Albert Gallatin. John Austin Stevens
baisé ce portrait charmant,
Je vous l'avoûrai sans mystère,
Mes filles en out fait autant,
Mais c'est un secret qu'il faut taire.
Vous trouverez bon qu'une mère
Vous parle un peu plus hardiment,
Et vous verrez qu'également,
En tous les temps vous savez plaire.”
At Pregny young Gallatin was the constant guest of his nearest relatives on his father's side, and he was a frequent visitor at Ferney. Those whose fortune it has been to sit at the feet of Mr. Gallatin himself, in the serene atmosphere of his study, after his retirement from active participation in public concerns, may well imagine the influence which the rays of the prismatic character of Voltaire must have had upon the philosophic and receptive mind of the young student.
There was and still is a solidarity in European families which can scarcely be said to have ever had a counterpart in those of England, and of which hardly a vestige remains in American social life. The fate of each member was a matter of interest to all, and the honor of the name was of common concern. Among the Gallatins, the grandmother, Madame Gallatin-Vaudenet, as she was called, appears to have been the controlling spirit. To her the profession of the youthful scion of the stock was a matter of family consequence, and she had already marked out his future course. The Gallatins, as has been already stated, had acquired honor in the military service of foreign princes. Her friend, the Landgrave of Hesse, was engaged in supporting the uncertain fortunes of the British army in America with a large military contingent, and she had only to ask to obtain for her grandson the high commission of lieutenant-colonel of one of the regiments of Hessian mercenaries. To the offer made to young Gallatin, and urged with due authority, he replied, that “he would never serve a tyrant;” a want of respect which was answered by a cuff on the ear. This incident determined his career. Whether it crystallized long-cherished fancies into sudden action, or whether it was of itself the initial cause of his resolve, is now mere matter of conjecture; probably the former. The three friends, Gallatin, Badollet, and Serre seem to have amused their leisure in planning an ideal existence in some wilderness. America offered a boundless field for the realization of such dreams, and the spice of adventure could be had for the seeking. Here was the forest primeval in its original grandeur. Here the Indian roamed undisputed master; not the tutored Huron of Voltaire's tale, but the savage of torch and tomahawk. The continent was as yet unexplored. In uncertainty as to motives for man's action the French magistrate always searches for the woman—“cherchez la femme!” One single allusion in a letter written to Badollet, in 1783, shows that there was a woman in Gallatin's horoscope. Who she was, what her relation to him, or what influence she had upon his actions, nowhere appears. He only says that besides Mademoiselle Pictet there was one friend, “une amie,” at Geneva, from whom a permanent separation would be hard.
Confiding his purpose to his friend Serre, Gallatin easily persuaded this ardent youth to join him in his venturesome journey, and on April 1, 1780, the two secretly left Geneva. It certainly was no burning desire to aid the Americans in their struggle for independence, such as had stirred the generous soul of Lafayette, that prompted this act. In later life he repeatedly disclaimed any such motive. It was rather a longing for personal independence, for freedom from the trammels of a society in which he had little faith or interest. Nor were his political opinions at this time matured. He had a just pride in the Swiss Republic as a free State (Etat libre), and his personal bias was towards the “Négatif” party, as those were called who maintained the authority of the Upper Council (Petit Conseil) to reject the demands of the people. To this oligarchic party his family belonged. In a letter written three years later, he confesses that he was “Négatif” when he abandoned his home, and conveys the idea that his emigration was an experiment, a search for a system of government in accordance with his abstract notions of natural justice and political right. To use his own words, he came to America to “drink in a love for independence in the freest country of the universe.” But there was some method in this madness. The rash scheme of emigration had a practical side; land speculation and commerce were to be the foundation and support of the settlement in the wilderness where they would realize their political Utopia.
From Geneva the young adventurers hurried to Nantes, on the coast of France, where Gallatin soon received letters from his family, who seem to have neglected nothing that could contribute to their comfort or advantage. Monsieur P. M. Gallatin, the guardian of Albert, a distant relative in an elder branch of the family, addressed him a letter which, in its moderation, dignity, and kindness, is a model of well-tempered severity and reproach. It expressed the pain Mademoiselle Pictet had felt at his unceremonious departure, and his own affliction at the ingratitude of one to whom he had never refused a request. Finally, as the trustee of his estate till his majority, the guardian assures the errant youth that he will aid him with pecuniary resources as far as possible, without infringing upon the capital, and within the sworn obligation of his trust. Letters of recommendation to distinguished Americans were also forwarded, and in these it is found, to the high credit of the family, that no distinction was made between the two young men, although Serre seems to have been considered as the originator of the bold move. The intervention of the Duke de la Rochefoucauld d'Enville was solicited, and a letter was obtained by him from Benjamin Franklin—then American minister at the Court of Versailles—to his son-in-law, Richard Bache. Lady Juliana Penn wrote in their behalf to John Penn at Philadelphia, and Mademoiselle Pictet to Colonel Kinloch, member of the Continental Congress from South Carolina. Thus supported in their undertaking the youthful travelers sailed from L'Orient on May 27, in an American vessel, the Kattie, Captain Loring. Of the sum which Gallatin, who supplied the capital for the expedition, brought from Geneva, one half had been expended in their land journey and the payment of the passages to Boston; one half, eighty louis d'or—the equivalent of four hundred silver dollars—remained, part of which they invested in tea. Reaching the American coast in a fog, or bad weather, they were landed at Cape Ann on July 14. From Gloucester they rode the next day to Boston on horseback, a distance of thirty miles. Here they put up at a French café, “The Sign of the Alliance,” in Fore Street, kept by one Tahon, and began to consider what step they should next take in the new world.
The prospects were not encouraging; the military fortunes of the struggling nation were never at a lower ebb than during the summer which intervened between the disaster of Camden and the discovery of Arnold's treason. Washington's army lay at New Windsor in enforced inactivity; enlistments were few, and the currency was almost worthless. Such was the stagnation in trade, that the young strangers found it extremely difficult to dispose of their little venture in tea. Two months were passed at the café, in waiting for an opportunity to go to Philadelphia, where Congress was in session, and where they expected to find the influential persons to whom they were accredited; also letters from Geneva. But this journey was no easy matter. The usual routes of travel were interrupted. New York was the fortified headquarters of the British army, and the Middle States were only to be reached by a détour through the American lines above the Highlands and behind the Jersey Hills.
The homesick youths found little to amuse or interest them in Boston, and grew very weary of its monotonous life and Puritanic tone. They missed the public amusements to which they were accustomed in their own country, and complained of the superstitious observance of Sunday, when “singing, fiddling, card-playing and bowling were forbidden.” Foreigners were not welcome guests in this town of prejudice. The sailors of the French fleet had already been the cause of one riot. Gallatin's letters show that this aversion was fully reciprocated by him.
The neighboring country had some points of interest. No Swiss ever saw a hill without an intense desire to get to its top. They soon felt the magnetic attraction of the Blue Hills of Milton, and, descrying from their summit the distant mountains north of Worcester, made a pedestrian excursion thither the following day. Mr. Gallatin was wont to relate with glee an incident of this trip, which Mr. John Russell Bartlett repeats in his “Reminiscences.”
“The tavern at which he stopped on his journey was kept by a man who partook in a considerable degree of the curiosity even now-a-days manifested by some landlords in the back parts of New England to know the whole history of their guests. Noticing Mr. Gallatin's French