Vindication

by Lyndall Gordon

  letter to EB: The US Vice-Consul for Le Havre, Francis Delamotte, appears to introduce GI to EB. GI is said to be a native of the US who is worthy of his confidence in a ‘joint commission’. The tone of the letter, co-signed by Delamotte and Imlay, besides being deadpan, is also too deliberately vague to ring quite true. It would be unlikely that GI would be dispatching treasure to a stranger–with his ship due to sail in the next day or two. Could this letter have been a kind of safety net or blind that, if opened, would seem to prove no scheme was afoot, and the relation with Backman as yet nonexistent? This is another brilliant discovery by Gunnar Molden, deepening the mystery of GI’s dealings. (Molden does not agree with my idea that this letter was a blind.) Kristiansand State Archive: Town Magistrate: Notary Protocol 8 (1794–1804), pub. by the Chief of Police, Sorensen (Dec. 1794). Presumably trans. from the English or French of the original into Norwegian. Delamotte was a big businessman and conceivably a player in GI’s game, though as yet not enough is known. His correspondence (in French) with the American Minister (Morris, Papers) reveals that Delamotte was arrested on 16 Feb. 1795 for a reason he never spells out. He had an English wife, and may have been suspected of spying. He had had an English business partner who had returned to England two years earlier. His fluency in English and the American ships at his disposal led to suspicions. His English correspondence was scrutinised. His nights were spent in prison; during the day he was allowed to work from 8 a.m. to 6 p.m. He remained in prison for four months–that is, till June–fearful for the safety of his wife. Married to a Frenchman, she was automatically protected, but not if that Frenchman was deemed a traitor.

  date of ship’s departure and nine days at sea: A later interrogation of Ellefsen at Arendal, Norway, on 28 April 1795, refers to his statement that a letter from GI on 13 Aug. had instructed him to sail to Gothenburg. Ellefsen testifies that the voyage took nine or ten days, and by 25 Aug. he was signing the ship over to his stepfather in Norway. This accords with new evidence in the letter from EB on 18 Nov. 1794 in which he says that the ship sailed from Le Havre on 14 or 15 Aug. It was therefore at sea c. 14–24 Aug.

  guillotining of leaders of the Terror: Eyewitness report in Rowan’s Autobiography, 238.

  dates of JB’s visit to Paris: Letters dated from Paris, 17 and 20 Aug. Houghton.

  MW’s ‘indignation’ with the knave: 19 and 20 Aug. MWL, 260; MWletters, 258–9. The dash in place of the name was inserted either by MW herself, or by WG in 1798 when he edited these letters for publication, destroying the originals.

  ‘fully acquainted…’: MW’s newly discovered letter to Bernstorff.

  Paris after the Terror: Linda Kelly, Women of the French Revolution, 153.

  Paris fashions in 1795: Laver, Taste and Fashion, 18; Murray, High Society, 245, 247, 253–7.

  women’s protest suppressed: In May 1795 radical women laid siege to the Convention so as to break the new order. The military was called in, and the Convention banned all unaccompanied women from its meetings and forbade more than five females to walk together in the street. (Jacobs, Her Own Woman, 177.) Women repeatedly attempt to enter politically into the Revolution, only to be controlled by the forces in power, whether Robespierre or his adversary Tallien.

  the Williams women had fled: HMW joined her lover John Hurford Stone in Switzerland, and from then they lived as a couple.

  Paine’s letter to the Convention: Paine, Dossier. In English with French translation.

  James Monroe: Replacing Morris as Minister, he had arrived at Le Havre at the end of July 1794, when the Terror ended. Conceivably, GI and MW, plus GI’s associate Delamotte the Vice-Consul, would have participated in a welcome for Monroe.

  von Schlabrendorf on MW in Paris: His recollections were in the form of notes in German in his copy of the Memoirs; relayed by his friend Carl Gustav Jochmann and reprinted in Durant’s Supplement to Memoirs, xxvii, 251–2. Other recollections are recorded by Henry Crabb Robinson in his Diary (2 Sept. 1817), after he visited HMW who recalled Schlabrendorf’s words (Crabb Robinson, Books and their Writers, i, 209).

  ‘permanent views’; ‘our being together’: Though GI’s letters have not survived, we can hear his voice when MW repeats his words 9–10 Feb. MWL, 278; MWletters, 281–2.

  honesty: WG casts doubt on GI’s honesty in the caveats of his note to MW’s letter of 30 Dec.: ‘the person to whom the letters are addressed, was about this time in Ramsgate, on his return, as he professed, to Paris, when he was recalled, as it should seem, to London, by the further pressure of business …’. Letters to Imlay, xxxi.

