LITTLE BRITAIN—After the Uzal Knapp article appeared a few weeks ago, a reader called attention to an account of a visit to the famous old soldier by N.P. Willis. It is worth adding to the record.
A little over a hundred years ago, Nathaniel
Parker Willis was a Little Britain neighbor. He was born in
Portland, Maine in 1806, studied at Boston Latin school, Phillips
Academy at Andover, and Yale College. He died in 1867 at Idlewild
in Cornwall, where he had lived for twenty years.
He came of a family of writers and publishers. His grandfather, Nathaniel Willis, was an apprentice in the same printing office with Benjamin Franklin, and was a member of the so called Boston "tea party," which can be said to have been brewed in Little Britain under the leadership of Dr. Thomas Young. His father, also named Nathaniel Willis, was one of the founders in 1816 of the BOSTON RECORDER, the first religious newspaper ever permanently (?) established.
N. P. Willis traveled much, lived in various places, moved in literary circles, wrote many books and magazine articles, and was well known and well thought of in his time. It has been said of him that "no American author has exhibited more constructive skill or a nicer choice of words." And from another encyclopedia – "Many a struggling aspirant for literary fame received aid and advice from Willis who as Halleck said, was one of the kindest men, and Thackeray asserted that it is comfortable that there should have been a Willis."
In 1855 Scribner published his OUTDOORS AT IDLEWILD. It is a collection of magazine articles. A few pages are given here in full, which he called "A Visit to an old Revolutionary Soldier."
Our Highland neighborhood prides itself on the mastodon disinterred among its hills, and the memorials of Washington so long here and at such a trying period, with his army. Science and history must take us in their way. Perhaps even Mr. Barnum too would give us a reconnoitering call if he should hear that among other belongings of the Father of Independence, his "usual nap" still survives among us, as well as his tea-kettle and arm-chair. Such is the fact – if the ear alone is to be trusted with a word. Usual Knapp is the curious name of the only surviving member of Washington’s Life Guard, an old man of ninety five years of age, here resident, and still hearty and active. And the circumstance with which he is commonly mentioned gives a promise of his still lasting longer – a habit which he has kept up for the eight or nine years that he has now been a widower, of celebrating his own birthday by a call on all the widows of the country round about.
The portrait of this venerable ‘revolutionary’ which hangs among the relics in the old mansion known as Washington’s Head-Quarters at Newburgh, had started a question as to his whereabouts, and we were surprised to discover that he was residing on just the other side of the mountain which we see from our western window – a brother farmer, within ten or twelve miles of Idlewild. This was startling vicinity for a still unsnapped link with an age gone by, and to drive over and see the old man on the first fair day was the promise of an excursion that might even lay a rose leaf on the full cup of a June morning.
I have spoken once or twice in these letters of our venerable next neighbor, Friend S., the quaker, whose white locks and soul-calm tranquility of mien and features are among the most precious pictures in our secluded grounds. To him also it was a surprise to learn that so interesting a person as Usual Knapp was still living, and within visiting distance, and he willingly agreed to make one of the party. His company had the additional value to us that it would bring together two whose eyes had been familiar with the form of Washington. Friend S. (now eighty years of age) having been a boy in the neighborhood when the headquarters were here, and seeing the great man almost daily.
The rural township to which we were bound is called Little Britain, and the atmosphere on the morning of our excursion (June 16th) was of that occasional summer haze which gives our hard and clear landscape the softer effect of that of England. There would have been a third reminder of the parent country in the sign of the old tavern representing General George Washington leading the British horn by a chain – but that remarkable painting is now removed. The highly cultivated fields of this part of our county of eggs and butter looked very English in the veiled sunshine. The cattle were English – Devon cows in every pasture. A belonging of our own native scenery was suddenly missed, as we descended from the gap in the ridge of Snake Hill – the thick cedars which line the walls on every road of Highland terrace. With the change of the soil, in passing the bowl-rim of mountains that shuts us in, the nourishment for this invaluable tree evidently ceases, and I had not realized before how fortunate we are in having such superb spontaneous avenues for the public roads, on our romantic ten-mile terrace.
