s childish outbursts, Knox simply replied, “I was made happy my dearest and only love by your letter. . . . Yesterday the enemy evacuated their outposts which gives us a considerable advantage in point of time. Our prospects are good & we shall soon hope to impress our haughty foe with a respect for the combined arms.”
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Knox’s massive collection of arms impressed even seasoned soldiers like Joseph Plumb Martin. “Our commanding battery was on the near bank of the river and contained ten heavy guns,” he scrawled in his diary, “the next was a bomb-battery of three large mortars; and so on through the whole line; the whole number, American and French, was ninety-two cannon, mortars and howitzers.”
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For three days the French-American forces, Lafayette’s troops, and three thousand of de Grasse’s men—some twenty thousand altogether—battered Cornwallis’s outnumbered army. Meanwhile, at Mount Vernon, Lucy regressed to her earlier peeves over Henry’s silence. On October 8, she sourly wrote that she was “led to conclude that you could not spare time for the perusal of such an epistle. Never was I so anxious as at this moment nor ever less able to bear it. . . . Let me know when there is a ray of hope that I may see you and why you do not write by the post.”
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That day, Knox’s artillerists began pounding the British in an assault leading to the climax of the siege, from October 10 to 12. “A tremendous and incessant firing from the American and French batteries is kept up,” Dr. Thacher scribbled in his journal. “The enemy return the fire, but with little effect.”
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Their lackluster efforts, Chastellux believed, resulted from Knox’s “military genius . . . [his] artillery was always very well served, the general incessantly directing it and often himself pointing the mortars; seldom did he leave the batteries.”
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At one point during the battle, Washington, Knox, and General Benjamin Lincoln watched the action in an exposed area. When an aide pointed out their danger, the commander in chief curtly replied, “If you are afraid, you have liberty to step back.”
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While protected from those details, Lucy’s anxieties, nevertheless, increased. Another week passed before two letters arrived. Neither was from Knox. “Mrs. Washington and Mrs. Custis [Eleanor “Nelly” Calvert Custis, wife of John Parke “Jacky” Custis] have just been made happy by the receipt of long letters; from their husbands, while I poor unhappy girl, am not worthy of a line,” Lucy penned. “It is not possible for any person to be more low spirited, than I have been for more than a week past. Heavens, that I should be neglected at such a time.” Pointedly, she added, “Mrs. Washington and her daughter-in-law planned to travel to the army camp at Williamsburg.” She, meanwhile, “shall remain here . . . probably ignorant of what is passing at the place where my all is at stake.”
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Knox had not forgotten her. The same day Lucy wrote to him, in fact, he had dashed off a note from the “Trenches before York” that read, “My love I have only one moment to write by an express . . . to inform the best beloved of my soul that I am well & have been perfectly so. The [night before] last we stormed the enemies’ two advanced works with very little loss. . . . I hope in ten or twelve days, we shall with the blessing of heaven terminate it. I shall take care of your Harry for your sake.”
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Three days later, Wednesday, October 17, his predictions were realized. Euphorically, he wrote Lucy, “I might be the first to communicate good news to the charmer of my soul. A glorious moment for America! This day Lord Cornwallis and his army marches out and piles their arms in the face of our victorious Army.”
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Thrilled, Lucy replied, “If this should prove true and my Harry is safe how grateful ought I to be to heaven.”
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A week later, Knox assured her, “I hope to have the sweet felicity of embracing you in ten days from today and perhaps sooner.” In a jovial reference to his infant son, Hal, he added, “Cannot you impress his memory [so] powerfully with the taking of Lord Cornwallis as to make the little fellow tell it to his children?”
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Hopes for a son’s tales about Yorktown for another generation of the Washingtons were crushed when George and Martha’s son, Jackie, died on November 5 from “putrid fever.” Struck by the juxtaposition of that tragedy with the triumph at Yorktown, Knox wrote General Biddle that the Washingtons “amidst flattering public prospects have received the most fatal blow to their domestic felicity.”
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A week after Jackie’s death, the Washingtons returned to Mount Vernon. Obliged to appear before Congress, but grieving nearly as deeply as Martha, Washington consequently brought his wife to Philadelphia on November 20. Before long the Knoxes would join them, for, as Henry explained to General Benjamin Lincoln, he intended to remain with Lucy “until the moment of her difficulty shall be over.”
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Proudly, he wrote General Greene on December 12 that Lucy had “presented me with another son,” whom they named Camillus Marcus.
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Washington was to be his godfather.

Four days earlier, a fleet of 150 ships of the Royal Navy had sailed at dusk from Philadelphia to Sandy Hook, bound for England. Hidden within the thicket of white sails also sped the
Robuste
with Charles Cornwallis and General Arnold aboard. Nearby, a packet ship carried Arnold’s wife, Peggy, and her newborn son, James, and toddler, Neddy.