  Could GI have been a secret agent…: If GI was known to be in the pay of Britain, he may have been in danger with the new regime in France–a reason for not visiting MW in Paris, and for sending a servant rather than coming himself when she agreed to join him in London.

  money from JJ: It has been suggested that this money came from her sisters, who did intend sending drafts through JJ with a view to an exchange rate in favour of the English pound. The plan was for MW to keep the money against a time when it would be possible for Bess to join her.

  disillusion: Jacobs, 183, ‘puts this neatly: ‘Imlay’s eagerness to pay Mary’s bills merely underscored his emotional negligence.’

  ‘illiterate’: 20 Aug. 1793, Adams, MS correspondence.

  ‘Spy Nozy’: Coleridge, Biographia Literaria (1817), ch. 10.

  Burke on MW: Burke to Mrs John Crewe (Aug. 1795), Correspondence of Edmund Burke, viii, ed. Thomas W. Copeland (University of Chicago Press, 1969), 304.

  Letters for Literary Ladies: Cited in Jacobs, 191.

  GI’s maxim: Repeated by MW to GI (29 Dec. [1794]), MWL, 272; MWletters, 275.

  RB’s complicity with marital infidelity: RB to JB (6 and 20 Jan. 1796), Houghton: b MS Am 1448 (542, 546). RB asks JB to confide everything, for her better health: ‘even if you get a sweetheart tell me’. JB was then departing for what turned out to be an almost two-year stay in Algiers. RB’s health did deteriorate, and she became a semi-invalid, taking cures, often seemingly close to death. I have wondered if this was in part an effect of sexual betrayal in an exceptionally close marriage–all the closer perhaps for there being no children.

  JB and dealings in Hamburg: JB’s letterbook (1797–1803), 69–70, records that Dallarde & Swan in Paris (one of the firms he was working for) later questioned his returns. JB replied rather evasively (Mar. 1798) that the greater part of the goods was sold at a low price through the House of Boué before he left Hamburg in July 1795. Houghton: b MS Am 1448(4).

  JB’s change of fortune: It may not be entirely unconnected that between Mar. and June 1795 JB’s associate Swan was contriving to manipulate the two-million-dollar Franco-American debt to his private advantage.

  JB’s estate in 1795: JB’s will-letter to RB from Algiers during an outbreak of plague (1796). Draft in Beinecke: Za Barlow 13; final version in Houghton. He remarks that most of their property was ‘now lying in Paris’. Sum cited by Charles Todd, Joel Barlow, 117.

  Barlow’s biographers: Charles Todd’s biography in 1886 offers skimpy evidence of his sudden wealth: ‘He invested largely in French Government consols, which rose rapidly after the victories of Napoleon and yielded him a handsome fortune’ (111). Todd is talking mostly about money coming in at a later period–sliding over the fact that JB was surprisingly well-off already in 1796. Woodress, Yankee Odyssey, assumes JB made his fortune as a shipping agent which is closer to the truth, but it can’t have been built up bit by bit, given the obstructive freeze of that particular year. The shortest chapter in Woodress (ch. 6, only 10 pages), ‘Commercial Interlude’ is where the blank lies. Without a fortune of sorts by the end of 1795, JB could not have hung on in Algiers for nearly two years on a small salary, while supporting Ruth in the pleasant area of the rue du Bac in Paris. Though he undertook consular duties, his position in Algiers remained shaky, according to his letterbooks in Houghton: he had to rebut an accusation from Washington that he was trying to cre
ate a diplomatic position for himself.

  JB on ‘pecuniaries’ (Feb. 1795): Houghton, b MS Am 1448 (67). In Feb.–Mar., Ruth was again at her London address, 18 Great Titchfield Street. I have wondered if she could have been a safe emissary to Imlay, since it was dangerous for her husband to enter England. Late in 1794 the French army, literally skating across the ice, drove the English out of Holland, and the ice-bound Dutch fleet was captured. Merchants from the Netherlands began to trade through Hamburg, whose shipping doubled in 1794–5. Neutral American agents were in demand. Swan’s international debt machinations of March–June might also be borne in mind.

  the freeze: Morris, Diary, ii, 79, 81, notes that the bulk of the shipping on the Elbe was American.

  ships ‘beat about by the Ice’: Robert Fitzgerald to William Wickham (19 Mar. 1795) from Kuxhaven at the mouth of the Elbe. Wickham, Correspondence, i, 31–3.

  Rowan’s sixteenth-century ancestor: James Hamilton, Viscount Claneboyne.

  Rowan and the United Irishmen: Rowan’s Autobiography; Foster, Modern Ireland, 276, 271f., and SC, i, 83.

  fête: On 21 Sept. 1794.

  Rowan’s first encounter with MW: Rowan, 253–4. This letter was written after MW departed for England (after Apr. 1795).

  ‘croak’: Rowan’s reminiscence to MW of his ‘fashion’ [habits] in Paris (15 Sept. 1797), KP, i, 285–7.