At the gate of a small and unpainted farm cottage on the side of a hill, I tied up my warm ponies, and, as the front porch showed no sign of life, we took the garden way to the back door. Here we were met by a middle-aged lady, whose face we could but partially see, for she had on one of those smotherers or hoods which all our country girls wear till they have got through with their work in the morning, this useful article hanging for the rest of the day on a nail by the kitchen door, ready to be slipped on whenever there is an errand to the barn, or whenever the hair is to be protected from dust, or the features from unwished for observation. Probably no passing stranger ever saw the face of an American girl while she was milking the cows or weeding the carrot patch.
The parlor blinds were thrown open, chairs placed, and the kindest of welcomes given us by this disguised lady in her smotherer, and then, saying that her father would be in presently, she disappeared, to be seen no more for that visit. (Footnote: In a drive over, which I have since taken to give my wife the pleasure of seeing the honored veteran, we had the good fortune to see one of the ladies, and were very much delighted with her inheritance of countenance and manners. She is indeed a worthy daughter of a sire such as republics depend on.) The old man was at work in his garden, but his slow steps were soon heard, and he entered the room throwing his hat upon the floor at one side of the threshold, and his stick at the other. With a smile on his face and both hands open, he came forward to greet the strangers. He was tall and bent, but evidently of the lithe and symmetrical build which was likeliest to attain his present age of ninety five. His head and features are exceedingly fine. A sculptor would have modeled a Caesar from them a half century ago. Frankness, cordiality and self-confident simplicity were marked in his expression of face, voice and manners.
Very deaf, he drew our chairs very near him, and with his right hand on the leg of Friend S., and his left hand on mine, he made himself acquainted with our names and professions…
The two old men, with the long gray locks of their two beautiful heads laid close together, soon got to comparing their reminiscences of Washington, the subject we were the most interested in bringing about. Friend S. related how the boys used to be called our of school when the commander-in-chief was seen to be coming along the road on horseback, and how dignified and noble he looked as he rode past with his hat off, courteously returning the low-bowed salutations of the lads. He said also that he now lived in the house Lafayette occupied at that time, at the junction of the Moodna with the Hudson; and then they refreshed their memories with the story of the Irishman who undertook to carry the Marquis across the stream on his back, and dropped him into the water-a possibility of an intention to drown the popular officer, which made the Irishman so detested that he was obliged to leave the neighborhood.
But the old sergeant’s description of the parade of the life-guard every morning before the mansion of head-quarters, and the look of the general as he so slowly walked up and down the portico, "straight as a dart and noble as he could be" was the most glowing of all. The "had the three best drummers in the arms," he said, and "they made such music that it took you right off your fee." It entirely straightened the old man’s spine to talk of it. He sat bolt upright, and the squeeze of his bony fingers upon my leg could not have been much looser than the one with which he "charged bayonet" at the battle of Monmouth. He said he remembered a verbal order Washington gave him at that time – not to present arms or take notice of him when he was alone. "He was a man of few words," he said, "and never familiar with anybody." He repeated a story he had one before told to Headley, the historian, of his having see Washington dodge a spent ball that passed close to his head on the battle field, and his smiling immediately, as if at his unsoldierlike weakness in doing so, and turning to his officers with the remark, "Ah, the frailty of poor human nature!" Of the general’s dress he gave us a minute description. Mrs. Washington he said was with him at Newburgh but "she was older than the general and not a handsome woman."…
The old soldier gave us a thrilling description of the privations of the army in its forced march to the South. It was the wettest season ever known, and he had not a dry thread on him for weeks, but he never took cold. The rations were next to starvation – often a dried herring a day and no bread. At the battle of Monmouth every man in his company was shot; he himself received no wound then, or in the other actions he was in during the war, except a slight graze of a ball on the back of his left hand. The old man’s feelings got the better of him once or twice in narrating the stirring scenes in which he had borne a part, and he "choked off" – but it evidently gave him great pleasure to recall them. He said he had no memory for things now but he could remember everything that happened then as if it were yesterday. He enlisted at the age of sixteen and was in the army six years…
Since the disbanding at the Peace, he has been a farmer, taking no part in the war of 1812. His wife died eight years ago at the age of seventy nine, and his two only children (daughters, one of whom assists in the support of her father by dress-making) live with him. His pension of ten dollars a month is much too little, for his merits, I should think, as well as for his wants…
As we drive home, I felt as if we were returning from a place where we had seen times gone by, though my horses, by the unusual length of the drive and the delay in their dinners, doubtless thought it more like a stretch into the future.
Created by Elizabeth Finley Frasier
April 7, 2002
