ONE of the few perfect jewels of romance, needing neither the craft of imagination nor cunning device of word-cutting lapidary, is that of Agnes Surriage, so improbable, according to every-day standards, so informed with the truest sentiment, and so calculated to satisfy every exaction of literary art, that even the most critical eye might be forgiven for tracing its shifting color to the light of fancy, and not of homely truth. Even at the present day, when the “Neck” is overrun by the too-civilized cottager, to whose gilded ease summer life everywhere most patiently conforms, Marblehead is one of our coast wonders,—a fortress perennially held by beauty, and dedicated to her use; but let the reminiscent gaze wander back a century and a half, and how entirely fitted to the requirements of fancy would it find the quaint town, the vagrant peninsula, and serenely hospitable harbor! The town itself was fantastically builded, as if by a generation of autocratic landowners, each with a wilful bee in his bonnet. Upstairs and downstairs ran the[65]
[66]
[67] streets; they would have respected not my lady’s chamber. Their modest dwellings seem by no means the outcome of a community governed by common designs and necessities; rather do they voice a capricious and eccentric individualism.

“Well, you see,” said an old Marbleheader, indulgently, “they built the houses fust, an’ the streets arterwards. One man says to himself, ‘I’m a-goin’ to set here; you can set where you’re a mind to.’ But,” he added, in loyal justification of his forbears, “I tell ye what ’tis, they done the best they could with what they had to do with!”

For they were governed by no inexplicable and crazy fancy,—these sturdy fishermen of Marblehead; they were merely constrained by the rigid requirements of their chosen site. Building on that stony hillside, they were slaves of the rock, dominated by it, pressed into corners. The houses themselves were founded upon solid ledges, while the principal streets followed the natural valleys between; and with all such rioting of irregularity, that long-past generation was doubtless well content. A house set “catty-cornered” to the world at large, sovereign over its bit of a garden, was sufficient unto itself, overtopped though it were by the few great colonial mansions, upspringing here and there, or by the solid dignity of the old Town-House. The smaller dividing paths, zigzag as they would, led to all the Romes of local traffic, and presently the houses followed the paths, the paths developed into rocky streets, and lo! there was Marblehead, a town dropped from the skies, and each house taking root where it fell.

But if any one reading the tale of these wilful dwellings should soberly doubt the common interests of the people, let him climb the rocky eminence in their midst to the old graveyard, where stood the little church, the oldest of all; here the first settlers[69]
[70]
[71] worshipped, and here, in comforting nearness, they buried their dead, within the niches spared them by the rock. It was set thus high, this homely tabernacle of faith, to overlook land and water, that no stealthy Indian band might creep upon the worshippers unaware,—for those were the days of the church militant in more than a poetic sense. An admirable spot this for the antiquary, wherein to pursue his loving labor of coaxing forward a reluctant past! Ancient headstones will salute his eye, and of these said one local lingerer, garrulous as he who discoursed on Yorick’s skull, “I can tell the date of ’em all, jest as I could a buildin’, by the architectur’!” But let him not conclude that in scanning the slabs erected two centuries ago he has seen all,—for here lies many an unrecorded grave. “They had to send to England for their stones then,” said the Oldest Inhabitant. “Poor folks couldn’t afford that, an’ most of ’em went without.”

