But my ambition is greatly concerned in this matter: a schooner is confided to my care, humble, indeed, when compared to those lofty piles which I have seen you so much admire, but which is, nevertheless, really capable of an European, nay of an India voyage. Read all history, ransack libraries, call tradition to your aid, search all records, examine a million of manuscripts on vellum, on parchment, on paper, on marble, on what you please, and I defy you to find the most distant hint of any poet, in any age or country, from Hesiod down to Peter Pindar, having been trusted with the controul or possession of anything fit to be mentioned or compared with the same barque, which you say, I have the misfortune to command.
"To be serious: misfortune ought to be only the topic of such men as do not think or reason with propriety, upon the nature of things. Some writer says, it is but another name for carelessness or inattention: Though that may not at all times be the case, it is in the power of every man to place himself beyond the supposed baneful influence of this inexorable deity, by assuming a dignity of mind, (if it be not the gift of nature) that will, in the end, get the better of the untoward events, that may frequently cross our best purposes. Indeed, the sea is the best school for philosophy (I mean of the moral kind); in thirteen or fourteen years' acquaintance with this element, I am convinced a man ought to imbibe more of your right genuine stoical stuff, than could be gained in half a century on shore. – I must add that, be our occupations what they may, or our fortunes what they will, there is a certain delectable, inexpressible satisfaction in now and then encountering the rubs and disasters of life, and I am entirely of the opinion which (says Dr. Langhorne)
"Weakness wrote in Petrarch's gentle strain,
When once he own'd at love's unfavouring shrine
A thousand pleasures art not worth one pain!"
"I must now conclude this scrawl, with telling you, that I am receiving on board my vessel a small cargo of lumber, at a place called Yamacraw, a little above Savanna. The weather is extremely warm, I am tired of my letter, and must, of course, conclude. I do not know whether you ever mean to make a voyage to sea – if you should, thrice welcome shall you be to such accommodations as my little embarkation affords. Poets and philosophers, shall ever travel with me at a cheap rate indeed! Not only because they are not generally men of this world, but because, even supposing the barque that bears them, should make an external exit to the bottom of the ocean, the busy world, as things go, will regret the loss of most of them very little, perhaps not at all.
On the 24th of April, 1789, when Washington arrived in New York to enter upon the duties of the presidency, in the fleet that accompanied him from Elizabethtown Point was the schooner Columbia, Capt. Freneau, eight days from Charleston. In June the Columbia again entered New York Harbor, and on December 28th she was at Sunbury, Georgia. On February 12th, 1790, Freneau arrived in New York, passenger from Middletown Point in the brig Betsy, Capt. Motley, to become editor of Child and Swaine's New York Daily Advertiser. For several months negotiations had been pending. Every appearance of the poet in New York for a year past had been marked by a small budget of poems in the Advertiser from the pen of "Capt. Freneau," but it was not until February, 1790, that he was induced to leave his beloved Columbia and settle down to a life upon shore. The poem "Neversink," written some months later, is his valedictory to the ocean.
"Proud heights: with pain so often seen
(With joy beheld once more)
On your firm base I take my stand,
Tenacious of the shore:
Let those who pant for wealth or fame
Pursue the watery road; —
Soft sleep and ease, blest days and nights,
And health, attend these favoring heights,
Retirement's blest abode."
The poem "Constantia" may record the poet's reasons for leaving the ocean, for on the 19th of May, 1790, there appeared in Peter Freneau's Charleston paper, the City Gazette, or the Daily Advertiser, the following:
"Married, on the fifteenth of April, at Middletown Point, East New Jersey, Capt. Philip Freneau to Miss Eleanor Forman, daughter of Mr. Samuel Forman, of that place."
The Forman family with which the poet allied himself was one of great respectability and even prominence in New Jersey. Its record during the Revolution had been a conspicuous one, and its connection included the Ledyards, the Seymours, and many other prominent families. Mrs. Freneau, in the words of her daughter, "was remarkable for her gentle, lady-like manners, amiable disposition and finely informed mind. She was affable and sprightly in her conversation, and there were, even when she had reached the advanced age of eighty-seven, few handsomer women." In her early years she dabbled a little in poetry herself, and there is a tradition in the family that the prenuptial correspondence was for a long time wholly in verse.
Freneau was now fairly settled in life, and for the next seven or eight years he was engaged almost continuously in newspaper work.
V
During the next year and more Freneau, as editor of the Daily Advertiser, brought to bear upon the paper all the vigor and literary skill which had so marked the Freeman's Journal. The tone of the editorial comment was patriotic and spirited. The note of reform, of opposition to everything that was degrading to high ideals, or that in any way threatened personal liberty, was never absent. Despite the manifold duties incumbent upon the editor of a city daily, he found time to write finished prose sketches and to woo the muses. His poetry of this period is notable both as to quantity and quality. Some of it was drawn from the notebooks of his years of wandering, but the greater part dealt with more timely topics. In June he published the advertisement:
"Mr. Freneau proposes publishing a volume of original poems, to contain about two hundred and fifty pages, 12mo, neatly printed… As soon as there appears a sufficiency of subscribers to defray the expenses of paper and printing, the collection shall be put to press."
Judging from several poems of this period which were printed as from the author's new volume, "The Rising Empire," this was to be the title of the book. The advertisement was dropped in October, and "The Rising Empire" never appeared, though most of its poems were printed in the edition of 1795.
On September 20, 1791, Freneau's daughter, Eleanor, was born at Mount Pleasant. His salary as editor of the Advertiser was not large; the little family, it appears, was in straightened circumstances. A letter10 from Aedanus Burke of Charleston to Madison, dated September 13, 1801, throws light upon the period.
"I remember, it was about the last fortnight that we served together in Congress, in 1791, I one day called you aside, and mentioned the name of Mr. Phillip Freneau to you, as one I knew you esteemed, and then lay strugling under difficulties, with his family. My memory brings to my recollection, that you mentioned the matter to the Secretary of State, Mr. Jefferson. Freneau was invited from N. York, and had the place of interpreter, with a mere trifle of Salary. Little did William Smith know, that you were the author or cause of bringing Freneau from New York; or he might have turned against you, his terrible battery of the slanders and invectives which he poured forth against Mr. Jefferson for three or four years afterwards."
Madison acted promptly. On the 28th of February, 1791, Jefferson wrote to Freneau as follows:
"Sir: The clerkship for foreign languages in