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IN the life of
Colonel James Swan, as in that of Doctor Benjamin Church, money was the root of
all evil. Swan was almost a fool because of his pig-headedness in financial
adversity, and Church was ever a knave, plausible even when proved guilty. Yet
both fell from the same cause, utter inability to keep money and avoid debt.
Colonel Swan's
history reads very like a romance. He was born in Fifeshire, Scotland, in 1754,
and carne to America in 1765. He found employment in Boston, and devoted all his
spare time to books. While a clerk of eighteen, in a counting-house near Faneuil
Hall, he published a work on the African slave trade, entitled, "A Discussion of
Great Britain and Her Colonies from the Slave Trade," a copy of which, preserved
in the Boston Public Library, is well worth reading for its flavour and wit.
While serving an
apprenticeship with Thaxter & Son, he formed an intimate friendship with several
other clerks who, in after years, became widely known, among them, Benjamin
Thompson, afterward made Count Rumford, and Henry Knox, who later became the
bookseller on Cornhill, and finally a general in the Continental army.
Swan was a member of
the Sons of Liberty, and took part in the famous Boston tea-party. He was
engaged in the battle of Bunker Hill as a volunteer aid of warren, and was twice
wounded. He also witnessed the evacuation of Boston by the British, March 17,
1776. He later became secretary of the Massachusetts board of war, and was
elected a member of the '' legislature. Throughout the whole war
he occupied positions of trust, often requiring great courage and cool
judgment, and the, fidelity with which every duty was performed was shown by the
honours conferred upon him after retiring to civil life. By means of a large
fortune which fell to him, he entered mercantile business on a large scale, and
became very wealthy. He owned large tracts of land in different parts of the
country, and bought much of the confiscated. property of the Tories, among other
lands the estate belonging to
Governor Hutchinson, lying on Tremont Street, between west and Boylston Streets.
His large speculations, however, caused him to become deeply involved in debt.
In 1787, accordingly, he started out anew to make a fortune, and through the
influence of Lafayette and other men of prominence in Paris, he secured many
government contracts which entailed immense profit. Through all the dark days of
the French Revolution, he tried to serve the cause of the. proscribed French
nobility by perfecting plans for them to colonise on his lands in America. A
large number he induced to immigrate, and a vast quantity of the furniture and
belongings of these unfortunates was received on board his ships. But before the
owners could follow their furniture, the axe had fallen upon their heads.
When the Reign of
Terror was at its height, the Sally, owned by Colonel Swan, and commanded
by Captain Stephen Clough, of Wiscasset, Maine, came home with a strange cargo
and a stranger story. The cargo consisted of French tapestries, marquetry,
silver with foreign crests, rare vases, clocks, costly furniture, and no end of
apparelling fit for a queen. The story was that, only for the failure at the
last moment of a plot for her deliverance, Marie
Antoinette
would also have been on the sloop, the plan being that she should be the guest
at Wiscasset of the captain's wife until she could be transferred to a safer
retreat.
However true may be
the rumour of a plot to bring Marie
Antoinette to
America, it is certain that the furniture brought on the Sally, was of
exceptional value and beauty. It found its resting-place in the old Swan house
of our picture, to which it gave for many years the name of the Marie
Antoinette
house. One room was even called the Marie
Antoinette
room, and the bedstead of this apartment, which is to-day in the possession of
the descendants of Colonel Swan, is still known as the Marie
Antoinette
bedstead. Whether the unhappy queen ever really rested on this bed cannot, of
course, be said, but tradition has it that it was designed for her use in
America because she had found it comfortable in France.
Colonel Swan, having
paid all his debts, returned in 1795 to the United States, accompanied by the
beautiful and eccentric gentlewoman who was his wife, and who had been with her
husband in Paris during the Terror. They brought with them on this occasion a
very large collection of fine French furniture, decorations, and paintings. The
colonel had became very wealthy indeed through his commercial enterprises, and
was now able to spend a great deal of money upon his fine Dorchester mansion,
which he finished about the year 1796. A prominent figure of the house was the
circular dining-hall, thirtytwo feet in diameter, crowned at the height of
perhaps twenty-five feet by a dome, and having three mirror windows. As
originally built, it contained no fireplaces or heating conveniences of any
kind.
SWAN HOUSE, DORCHESTER, MASS.
Mrs. Swan accompanied her husband on several subsequent trips to
Paris, and it was on one of these occasions that the colonel came to great
grief. He had contracted, it is said, a debt claimed in France to be two million
francs. This indebtedness he denied, and in spite of the persuasion of his
friends he would make no concession in the matter. As a matter of principle he
would not pay a debt which, he insisted, he did not owe. He seems to have
believed the claim of his creditor to be a plot, and he at once resolved to be a
martyr. He was thereupon arrested, and confined in St. Pélagie, a debtor's
prison, from 1808 to 1830, a period of twenty-two years!
He steadfastly
denied the charge against him, and, although able to settle the debt, preferred
to remain a prisoner to securing his liberty on an unjust plea. . . . He gave up
his wife, children, friends, and the comforts of his Parisian and New England
homes for a principle, and made preparations for a long stay in prison.
Lafayette, Swan's sincere friend, tried in vain to prevail upon him to take his
liberty.1
Doctor Small, his biographer, tells us that he lived in a little cell in the prison, and was treated with great respect by the other prisoners, they putting aside their little furnaces with which they cooked, that he might have more room for exercise. Not a day passed without some kind act on his part, and he was known to have been the cause of the liberation of many poor debtors. When the jailor introduced his pretended creditor, he would politely salute him, and say to the former: "My friend, return me to my chamber."
With funds sent by
his wife, Swan hired apartments in the Rue de la Clif, opposite St. Pélagie,
which he caused to be fitted up at great expense. Here were dining and drawing
rooms, coaches, and stables, and outhouses, and here he invited his guests and
lodged his servants, putting at the disposal of the former his carriages, in
which they drove to the promenade, the ball, the theatre – everywhere in his
name. At this Parisian home he gave great dinners to his constant but bewildered
friends. He seemed happy in thus braving his creditors and judges, we are told,
allowed his beard to grow, dressed à la mode, and was cheerful to the last day
of his confinement.
His wife died in
1825, and five years later the Revolution of July threw open his doors in the
very last hour of his twenty-second year of captivity. His one desire upon being
released was to embrace his friend Lafayette, and this he did on the steps of
the
Hôtel de
Ville. Then
he returned, July 31, to reinstate himself in prison – for St. Pélagie had after
twenty-two years come to stand to him for home. He was seized almost immediately
upon his second entrance into confinement with a hemorrhage, and died suddenly
in the Rue d'Êchiquier, aged seventy-six. In his will, he donated large sums of
money to his four children, and to the city of Boston to found an institution to
be called the Swan Orphan Academy. But the estate was found to be hopelessly
insolvent, and the public legacy was never paid. The colonel's name lives,
however, in the Maine island he purchased in 1786, for the purpose of improving
and settling, – a project which, but for one of his periodic failures, he would
probably have successfully accomplished.
1
"History of Swan's Island."
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