The couple had deliberately separated for the transatlantic crossing. Peggy’s decision to travel in an expensive packet ship, Rebecca Shoemaker had gossiped to her daughter, was “more agreeable for her than a man of war, yet not safe for him [Arnold]. They give for the cabin 300 guineas and then took what company they chose, chiefly military, I believe. I do not hear of any females but her maids.”
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IF PEGGY’S PERSONAL STAR
was on the rise, Arnold’s was in freefall as their respective ships headed into the high seas. The
Rebel
, an American privateer, suddenly loomed into view behind the
Robuste
, attempting to capture Arnold. During that chase, high winds and driving rains from an Atlantic storm battered the
Robuste
, impelling Arnold’s move to the
Edward
, a transport ship. Ultimately the
Rebel
captured the
Robuste
, but, as London’s
Public
Advertiser
of January 24 surmised, the sailors were doubtless “chagrined at their disappointment in missing their expected prey.”
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By January 21, the
Edward
anchored at the Scilly Isles on Britain’s west coast, where fishing boats ferried the passengers to shore. Only Arnold remained aboard the
Edward
, determined to wait there until, the
London Chronicle
reported, “a vessel of force appeared . . . to warrant his safety” and deliver him to Portsmouth.
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Peggy’s trip went more smoothly. Despite a similarly stormy crossing, the packet ship carrying her and her children arrived in Falmouth, England, without incident.

By Tuesday, January 22, the newly reunited Arnolds rode into windswept London in “a good deal of small rain.”
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That day the
Daily Advertiser
announced, “They have taken a house and set up a carriage and will, I suppose, be a good deal visited.”
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The Arnolds’ new residence was a handsome five-story townhouse, the tallest in fashionable Portman Square. Other American Loyalists lived nearby, among them William Fitch and his young sisters, Ann and Sarah, who soon befriended the Arnolds.

Margaret Shippen Arnold

Soon after Peggy’s arrival with “the General,” as she called Arnold, she renewed acquaintance with her American-born cousin, Dorothy Willing Stirling, whose husband, Sir Walter Stirling, introduced Arnold to George III at court. Subsequently, Arnold had a private audience with the king, followed by a stroll through St. James Park with the king and the Prince of Wales.

Afterwards, Arnold boasted to his New York Loyalist friend William Smith that “his Majesty wished me to return to America” and “promised me that I could be promoted.”
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By February 4, the London
Daily Advertiser
reported General Arnold would “shortly to return back to America, and to have the command of the Loyalists.”
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Peggy, too, was initially swamped with attention. Colonel Banastre Tarleton and other officers who remembered the former belle from Philadelphia now declared Peggy “the most beautiful women in England.”
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One of the women who fussed over her was Elizabeth Lady Amherst, the lovely, fair-skinned wife of Sir Jeffrey Amherst, who introduced Peggy at court on February 10. Immediately she was lionized. George’s wife, Queen Charlotte, it was said, became “so interested in favor of Mrs. Arnold as to desire the ladies of the court to pay much attention to her.”
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Contrary to her usual austerity, the plain, good-hearted queen lavished an annuity of a hundred pounds a year upon Peggy for the maintenance of her children, as well as for those not yet born.

On March 19, George III also issued a royal warrant to his paymaster of pensions on Peggy’s behalf. “Our will and pleasure is and we do hereby direct, authorize and command, that an annuity or yearly pension of £500 be established and paid by you unto Margaret Arnold, wife of our trusty and well-beloved Brigadier General Benedict Arnold, to commence from the day of the date hereof and continue during our pleasure.”
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After commissions and fees, as General Clinton noted in a memorandum of 1792, Peggy received £350 from the King “obtained for her services, which were meritorious.”
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Revealed when Clinton’s papers were publicized in the early twentieth century, the memorandum convinced subsequent historians that Peggy had participated in Arnold’s treason.

Superficially, the Arnolds’ social success in London society in 1782 seemed ensured. Though not fabulously wealthy, the Arnolds lived luxuriously. Their townhouse was outfitted with fine mahogany furniture; their table handsomely appointed with fine silver, crystal, and Wedgwood; their personal needs attended by a staff of servants, with a private coach and four ready to drive them through London. Still, appearances meant far less in England than a man’s character, and its lapse inevitably produced a cloud of suspicion as thick and impenetrable as a London fog. Instead of the admiration Arnold anticipated he would receive from the British, he inspired contempt.

Sir Walter Stirling’s reaction typified this reaction. Mrs. Arnold, he opined, “was an amiable woman, and was her husband dead, she would be much noticed.”
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By February 16, a satiric “Ode Addressed to General Arnold” by “Lady Craven” appeared in the
Whitehall Evening Post
. The first of its twelve withering stanzas read:

Political resistance to a continuation of the American war intensified contempt for Arnold. In the lofty halls of Parliament’s House of Lords, Thomas, Lord Walsingham, descried the “case of one Arnold, who, coming to this kingdom, with his hand treacherously and traitorously reeking in the blood of his countrymen, closeted with the King, to be received at Court, to be smiled upon, to be caressed, to be rewarded in contamination and to the disgrace of the British army . . . the instrument of that delusion to this country, which . . . have so successful for themselves . . . though so ruinously for this nation, promoted and obtained?”
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