Across the little harbor, at nightfall populous with white sails, stretches the “Neck,” once a lonely, rock-defended treasury of beauty, besieged by wave, and alternately lashed and caressed by the fickle, but persistent foam. Well fitted are its girdling citadels for enduring warfare; their towers outlast the feet that climb them, and their masonry crumbles not below, save slowly, through the infinite patience of the eternally tossing sea. And when the eye tired of this majesty of the illimitable, when it wearied of ocean spray, spouting column-like through some gigantic cleft, and found itself oppressed by the rhythm of rolling foam, what would it have seen, on turning inland from Castle Rock, that century and a half agone? A stretch of green pasture-land, becoming yellow as August marches on,—the “Neck” itself. Then, wandering on unwearied, still traversing the “Neck,” sweet, bosky hollows, where lie to-day such treasures of shining leaf and soft-lipped flower as Paradise might claim. These are the wild, sunken gardens on the road to Devereux, glowing in the gold of a royal tansy, greenly odorous of fern, and sweet with the wild azalea,—honey-smeared and pollen-powdered, loved of the bee, and his chief tempter to drunken revels on the way from market. The button-bush holds aloft her sign of cool white balls; loosestrife stars the green undergrowth with yellow; and over stick and stone the blackberry clings and crowds. There the wild rose lives and blooms, fed on manna brought by roving winds and fleeting sunlight, never unblest, even when the purveyors of honey come winging by, to rifle her sweets, and leave her to the ripening of maturity and the solid glow of her red-hipped matron-hood. And on the left again, still facing south, is the insistent sea, dragging down its pebbly beach, and on the right, the dimpling harbor, reddened, for him who is wise enough to wander that way at sunset, with flaming banners of the sky. To cross the harbor again, and follow the mainland back to a point nearly opposite the lighthouse of the Neck, is to find, neighbored by the old graveyard, ruined and grassy Fort Sewall, to-day the lounging-place for village great-grandfathers, or vantage-ground for overlooking a yacht race, but in 1742, when Charles Henry Frankland was Collector of the Port of Boston, just a building. And one day in the previous year, the gallant young Collector, smartly dressed in the fine feathers of the period, and no doubt humming a song,—since he seems to have fulfilled all the conditions of an interesting young galliard,—came riding down on some business connected with the prospective fort. He stopped at the Fountain Inn for a draught,—not so innocent, perhaps, as that from the clear well still springing near the spot,—and, scrubbing the tavern floor, there knelt before him, in lovely disarray, the sweet beggar-maid destined to be crowned at once by the favor of this careless Cophetua. Let that phrase be swiftly amended! Agnes Surriage was no beggar-maid, but the honest daughter of hard-working fisher-folk, and patient under her own birthright of toil. Her beauty was something rare and delicate, calculated to arrest the eye and chain the heart; the simple dignity of her demeanor was no more to be affected through her menial task than a rose by clouded skies. Her fair feet were naked, and blushed not at their poverty, but Frankland’s heart ached with pity of them, and he closed her fingers over a coin, to buy shoes and stockings. Then he gave her “good-day,” and rode away,—but not to forget her; only to muse on her grace, and to start at the vision of her eyes, shining between him and his bills of merchandise and lading. Again he came riding that way, and again he found her, still barefooted; but when he reproached her for[77]
[78]
[79] having failed to put his coin to its destined use, she blushed, and answered in the homely dialect of Marblehead, which yet had no power over the music of her voice, that the shoes and stockings were bought, but that she kept them to wear to meeting. And now the young Collector went often and more often to Marblehead, until the day came when he obtained her parents’ permission to become her guardian, and take her away to be educated. So the wild bird entered voluntarily into the life of cages, to learn the demeanor and song-notes which were approved by the fashionable Boston of the day.

The quaint, village-like, and yet all-regal Boston of the past! Perhaps this was one of the most interesting pages of its life history, before the royal insolence had roused in it an answering manhood; when fashion scrupulously followed a far-away court over sea, and the daily life of luxurious British officials was so distinct from that of the Puritan stratum of society. In England, public affairs seesawed between the policies of George II. and Walpole, and from the world of letters, Richardson and Fielding were amusing the young bloods of the day, and by no means toughening their moral fibre. The leisure of the bold Britons who ruled over us was not for a moment poisoned by fear of American defection from the royal mother-land. Rather, for men like Frankland, was this loitering in western airs their Wanderjahr, a pleasant exile, whence they would some day return, with treasures of new experience, to sit down beside the English hearthstone, and, Othello-like, rehearse the wonders they had seen. Meantime, they walked the streets, bravely attired in small-clothes and wigs, discussing the troubles brewing with the French, and seeking, so far as they might, to build up a miniature England within the savage-girdled settlements of the New World. Sir Harry Frankland stands out from the faint portraiture of the time as one of the most knightly souls of all. He was young, blest with an attractive presence, and his[81]
[82]
[83] tastes were those of the gentleman and the scholar. That he was sensitive and refined even to the point of evincing that feminine strain of temperament so fascinating in a manly man, is very apparent from the fragmentary records of his life, but he lacked no sturdiness of temper or demeanor.