  ‘all the sanctity…’: Rowan, Autobiography, 256.

  MW on marriage in conversation with Rowan: Letter to his wife (20 Mar. 1795), delivered in Ireland by EW. Ibid., 259.

  weaned Fanny: Jacobs, Her Own Woman, 185, suggests weaning was a preparation for sex, for it was then assumed that nursing mothers should abstain.

  GI’s reception of MW; shared house: Memoirs, ch. 8.

  GI’s excuses to BW: His letter (Nov. 1794) cited by KP, i, 217.

  Mary’s blow to BW: BW returned MW’s letter, and wrote to EW on 8 May: ‘Would to God we were both in America with Charles. Do you think it would be possible for us to go from Dublin in an American ship to Philadelphia–this is my only HOPE.’ Early in June she sent another letter to MW (it has not survived) and waited in suspense, but there was no reply, for Mary had left. She urged GI to look after her sisters in her absence, though he did not. The anger Mary provoked at this moment would have repercussions for her daughter Fanny twenty years later.

  ‘whirl’: MW to GI (27 May 1795).

  libertinism…liberty: Seelye, Beautiful Machine, 189.

  ‘Inckay’ sold the ship: Record of sale and date in the Riksarkivet, Stockholm.

  the ship did not sink: Proven by Molden, ‘The Silver Ship Emerging’, 139–54.

  GI’s orders for MW: 19 May 1795. Abinger papers: original untraced, present text taken from Pf’s microfilm of the Abinger Collection, reel 9. Two reasons for giving the letter almost in full are, first, the difficulty of penetrating the convoluted paragraph about MW’s task in Norway, and second, the curious emphasis on Messrs Ryberg. KP, i, 227–8, quotes a large extract. Shorter extracts in Durant’s Supplement, 295; Holmes, Sidetracks, 238; and Jacobs, 205–6.

  meet up: There was some talk of Basle (one of the centres of the French secret scheme to gain provisions).

  12 FAR NORTH

  Uncited quotations are from MW’s letters to GI of June 1795–Jan. 1796 in MWL, 289–328; MWletters, 295–337. This chapter offers a solution to the mystery of the silver ship. The notes below present the substratum of the evidence in lieu of the elusive proof.

  impressions of Beverley: Travels, letter 9.

  Onsala peninsula: Suggested in Buus, ‘Promethean Journey’, replacing Nyström’s idea of the Nidingen reef.

  Ellefsen’s background: Peder’s grandfathers were brothers, Hans and Peder Ellefsen, who married daughters of a rich man called Isaac Falch. The two families were joint owners of the flourishing Egeland ironworks which manufactured the decorative iron stoves that were the necessity of every Norwegian house. A son of one house, Ellef Hansen of Arendal, married a daughter of the other, Margrethe of Risør, uniting two fortunes.

  Groos: Not far from Grimstad.

  delay in Groos:, Ellefsen claimed that the bottom of the ship was damaged in the ship’s log for 21 and 22 Aug. Molden has ascertained bad weather at the time.

  galloped: Ellefsen could have hired a boat, but my guess is that in his hurry, a boat, subject to wind, would have been too uncertain.

  Ellefsen sold the ship: The deed states he had bought the ship for his stepfather, Major Christopher Henrik Hoelfeldt, at Le Havre.

  Sandviga: Gunnar Molden has identified the docking place for sailing ships in the late eighteenth century, to the left as you enter Arendal along the Galtesund Channel.

  silver as a speciality in Schleswig-Holstein: This area often changed hands. At the time it belonged to Denmark. A stunning array of eighteenth-century silver is in the North German Museum in Altona, the capital of Holstein. In 1965 silver objects previously stored went on permanent display. See Manfred Meinz, ‘Die “Silberkammer” des Altonaer Museums’, Altoner Museum in Hamburg: Jahrbuch 1966, iv (Hamburg: D. R. Ernst Hauswedell & Co. Verlag), 38–75; and a sequel on the silberkammer in Jahrbuch 1967, v, 79–136.

  local folklore about the silver ship: Foss, Arendals byes historie.

  plan to sink the ship: Judge Wulfsberg’s report (18 Aug. 1795) to the Stiftamptmann in Oslo, and to the Danish Prime Minister, cited in Molden, ‘The Shipwreck That Never Was’. I am grateful to Molden for a copy of this letter. Molden adds in ‘No Riches for the Descendants’ that the ship was rumoured to have sunk ‘just off Torungen’, near Skurvene. A lighthouse there marks danger.

  fresh moves to detach from ship: On 11 Sept. Ellefsen approached Captain Gabriel Engström from Hamburg to replace him. This didn’t work out.

