FATHER and DAUGHTER After Elizabeth Bayley Married Into the Seton Mercantile Family, Her Relations with Her Public-Spirited Father Continued As Close As Before
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CHAPTER 3 hg FATHER AND DAUGHTER After Elizabeth Bayley married into the Seton mercantile family, her relations with her public-spirited father continued as close as before. When Dr. Bayley traveled away from New York, he corresponded with his daughter and complained on occasion, “Never was I more vexed or disappointed than this evening. Why did you not write by the post?”1 He confided in her his fatigue and ennui in Newark. “Work, ache, cards, loss of money, sick of Pandora’s box,” were phrases he used to voice his dissatisfaction with his own life.2 But the summers Elizabeth spent on Long Island found him cheerfully running out in his boat to see her and receive “the most cheerful welcome in the world.”3 There is no way of conclusively defining the dislocation of family relations which seemed to have existed between Dr. Richard Bayley and his second wife, but the veiled references to these relations suggest that the quick-tempered surgeon at this period had forbidden Elizabeth to effect any reconciliation. This rift was pointed up by the return of Eliza Craig Sadler from Europe and the subsequent marriage of William Craiga to Emma Bayley, Elizabeth’s half-sister.4 Elizabeth found the joy in Sad’s return diluted by the difficulty the family feud presented. She explained to Julia Scott: My Intercourseb with Mrs. Sadler—will be so much mixed with vexation, and our difference will be a source of so much mortification to her, that I can never visit her without expecting to meet those I do not wish to meet, and would rather now wish to avoid what was once so great a pleasure.5 Dr. Bayley commented on his own situation with the light remark: I love to think on the oddity of my life. What words afford the most inconsolable affliction to another person, that which would afford aching heart to most people, seem to me as a matter of amusement. Dear heady temper go on. Hail to the period when I shall be at rest.6 a It is possible that both William and Samuel Craig were brothers of Eliza Sadler, but final proof is lacking. “Emma” was Charlotte Amelia Bayley, oldest daughter of Charlotte Amelia Barclay Bayley and Dr. Richard Bayley. The marriage took place on 19 June 1799 and the bridal couple spent their honeymoon at the Sadler summer home on Long Island. b Intercourse was the term commonly used in during the nineteenth century for social or business interactions between persons or groups. 61 But Elizabeth knew her father better than to be deceived by his flippancy and she confided her concern to Julia: My Father, in addition to his former uneasiness, has new sources of distress which make me tremble. Two of my brothersc have already shown the most unquestionable marks of unsteady dispositions—We cannot Wonder—but this is a sacred subject, and appears to have affected him above all other Evils.7 Elizabeth was determined to ease her father’s burden in some way or other. “You are a philosopher,” she consoled him. “Treasure up the blessed spirit.”8 She sent him inspirational poems, and praised his work. When the lack of appreciation for his efforts depressed the health officer, Elizabeth wrote: If the prayers of a good quiet little Female are supposed to be of any avail, it [your health] will be long continued to you, with the hope that the visual rays of our fellow citizens will in time be brightened by your labors, and their attention awakened by the voice of truth and conscience.9 She relayed to Dr. Bayley the compliment of a French physician who found her father’s article on yellow fever in the Monitor “the best thing written on the subject.”10 She tried to arrange the family Christmas so that Dr. Bayley could spend it with his two oldest daughters and their children, and 25 December 1799, found the Posts and Setons together, and the doughty doctor entangled amid the sticky hands of his little grandchildren.11 After 1797, the state capital was removed to Albany, New York, and Dr. Bayley journeyed northward each winter to present the business of the health department to the legislature. Here he mingled with Alexander Hamilton, Gouverneur Morris, and other men of “superior sense” and “great brilliancy of wit.” He told Elizabeth, “I esteem it a high good fortune to be on a footing of communication, of feeling, and sentiment with them.”12 He enjoyed lodging with them at the lieutenant-governor’s at Watervliet.13 c The “brothers” were probably Elizabeth Seton’s half-brothers, Richard and Andrew Barclay Bayley. Neither