Agnes Surriage responded at once to the new influences about her. Indeed, she was of those to whom borrowed graces are external and almost unnecessary: Nature had dowered her with the riches of beauty, nobility, and modesty of mien; and to adorn her by artifice was merely to remove the rose from its garden bed, and set it in a silver vase. From God’s lady, fitted to scrub the tavern floor and lose no charm thereby, she became a dame who might have been commended to courts and palaces. She learned to sing, to play on the harpsichord, and dance; for painting, embroidery, and all the fragile accomplishments of the day, she had a surprising aptitude. She was surrounded by luxuries which might have proved bewildering to a less simple and noble nature, and, last of all, she stooped to receive the crown of her guardian’s love. Alas! poor maid of Marblehead! for this was a crown that smirched the brow and stung as with nettles, no matter how bravely its blossoms nodded above. Frankland loved her, but he was bound by the fetters of an ancestral pride; he owed all to his family, and nothing to his own manly honor,—and he could not[85]
[86]
[87] marry her. It is pitiful to guess with what tragic battlings of heart and conscience her overthrow must have been accomplished, but even she could scarcely have counted the cost,—the daily torture, the hourly pinch of circumstance, when one after another of Boston’s best, who had not failed to recognize the fisher-girl, rich in nothing but her dower of beauty and character, refused to countenance the fine lady, so ironically favored of Fortune. In the humble home at Marblehead, her name became the keynote of shame; for though these fisher-folk were rude of speech almost beyond belief, though they caroused wildly half the year, preparatory to their summer voyaging, they had a hard hand and a rough word ready for one who was light o’ love. She had given all for the one jewel, and both her little worlds, of birth and adoption, trembled from their centres. All the more did she turn to Frankland, as to her sun of happiness, and in the unfailing warmth of his affection she alternately drooped and smiled.

Then began the second and more glowing chapter of this dramatic tale. Sir Harry must have been bitterly moved by the social ostracism of his ward and lady, and he shortened the period of her expiation by the only possible device left him, save one, and took her away. He had bought a large tract of land in Hopkinton, Massachusetts, and there he proceeded to build a manor-house, where, in a humble fashion, life might copy the abundance and solid magnificence of England’s ancestral homes. The country itself[89]
[90]
[91] was a wonder of hill and valley,—hills where the loftier beauty of Wachusett and Monadnock might be viewed, valley where a happy village nestled, and where clear, cool streams flowed lightly to their outlet. Sir Harry was a clever purveyor of the good things of life; he made his manor-house commodious and fair to see, and erected a comfortable farm-house for his laborers; his great hall roof was supported by fluted columns, and its walls were hung with tapestry, rich of hue and texture. The house was approached by a long and stately avenue cut through magnificent chestnut-trees; the ground sloped down in commanding terraces of blooming sward, and the gardens and orchards were marvels of growth and abundance. In his gardening he took delight, but, alas for human pride and power! only the giant box of his borders and a few ancient trees have seen the present century, to attest his vanished life.

Here the two must have lived Arcadian days, in all but lightness of heart. The lovely maid, for whom no labor had been too menial, reigned the queen, of this lavish domain. She was the mistress of negro slaves, she walked in silk attire; and local gossip assures us that her tastes and those of Sir Harry were in the most perfect harmony. They rode together through their own plantation or over the fascinatingly unbroken country without; they read the latest consignment of books from England; and Sir Harry hunted the fox and fished for trout in the cold streams, possibly while Agnes did a bit of graceful and ladylike sketching on her own account,—for it must not be forgotten that she belonged to that unexacting era when large eyes and sloping shoulders were much in vogue, and when the work of womankind was all the more attractive for being a trifle thin and “very pretty.” Probably her accomplishments were all the more entrancing for matching “lady’s Greek, without the accents.” Here in their primeval wilderness, primeval morals were more to be tolerated, and the autocrats of Boston did not disdain to visit them—undoubtedly without their wives! At least Sir Harry did not lack society; and there is a tale that at the banquets, enlivened by the choice wines which came in his way by virtue of his collectorship, he, canny man! drank from a glass cunningly made shallow, so that he could toss off an equal number of potations with his guests, and yet remain sober while they slid imperceptibly under the table. For in these days, it was almost incumbent upon gentlemen to conclude a banquet by lying reclined “like gods together, careless of mankind.”