  signed over ship. In the 1970s Nyström found the deed of transfer at the Aust-Agders Archives, Arendal. Further facts are revealed in the interrogation of Ellefsen in Arendal Town Hall (28 Apr. 1795), a shaming event in his family town.

  three witnesses: The lawyer Mr Ussing; Peder’s stepfather’s representative; and his brother Isaac Falch Ellefsen.

  crew at the time of handover: Judicial inquiry in Arendal, 30 Apr. 1795. Kristiansand Archive: Police Protocol 1 (1783–99), p. 287B. Wulfsberg, report of 18 Aug. 1795, seems to suggest a change of crew in the course of the voyage when he says that Ellefsen ‘troubled himself to obtain the kind of people on board the ship, who would be party to the ship’s sinking’.

  likely time for attempt to sink the ship: On 22 Sept. 1794 Ellefsen borrowed 588 riksdaler from his lawyer, with the ship as security. Although it was common to raise money in this way if repairs were necessary during a journey, this would later be questioned as a criminal act, and a reason could be that damage to the ship had been deliberate. The ship was still making for Gothenburg, Ellefsen reassured EB in late Sept. and again on 7 Oct.

  storm: Crew’s testimony on 23 Dec. 1794. Quoted in Molden, ‘The Silver Brig’.

  EB leapt into action: GI did not tell EB about the silver until 24 Oct. (the day before the Rambler with its bullion reached Gothenburg). EB approached Christoffer Nordberg, the leading merchant in the Swedish border port of Strömstad. Nordberg consulted the town’s district judge, A. J. Unger, and also Wulfsberg.

  Waak: Queried Ellefsen’s right to mortgage the ship, and took him to court.

  magistrate of Risør: von Aphelen cross-questioned Ellefsen on 8 Nov. 1794.

  Ellefsen extracted the receipt: Opinion of Judge Wulfsberg (18 Aug. 1795).

  Ellefsen’s allegation that Coleman ‘escaped’: ‘On 11th [Nov. 1794], after being forced by the local magistrate to fire the person I hired as captain of the Maria Margreta, the aforesaid mate Mr Kolmand [Coleman], and demand the return of all the ship’s papers because of his lawless and untoward circumstances, this person, unbeknown to me … has on this day gone to sea and escaped with the ship from East Risør harbour.’ Report of the Kristiansands Addresse Kontors Efteretninger
(27 Nov.), the only newspaper in that part of Norway at the time. Discovered by Molden.

  crew’s testimony: 23 Dec. 1794, after the ship landed in Kristiansand, and following Coleman’s interrogation. Discovered by Molden.

  failed attempts to land in Sweden: 15 and 16 Nov. 1794. Travels, letter 6.

  Coleman interrogated at Kristiansand: 13 and 15 Dec. 1794. Ellefsen had tried to forestall this with an attack on Coleman on 5 Dec., declaring that Coleman was using the flag illegally. Subsequent interrogations queried Ellefsen’s own right to fly the Danish flag. When Ellefsen was questioned on why he had not taken the ship from Arendal to Gothenburg, he made the flag his excuse, saying that he did not want to commit a ‘wrong’. He gave a different excuse in a letter to EB: he was unwell, he claimed, and his private affairs prevented his completing the journey. Neither excuse rings true. Ellefsen made a bad impression on Magistrate von Levetsow and police chief Rasmus Sørensen. (Kristiansand Town Magistrate, 34. Collegial Protocol (1793–4), 213. Includes a report from Levetsow to his Danish superiors.)

  document vital to the case against Ellefsen: The document, in English, was translated into Norwegian by 15 Dec., within four days of the ship’s docking in Kristiansand, and included in the magistrate’s report to Copenhagen. Another document that came to light at this time was the introduction of GI to EB, giving the impression that the two didn’t know each other and as yet had no dealings (ch. 11, above). The letter, signed by Delamotte and GI himself and dated from Le Havre, 26 Thermidor (13 Aug.), was in French. The magistrate ignored this because it did not mention Ellefsen or the ship. A record of this inquiry was presented at a more searching interrogation in Arendal on 28 Apr. 1795. (Kristiansand State Archive: Arendal Town Magistrate, Police Protocol 1 (1783–99), p. 287B.)

  ‘crooked business!’: GI had not altogether contravened the American position on trading practice. Jefferson, as Secretary of State, had recently laid down that ‘our property, whether in the form of vessels, cargoes, or anything else, has a right to pass untouched by any nation, by the law of nations: and no one has a right to ask where a vessel was built, but where is she owned?’ (Jefferson to Morris in Paris, 13 June 1793: Morris, Papers.) Given Jefferson’s principle, a French ship is no longer French if an American buys it. GI, though, may have ventured beyond the bounds of law when he disguised his American ship as a Norwegian one. When Ellefsen declared that the ship had no right to fly a Norwegian flag, he was exposing GI’s infringement of Norwegian law.