man lived long nor achieved any success while alive. Richard Bayley, Jr. was born on 7 August 1781. Sometime between 1799 and 1803 he was briefly associated with the Filicchi counting house in Leghorn, probably through William Seton’s intercession. By 1805 he had lost $10,000 of his mother’s money in abortive mercantile pursuits. He married Catherine White on 26 October 1812, and was killed three years later in a horse and carriage accident on 29 May 1815. Very little is known of Andrew Barclay Bayley except that he was once engaged to Harriet Seton, pursued a mercantile career in Jamaica and the West Indies, and died there prior to 8 December 1811, on which date Mary Bayley Post announced his death to Elizabeth Seton. 62 He wrote satirical descriptions of the flirtations at the capital, told whose portrait was receiving the most attention, and commented on the current theatrical offerings. But more often his thoughts were in New York, and he begged his “Lady Bet” not to miss a post for Albany.14 He wanted news of his grandchildren, and he admonished Elizabeth “that a sound mind in a sound body ought to be your motto for educating your children.”15 His opinion was much more colored by his age than by any vein of prophecy, for he added, “Look up and urge forward your claims to preeminence; your children are to give you immortality. This is neither the world nor the age for you to enjoy it in.”16 Dr. Bayley felt closer to his second daughter than to any other person living. It was to Elizabeth that he opened his heart fully and tried to explain himself. He wrote: Shall we be compelled to assign or connect motives to every action of our lives? To every impulse of mind? To every expression of a heart that feels? I hope not, for surely in such a case, I should be deprived of many little pleasures that a more cautious temper never feels. Calculations, intentions, cautions are all entitled to their place [but] to be always calculating, always cautious, to be always influenced by intentions are motives never to be applied to me.17 In trying to form some estimate of Elizabeth Seton’s personality it is well to recall now and then this side of her father’s character. There is a kind of personality which tolerates no opposition to what it deems the natural expression of its own impulses. Often this temperament views it pyrotechnics as rather amazing, even unfortunate, but certainly never unjustified. When the same tendency toward temper in a child is reinforced by the example of a beloved parent, the force of this personality trait can be considerable. It is not at all surprising, then, to find that in the mature Elizabeth Seton a deep-rooted tendency to imprudent self-expression sometimes won the battle over her will to self-control. She herself never lost consciousness of the fact that a hot temper was one of her sources of temptation. The serenity she displayed in later life was no gauge of the battles she had to fight. Her meekness and humility were hard-won. As the Seton fortunes declined, Dr. Bayley became more concerned about the welfare of his favorite household. In March 1799, Elizabeth had told Julia “My Father has obtained permission from the Legislature to perform all the plans he has contemplated on Staten Island. He is building a hospital and dwelling house.”18 By the following spring the house was sufficiently completed to suggest to Bayley that he could offer it as a summer 63 haven to his harassed daughter. Elizabeth in 1800 was expecting her fourth child and the doctor wanted no repetition of the crisis Richard’s arrival had created. Late in May, Dr. Bayley went on ahead to Staten Island, taking with him young Anna Maria, Will, and Dick. Elizabeth was to follow in June, accompanied by Rebecca Seton, who had recently returned from the south.19 And so it was that on 1 July 1800, William Magee Seton announced to Julia Scott: I have the pleasure to inform you that on Saturday last at dawn of day your little friend presented us with another daughter, if possible more lovely than the first, but as you are acquainted with my sentiments with respect to what is mine, I will forbear all description at present and let you judge for yourself—I left her and her mother yesterday at the Health Establishment where they cannot but thrive and indeed Eliza was never better.20 Although it was originally intended that the Setons would be on the island only a month, Dr. Bayley was so delighted with his new family life that he confessed “the habit of being a Christian and in some degree domesticated was not to be dispensed with after four weeks’ enjoyment.”21 The decision was, then, that the Setons should remain all summer.