But the swiftly moving drama could not be stayed; and Sir Harry, called to England by imperative duties, carried his treasure with him to his ancestral home. At least there was this to be said in his favor, during these doubtful days,—he was not of those who love and ride away, and his loyalty to the one chosen woman never suffered reproach. In England, either defiant or strangely obtuse to the values of their relation, he introduced Agnes to his family; but neither her beauty nor accomplishments redeemed her unhappy standing, and she was made to suffer that social ignominy which is so absolutely blighting to a sensitive spirit. The strange irony of her position is very dramatic in retrospect. A lovely and loving woman, bound to the man who should have been her husband, by all the most holy vows of nature, she was destined to an unrelieved and bitter expiation; and though Sir Harry doubtless suffered with her, yet, in obedience to the laws that govern womankind, Agnes must have endured a desolation of misery entirely unimagined by him. Again they went into happy exile, and made the grand tour of the Continent, ending at Lisbon, at that time a species of modern Sybaris. Enriched by Brazilian gold, the court was supported in a magnificence then unparalleled in Europe. The opera was the finest on the Continent, and one pageant succeeded another, obedient to the whims of any ever-regnant luxury. Here, too, on the eminence of the seven hills, a colony of wealthy English merchants had congregated, and spent their fairy gold, flowing back through the magic portals leading to the New World, with a prodigality emulating that of the court. Here Frankland gave himself up to the fair god of Pleasure; he lived as if there were to be no morrow, and lo! the morrow came, and with it the judgment of God. On All Saints’ Day, 1755, the sun rose in splendor over the city of Lisbon; and all its inhabitants, from courtier to beggar, took their way churchward, for the celebration of High Mass. Frankland, in his court dress, was riding with a lady, when without warning the earth surged sea-like under them, and a neighboring house fell, engulfing them in its ruins. The lady (who was she, O Historic Muse? and was their talk light or sober, that care-free day in Lisbon?), this unnamed lady, in her agony and terror, bit through the sleeve of Frankland’s cloth coat, and tore a piece of flesh from his arm. And for him, he lay helpless, reading the red record of his sins, and adjudging himself in nothing so guilty as the wrong to the woman who loved him. Strange and awful scenes had driven the city frantic. Churches and dwellings had fallen; the sea swelled mountain-high, and swallowed the quay, with its thousands of bewildered fugitives. Lisbon went mad, and beat its breast, beseeching all the saints for mercy. But to one great spirit, even the insecurity of the solid earth was as nothing compared with the danger of her beloved mate. Agnes Surriage, aflame with anxiety for Frankland, ran out, as soon as the surging streets would give her foothold, and rushed about the desolated city in agonizing search. By some chance, strange as all the chances of her dramatic life, she came upon the very spot of his fearful burial. She tore at the rubbish above him with her tender hands; she offered large rewards, so purchasing the availing strength of others, and Frankland was saved.

To court and people, the earthquake voiced the vengeance of an angry God; to Frankland, it had been a flaming finger, writing on[99]
[100]
[101] the wall a sentence for him alone, and in security he did not forget its meaning. Waiting only for the healing of his wounds, he at last besought the blessing of holy church upon his love; and Agnes Surriage under went a radiant change into the Lady Agnes Frankland. And now for a time her days became gleaming points in a procession of happiness. Her husband returned with her to England, where she was received as a beloved daughter of the house, and enshrined in those steadfast English hearts, where fealty, once given, so seldom grows cold; and after a tranquil space, the two set sail again for America. Even amid the scenes of her former martyrdom, Agnes was no longer to be regarded as an alien and social outcast. She walked into Boston society as walks a princess entering her rightful domain, and there took up the sceptre of social sway at the aristocratic North End. Frankland had purchased the most lordly mansion there, of which the fragmentary descriptions are enough to make the antiquary’s mouth water. The stairs ascending from the great hall were so broad and low that he could ride his pony up and down in safety; there were wonderful inlaid floors, Italian marbles, and carven pillars. There Agnes lived the life of a dignified matron, and a social leader whose fiats none might gainsay. Indeed, from this time forward her story is that of the happy women whose deeds are unrecorded, and is only to be guessed through scanning the revelations of her husband’s journal. His health seems to have guided their movements in great measure; for they again visited Lisbon, and then came home to England, where he died, in 1768.

Lady Frankland returned to Hopkinton, and there she lived through uneventful days, with her sister and sister’s children, overseeing her spacious estate, and entertaining her hosts of friends, until 1775, that fiery date of American story. A jealous patriotism was rife; and it was not unnatural that the widow of an officer of the Crown, herself a devotee of the Established Church, should become an object of local suspicion, hand in glove as she was with the British invaders of our peace. Like many another avowed royalist, she judged it best to leave her undefended estate at Hopkinton, and place herself under military protection in Boston, and there she arrived, after a short detention by some over-zealous patriot, in time to witness the battle of Bunker Hill from the windows of her house, and to receive some of the wounded within its shelter. Thence she sailed for England, as our unpleasantness with the mother-country increased in warmth, and at this point she becomes lost to the romance-loving vision,—for, alas for those who “love a lover,” and insist upon an ideal constancy! Lady Frankland was married, in the fourteenth year of her widowhood, to John Drew, a wealthy banker of Chichester, and at Chichester she died, in one year’s time. But after all, on that sober second thought which is so powerful in regilding a tarnished fancy, does not her remarriage suit still better the requirements of romance? For instead of dying a staid Lady Frankland, her passions merged in the vital interests of caps and lap-dogs, she transmutes herself into another person, and thus fades out into an unrecognized future. Since neither the name of Surriage nor Frankland is predominant in its legend, even her tomb seems lost; and the mind goes ever back in fancy to her maiden name, her maiden state, when she was the disguised and humble princess of Marblehead.